Category Archives for Education

Unequal higher education is bad education

Private students only for Russell Group universities

Social responsibility and our universities have been in the news of late. Just five private schools and one college send more students to Oxbridge than 2000 state schools! This from the Social Mobility Commission. And from a Guardian freedom of information request: of students accepted by the Russell Group of universities, the 24 that consider themselves the top universities, more come from Surrey alone than from the whole of Wales and the north-east of England combined! The inequality is appalling and has been getting steadily worse under both the Coalition and New Labour.

To be sure, annual fees of £9,000 discourage poor and mature students alike, but there is more to the explanation than this. Opportunities are simply greater for the privileged minority – all opportunities. The majority can forget that gap year in Peru, that internship in a top company, that job offer from family networking. Above all, it can forget that private education with all its individual attention, its learning beyond the curriculum, its cultivation of confidence and contacts for life.

The privileged are not to be blamed for seizing their opportunities, but the more they do, the more the gap between the privileged and the rest grows. You might expect the rest to complain, but so should the privileged. If able students are not allowed to develop and use their talents, we are all poorer, the privileged included.

The Green Party vision

The Green Party would change the country’s broken university system. Universities no longer educate students to contribute to society: they sell qualifications, passports to better jobs, more money and yet more privilege. Universities are businesses selling personal advancement to customers. They compete fiercely, touting their courses in terms of the likelihood of their graduates securing the best jobs in the best firms, and increased lifetime earnings. The Coalition government offers universities incentives to enroll underprivileged students; they will remain token and ineffectual as long as universities compete for the most privileged students.

The UK now ranks fifth among European countries in the proportion of gross domestic product government spends on higher education – fifth from the bottom, that is. Only the governments of Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Greece are more miserly. The Green Party accepts the Scandinavian model: higher education for all those with ability is a national investment, fundamental infrastructure, without which a country goes nowhere. The Coalition sees only a cost that can be reduced by privatisation and competition. Just look at the result.