Tag: Lecture

  • From playground to lecture hall – working with schools to support wellbeing throughout education

    From playground to lecture hall – working with schools to support wellbeing throughout education

    Higher education institutions are increasingly acknowledging the importance of wellbeing in shaping meaningful and sustainable learning experiences. However, the wellbeing of students and staff is often treated as a separate or secondary issue, addressed through isolated initiatives rather than embedded into the fabric of university life.

    I propose adopting a lifelong approach to wellbeing in education grounded in appreciating that schools and universities are not distinct spheres. Rather, they are stages on a continuous educational journey. The way we foster wellbeing in schools must inform, and align with, our practices in higher education.

    Foundations for wellbeing

    The foundations laid in schools play a crucial role in shaping how learners experience their transition into university. When educational environments nurture emotional resilience, social connection, and inclusive responses to academic pressures, learners arrive in higher education with a stronger base of support. In contrast, when wellbeing is not prioritised earlier in the educational journey, the structural and emotional demands of university life can amplify existing challenges. This underscores the need for continuity and care across the educational continuum, rather than placing responsibility on individuals to adapt alone.

    In many school systems, wellbeing is increasingly recognised as integral to education. A holistic, strengths-based approach helps ensure that wellbeing is supported through curriculum design, teaching practices, and whole-school approaches and policies. Programmes focused on social and emotional learning are embedded, and collaboration across sectors – education, health, and community – creates a network of support that extends beyond the classroom.

    In higher education, this picture is evolving. The work on wellbeing spearheaded by Universities UK in recent years has helped universities to become more attuned to the importance of wellbeing, yet academic culture often remains shaped by competitiveness, performance metrics, and output-driven models. This dynamic also influences schools in some contexts, particularly where high stakes testing and narrow accountability frameworks dominate. However, there tends to be greater acceptance within schools that wellbeing and learning are deeply interconnected.

    In the university context, structural pressures, including institutional expectations and the demands of competitive academic cultures, continue to affect both students and staff, contributing to stress, burnout, and mental health difficulties. Although there is growing attention to student wellbeing in policy and strategy, support for staff wellbeing remains less visible, despite its clear influence on teaching quality and the wider learning environment. There is a need for a joined-up, systemic approach recognising the interdependence of student and staff wellbeing.

    Whole institution approaches

    A whole-university approach, as promoted by Universities UK, is a strategic, institution-wide commitment to embedding wellbeing into every dimension of university life, echoing the well-established whole-school model in many primary and secondary education systems. Just as whole-school approaches integrate wellbeing into teaching, leadership, curriculum, and engagement with families and communities, a whole-university approach ensures that wellbeing is not confined to support services or stand-alone initiatives. It becomes a shared responsibility, woven into the ethos, governance, and daily practices of the institution.

    Rather than relying on reactive services, this model positions wellbeing as a core value that shapes leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional relationships. It calls for cultural transformation, redefining success to focus not solely on outcomes, but on flourishing. This includes embedding wellbeing in teaching and assessment, professional development, work-life balance, and inclusive, compassionate organisational values. It requires systems that promote flexibility, equity, and psychological safety as the norm.

    Universities must be understood as ecosystems. When this ecosystem is well, everyone within it is more likely to thrive. This involves designing curricula that support engagement and wellbeing, adopting inclusive policies, and nurturing cultures of trust, care, and belonging in both academic and administrative contexts.

    Higher education can also learn from the progress made in schools. Many school systems have already developed comprehensive frameworks for promoting wellbeing – such as the Health Promoting Schools model – which successfully embed wellbeing into governance, pedagogy, and wider school life. Higher education has much to gain from adapting these models to its own settings, helping to ensure continuity of support as learners move between sectors.

    Embedding wellbeing through national frameworks

    Aligning approaches across schools and universities creates a more cohesive experience for learners and reduces the sense of disorientation that often accompanies educational transitions. It also enables valuable exchange between sectors, where shared learning can lead to better outcomes for all.

    Within this context, and especially given the significance of the transition from school to university, national leadership is essential in embedding wellbeing consistently across education systems. The move into higher education is more than a change of setting; it is a profound developmental shift, often marked by increased autonomy, identity exploration, and academic complexity. While this transition can be exciting, it also brings vulnerability and emotional strain. Maintaining wellbeing support across this bridge is therefore not optional; it is essential. Yet it is precisely at this stage that inconsistencies and gaps often emerge. National policies that intentionally bridge sectors can ensure wellbeing remains a continuous thread throughout a learner’s journey.

    One crucial aspect of national leadership is the development of robust policy and strategy relating to wellbeing, both within institutions and at a broader, systemic level. Country-wide initiatives create coherence, consistency, and a shared vision – particularly important when seeking to strengthen the links between schools and universities. Ireland, for instance, has implemented a national policy and strategy around mental health that spans multiple sectors, not just education. This kind of joined-up approach exemplifies how public policy can help to sustain cultural change across the education system and beyond.

    The wellbeing of our educational communities is not a peripheral concern. It is central to the very purpose of education. By embedding wellbeing across every level – through policy, pedagogy, leadership, and institutional culture – we not only support individuals to succeed, but also help to build resilient, compassionate institutions where everyone can flourish.

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  • Solving our literacy crisis starts in the lecture hall

    Solving our literacy crisis starts in the lecture hall

    Key points:

    The recent NAEP scores have confirmed a sobering truth: Our schools remain in the grips of a literacy crisis. Across the country, too many children are struggling to read, and too many teachers are struggling to help them. But why? And how do we fix it?

    There are decades of research involving thousands of students and educators to support a structured literacy approach to teaching literacy. Teacher preparation programs and school districts across the nation have been slow to fully embrace this research base, known as the science of reading. Since 2017, consistent media attention focused on the literacy crisis has created a groundswell of support for learning about the science of reading. Despite this groundswell, too many educators are still entering classrooms without the skills and knowledge they need to teach reading.

    While there is steady progress in teacher preparation programs to move toward the science of reading-aligned practices, the National Council on Teacher Quality’s latest report on the status of teacher preparation programs for teaching reading (2023) still shows that only 28 percent of programs adequately address all five components of reading instruction. Furthermore, according to the report, up to 40 percent of programs still teach multiple practices that run counter to reading research and ultimately impede student learning, such as running records, guided reading, leveled texts, the three cueing systems, etc. This data shows that there is still much work to be done to support the education of the teacher educators responsible for training pre-service teachers.

    The disconnect between theory and practice

    When it comes to literacy instruction, this problem is especially glaring. Teachers spend years learning about teaching methods, reading theories, and child development. They’re often trained in methods that emphasize comprehension and context-based guessing. However, these methods aren’t enough to help students develop the core skills they need to become proficient readers. Phonics–teaching students how to decode words–is a critical part of reading instruction, but it’s often left out of traditional teacher prep programs.

    One primary reason this disconnect happens is that many teacher prep programs still rely on outdated methods. These approaches prioritize reading comprehension strategies that focus on meaning and context, but they don’t teach the foundational skills, like phonics, essential for developing fluent readers.

    Another reason is that teacher prep programs often lag when it comes to incorporating new research on reading. While the science of reading–a body of evidence built from decades of research and studies involving thousands of students and educators about how humans learn to read and the instructional practices that support learning to read–has been gaining deserved traction, it’s not always reflected in the teacher preparation programs many educators go through. As a result, teachers enter classrooms without the knowledge, skills, and up-to-date methods they need to teach reading effectively.

    A way forward: Structured literacy and continuous professional development

    For real progress, education systems must prioritize structured literacy, a research-backed approach to teaching reading that includes explicit, systematic instruction in phonics, decoding, fluency, and comprehension. This method is effective because it provides a clear, step-by-step process that teachers can follow consistently, ensuring that every single student gets the support they need to succeed.

    But simply teaching teachers about structured literacy is not enough. They also need the tools to implement these methods in their classrooms. The goal should be to create training programs that offer both the theoretical knowledge and the hands-on experience teachers need to make a lasting difference. Teachers should graduate from their prep programs not just with a degree but with a practical, actionable plan for teaching reading.

    And just as important, we can’t forget that teacher development doesn’t end once a teacher leaves their prep program. Just like doctors, teachers need to continue learning and growing throughout their careers. Ongoing professional development is critical to helping teachers stay current with the latest research and best practices in literacy instruction. Whether through in-person workshops, online courses, or coaching, teachers should have consistent, high-quality opportunities to grow and sharpen their skills.

    What do teacher educators need?

    In 2020, the American Federation of Teachers published an update to its seminal publication, Teaching Reading is Rocket Science. First published in 2000, this updated edition is a collaboration between the AFT and the Center on Development and Learning. Although some progress has been made over the past 20 years in teaching reading effectively, there are still too many students who have not become proficient readers.

    This report outlines in very specific ways what pre-service and in-service teachers need to know to teach reading effectively across four broad categories:

    1. Knowing the basics of reading psychology and development
    2. Understanding language structure for word recognition and language comprehension
    3. Applying best practices (based on validated research) in all components of reading
    4. Using validated, reliable, efficient assessments to inform classroom teaching

    There should be a fifth category that is directly related to each of the four areas listed above: the knowledge of how to address the specific oral language needs of multilingual learners and speakers of language varieties. Structured, spoken language practice is at the heart of addressing these needs.

    Moving forward: Reimagining teacher training

    Ultimately, fixing the literacy crisis means changing the way we think about teacher preparation and ongoing professional development. We need to create programs that not only teach the theory of reading instruction but also provide teachers with the practical skills they need to apply that knowledge effectively in the classroom. It’s not enough to just teach teachers about phonics and reading theory; they need to know how to teach it, too.

    Literacy instruction must be at the heart of every teacher’s training–whether they teach kindergarten or high school–and ongoing professional development should ensure that teachers have the support they need to continuously improve.

    It’s a big task, but with the right tools, knowledge, and support, we can bridge the gap between theory and practice and finally begin to solve a literacy crisis that has stubbornly endured for far too long.

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  • White House Partners With Hillsdale for Lecture Series

    White House Partners With Hillsdale for Lecture Series

    President Donald Trump is tapping a familiar institution, Hillsdale College, to produce a video lecture series for the U.S. sestercentennial, the administration announced on social media.

    “On July 4, 2026, we will celebrate 250 years of American Independence. The White House has partnered with @Hillsdale to tell our story of a rag-tag army defeating the world’s mightiest empire and establishing the greatest republic ever to exist,” the administration posted Tuesday.

    The first installment in the series, according to the post, was a seven-and-a-half-minute video featuring patriotic imagery and comments from Hillsdale president Larry Arnn, who emphasized the importance of knowing American history in order to commemorate the 250th anniversary. 

    In introducing the video series, Arnn cast Trump in the mold of Abraham Lincoln. 

    “Part of the purpose of this series of lectures is to remember. President Trump does this in part I think—I don’t speak for him—but the word ‘again’ is important to him. He has a famous slogan that I will not repeat here, but everybody knows what it is,” Arnn said. “He wants to do something again. Something [that’s] already been done, he wants to see it happen again.”

    Arnn argued that Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, “places him somewhere near the politics of Abraham Lincoln,” who sought to build on the foundation laid by George Washington.

    The video focused on the Declaration of Independence and start of the Revolutionary War. The second installment in the series is about the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

    A Hillsdale spokesperson told Politico the college did not take “a dime of federal money” for the video lecture series, which it is providing in partnership with the White House and the Department of Education. (Hillsdale, a private, Christian institution in Michigan, does not accept federal financial aid.)

    The Trump administration also worked with Hillsdale at the end of the president’s first term. In early 2017, Hillsdale officials were part of a commission, chaired by Arnn, that produced the 1776 Report, a widely ridiculed document that academics dismissed as unserious scholarship. Critics argued the 1776 Report provided a whitewashed view of American history, omitted Native Americans entirely and had multiple citation issues.

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  • Weekend Reading: Rethinking the Cost of Higher Education – A Lecture Revisited

    Weekend Reading: Rethinking the Cost of Higher Education – A Lecture Revisited

    • This lecture was originally delivered by the Rt Hon John Denham MP, former Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills in Gordon Brown’s Government. He gave this lecture from Opposition in January 2014. More than eleven years later, we revisit his lecture to consider what lessons it holds for today’s higher education sector.

    At the RSA in 2014,  I tried to address the mounting challenges facing the higher education sector:  a system with stressed finances, eye-watering fees,  educationally not fit for purpose in some parts, and in which limited public funds were written off while incentivising the provision of a monochrome one-size fits all teen-focussed education.  The National Accounting rules which framed much of the technical financial analysis have now changed.

    Overseas student fees held the crisis away much longer than I expected, albeit at the cost of financial and reputational vulnerability, but it’s with us now. I’d argue that today, ministers face much the same issues that I discussed.  

    The lecture is clearly a provocation, not a plan, but its key tenets are valid. It is better to use what money you have to teach students and reshape the sector today than write off unjustifiable debts in the future. Ministers should have the courage to incentivise a greater diversity of provision, options for cheaper study, different ways of working and closer relations with employers. Unless a lot more money is to be found, some of these questions can’t be ducked.

    John Denham, March 2025

    RSA Lecture – The Cost of Higher Education

    Good evening.

    Thank you to Matthew for hosting the meeting, Alison for agreeing to respond, and you for coming. You may not agree with me tonight. But if I don’t challenge at least some current assumptions about how we fund and deliver higher education I shall have failed.

    I want to change the terms of the debate, not present a detailed plan for university education.

    What’s the problem?

    But I suppose the first question is, why bother? Isn’t everything going very well?

    UCAS figures show the largest ever number of admissions last September, there’s further progress, in widening participation, and even a small increase in free school meal students going to the 35 most selective universities.

    And the Chancellor is apparently so flush with money he can lift the cap on student numbers, funding an extra 60,000 a year.

    I’m sure researchers and the UCU will say it’s no bed of roses, but cash from new fees means university life has been a lot more congenial than life in local government or the NHS for the past three years.

    The private cost is eye-watering but haven’t the high fees been accepted by parents and students?

    The problem, of course, is that the whole system of university finance for English students is sliding slowly but surely off a cliff.

    •  The £9000 fee is declining in real value
    • Capital spending has been slashed, pushing more universities further into debt driven investment
    •  The science budget will have fallen by 20% in real terms by 2016 – undoing the huge impact of Labour’s ten year investment
    •  The system runs so hot that a small misjudgement about student numbers creates a huge hole in the BIS budget. So we have ministers arguing about whether to cut research or support for poorer students
    •  The NAO have highlighted the black hole of unrecoverable loans, including those to EU students
    •  The cost of debt cancellation– the so-called Resource Account Budgeting or RAB charge – is rising steadily.
    •  The Chancellor’s new expansion – apparently based on the same accounting principles as Merdle’s Bank – has many questions about its sustainability.

    Across universities you hear the same story. ‘We might get through the next few years. But it can’t go on like this for long’.

    We already have the world’s most expensive public university system yet most proposals for change are variations on the theme of asking graduates to pay even more.

    But that’s not the end of the bad news.

    Quality and relevance

    English universities have huge strengths, of course. Our international research reputation is outstanding; we remain a magnet for international students; there is much excellence in our teaching.

    But concerns about what parts of higher education deliver simply won’t go away. Despite improvements, many employers remain deeply critical of the employability of too many graduates. One quote is not evidence, but it’s not hard to find ones like this one:

    ‘Despite our best efforts we have come to the decision that we would prefer to be understaffed than hire poor-quality applicants,’ said Bryan Urbick, founder and CEO of the Consumer Knowledge Centre. ‘As the economy rebalances, we will need more highly-skilled employees, particularly for young people with science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) degrees, but businesses are struggling to recruit good graduates from the UK.’

    And

    ‘Strong overall performance on higher skills participation must not be allowed to mask the skills shortages already impacting upon key sectors of the economy, which point to a mismatch between supply and demand’ said Katja Hall, Policy Director at the CBI.

    47% of new graduates, and a third of those who graduated five years ago, don’t work in graduate jobs. They’re in debt and its not the reason many went to Uni in the first place.

    There’s some big questions here about the links between higher education, the economy and economic growth.

    Social Mobility

    Despite steady progress in widening participation we are still miles away from a genuinely meritocratic, lifelong higher education system. The change in the most selective institutions has been small and there has been a sharp fall in mature student applications and a collapse in part time student numbers. These are the routes which have previously allowed talented individuals to enter higher education later in life.

    Austerity

    And austerity has not gone away.

    £25bn of more cuts, says the Chancellor. Labour may not have signed up to those sums, but every pound will be closely scrutinised.

    As a country, we actually spend too little on higher education. But we can’t even open the case for more until we’ve scrutinised every current pound we spend.

    And that’s not just the public money.

    The cohort of students who started in September 2013 will pay back £7.8bn over the years ahead. You can’t ask people to pay sums like this if you can’t prove it will be well spent.

    Getting more from current spending is not alternative to higher investment. It’s the essential precursor to it.

    My aim tonight

    I will argue that of the £bns taxpayers spend on higher education, hardly anything is spent directly on teaching students.

    I’m going to ask a radical question – what would universities look like if the state actually spent all it could on teaching students things.

    I will argue that we have foolishly turned our backs on modes of higher education which, for the right students, would be more cost-effective and better tailored to the economy’s needs, and do more for real social mobility.

    I’ll ask what a more cost-effective university system would look like.

    I will argue that the £bns that graduates will pay are inflated by all sorts of costs which are not their responsibility, the system lacks transparency and which, despite all the talk of choice, is actually narrowing many of the options students used to enjoy.

    I’ll ask what a fairer, more diverse university system might look like.

    And finally, I will argue that current spending does far too little to foster the real partnerships with employers that would benefit students, business and the wider economy.

    I’ll ask how we could use taxpayers more effectively to boost recovery and growth.

    Taken together, I’ll show how these changes will widen student choice, reduce the costs of higher education and improve social mobility

    I want to change the terms of the debate, not present a detailed plan for university education.

    The independent policymaker faces many obstacles.

    BIS [The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills] doesn’t allow independent access to their higher education finance model so we have to rely on their crude ‘ready reckoner’ published some time ago. An updated version promised before Christmas arrived on Tuesday – too late for today. We have, for example, had to assume a RAB charge of 35%, not the 40% which now seems likely.

    I have drawn heavily on the incomparable Paul Bolton in the House of Commons Library. But I’ve asked Paul to make so many heroic assumptions and approximations that the responsibility for using the figures is mine, not his.

    Higher Education finance

    Let’s take a quick look at the public finance of higher education

    On the government’s figures, by 2015-16 (and ignoring for now the sketchy announcement in the Autumn Statement):

    •  Of the £6.7bn of tax-funded spending, just £700m will be spent directly on teaching grant
    •  Of the rest £4.2bn is spent on debt cancellation (RAB charges)
    •  £330m goes on supporting more disadvantaged students to successfully complete their courses, and £1.5bn goes on maintenance grants to low-income students.

    Taxpayers now spend £6 on debt cancellation for every £1 they spend on teaching students anything.

    Defenders of the current system will say I just don’t understand the system.

    It is fees that pay for teaching costs, they say. And that’s made possible by RAB charges which are a progressive policy which protects graduates from degrees which turn out to be of limited economic value.

    The reality of course is that RAB charges are not so much a progressive policy as a simple recognition of the political reality that you can’t get blood out of a stone.

    According to David Willetts, perhaps 50% of this September’s students will not repay their loans in full.

    Half of all today’s students will pay 9% of all their income above the repayment threshold for the next 30 years and they still won’t clear their debts. And that takes no account of bank loans, credit cards and any other debts that mount up while studying

    We do have to hope that the mind-broadening, growing up, parts of their degree are worth it, because economically it hardly looks a good deal for them, taxpayers or the wider society.

    The RAB charge was 28% under Labour’s fee system, a projected 32% when the new system was introduced, now ministers say it is 40% and many independent experts say it will be higher.

    It’s not just that rising RAB charges are a problem for the government and the public finances.

    Debt write off also forces up everyone’s fees by top-slicing money which could have been spent on teaching, so keeping fees down.

    So it’s equally true to say that every time the RAB charge goes up it means fewer and fewer successful graduates paying off the debts of more and more economically less successful graduates.

    Or to put it another way,’ if your son didn’t go to that unsuitable course at that weak university, my daughter could pay lower fees for her degree at her more prestigious college.’

    That may not be an issue in English politics today, but it will be.

    Ever rising fees will lead more and more students and parents to ask what and who they are paying for.

    I don’t know of any progressive principle which thinks it is a good idea to induce people, generally from lower income backgrounds, to take on huge loans, demand big payments, and then to tell them they don’t have to pay after all. It’s not how progressive parents bring up our children, and the state shouldn’t do it to them either.

    Of course, some people will die, fall ill, devote themselves to their children or do what I did and spend 18 years after graduation working in low paid jobs in the voluntary sector.

    But a sound, progressive, politically sustainable system would have loans sufficiently affordable that the great majority pay them in full. If we want wealthy graduates to pay more we should tax them fairly.

    The economic and political costs of a high fees policy

    If you look at HE funding again, something else may stand out.

    Look at how many elements were the consequence of introducing a high fee market system. They are either economically unavoidable, or politicians had to introduce them to allay public concerns about high fees.

    A high cost of debt cancellation is simply unavoidable, but the repayment threshold also reflects a political calculation.

    The £150m a year National Scholarship Programme which flared and died in just three years was otherwise known as the Save Nick Clegg’s Face fund.

    In one of the largest politically driven programmes, the Office of Fair Access requires universities charging more than £6000 to plough around £700m of their fee income into bursaries, fee remission and the like of little proven benefit. The cost-effective AimHigher scheme was scrapped by the coalition

    The maintenance grant was increased by Labour and again by the Coalition to offset criticism of fees – even though there is little logical connection between the two.

    Received wisdom is that this spending is politically untouchable.

    But we must dare to think differently. Crude politics has created too many bad policies in the past.

    Let’s start by taking the radical step of putting all this money into teaching. And then, put back, working from first principles, the programmes that are really needed.

    Positive feedback

    As you put more money into teaching the cost of fees comes down. As fees fall, RAB charges fall, and the % of debt repaid increases. So you plough these RAB savings back into teaching, fees fall, RAB charges come down, you put the money into teaching and so on. The effect is striking.

    In our model, which also builds in some other changes I’m going to outline, spending on teaching rises from £700m to £4800m – a seven- fold increase. The spending on debt cancellation falls from £4,200m to £2,200m. In other words we have transferred £2bn from debt cancellation into the education of students!

    My first aim was to see what happens if we put all public funding into teaching. It turns out it would nearly halve current fees.

    But I’ve explored other changes which, though they contribute to reducing the cost of fees further, are really there because they are inherently desirable.

    In my view our university system would be stronger if it offered more choice to students who cannot or do not want to spend three years full time studying for a degree; if it gave students more choices of ways to reduce their living costs; if it made it easier for employers to partner universities in the delivery of degrees; and if it freed up other resources for re-investment.

    Cutting fees and debt repayments will ease the burden on graduates. The more immediate problem for most students is surviving while they study.

    Recent NUS research shows a £7000 shortfall per year between student living costs and the maximum income from grants and maintenance loans.

    I don’t want to sound like a party hack but the term ‘cost of living crisis’ comes to mind here.

    There’s just no prospect of finding the sort of public money which could make a significant impact on student incomes. The only way is to give students more choice of less expensive modes of study, whether

    studying more intensively for a less time, mixing part-time and full time education, combining work and study, or studying from home.

    Yet we seem to be going in the opposite direction.

    A one size fits all university system?

    Even the most fervent advocates of Labour’s 50% target would surely be surprised that it has been achieved almost entirely through the most expensive mode of higher education – the three year degree studied away from home.

    Part time education is collapsing. The number of two year honours degrees has barely changed. Labour’s employer backed degrees have been dropped. Fewer mature students are applying.

    Higher education is becoming ever more a one size fits all approach.

    It is almost a rite of passage for young people, defended as much for the so-called ‘student experience’ as the quality of education.

    I wouldn’t knock it; I enjoyed it myself.

    But should our universities be so focussed on this single mode of study?

    No one suggests that Open University graduates do not have real degrees, even though they – by definition – eschew the entire ‘student experience’.

    There is second reason for challenging our ever growing reliance on the three year degree study away from home.

    Of all the OECD countries, the UK has the highest percentage of young graduates. And this was before the fall in mature and part time student applications. Today, 90% of full time English students at university are under 25.

    More than anywhere else in the OECD we have made higher education a one-shot deal, for young people to do as early as possible.

    What on earth have we done?

    Our schools system fails more than most in overcoming inequality and social disadvantage by the age of 18 or 19. Yet on top of this inequitable schools system we have imposed the youngest HE system in the world.

    It is is impossible for all young people to compete fairly in such a system.

    Now, I don’t think we should give up trying to get the Russell Group to take admissions seriously. We should support Alan Milburn’s efforts to open up the professions. We should challenge the abuse of interns.

    But for the foreseeable future, a genuine commitment to social mobility will require the construction of routes for the late developers, those who went to weak schools and those whose parents had low aspirations.

    So as part of my thought experiment I’ve looked at the role of more intensive degrees, studying from home and combining work and study.

    Two year degrees

    Two year degrees exist in both the public and private sector.

    The private University of Buckingham repeatedly tops the National Student Survey for student satisfaction.

    We can’t know the real demand for two year courses – current financial rules make it hard for public universities to introduce them. Research for Kaplan, albeit an interested party, suggests an untapped market and good awareness of the pros and cons of intensive study.

    It certainly looks as though some students could study more intensively.

    David Willetts says that students study 5 hours a week less than in the 1960s. On average, students study for 30 hours a week for 30 weeks of the year.

    The Higher Education Policy Institute and Which study highlighted variations between similar courses in different institutions.

    And according to HEPI, EU students on the Erasmus programme find our courses less intensive than in other European countries.

    I have suggested that 30% of courses – half of them employer co-sponsored – should be taught intensively.

    Suggestions of two year degrees always bring out fears of dumbing down. But given their potential to save money both for students and the taxpayer, knee jerk responses are irresponsible unless soundly evidence based.

    In my model I’ve assumed a two year intensive degree – say 39 weeks of study a year– would cost 20% less to deliver than a three year degree. This is based on both public and private sector charges.

    But I’ve also set out to graduate the same number of students – three two year cohorts every six years rather than two three year cohorts if you like.

    So at any one time, teaching costs are about 7% less than at present, and there are 10% fewer students in the system.

    But I’ve also designed the system so that overall university income remains unchanged.

    So we have fewer students at any one time, lower costs, and the same resources. Better student-staff ratios. Less pressure on facilities. New options for research time and staff sabbaticals

    There is no reason at all why standards should fall.

    The key thing here is the use of intensive periods of study.

    Someone in work could work four intensive half years over a four year period. Someone else might do a couple of part-time years at a local college followed by an intensive full year at another university.

    Intensive study may not be for everyone. It will require commitment and a maturity of approach. In fact, perfect for the somewhat older student with work experience who needs a route into higher education but neither wants nor can afford a leisurely three year degree.

    ‘Studying from home’

    In our model, the public finance effect of more students studying from home is relatively small and not enough to justify taking choice away.

    My real motive in raising this issue is to challenge the lazy assumption that it does not matter if vast numbers of students have to leave home to study a suitable course. If anything, the current competitive regime has forced more universities to trawl a national market, not their more local communities.

    The effect is to impose quite avoidable costs on students which inevitably hit the poorest hardest. A new social divide is opening between those students who can only afford to study from home and those whose family gives them the choice to study away.

    We should give students a real choice to study from home because it is much cheaper and is the only realistic way of bridging the gap between the maintenance system and the real costs of studying.

    I’ve assumed that 60% of students might choose to study from home if they could.

    We can’t make students study from home. Many couldn’t for personal or geographical reasons.

    But we are a densely populated largely urban society with many universities; there is a network of FE/HE colleges already delivering respected degrees; it should be possible to offer the vast majority of students a real, quality, choice of courses within reach of their own homes.

    It is a scandal that, too often, that choice does not exist and universities in the same locality barely talk to each other.

    I’ve no illusions about how challenging this is.

    On the one hand, it would be big cultural shift in the way many young people and their parents see university education.

    On the other, it would be an even bigger cultural challenge to universities.

    It would actually mean – heaven forbid –suggesting that they sit down together at local or sub-regional level; Russell Group members and Million+; Alliance and GuildHE, to actually cooperate and collaborate on the delivery of courses. Real flexibility of study would enable students to study mutually recognised credits at universities within their locality.

    Some may think this is where my thought experiment breaks down completely!

    But shouldn’t we challenge universities to change their insular attitudes?

    Employer sponsored degrees

    Finally let’s look at the end product of all this.

    Of course, university education is not all about getting a job; etc; etc.

    But, you know, for many students the idea of getting a decent job is probably in there somewhere.

    The ONS figures tell us that nearly 50% of new graduates, and a third of those who graduated five years ago, don’t work in graduate jobs. Things have got steadily worse during the recession, but they were not great before the banking crisis.

    The figures don’t prove we are educating too many graduates. They do show that producing more graduates doesn’t automatically increase the demand for graduates – the drivers for that lie in research, development, innovation and the incentives for long term business investment.

    But they probably also tell us that employers are not wrong when they say many graduates lack the employability which would make employers to want them in graduate jobs.

    ‘One way to address this is to develop more partnership-based provision, with greater levels of business involvement in colleges and universities, as well as boosting apprenticeships. But the market in ‘learn-while-you-earn’ models – such as higher apprenticeships and more flexible degree programmes like part-time study – is underdeveloped.’

    CBI Tomorrow’s growth: New routes to higher skills (2013)

    So my final proposal is to subsidise employers to put their employees – current employees or potential students they recruit – through university. I’ve aimed for 50,000 a year – that’s half the total number of intensive two-year degrees.

    I would base this on the workforce development programme I introduced at DIUS [Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills] which after just three years was creating 20,000 places a year with employers paying wages and an average of £3000 towards the course costs. I’m not proposing a rigid system. We already have some companies, like JLR at Warwick, who pay the full fee costs. Others could not pay much at all. It’s the principle that matters.

    Employers and universities would work together to design the right course. Big companies can do it for themselves. Smaller companies will need to work together, but that may be a real strength if employers, perhaps under the umbrella of the Local Economic Partnerships, come together to shape provision in local universities.

    Bringing it together

    I have looked at four changes.

    • We put as much money as possible into teaching.
    •  We use public and private contributions more effectively by encouraging more intensively taught degrees
    • We ensure that more students can minimise the cost of study by providing a genuine choice of quality courses within reach of home, and that there are more routes for older students
    •  And we incentivise new collaboration between employers and universities.

    A brief financial overview

    It may be helpful to run back over the key changes this makes to HE finance

    These tables will repay a longer look when I publish this lecture, but they’ll give some idea of what is going on.

    The approximate financial impact shows how we have switched resources into teaching and away from RAB charges. By putting money from widening participation and maintenance grants into teaching, and by shortening courses, with more students studying at home, and employer backed courses, we make an initial savings of £2.3bn. The second and third round impact on RAB charges releases an additional £1.2bn.

    The next slide shows that we have kept public sector spending on higher education constant – at £6.730bn.

    And the next slide on institutional steady state income shows that the total university income also remains constant – allowing for rounding errors – at £9.430bn.

    Institutional income remains the same even though we have more students on cost-effective intensive courses and fewer students in the system at any one time. That’s why, as I mentioned earlier, student-staff ratios improve and there are resources to invest in teaching quality.

    Not shown almost £700m OFFA tells universities to spend on widening participation. With fees slashed, the case for such central dictation falls away. If you end this requirement, the money available to universities rises to £10.1bn.

    We shouldn’t overstate the case.

    One of the quirks of my model is that, while graduate numbers remain constant in the first few years, overtime they would decline.

    Clearly, we don’t want this to happen. The first call for more investment would be on the spare capacity built into our model and the second on the current OFFA spending. The next model will address this but here is more than enough money in the system to deal with it.

    Investment in widening participation by the most selective universities remains essential. But even so, I believe substantial sums could be freed up for research.

    The model has considerable flexibility.

    If you feel I have pushed for too many intensive courses, aimed for too many home students, been over optimistic about employer contributions, or the student

    Estimated institutional steady state income directly connected to full time English undergraduates: higher loans fully replace grants for low income students, and 15% premium

    premium is too low, then we can draw on these funds to adjust the system or make relatively modest changes to the level of the student entitlement and fees.

    I’ve pushed change as far as I can – partly to show what could be achieved, and partly because, frankly, I think it is essential to free up resources for research if we possibly can.

    We could deliver this system in different ways, but I think we need a fresh start; as clear, transparent and fair as it can be. So let’s make a radical break with both the current system and that left by Labour.

    The student entitlement

    I suggest that every student accepted on an honours degree course attracts a flat rate student entitlement which goes to their university. Flat rate, irrespective of institution, course, length of course or current fee level charged.

    So, you take the £4.7bn we have now allocated to teaching. You top slice, of course, the extra money required to support science, engineering and other high cost courses. And then you divide the rest amongst the students.

    In the simplest form, this produces a student entitlement of £14,800 per student.

    The fee now payable is the difference between the current cost of a degree and the value of the entitlement. It would be financed and paid back as at present.

    The total fee cost of the average three year degree – and remember that in my model the great majority of degrees, 70% – would be three year degrees or longer – the average total would be less than £10,000 – about the levels fees were at when Labour left office.

    And the total fee cost of a full cost university – currently £27k – would fall to about £12,000.

    The total fee cost for a two-year degree would be less than £5000.

    For those on employer sponsored degrees of course, there would be no fees and they would receive a wage as well.

    There are many different routes through this system. But this example – a three year degree studied away from home (so the most expensive option) – show how total debt falls, total payment falls, and the % repaying in full increases.

    The second example is a two-year degree – but again, assuming study away from home, so the most expensive choice – shows an even more marked difference.

    Students get a lot of choice. Money follows the student.

    But it is an entitlement, not a voucher.

    It is high time we set aside the childish fad which said that every public service reform had to be expressed in the banal and vacuous language of consumer capitalism.

    If my proposal were adopted it would be because the people of England had decided to establish an entitlement for their children to go to university, and that’s how it should be described.

    Support for low income students

    Significant fee reductions come from investing in teaching, rather than the political and economic costs of a high fee system.

    But some students from non-traditional backgrounds do need more support to complete their courses successfully. Students from poorer homes do have to live while they study. So we need to ensure these needs are still met.

    I doubt that the OFFA-mandated money has much effect. Bursaries may shift students between institutions, not get them to apply in the first place. Fee remission is simply inequitable in a system of graduate repayments. Much of this money could be better spent either on teaching or on research.

    The needs of students who need extra support are real as Million+ have argued. We could simply retain the current widening participation spending or student opportunity as it is now called.

    But I would rather create an additional student entitlement, a student premium if you like, which would clearly make disadvantaged students financially more attractive to universities. My model builds in a 15% enhancement to the student entitlement.

    My model replaces the student grant with a loan. By doing so we ensure that the low income student has just as much money to live on as at present.

    While their maintenance debt will go up, their fees have fallen dramatically, and it is the total debt – fees and maintenance – which determines how much graduates have to pay back.

    In all the modelling we have done, low-income students will end up owing less money and paying back less money on every single mode of study and length of course. But still have as much to live on while they study.

    This is such a radically different picture to the one we have today – lower fees, lower debt, lower payments, as many graduates, and new money for research and teaching – that you might be forgiven for thinking there is some sleight of hand. Mistakes aside, there isn’t.

    All I have done is ask a few basic questions about using money better.

    What George Osborne should have done

    In the Autumn Statement George Osborne announced that he would put money from the sale of the student loans book into creating 60,000 additional student places. He says it will cost £700m a year.

    There’s too little information to incorporate it into our modelling.

    But all other things being equal, if George had invested £700m in this system, he could have created as many additional graduates, at lower cost, and had money left over to invest in teaching quality or research.

    A few closing thoughts

    I’ve packed a lot into a short lecture, so I want to allow time for Alison’s response and your questions.

    But in closing, let me touch on a few other issues

    Firstly, we have cut private repayments by £2.4bn without reducing university income. I wanted to lower the private cost of a degree.

    But this does also substantially reduce payments by the wealthiest graduates; would that be fair?

    The option is there to introduce a free standing graduate tax. A 1% tax above the threshold would produce £1bn a year after 20 years and £2.5bn in the longer term. It would take time to start as you wouldn’t want anyone to be paying more than the current 9%. But it soon be generating useful funds.

    My model doesn’t depend on it. But it may be part of the longer term answer of generating new, hypothecated income for our universities.

    Second, no one is going to price a part-time degree higher than a full time degree, so part-time degree costs will fall. So we can trigger a renaissance in part time education.

    Thirdly, you would really want to integrate these reforms with higher level apprenticeships and the real problems of taught masters. We can at least see the analogies between higher level apprenticeships and employer co-sponsored degrees, and it’s worth noting that an integrated masters degree, with intensive teaching, would cost students less than a current three year degree.

    Fourth, It won’t be long before the most research intensive universities – come along and ask ‘can we put our fees up now please?’. This is indeed more politically feasible than under the current model.

    But we shouldn’t rush into it. We’ve raised university spending by £700m, largely by reducing obligations on the more expensive universities. So we need to know more about the impact of these reforms on different types of university.

    But, in any case, tough conditions would have to be met. We would need a self-limiting clawback mechanism of the type proposed by Browne; universities would have to take responsibility for any additional fee loans and write-offs; they would have to demonstrate collaboration with other local universities on courses and mutual recognition of credits; and they would have to deliver progress, not aspiration, on widening participation.

    Fifth, I’ve not looked at implementation. But I would note that if we started now we could take advantage of the current demographic decline and reduce the number of three year degrees more than the proportion of students taking them. We could build demand for intensive courses, beginning by ring-fencing money for the growth in employer co-sponsored degrees.

    Several people have already asked whether this is about to become Labour policy.

    I certainly hope Labour will look at this, but I hope others will too.

    The modelling is crude, the assumptions broad, the approximations considerable. It’s not a detailed plan for higher education and it’s in no state to go into anyone’s manifesto!

    We’ve had enough damage done by enthusiastic politicians working on the back of envelopes already.

    Wouldn’t it be good if BIS now took this concept, put it in their more sophisticated models, and informed a genuine public debate? But that would take Ministers who don’t feel personally or ideologically wedded to the current system.

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  • Spring 2025 Inclusive Growth and Racial Equity Thought Leadership Lecture Series (Howard University)

    Spring 2025 Inclusive Growth and Racial Equity Thought Leadership Lecture Series (Howard University)

    Scheduled for Feb 20, 2025. The Spring 2024 Inclusive Growth and Racial Equity Thought Leadership Lecture Series will feature a fireside chat with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Professor of History, Director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research, and National Book Award-winning Author.

     


     

     

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