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?

While @Tiredalwaystired has made a valid point, I am with you to a large extent in this. I went to America before I came to live in Britain, visiting the UK frequently. The contrast in much of the cultural tone was fantastic, from the British perspective. I had the sense that although this society is dreadfully class conscious, an interest in culture transcended class barriers.

In America by contrast a bright kid from certain backgrounds, or even an adult, with an interest in various cultural or intellectual pursuits has had a bit of a struggle.

Nowadays we seem to be moving in the American direction. I intensely dislike the America-bashing threads, largely because they are so misinformed, but this is one American trend I deeply regret.

Actually according to govt stats the average age of a nursing student is 29yo, so looks like proportionately they might be affected. Half of all nursing students are age over 25.

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmeduemp/124/124ap33.htm#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20Nursing%20and%20midwifery%20students%20have,nursing%20students%20aged%20over%2025. publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmeduemp/124/124ap33.htm#:~:text=—%20Nursing%20and%20midwifery%20students%20have,nursing%20students%20aged%20over%2025.]]]]

we know that applications to nursing courses from mature students is falling at a faster rate than applications than non mature students. Lack of jobs is likely to accelerate this issue as mature students with less ability to be geographically mobile will be averse to commencing their training if there is a suspicion there may not be a job locally at the end.

That link is from 2001 though.

An odd choice as we are now in 2024.

or am I missing something?

This is of course true to some extent. However teaching and learning methods can level the playing field to some extent at university; and there is the question of how and why those A level grades were obtained in the first place.

Yes @poetryandwine - your point about "how and why those A level grades were obtained in the first place" is really central here.

And the Sutton Trust estimates that a middle-class education (paid for, or grammar school, or a family with cultural and social capital as well as economic capital) will add up to one grade at A Level. I come from that background myself - well-off family with substantial educational & cultural capital, at a "bog standard" comprehensive (my parents had both attended top public boarding schools and hated it so much they sent us to the local mediocre good comp 😂) - I did far better than my working and lower-middle class peers. Although I realised once at university (an elite one) not as well as the heavily tutored taught in classes of 4 or 5, when classes for most of my A Level subjects were between 20 and 35.

So I've seen it in my own career, and I see it in my students.

I dont know why people are so hung up on this point , I really don’t have time to try and find more up to date figures but I can promise you that anecdotally around 50% of the nursing and midwifery cohorts I teach are mature students. Always have been and I don’t really see why that would be any different now.

My main point which people are losing sight of is that there are no jobs. My Facebook feed from various nursing groups I’m in is full of such stuff. If there are no jobs this will affect new applicants to training courses. That is my point on a thread about universities. And the danger is that if this continues then in 8 years time when staff shortages in the trusts have got worse and they suddenly need to desperately recruit then there won’t be people available to apply for the jobs.

last night I was reading a post from Scotland about midwifery saying only a handful of positions in the whole country. And she very clearly made the point that there are technically vacancies but the trusts can’t afford to fill them. Even if some of those Scottish students don’t have families and could move to England why should they? Maybe they don’t want to leave their homes, their friends? Health Scotland have actually told them to seek alternative employment and to wait for jobs to be released next year. But next year another cohort will have qualified!

that’s what people should be concentrating on. It’s a disgrace not only for the individuals who can’t get jobs but for the people who live in these areas and are expected to put up with short staffed services. Not whether 50% or less of the cohort should be able to move. And btw I’ve seen another post this morning about the lack of jobs in London, but I do think that was maybe midwifery not nursing.

the govt need to get a grip on this. I appreciate they’re new in post and I really hope they understand the issue but it would not surprise me if we see future statements bleating on about the need to train more staff to fill the vacancies
🤷‍♀️. Health education England are still keen to train as many students up as possible and are upset about the massive drop in university applicants this year. My universities has filled 30% of the nursing course!

Universities are already using contextual admissions to level the playing field. However, students won't be hand-held at uni, so they do need to have self-motivation, an aptitude for learning and ambition to succeed. If they don't, then 3 years at uni isn't going to magically compensate for 18 years of schooling and family life.

But in any case, that isn't what this thread is about. It's about universities being shut down because they are uneconomic. Young people don't need contextual admissions to get into those universities, because they will happily take anybody's money.

My understanding is that the "at risk" universities have not been publicly named. So, until they are known, no judgement can be made about the impact.

@CormorantStrikesBack i’m sorry I hadn’t realised nothing had changed in the university sector over the past 24 years. Funding, demographics, expectations, government policy, external pressures and context, even VC remuneration levels all just the same. And that’s before we get to readily accessible data. Silly me. 🤔

You are being more than a bit silly to be honest. You’re either twisting my point or not understanding it. I never said nothing had changed within the university sector in the last 20 years. I was purely talking about the ratio of mature students vs non mature students in healthcare courses.

did I mention funding, vc remuneration, govt policy, context? No, don’t think I did. Because that wasn’t what I was talking about.

if you’d like to engage about my actual point about how the current massive drop in applications to healthcare courses this year might be affected by the current lack of jobs then I’m all ears.

Talking about "lower" unis being glorified polytechnics is unhelpful, unfair and snobbish.
Without a doubt some students from working class environments are excluded from going away to uni because of cost. If both parents work full time modest jobs, you are going to only get the £4700 maintenance loan, with parents having to put the £7kish pa accommodation bill on credit cards. Students from low income families get the full loan, which is just under £12k I think. It isn't necessarily the deprived kids being excluded, it's the middle earning working classes. (This isn't taking into account paid for top up tuition).
Also, don't allow old fashioned academic snobbery make you look down on degree apprenticeships. Businesses are funding a degree that businesses actually want, and the student is getting paid work, experience, education and an out from the £45k debt. Far from it being for the lower achieving students, in my area the degree apprenticeships command higher A levels than the unis for the same qualification. Kids doing degree apprenticeships aren't going to be the ones working as unpaid interns for 12 months, or the graduates doing fill in jobs before an opening appears in their chosen career.

Late last year, just as applications for courses starting in 2020 were closing the government, recognising the impact of the removal of the bursary on more mature and disadvantaged students in particular, reinstated the maintenance grant (the part of funding that covered living costs) with additional funding for people studying within regions or specialties with particular shortages – though students will still have to cover their course fees. Breaking down this trend by age, we can see that age groups over 30 have seen the biggest increases in student numbers this year, increasing by an average of 40 per cent year-on-year (more than 2,800 people).

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/blogs/student-nursing-numbers-good-news