PSA: G Hinsliff universities article today

[poetryandwine]

In today’s Guardian, in print and online, Gaby Hinsliff has an article on the crisis being faced by UK universities. The title begins

’Universities are in free fall …’

and then the two versions differ slightly.
It currently appears on the front page of the (free) Guardian website.

The reason I thought this worth mentioning is that Hinsliff does an excellent job of briefly explaining the background and showing how the causes have fed on each other, from Brexit to greedy VCs to the interest rates rises to our confused social policy. The overview is very helpful.

The accounting firm PwC have just provided Universities UK with a sobering report on the financial future of the sector.

I don’t understand the quotation marks in @Roberson170 post, but am curious about the future of universities, especially as the model of the last couple of decades around anyone and everyone going to uni to study whatever the hell they want without much consideration for future career prospects may be part of the problem. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have scholars across the academic spectrum, especially in some subject areas that don’t make an obvious economic contribution to society, but there are some subjects where degree level qualifications are silly.

but there are some subjects where degree level qualifications are silly

For example?

Let me guess, Media Studies.

Link to article: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/29/britain-universities-freefall-saving-them-funding-international-students

I would say Nursing - I think making nurses do a degree and making them take out loans to pay for it when half the time they are working shifts in hospitals was a seriously bad move.

My sister was a midwifery sister and learnt at nursing college - didn't need a degree. And I have a friend who is one but struggled to write essays (I helped her as much as I could) and only just passed as a result but she is a brilliant midwife just not 'academic'. I don't understand why writing essays is a requirement (and I am an academic!).

I suspect there will need to be a swing back to employers (small and large) taking greater responsibility for post-school training, a contraction of the university sector together with a parallel revitalisation of local FE colleges and a rebalancing of reward and tenure within institutions in favour of younger, more junior teaching and research staff.

Others may disagree and that is fine. As an outsider to the sector, my analysis may not be correct. The issue is that any change is likely, at the broad level, to be very slow (decades) but also 'disorderly' at the local level, catching out students and staff caught up unwittingly in a sudden and dramatic unravelling at a particular institution.

I think that nursing is one of those jobs that has changed massively since the 1990s though.

I am 52. When I was 16, non-academic girls with modest GCSEs (and I do mean “girls”) went in for nursing or secretarial training. But I get the impression that far more is expected of nurses now.

I don’t want to derail the thread with talk of one job, of course, because the wider topic is interesting.

I don't doubt it @VictorianChic but just because you don't go to university doesn't mean you aren't intelligent enough to manage the requirements - I also left school at 16 and went into work as a management trainee with only O levels - was in my 30s when I got a PhD.

But bringing nursing and other professions under the university umbrella enabled the government to make applicants take out student loans and pay for their training themselves and I think it was wrong. Same for doctors and teachers in my opinion - we need them as a society.

I would say Nursing - I think making nurses do a degree and making them take out loans to pay for it when half the time they are working shifts in hospitals was a seriously bad move.

What about medicine then? They're also working in hospitals loads.

(Nursing, and teaching, became degree occupations in the 90's as a way to increase female university participation rates btw - obvs when no fees were paid. But making nursing a non-degree occupation a) devalues it as a profession, and b) means university goes back to being male dominated.)

I suspect there will need to be a swing back to employers (small and large) taking greater responsibility for post-school training,

That was what the apprenticeship levy was supposed to do. It's failed, badly.

@titchy I think I said that - doctors and teachers - and probably other professions we need for society to function

I don't see university degrees as the only way to make someone feel valued. Professional qualifications can provide equal if not higher status.

Otherwise universities wouldn't be so keen to get their degrees professionally accredited!

I don't know but here are a list that definitely might be:

https://www.whatuni.com/advice/choosing-a-course/strangest-university-degrees-you-can-study-uk/82740/

I don't think the Apprenticeship Levy failed badly; it was very blunt in its original form and incentivised mostly large organisations to subsidise training of older staff. The direction of travel is right but needs to be finessed.

The other issue is that standards and rigor in apprenticeship training are hugely variable. Well organised sectors and FE institutions with the right teaching staff and connections are what is required. This is currently very patchy by sector and geography.

Yes I agree with you @PerpetualOptimist but we did have a great system of day release and apprenticeships before the stupid government messed it up.

Germany have a good education framework where they split academia from the professions and they are of equal status. The implication - that you aren't top tier unless you have a university degree is ridiculous and the government (think it was Tony Blair's?) should never have promoted that by saying 'everyone/50%" (can't remember precisely) should go to university making people think that if you didn't you had somehow failed at life.

It has just created qualification inflation for jobs.

I think the elephant in the room is the relationship between HE and MC aspirations.
IMO this has been a significant factor in the expansion of degree programmes (also the need to appeal to the international market, but I will focus on one thing at a time).

It would be difficult for me to say which programmes should go, or be downgraded. But the larger point is that people want their DC to have degrees, as a means of gaining or maintaining MC status, and the sector has responded.

If so many did not not secretly, or not so secretly, look down on the successful builders, electricians, etc who say ‘toilet’ and ‘pardon’ and commit other such dreadful crimes, I wonder whether these very successful people would be so keen to send DC to uni? Of course some of their DC, like all others, will intrinsically want to go and that is marvellous.

In short, if uni was for students who wanted to study and if we had other pathways to social acceptance as well as economic success for the others, I wonder if the resulting rebalance would solve some of the problems? Probably we are too far gone to solve all of them this way.

I find this a bit sneering. Brewing and distilling has been offered at HWU for years and after all uses a great deal of chemistry and plant science.

Not sure what is weird either about Old Norse. At an acclaimed RG university, no less.

Yes it is a bit of an odd list that one. It's more like here are some really interesting things you can do at University that you couldn't do at school!

My youngest is going to university in September - I have to say I am in two minds about it - I would prefer him to train as a pilot, builder, electrician or even a train driver (100k a year I hear!) or perhaps tske over his dad's small engineering company but he wants to be a scientist like me so no way round that!

I mainly agree with @Piggywaspushed concerning the linked article on strange degree courses, although at first glance I have some concerns about a couple she did not mention.

In particular I am curious about the overall workload in the two year Baking course leading to a degree. Fine if it’s 72 weeks of study. (That’s three years of 24 weeks, condensed) Problematic if it is two years of 24 weeks of study. But I am not concerned enough to look it up.

And if I’m honest I would prefer that Baking and Surfing expertise be honoured by guilds or other respected professional qualifications rather than degrees, but I accept that is a question of taste

The train drivers don't seem entirely happy though...

And actually pilots have v high levels of depression.

But the surfing is an FdSc anyway and food science type courses have also been at universities for years.

In fact one of my students got turned down for that course this year so it is extremely competitive.

Well maybe - I don't think a lot of my colleagues are entirely depression free or experiencing good job security either. I guess if you are in a job you love - and I love mine and will probably continue the research even when I retire - it's half the battle to a happy life.

But financially I am not sure it is worthwhile accumulating 4 years of student debt that you will be paying for for 40 years to become a research scientist anymore.

The social dimension you raise is interesting and important, Poetry. Although apprenticeships and other non-uni qualification pathways were more abundant before university expansion, there was often implicit class and sex-based 'sorting' with university the preserve of (mostly) middle class young men destined for higher pay careers and (mostly) working class men and women channelled by expectation and/or restricted opportunity into 'appropriate' jobs.

As titchy rightly points out, university expansion (from the late 1970s onwards, accelerating post 2000) has been really important in opening up opportunities to and expectations of young women generally and men and women from lower income backgrounds in particular. Any shrinking or fundamental restructuring of the university sector needs to avoid, unwittingly, resurrecting those social barriers. Equally, we need to ensure non-uni routes are seen to be of equal status for the given level of attainment.

Overall, though, I think it is a question of rebalancing.

a link to the PWC report for Universities UK referenced up thread https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/sites/default/files/field/downloads/2024-01/pwc-uk-higher-education-financial-sustainability-report-january-2024.pdf

Those two are level 5 foundation degrees, not Bachelors, so equal to the first two years of a degree.

Which is interesting given the societal mania for pushing young people into STEM...

I agree University was the preserve of the MC/UC on the whole - no way my parents who left school at 14 would have considered me staying at school beyond the legal age. But the system we now have has not solved that as students without parental support or with parents who earn just enough to not be eligible for more than the basic grant and cannot afford to contribute are still being left out.

I am torn. I go into local schools that do not traditionally send students to university/universities like mine and do Sutton Trust events as well as being a First Gen Scholar rep and I feel sometimes dishonest in encouraging students to consider/stay at university any more due to the debt. But then again, who am I to pull up the ladder behind me?