Abul Rizvi was the deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, then the deputy secretary of the Department of Communication.
He has a PhD in Immigration Policy from the University of Melbourne, and came to Australia as part of a migrant academic family.
He argues Australia’s current visa system is unjust, proposes his alternative to student caps, and says we need to change government attitudes to international students.
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Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy. Picture: Supplied
The peak body representing universities, Universities Australia (UA), has said the federal government should offer more money and less bureaucracy to the higher education sector ahead of the election due by April.
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There has been much discussion in recent months about financial pressures in the higher education sector and what could be done by stakeholders in the sector – government, regulators and higher education institutions themselves – to address these.
One such proposal is a strategy of “radical collaboration” between institutions, ranging from mergers to federations, or shared services and centrally operated services. Indeed, the Office for Students (OfS) has cited radical collaboration as a likely response to the financial challenges in the sector:
Where necessary, providers will need to prepare for, and deliver in practice, the transformation needed to address the challenges they face. In some cases, this is likely to include looking externally for solutions to secure their financial future, including working with other organisations to reduce costs or identifying potential merger partners or other structural changes.
This notion of radical collaboration goes beyond the traditional practice of academically driven collaboration. Instead, in this context radical collaboration refers to deeper, more extensive and far-reaching strategic collaboration, involving institutions working together to achieve a strategic shared mission and/or efficiencies. This might include, for example, curriculum sharing, or collaborating on a regional basis where institutions collectively decide which is best placed to deliver particular courses or subject areas.
While the notion of “radical collaboration” may present a potentially appealing way of responding to the challenges that the sector is facing, there is, however, a significant tension between the principles of such transformational integration and the principles of competition law. As things currently stand, many forms of greater integration between institutions, particularly in relation to curriculum mapping and sharing the provision of courses, would breach the competition rules.
Competition laws seek to safeguard free and fair competition between “undertakings” (ie any entity that is engaged in economic activity) for the benefit of consumers, with the aim of creating competitive markets which benefit from the efficient allocation of resources; innovation; lower prices; increased choice; and better-quality products and services for customers.
Competition laws therefore prohibit agreements and understandings between independent “undertakings” that have, as their object or effect, the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition. Some agreements are regarded as being so harmful to competition in their nature that they are prohibited outright, for example, agreements between competitors to fix prices, share markets, limit output, or co-ordinate or rig tenders. These types of agreements are highly likely to attract vigorous enforcement action by the competition authorities, including the imposition of substantial fines. A finding that an organisation has breached competition rules (or even an allegation of a breach) would inevitably lead to negative publicity and reputational harm.
While the higher education sector may not bear all the hallmarks of a traditional, fully competitive market, it does fall within the scope of the UK’s competition law regime. Higher education institutions are “undertakings” for the purposes of competition law because they are engaged in “economic activities”; they provide education and other ancillary services to undergraduate and postgraduate students, create jobs which benefit their local and the national economy, as well as develop new products and services.
Moreover, higher education institutions have to compete to “win” students, competing to a certain extent on price, in the context of international or postgraduate provision, but primarily on non-price factors of competition, such as choice of course/course content; quality of provision; reputation; and the range and quality of ancillary services, such as sports provision, accommodation and other student services. Higher education institutions also compete in “upstream” labour markets to attract and retain talent (ie teaching and research staff).
Collaboration between sector participants can undoubtedly be positive and pro-competitive. Such arrangements may be permitted by competition law if (among other things) the collaboration produces efficiencies which benefit consumers. For example, when properly structured, benchmarking exercises or arrangements between institutions to share facilities can lead to the more efficient allocation of resources. However, collaboration between sector participants which dampens or reduces the levels of competition that would otherwise exist between them, and/or which produces no clear benefits for consumers, risks breaching the competition rules.
A clear understanding of where the line is drawn between collaboration which promotes competition and delivers consumer/student benefits, and collaboration which reduces or distorts competition, is therefore important. If this boundary is not well understood, or the boundary itself is not appropriately drawn, the competition rules could act as a barrier to the very innovation and collaboration which the OfS and the government are relying upon to alleviate some of the pressures facing the sector. Indeed, in an interview last week, vice chancellor of Cardiff University Wendy Larner commented that competition law was preventing the kind of collaboration on course provision that she felt was necessary.
More recent regulatory scrutiny of the sector has focused on consumer law aspects. Nonetheless, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and its predecessor, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), have reviewed mergers between higher education institutions – for example, the University of Manchester / Victoria Manchester / University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology merger in 2005. And in 2014, the OFT conducted a call for evidence in order to gain a better understanding of how choice and competition were working in the higher education sector in England in response to policy developments that sought to foster the development of a competitive market.
The OFT’s report, following the call for evidence, noted that the most “serious and prevalent” concerns raised by stakeholders related to the extent to which fears of breaching competition law might hinder beneficial cooperation between institutions. However, the report also noted that despite “many generic references” by stakeholders to the potential (perceived) tensions between collaboration and competition, “there were no substantive examples that would justify, because of their relevance and/or novel nature, the production of specific OFT guidance beyond that already available.”
That said, the report also noted that there was scope for the (then incoming) CMA to highlight that:
The OFT’s report was published a decade ago at a time when the sector was arguably in a different place. The types of collaborative activities identified by the OFT in its report as being beneficial and delivering benefits to students were very much the more traditional forms of cooperation and certainly some way removed from the radical collaboration concepts being discussed at present.
It also appears to be the case that a lack of concrete examples demonstrating where the competition rules had, in practice, posed a barrier to beneficial collaboration influenced the OFT’s thinking. It is perhaps for this reason that the OFT’s findings were limited to acknowledging that cooperation which results in efficiencies should be allowed to take place and reminding institutions of the possibility of relying on an individual exemption from the competition rules.
An individual exemption involves the institution(s) in question conducting a self-assessment of whether the proposed agreement restricting competition will benefit consumers to an extent that outweighs the harm to competition. In practical terms the notion of relying on a self-assessed individual exemption may not be attractive to many institutions. Four cumulative criteria must be met for the exemption to apply and, if the agreement is challenged, the party relying on the exemption bears the burden of proof for substantiating, with specific evidence, that the exemption criteria are met.
Undertaking the self-assessment process in advance of entering into any agreement around radical collaboration would be a significant, evidence driven compliance exercise involving financial and economic modelling. However, even if institutions (and their advisors) were to conclude that it is likely that the exemption criteria are met, there would always be the risk that the CMA or a court might take a different view of the evidence and would disagree. Institutions may not be prepared to proceed with a high-stakes radical collaboration against this backdrop of uncertainty.
Moreover, the criteria for individual exemption include the requirement that an agreement must improve production or distribution, or promote technical or economic progress, “while allowing consumers a fair share of the resulting benefit.” Consumers in this scenario means students. In other words, to rely on the exemption, any benefits accruing to the participating institutions from the collaboration must be passed on to a sufficient extent to the students. It would have to be demonstrated, with evidence, that the collaboration would result in lower prices, or better choice and quality, for students. It would not be enough for participating institutions to demonstrate that benefits merely accrue to them.
It is also worth remembering that the CMA may offer non-binding views on the application of the competition rules to “novel” questions. The CMA has in fact expressed that it is open to hearing from the sector, perhaps in response to the vice-chancellor of Cardiff University’s critical comments.
While seeking a non-binding view on a proposed form of radical collaboration may sound appealing, it is open to debate whether some of the collaboration proposals which have been mooted are genuinely “novel” in competition terms. For example, an agreement between competing institutions about who will offer certain courses would almost certainly be characterised as market sharing, a serious breach of the competition rules.
There’s an argument to be made about whether a wider national agenda from government on driving forward radical collaboration in higher education is needed, which takes into account the competition law issues. Similar questions to those facing higher education were recently debated in the competition law community in the context of how the competition rules apply to sustainability agreements – agreements between industry participants which are aimed at preventing, reducing or mitigating the adverse impact that economic activities have on the environment, or assist with the transition towards environmental sustainability. Specifically, a number of organisations had voiced concerns that the fear of inadvertently breaching the competition rules was preventing beneficial sector and industry collaborations aimed at delivering sustainability goals.
In response, a number of competition authorities – including the CMA – proactively published guidance to help organisations apply the competition rules to sustainability agreements and collaborations. The CMA published its Green Agreements Guidance in October 2023 containing a clear statement of intent, along with practical and user-friendly guidance, that competition law should not impede legitimate collaboration between businesses that is necessary for the promotion or protection of environmental sustainability.
The guidance also sets out welcome details of an open-door policy, by which businesses considering entering into an environmental sustainability agreement can approach the CMA for informal guidance on their proposed agreement if there is uncertainty on the application of the guidance. This policy also provides some reassurance that the CMA would not expect to take enforcement action against environmental sustainability agreements that correspond clearly to the principles set out in the guidance.
To date the CMA has published two opinions under its open-door policy. These in turn form the beginnings of a body of decisional practice which will help inform organisations, as well as advisors, on the CMA’s approach to collaboration in this area, aiding self-assessment and informed decision-making.
Given the extensive challenges facing the higher education sector, and the passage of time since the OFT’s call for information in 2014, this might be an opportune moment for the CMA to consider the specific issues facing the sector and to engage with the sector more extensively on how the competition rules apply in the sector.
Taking steps to support a viable, flourishing higher education sector which, among other public goods, boosts economic growth, would undoubtedly be aligned with the government’s growth mission and, in turn, aligned with a key pillar of the CMA’s strategy of driving productive and sustainable growth. To the extent that the competition rules are perceived by institutions as presenting a barrier to collaboration that would deliver benefits to students, and where there are examples which show this, there may now be a case for specific higher education focused guidance, similar to the approach taken to the Green Agreements Guidance. Clear guidance, including worked examples on how the individual exemption should be applied and understood in the context of the higher education sector, could be a positive and welcome step forward.
In a recent speech interim Executive Director for Competition Enforcement at the CMA Juliet Enser noted the work of the CMA in ensuring that its enforcement activities do not have a chilling effect on pro-competitive collaborations between competitors, referring to the sustainability guidance and the CMA’s work on competitor collaborations in the pharmaceutical sector. Enser said “where we are convinced on the evidence that there is a real risk, that absent our providing appropriate comfort, the economy will lose out on beneficial collaboration then we are prepared to act.”
This is a positive statement from the CMA, signalling a proactive willingness to engage. In turn, the higher education sector could seize upon this invitation and commence a dialogue with the CMA, providing examples and evidence of where clarity on the application of the competition rules to the sector is needed, so that stakeholders can work towards pro-competitive collaborations which may ultimately benefit students, the higher education sector and the economy at large.
This article is published in association with Mills & Reeve. Join us on Tuesday 4 March 12.00-1.00pm for Connect more, a free online event exploring the potential for more system-wide collaboration in higher education in England. Find out more and register here.
Josh Burns MP led the parliamentary inquiry into campus anti-Semitism. Picture: Martin Ollman
A high-security “safe room” has been set up for Jewish students at a top Sydney university after some reported feeling at risk due to anti-Semitism on campus, prompting Jewish leaders to say it should “shock us all” when young people “feel they need a sanctuary to escape” from hate.
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On 1 January 2018 the Office for Students took over the regulation of higher education in England from its predecessor (the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)).
One little discussed impact of this change was an avalanche of university borrowing that has dramatically shifted the priorities and risk profile of English higher education.
As late as the 2017 memorandum of assurance and accountability between HEFCE and higher education providers, the regulator had the right of veto over university financial commitments over a certain level. If you wanted to borrow money, and you were talking “serious money” in relation to the size of your provider, the regulator needed to sign it off.
That year written approval was required where total financial commitments exceeded six times the average adjusted net operating cashflow (ANOC) from July – or where the provider was assessed as being “at higher risk”. The year before, it was required when borrowing crept above five times the (six year) average EBITDA. And back in 2006 it was required for borrowing over 4 per cent of income.
The levels may have shifted over the years but the principles remained the same – to ensure that providers in receipt of public funds offered value for money, and were fully responsible for the use of these funds. These broader requirements were set out in detail:
HEIs must apply the following principles when entering into any financial commitments:
a. The risks and affordability of any new on- and off-balance sheet financial commitments must be properly considered.
b. Financial commitments must be consistent with the HEI’s strategic plan, financial strategy and treasury management policy.
c. The source of any repayment of a financial commitment must be clearly identified and agreed by the governing body at the point of entering that commitment.
d. Planned financial commitments must represent value for money.
e. The risk of triggering immediate default through failure to meet a condition of a financial commitment should be monitored and actively managed
At some point during the transition from HEFCE to OfS, all this was scrapped.
If “at some point” sounds uncharacteristically vague that’s because the decision was murky even by higher education policy standards. The requirement was in the 2017 memorandum – it wasn’t in the OfS 2018 “terms and conditions” of funding, or any of the registration or information requirements, or the regulatory framework. The shift was never consulted on, it wasn’t in the Green or White paper, it was never discussed in parliament. It just kind of happened.
In Wales, there are still requirements to get borrowing above a threshold signed off based on the 2017 Financial Management Code – however your (individual provider) threshold is built into the formulae of your financial forecast template. Thresholds are never published, but Medr may occasionally drop you a note to tell you what yours is. Which is nice.
In Scotland things are (slightly) more straightforward: there is a threshold over which SFC’s formal consent is required. It’s not a concrete figure but a calculation to determine whether the total annualised cost of the borrowing exceeds 4 per cent of total income (according to a university’s last audited statements) or would exceed by 4 percent the estimated total income for the year in which the borrowing begins – whichever one is the lower.
As things currently stand in England the explanatory sections on the D conditions of registration set up definitions of financial viability and sustainability. Viability is the interesting one here – for OfS purposes it means there is no reason to suppose the provider is at a “material risk of insolvency” (being unable to pay debts as they fall due) for the next three years. This clarifies that OfS does expect to know about borrowing (“have regard to” in fact) – and even suggests OfS would expect to be able to speak directly to lenders:
It will be for the provider to ensure that the OfS is fully informed as to its financial facilities, and it will be expected to consent to the OfS making direct enquiry of the finance provider if requested to do so. The OfS may draw inferences from a failure to provide such consent.
This approach to university borrowing can also be seen in the transition provisions that existed as OfS effectively carried on as HEFCE while it began to register existing providers – a commentary to the required audited data included the need for universities to include information on:
Whether the provider is planning to take any loans from a bank, shareholders, directors or anyone else and, if so, information about these plans (how much is it planning to borrow, when will this be taken out, when will it be paid back, what will it be used for) and whether it will affect the provider’s viability or sustainability.
This shift did not go unnoticed by universities, so 2017-2018 became a bumper year for university borrowing – with banks, private funds, and the bond markets all displaying an appetite for access to (then) underleveraged, secure, and low risk UK higher education.
The 2017 HEFCE financial health publication noted that:
At the end of July 2017, the sector reported borrowing of £9.9 billion (equivalent to 33.1 per cent of income). This is £980 million higher than the level reported at the end of 2015-16, which was £8.9 billion (30.7 per cent of income).
By 2018 OfS as reporting that borrowing would reach £12bn by “year 2” (2017-18).
At the end of Year 2, the sector reported aggregate borrowing of £12.0 billion (equivalent to 36.8 per cent of income), a 21 per cent rise of £2.1 billion compared to Year 1. Forecasts show that borrowing is projected to continue to rise in absolute terms over the four forecast years, reaching £13.3 billion by the end of Year 6.
In the last quote, “year 6” is 2021-22 – the projection of aggregate borrowing was (as usual) on the low side. That year’s financial health report pegged it as just over £14bn.
OfS, of course, could have decided to apply specific conditions of registration if it was concerned about borrowing at a particular provider. It still gets information on what universities are borrowing, and on what they plan to borrow in future, via the annual financial return (and there have already been rumblings about an increase in the amount and frequency of provided data). It could have stepped in to moderate the boom in borrowing since it took regulatory control of the sector – it did not.
But the time of plenty has clearly passed – affordable finance is simply harder to come by, and the terms of existing borrowing (set during a more confident era) have often been renegotiated. The 2024-25 aggregate external borrowing is projected to be £13.3bn, and this for a much larger sector. And even the sector’s own (generally optimistic) forecasts suggest that it will drop further in years to come.
This is very much the hangover after the party. The easy money simply isn’t there for the sector to borrow – all that remains is the improvements it paid for (hopefully in useful, tangible, things like estates and infrastructure), the repayments, and the interest.
You can see that in the data (Based on what I know about what has happened so far I don’t think this includes stuff like bonds, so the figures are illustrative rather than precise) – the big peak in unsecured loans was in 2017-18, the academic year that restrictions came off (the smaller peak in 2020-21 represents the government backed Covid loans).
You can also see a peak in repayments in 2018-19: clearly many providers decided that with the brakes off, the easiest way to proceed was with short-term revolving credit. More worryingly for sector finances, interest repayments remain at 2018-19 levels even though borrowing has declined sharply – an impact of a rise in interest rates following a long period of near zero inflation.
In essence some of the blame for the current financial crisis faced by the sector can be attributed to this little-scrutinised decision to remove borrowing safeguards. Though estates (especially) benefited from this gold rush, the entry of UK universities into the world of private placements and bonds has left a legacy that will take decades (and hundreds of millions of pounds cut off the top of sector finances, and increasingly arduous restrictions on university activity within covenants) to reckon with.
And these controls on university activity hit in numerous ways. As Philip Augar’s review noted, way back in 2019:
Universities’ expansion has been partly funded through debt and financial arrangements known as ‘sale and leaseback’. The former includes bond issues and bank borrowing; the latter involves universities selling student accommodation for cash upfront, sometimes committing to provide specified numbers of rent-paying students to the new owner.
A failure to meet challenging recruitment targets has a multiplier effect if you factor lender requirements into the equation.
Was the removal of controls over borrowing the single most important regulatory act of the modern era? For those able to raise money in this way, it supported huge improvements in university estates and infrastructure. It provided the capacity that has underpinned recent growth – though not as much growth as we saw in the 90s and 00s, when a far greater proportion of capital came from the state.
It’s at least arguable that for many larger and better known providers the amount of indirect control over their actions that has been ceded to investors via covenants linked to borrowing. has driven the dash for growth at all costs. If you’ve worked in a university during this period and feel like things have changed, this could be why.
And it gets worse if you think about the aggregated risk across the whole sector – not least because the arms race of expansion forced the majority of the sector to seek private finance at roughly the same time. The numbers in the chart above are indicative – but even so show a sizable liability that could have a huge impact on the way providers behave. It’s the roots of the sector-wide dash for growth that the regulators have expressed concern about – but thus far the impression has been given that it is just empire building. It is survival.
There is no easy fix. Though I think most of us believe that the government would step in in the event of provider failure – to protect the student interest certainly, and possibly to protect the local interest – what would happen to outstanding debts across multiple providers in these circumstances is less clear. It is entirely likely that a loan becoming due for full payment due to a breach in covenant conditions would itself be the cause of provider failure.
In the bad old days, when the government was a significant source of both capital and recurrent funding for most universities in England, there was a thing called exchequer interest – a complicated and little-discussed aspect of public funding that means that assets purchased with public funds should revert at least in part back to the public. Exchequer interest as a consideration for capital investment has largely been replaced by lender interest – in the event of a provider collapsing large parts of abandoned campuses (which, of course, have been paid for by public funds in the sense that it is income from fees that has funded repayments) would revert to lenders.
These buildings and this equipment would immediately lose a lot of value, which is one reason why lenders like to renegotiate rather than repossess. If you think about it, a large teaching block in the middle of a thriving campus is a clear asset – without the campus it is a liability that needs to be repurposed and maintained.
So if you ever see the government stepping in to save an anchor institution, recall that private finance has an interest in seeing campuses continuing to throng with students. It’s a funny way to preserve the future of the sector, but we live in peculiar times.
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Philadelphia students could head back to classes before Labor Day for the next two years, according to proposed academic calendars the district released Tuesday.
The pre-Labor Day start for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 calendars will allow for longer spring and winter recesses as well as additional cultural and religious holidays throughout the year, district officials said this week.
Superintendent Tony Watlington also confirmed Tuesday that district schools and offices will be closed on Friday for the Philadelphia Eagles celebratory Super Bowl parade.
“We look forward to celebrating the Eagles’ victory as a community, and we hope that our students, staff and families will do so safely and responsibly,” Watlington said in a statement.
The question of whether to start before or after Labor Day has rankled families and district leaders in recent years, in part because many Philly schools do not have adequate air conditioning. That has forced some buildings to close or dismiss students early due to excessive heat in the first week back.
This school year, the first day back landed before Labor Day, and 63 schools without air conditioning dismissed students early, during the first week of classes. However, school started after Labor Day in 2023-24, and heat closures still impacted students’ learning time that first week.
Watlington said at his state of the schools address this year that over the past three school years, the number of schools without air conditioning has shrunk from 118 to 57 thanks in part to a donation from Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts.
Shakeera Warthen-Canty, assistant superintendent of school operations and management at the district, said their academic calendar recommendations this year are built off of a survey and several in-person feedback sessions.
The majority of parents and caregivers who responded preferred a post-Labor Day start, the survey found. But students, teachers, school staff, and community members reported they overwhelmingly preferred starting the school year before Labor Day.
Some 16,400 parents, students, school staff, principals, and community members responded to the survey the district sent out last September, Warthen-Canty said.
Respondents also said they wanted more frequent breaks for longer durations to accommodate family vacations, as well as time to rest, support mental health, and prevent staff burnout.
State law says districts must have a minimum of 180 student days, or a minimum of 900 instructional hours for elementary school students and 990 hours for middle and high school students. The district’s collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union also requires 188 teacher work days, as well as a minimum of 28 professional development hours.
The district officials’ calendar recommendations will go to the school board for a vote before they are enacted.
If approved, winter recess would be seven days in 2025-26 and eight days in 2026-27, while spring break would be five days both years.
In addition to the five state and national holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Day), Philadelphia school district school holidays in 2025-26 and 2026-27 would include:
This school year, both Indigenous Peoples Day and Veterans Day were school days.
As for how the new calendar may interact with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s commitment to “extended-day, extended-year” school: Deputy Superintendent Jermaine Dawson said this week the district has ensured any expansion of that program will work “alongside our calendar of school days.”
This story was originally published at Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
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The U.S. Department of Education has issued a sweeping directive ordering educational institutions to eliminate race-based considerations from admissions, hiring,
In a Dear Colleague Letter to schools receiving federal funding, the Department mandated the cessation of race preferences in areas ranging from admissions and hiring to scholarships and disciplinary actions. Schools that fail to comply within 14 days risk losing federal funding.
“With this guidance, the Trump Administration is directing schools to end the use of racial preferences and race stereotypes in their programs and activities,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, characterizing the move as “a victory for justice, civil rights laws, and the Constitution.”
The directive, which builds on last year’s Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, extends far beyond college admissions to encompass elementary, middle, and high schools. It also targets diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, which the Department claims have contributed to “widespread censorship” and a “repressive viewpoint monoculture” on campuses.
The Department’s action specifically prohibits race-based considerations in admissions processes, hiring and promotion decisions, compensation, scholarship and prize distributions, and disciplinary actions. Schools must now evaluate students “according to merit, accomplishment, and character,” according to the directive.
The sweeping nature of the order has raised serious concerns among education experts about its implementation timeline and scope. The 14-day compliance window, in particular, has drawn criticism from school administrators who argue that revamping entire systems of administration, hiring, and student life programs requires more time and careful consideration.
Critics of the directive argue that it represents an overreach of the Department’s authority and misinterprets the Supreme Court’s Harvard decision. While the Court ruled against race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, many legal experts contend that the ruling’s scope was more limited than the Department’s interpretation suggests.
The Department’s letter also takes aim at what it describes as a “DEI regime” in educational institutions, claiming these programs have fostered censorship through various mechanisms, including “deplatforming speakers who articulate a competing view” and using “bias response teams” to investigate those who object to a school’s racial ideology.
Educational institutions now face the complex task of reviewing and potentially overhauling numerous programs and policies to ensure compliance with the new directive. This includes examining everything from recruitment strategies and scholarship criteria to student organization funding and faculty hiring practices.
The Department has established a complaint system through its Office of Civil Rights for individuals who believe an institution has violated these new guidelines. However, education advocates warn that the rapid implementation timeline could lead to hasty decisions that might inadvertently harm educational equity and access.
As schools scramble to interpret and implement these changes, the directive’s long-term impact on educational equity and institutional diversity remains uncertain. The Department’s enforcement approach and how it will evaluate compliance are yet to be fully detailed, leaving many institutions in a challenging position as they attempt to navigate these new requirements while maintaining their educational missions and values.
Esta semana, CBS News pudo ver de primera mano el notorio Centro para el Confinamiento del Terrorismo de El Salvador, una prisión que pronto podría albergar a deportados (y posiblemente ciudadanos estadounidenses) de los EE. UU. La Administración Trump está trabajando en un acuerdo, incluso si viola los derechos humanos. Las imágenes son inquietantes.
In 1994, the year that HESA was born and we started to count those with degrees from former polytechnics in the stats, about 225,000 full-time home-domiciled students graduated with a first degree in the UK.
Today the Russell Group enrols about 350k. Funny that those who say too many people go to university tend to stay tight lipped about that part of the sector’s “dilution”.
Ten years later, then funding council boss Howard Newby said:
[T]he English—and I do mean the English—do have a genius for turning diversity into hierarchy and I am not sure what we can do about that, to be quite honest. It is very regrettable that we cannot celebrate diversity rather than constantly turning it into hierarchy.
The switch of circa 125,000 students from poly to university in the early 90s was one of the signature moments of the status/sorting panic that has accompanied the expansion of higher education over time.
The story runs something like this. Access to university has never been evenly distributed across the social-economics. And having a degree seems to bestow upon graduates socio-economic advantages.
So over the long-run, rather than doing the hard yards of making entry distribution fairer – which, whatever method is used, necessarily involves saying “no” to some who think they have a right to go – the easier thing has always been to say “yes” and expand instead.
Hence when in 2018 OfS had a choice between Option 1:
…it obviously couldn’t persuade ministers to front out Option 1. So everyone let Option 2 happen instead – only without the money to support it. And now look at the mess we’re in.
Option 2 – whether applied to the whole sector or just the elite part – creates a problem for those who enjoy the relative rarity of the signalling. The signal is less powerful, partly because there are few who look back on their time at university and think “maybe if it was truly meritocratic I wouldn’t have made it in”.
It also ought to be expensive to expand – so over time both universities and their students are instead expected to become more and more efficient, or fund participation through future salary contributions to pay for the expansion.
And if overall participation levels off, Option 2 applied just to the elite part of the sector yanks students away from everywhere else – with huge geographical and social consequences along the way.
There is a human capital upside of mass participation. The better educated the population, the more inventive and healthy and happy and productive it will be in general. But without other actions, that doesn’t address the relative inequalities of getting in or getting on.
The phrase “social mobility” doesn’t actually appear in the 2024 Labour Manifesto – but it’s lurking around in the opportunity mission as follows:
We are a country where who your parents are – and how much money they have – too often counts for more than your effort and enterprise… so breaking the pernicious link between background and success will be a defining mission for Labour.
Good luck with that. Part of the question for me that surrounds that is the scale of that challenge insofar as it concerns higher education – and what is coming soon in the stats that will make that easier or harder.
For the past few decades, different iterations of the “efficiencies” needed to massify – which focussed largely on the transfer of the costs of participation from state to graduate – have had three core features designed to reconcile the expansion and efficiency thing with the goals of social mobility before, during and after HE:
Taken together, the idea has been that accessing the signalling benefits will be easier via expansion and fairness fixes; that the experience itself resembles the “school uniform” principle of everyone having a fairly similar experience; and then that those who reap the economic rewards shoulder the biggest burden (and in that a burden a bit bigger than it actually cost) in paying for it all.
You tackle inequality partly through opportunity, and partly through outcomes – the rich pay more both than others and more than the actual cost. So central was redistribution to the design of the fee and loan system in the last decade that the government announced and formally consulted on a plan for early repayment mechanisms to stop people on high incomes being able to “unfairly buy themselves out of this progressive system”.
But a decade on, the government is in a real bind. The initiatives aimed at broadening the characteristics of those enrolling into higher education look much less impactful than just expanding – especially in “high tariff” providers.
The cost of living – especially for housing – is wrecking the “school uniform” principle unless we were to loan students even more money – which has its… costs.
And having reduced interest on student loans to inflation – paid for by a longer loan term – it’s hard to think of a more politically toxic move than slapping it back on, however redistributive it will look on an excel sheet.
That all exacerbates the social mobility challenge. Students cluster into the Russell Group because that group of providers now has the same “meaning” for the press and parents that “university” had prior to 1992.
Whether in the Russell Group or not, the differential student experiences of haves and have-nots (both inside and outside of the curriculum) will show up both in their actual skills and what they can “sell” to employers. And the most successful graduates from the most attractive-sounding universities will pay less for university across their lifetime, while everyone else will pay more.
In a way though, even thinking about social mobility or the redistributive graduate contribution scheme in terms of relative lifetime salary is the biggest problem of all. Because given what’s coming, it really should be the least of our worries.
Since Tony Blair increased tuition fees to £3,000, above-inflation house price growth has delivered an unearned, unequal and untaxed £3 trillion capital gains windfall in Britain. 86 per cent above inflation house price growth over the past 20 years has delivered capital gains on home owners’ main residences worth £3 trillion – now a fifth of all wealth in Britain.
The value of household wealth stood at around three times the value of national income throughout the 1960s and 1970s – but since the 1980s, the rate at which households have accumulated wealth has accelerated, outpacing the growth in national income, so that the stock of household wealth was estimated to be 7.6 times GDP at the end of 2020.
Wealth matters. For those who have accumulated it, it provides a better ability to absorb shocks to income, easier access to lower-cost credit, and facilitates investment in significant assets such as housing. But it’s not equally held.
Wealth is about twice as unequal as the income distribution, and because growth in wealth is outpacing growth in household income it is harder for those currently without it to accumulate it, and enjoy the same benefits outlined above – because as the value of assets rise relative to income, it becomes harder for someone to “save” their way up the wealth distribution.
The least wealthy third of households have gained less than £1,000 per adult on average, compared to an average gain of £174,000 for the wealthiest ten per cent. Gains have been largest in London, where on average people have gained £76,000 since 2000, and smallest in the North East of England, with an average gain of just £21,000.
As Robert Colville points out in The Times:
We have come to realise that what is really dividing our society, as that £5.5 trillion starts to cascade down the generations, is not the boomers’ greed but their love.
There’s an age aspect to the inequality – those aged 60+ have seen the biggest windfalls at around £80,000 on average – compared to an average of less than £20,000 for those under 40 years of age. But that age aspect also points to something hugely important that’s coming next – because eventually, those older people will die – and who they transfer their wealth to, and what it’s invested in, will matter. Because not only does wealth inequality dwarf wage inequality, it also predicts and drives it.
Here thanks to the Resolution Foundation we can see how intergenerational transfers (both gifts and inheritances) will become increasingly important during the century, as older households disperse their wealth at death via inheritances. It estimates that those transfers are set to double over the next 20 years as the large baby-boomer cohort move into late retirement – and it is likely that more wealth will be dispersed by these households while they are alive through gifts.
And it’s when that ramps up that the interaction with any tuition fee system that will really start to matter.
Since 2015/16, DfE figures for England tell us that between 10.1 and 13.6 per cent of entrants at Level 6 have self-funded. Some of that will be PT/CPD type activity, some of it students running out of SLC entitlement, and some not drawing down debt for religious reasons – but most will be people who can just afford it.
Of course what a fixed-ish percentage hides a bit is the number growth – if HE participation has been growing “at the bottom” of the social-economics, a fixed-ish percentage means that more on equivalent incomes are paying upfront. In 2022/23, a record 54,700 entrants were marked up as “no award or financial backing”.
In the original £9,000 fees system, it made little sense to opt-out of student loans – because the vast majority never paid it back in full by design. But now with a cheaper (in real terms) tuition fee, a frozen repayment threshold and an extended term of 40 years, the calculation has changed – suddenly it makes much more sense to avoid the debt if you can.
And so given that paying for your younger relatives’ tuition fees represents a way of investing some of that inheritance in way that avoids inheritance tax, we’d have to assume that unchecked, not only will richer graduates in the loan scheme get a much better lifetime deal than they did a few years ago, more and more won’t be in the scheme at all.
(The green line is the system we had for most of the last decade – the grey line the system the Conservatives slipped past everyone on their way out).
Even if every penny of an inheritance was drained away on paying for HE upfront, if we compare two graduates – one with 40 years of graduate repayments ahead of them, and one without, it doesn’t take long to clock how impossible social mobility becomes for otherwise notionally equal graduates.
Then assume that those getting their fees and costs paid for them while they’re a student are clustered into the Russell Group and its signals already – and lay on top of that the fact that those without a windfall coming are more likely to be those with a pretty thin “student experience” and so without the skills or cultural capital to cheat the socio-economic odds, and you pretty quickly need to give up and go home.
The problem that that all leaves is pretty significant – partly because wealth inequality is already more stratified than income, partly because it drives the type and value of HE experience a student might have, and partly because HE participation has a much better track record at delivering salary gains and salary redistribution than it does at delivering wealth gains or wealth redistribution.
Put another way, it might be a rite of passage, and it might be good to have a better educated population, but without the prospect of it delivering social mobility, it will lose both real and symbolic value.
So in reverse order, what can be done? On the way out, if there must be a graduate contribution system, not only does it have to return to attempting to redistribute from the richest to the poorest, it has to do so by expecting a fair chunk of that boomer windfall to fund some redistribution.
An above inflation interest rate has to return – and upfront fee payers shouldn’t be able to just buy a better education for themselves, as they can in the US – they should be expected to contribute more into the pot for everyone’s benefit. Higher fees, but only for for upfront payers – DfE needs to dust off that consultation from the last decade, and fast.
During, we’ll need to redouble efforts to re-establish at least a notional run at the school uniform principle – carefully calibrating student income and experience to return to a baseline where everyone experiences something similar.
Some of that is about reducing the costs of participation rather than loaning more money to meet them, some is about defining a contemporary student experience so that those who need to work can do so with dignity while extracting educational value, and those that don’t are expected to. It’s also about a credit system that recognises the educational value of extracurricular activity – so that everyone has time to take part in it.
Then on the way in, we need more mixing – we do need Scenario 1 to return as a much tougher target.
As well as that, the clustering up the league tables as a way of avoiding harder questions about access in our elite institutions almost certainly needs to stop. Taken to its logical conclusion, in a couple of decades there will only be 24 universities left (and in the minds of the press and parents, we’re arguably already there) – but if Labour facilitates only 19 cities having students and graduates in them, both it and everywhere else is doomed.
Labour, in other words, has to start saying no:
Part of the balancing act to choking off clustering is one other thing that should matter to Labour. The scandal isn’t that applicant X can’t quite get into the Russell Group with 3 A*s. It’s that we still have a system that somehow writes off the student and the university they attend if they don’t.
Making it much more attractive to commute (coupled with a domestic Erasmus), talking up not just alternatives to university but universities that aren’t the Russell Group, abolishing the archaic degree classification system, ripping up all the quality systems that have singularly failed to “assure” the press and the public that quality can be found elsewhere, and forcing through some institutional subject specialisms (and obvious vocational excellence) within the system would all help.
Do all of that, and maybe one day, a senior figure in HE might be able to claim that mass higher education – and all the rich benefits it brings – both survived and thrived because it finally found a way to celebrate diversity rather than forever turning it into hierarchy.
Thanks to Alan Collinge and Student Loan Justice for this information on government contractors for the US Department of Education’s Student Loan Portfolio.
