University closures disproportionately impacting working class students

[mids2019]

Are we in danger of a situation where a lot of working class students who often have A levels that aren't all at A or A star level will be removed of opportunities for higher education?

We are looking at universities predominantly those that are attended by working class students facing departmental closures. Academic courses that possibly don't have high entrance tariffs are closing or will be closed.

One of the advantages of the newer universities was that entrenched inequality was challenged by allowing working class children to study the same academic courses as their middle class peers e.g. English, philosophy, physics, maths etc. Employers are encouraged to look at degree classification and not institution levelling the playing field and giving a lot students from deprived backgrounds access to professional they may not have had access to otherwise .

We now have degree apprenticeships flouted as the way forward but these simply aren't degrees in the academic sense but vocationally based tailors to employers needs not the students. Degree apprenticeships are mostly work based with blocks of academic learning of restricted length embedded in essentially a work environment. Isn't this pushing working class students down an essentially vocational path similar to the old grammar secondary modern divide but pushed on a few years to post level.

Are we going back to only the middle class being entitled to the advantages both professionally and personally of higher education?

I had BBDU ‘A’ levels back in the mists of time because of MH issues - home circumstances, first generation uni. One B was General Studies. I went to a non-RG university, in the days of polytechnics, and got a 2/1 followed by 7 years of Master’s level studies, all at universities and while working in a profession. We shouldn’t write people off en masse.

But we know as employers that a Cambridge English 2:1 grad has been subject to substantially higher academic rigour than the average “UK regional town New University” 2:1 where the degree has been taught mostly online with minimal contact hours. It’s obvious within days of starting with us - we try to be as blind as we can to universities but we do have limits.

There’s really no point pretending otherwise and I think it’s actually pretty bad that we encourage working class children to do poor quality non-vocational degrees at huge cost.

Nursing is well paid compared to many non-graduate professions. That said, I think most people would back the idea of subsidising student loan repayments for vocational employees in professions where there are demonstrable shortages. It has been too easy for Governments to avoid this moral responsibility by recruiting nurses from abroad.

PGCE route teachers still have blocks of time at university with blocks of placement time. It’s SCITT and Teach First where teachers learn on the job with day release for tuition. Nursing degrees still involve blocks of time at university but with long placements - they are not 100% learning on the job. There are some degree courses where 12 hours in university are the norm, but independent learning is expected and students need to be academically able to manage their courses.

See I take offence at that. My DD’s A’levels weren’t the best due to very poor teaching during Covid (she’s dyslexic and support disappeared). She also went to a ‘crap’ local uni because she couldn’t get an apprenticeship. Sent off loads of applications and her CV was excellent but somehow no luck.
She worked extremely hard at Uni and got a first. Turned up for every lecture. Please don’t tar everyone with the same brush.

Nursing is a graduate profession, though, and the pay scale isn’t great for a graduate profession. Given the shortage, though, I agree that the government should subsidise training. The courses are academically demanding and applicants are mostly working class, often women with children.

All I know, is that the amount of uni places is reduced through either unis closing down or the number of courses being reduced at some, the sharp elbowed middle classes won’t be the ones seeing their kids not getting one of the reduced amount of places……wherever the places happen to be, the middle classes will gather the information and means to access them.

Accessing the best opportunities is about so many things. Yes, it’s your exam results, but it’s also about knowledge of the system, confidence to try, being in a Community where high aspiration and self belief is the norm and where parents have knowledge and support in active ways.

The Sure Start Centres offered great stuff and pretty quickly the middle class spotted that and started accessing them. Whether it’s degrees at a particular place, degree apprenticeships, some other new qualification or funding that turns out to be good - you can guarantee who will be first in the queue to access it.

It isn't to do with class.
It is to do with the most academic people being offered the opportunity to study at University, rather than those who are not so well suited to critical thinking and independent study that is needed for a degree.

I begged my dc not to go to university since neither were interested in academic work. However they wanted to do what their friends were doing and the argument I couldn’t refute was that so many employers will only consider graduates.

@SunnyDaySummer , Blind recruiting aims to ensure that the best person for the job is selected. In fact, when certain branches of the Civil Service switched to blind recruiting the proportion of Oxbridge recruits increased. It is thought that the Oxbridge tutorial system, which strongly encourages intense academic engagement week by week for the whole of the undergraduate period and can sharpen the wits like nothing else, gets the blame.

If a weak applicant wins a job that used blind recruiting, the selection process was poorly designed

In Scotland, nursing students have their fees paid and receive a bursary and there are still issues of under recruitment to nursing degrees. It is sheer madness to charge nurses for their training.

Great post, @WombatChocolate

PS I believe bias may play a role in the later stages of blind recruiting just as in any recruiting process. When recruiting for graduate jobs it seems unlikely that this bias will favour the WC applicant

It’s obvious within days of starting with us - we try to be as blind as we can to universities but we do have limits

Then your recruiting practices are crap. But you blame the unis...

The days of nursing and midwifery shortages seem to be in the past. There’s a real issue with recent graduates (this year) not getting jobs. The trusts have ramped up recruitment of overseas staff and the students just graduating are struggling for work. Why would trusts spend money on apprenticeships when they can just recruit from abroad? And that’s even when they have got vacancies which they can afford to fill. Rumour is that there are still vacant but no money for wages.

The home office granted 350000 health and care visas in 2023 alone, including dependents I think.

Just read your posts. The expansion of universities went too far and encouraged too many people on to low quality courses that gave them masses of debt but not much prospect of a good career.

I have just suggested to middle class relatives that their child consider degree apprenticeship.

The old system with grants for working class kids was far more effective in reducing inequality. If we have fewer universities maybe more grants could be brought back.

It's comparable to other public sector graduate professions.

Some employers are wealthier than others, and that is reflected in their employees' pay.

I currently work for an HE employer, and get paid far less than if I was working in another sector, but there are other benefits, which I appreciate because I've experienced both. As an IT professional I do at least have the choice to switch between multiple sectors. Nurses can, and do, switch to the private sector (unfortunately), but that may be as much to do with poor working conditions as pay.

If we want all nurses to be paid the same as bankers we need to either pay a lot more tax or shift further towards private healthcare. We also need to stop recruiting from abroad when there are shortages.

There will be some people who are a hidden/late genius and of course a couple have already popped up on the thread, but as an employer, either you can use academic results and other hard evidence of capability as a filter, or you literally have tens of thousand of CVs to read and thousands of people to interview/test.

And the same must apply to universities, they need to be more selective and efficient as they are currently being propped up financially by immigration and ultimately subsidised by the taxpayer as many of the loans are never paid off.

We all know many people who have not got much out of their degree, and each of these people represent the economy losing 3 years of productive full-time employment, plus the cost of the unpaid loan.

I’m not saying there are no up-sides, of course many people benefit from the second chance, but how do we afford it as a nation without running out of money to catch murderers and treat cancer patients? (Only going dramatic as it’s so easy to say “just give everyone a chance” when you don’t have to consider the cost side of the equation and what that impact those costs have on other people’s lives.)

I have worked with 10 trainee nurses over the last 3 years and 9/10 got jobs, but all 10 have huge student loan debts. I think nursing should be a degree level profession and that central government, not NHS trusts, should at least partially fund the degrees - if fully funded, there should be a commitment to stay in the UK for a certain number of years provided they can get jobs here.

OP you seem to misunderstand degree apprenticeships and think they're being flogged to the working classes due to the fact that those with lower grades are not up to academia. I can tell you it is absolutely not the case. The JP Morgan insight evening was full of students in their private school blazers and expensive suits, the competition was huge having already been whittled down over the previous 4 rounds from literally thousands of applicants. Competition for degree apprenticeships is enormous and actually highly favours private school applicants as they have the confidence, polish and public speaking experience that state school kids generally don't have.

Much of the academics you learn in a degree will be of absolutely no use to you in a job, students doing a History degree probably won't ever use their historical knowledge in a job, but other skills they have learnt/demonstrated will be very useful. Often all the academic stuff you learn is only that useful if you go into academia. People often end up working in a job that is completely unrelated to their degree.

I was poorly taught at a state comp and got an E in one of my A-levels. Went to uni, did a masters and passed with distinctions. I was very bright and suited to research and academia - just not A-level exams.

As someone who graduated in the 90s, not all graduate jobs were in London. Maybe finance? Law?

DH and I worked in graduate roles in Nottingham, Stockport, Northampton, Leicester, and Manchester. We didn't want to live in London.

I moved south for a research post at a Russell Group uni, then went into IT consultancy as part of the 1990s IT boom, mostly working on Government contracts. My DH moved south to work for a Government department then moved to an airline, then an energy producer. Our original moves were obviously prior to Government decentralisation. I think jobs are better distributed now, but many employers still have headquarters in the south east.

I think nursing should be a degree level profession and that central government, not NHS trusts, should at least partially fund the degrees

Going slightly off-topic, but something also needs to be done urgently about the private healthcare sector making no contribution to training of doctors, nurses, etc. (either financial or through placement provision), then employing them and charging the NHS massive amounts for their services to fill gaps left by the NHS's inability to recruit staff who they paid to train.

It’s only in the last month so the current finishers that are affected by this lack of jobs. Last year was fine. I fully agree that nhs professions shouldn’t incur a student debt when training. I never had to pay tuition fees.

Also the nhs afaik don’t pay to train staff (apart from apprentices). The majority of students are non apprentices and the universities pay the nhs trusts for each placement week per student. So that’s where a good chunk of tuition fees go.