For those who do , how easy do you think it would be to reign back from the higher numbers (since my day) of those going to university in say the 80s , compared to today. And would it be a good thing or not? In my day tuition fees were paid and then it was a means tested grant ( for accommodation etc) . But far fewer school leavers went to university back in the day. I would be interested to hear what those who work at universities think
Life would be easier for those of us who retained our jobs.
But it would be a disaster for the country. We'd have to have very very strong mechanisms to ensure that university entry was really down to talent and ability, and not paid-for socio-economic advantage. I was outraged & amused (an awkward position) to read on another thread in this section from a poster who seemed to have children at Eton, identifying how offers to Eton children from Oxford/Cambridge had dropped. The tone of that post was very much one of outrage that the expected rate of offers to the elite institutions was not forthcoming - as if, jst by buying your child's education, you had the right to enter the next level, as an expectation.
The Sutton Trust has excellent figures on all this. Generally, educational attainment borne out of socio-economic advantage, is worth a grade level at A level. So the paid-for educational attainment of an A is equal to the state-educated B. Broadly speaking ...
So there'd need to be very very strong monitoring and controlling of how universities admitted students. We don't live in a meritocracy, mostly because while there is still just a bit of upward mobility, there's very little downward mobility. Tim-nice-but-dim still gets his place at Durham or Exeter or wherever.
Whereas working-class students who are ambitious and bright, but have lived the 1st 18 years of their lives being battered by Daily Fail style broadsides against their whole culture & way of life (and that's before we look at institutionalised sexism & racism), are overly susceptible to feelings of failure before they've even begun.
I'm at a place with a reputation for Oxbridge rejects & hooray Henrys, and we are desperate for more diversity, as are most of our students (I'm in the humanities where students can be more aware of these sorts of issues). But we're in the middle of quite a big internal debate about how we serve our students who come in via Widening Participation mechanisms. They struggle - with the culture, rather than because they're not intellectually up to the work.
As do many of the young women of whatever class, sadly. Still. Imposter syndrome & apologising for their very existence is still common amongst the young women I teach.
So going back to an elite system would serve this nation very very badly. Particularly with a government hell-bent on destroying working-class culture (I'm as upper middle as you might get - 3 generations of Oxbridge on one side, never really needing to earn a living on the other, but even I can see this). A government not really committed to trying to develop equality & equity via education in this country.
As is (because it is happening) xenophobic policies towards international students. International students don't just subsidise your DCs educations. They bring new ideas, different experiences, different cultures to your DCs' educations. Encountering the new and the different is how we learn.
And we should be proud of an education system which is seen as one of the best in the world, not shutting it down to the rest of the world. I love British cosy suburbia for the comfortable lifestyle it gives many of us, but it has no place in a nation's intellectual life.