The Director of the Office for Fair Access is Prof. “Les” Ebdon, grammar school boy and, until very recently, Vice Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire (ranked 102/117 by the Guardian University Guide, and 88/116 by the Times Good University Guide, fees £9K, drop out rate 11%, compared with national rate of 7.2%). He is reported as saying that universities must recruit as many students from poor homes as from the better off, if they are to be allowed to charge the top rate £9K fee, and that access to the most selective universities must be “opened” to students from poor families.
In my teaching days I would have marked down a student who wrote such a statement. What is “poor” and what does poverty have to do with the inherent ambitious nature, intelligence, focus and determination that drives some, but not others, to want to aim for the highest levels of education? I know plenty of people from poor homes (and Prof Ebdon says he was one of them) who found no bar to entry to higher education. It was, after all, completely free when he and I were young, and there were free grammar schools, selecting and developing the most talented children. Even when it was all free, many young people were not interested in university education because it was not as fashionable then, nor was it necessary as a qualification in order to take up a good career. It was the dearth of ambition in the families, however, that was, and still is the biggest barrier to educational achievement. There are many families, as I found when I dealt with university admissions, that tell their children that university is not for them and have an attitude of reverse snobbery towards it. Some schoolteachers did the same.
It is the governments, of all parties, that have increased university fees to a level that must deter poor students, but also failed to explain to them that they do not have to pay those fees upfront. They are not repayable until income after graduation reaches a certain level; and it is also the case that the most “elite” universities, as no doubt Prof Ebdon calls them, are the most affordable, because over the decades their grateful alumni have donated funds to them to provide bursaries for the new generation. My own old college attracts large numbers of undergraduates from the state sector, and gives bursaries to about one-third of all its students from homes with lower incomes, without any compromise in its successful pursuit of the highest academic standards. A recent study suggested that it is more likely that middle income potential students, not the poorest, have been deterred from applying to university by the high fees. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19182000
There are no artificial barriers to access. All the candidate has to do is fill in the forms – and get the grades. The schools should be directing them to choose the appropriate A levels. The universities collectively have spent millions in recent years on summer schools and other outreach activities. Never was higher education so readily accessible. But all the good work done by the universities is profoundly undermined when an Ebdon or a Brown insinuates that there is, after all, in their opinion, discrimination in favour of the rich and privately educated. It is these statements that scare off young people, if anything does. The good universities are perfectly capable of assessing candidates in the round, and do not need to be told to take into account “context”, or make lower offers to certain underprivileged candidates (whether defined by postcode, parental education, income or race). Most of Britain’s universities are attractive not only to home grown talent but also to overseas students, and their worldwide reputation ought not to be undermined by this sort of talk. And we should all be condemning the student visa fraud that appears to have been uncovered at London Met, because that damages reputation as well, not to mention having an adverse effect on the genuine clever students from overseas.
The twin evils are the chronic underfunding over the decades of our universities, leading them to seek overseas students at higher fee levels; and the poverty of aspiration of some families and schools. Pressurising universities to adjust admissions to meet some government social engineering objective is a recipe for disaster. The result could be to destroy the very excellence and integrity that is sought for all students. It will only drive away the best and brightest to the universities of other nations that are not so tainted.
So lets see. Get into debt to get a degree. Then when you earn, you pay it back.
Ah, but you should get a degree because you earn more, and then we’re going to get you because you are rich. We’re going to tax you until it hurts.
Students aren’t stupid. They have worked out that you’re treating them as cows, to be milked. Shades of Arbeit macht frei.
Heads the state wins, tails you lose.
On the whole I agree with your sentiments. Candidates should be selected for university places on their academic merits and nothing else. Universities can not be dumbed down for ideological reasons to do with widening access.
However, perhaps by “poor”, Prof Ebdon is referring to those families with no history of higher education, where children are told university is not for them. These will tend to be lower-income households. If a quota for such households is set, would it encourage universities to reach out to those people and encourage them to apply? Is there a reason that there should be fewer higher achievers among lower-income households? Statistically all income groups should be represented equally, surely?
As for middle-income people – or anyone for that matter – being put off by “high fees”: I would really hope anyone capable of attending university would realise the new repayment scheme is effectively a graduate tax. If you don’t earn much, you pay little or nothing back. Many people will never repay their fees. Those who are successful pay more. But unlike a pure graduate tax, it’s limited in both time and amount you repay. It doesn’t affect your credit rating as, unlike a loan or mortgage, there’s no risk. If you lose your job, you don’t have to make payments. The media really has not helped to explain any of this.
As for middle-income people – or anyone for that matter – being put off by “high fees”:
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For the simple reason its not financially viable.
we should all be condemning the student visa fraud that appears to have been uncovered at London Met,
THAT, Noble Baroness has been going on for 40 years or more!
I may be missing the point entirely, about young people from poor backgrounds but Jenny Lee’s baby, the OU, does so much to counteract the
myth of disadvantage and poor backgrounds, that worrying about equal opportunity from all backgrounds really is not worthwhile.
Many people from council “sink” estates need 10 years or so, of work and life before they decide that university and higher education is for them, and then THEY KNOW!
The one thing I do with people in their teens and 20s is to discuss their future career prospects, and they all glow at the thought of the OU! They do not glow at the thought of accumulating debt, to be repaid during thir adult life. If they are not in the habit of mortgaging and borrowing, it can be very worrying indeed for them.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be!
I think I can offer an hypothesis of why poorness and poverty matters. However it is tentative, so testing to destruction is welcomed.
I think the problem may not be applying to a high quality university, as such, but instead the coaching private schools provide to pass opening selection and interviews, and the focused tutoring they provide to help get higher grades.
This also may include better technologies and equipment in education, which also will obviously have an effect (it being hard to learn programming if you don’t have regular access to a computer and the best textbooks etc.)
Apart from scholarships, being at a private school generally relies on the success of your parents, rather
Even with scholarships, there must be a ratio of paying students to non-paying students, or a some kind of trust fund paying for this. Again this means that you are not wholly ‘self-made’ in education – you may have passed the requirements of the scholarship, but it is only through the fees paid through others, or charitable funds being setup.
A second factor is the position of poverty on life outside school – no matter what your personal characteristics are, if you have to take a job due to poor financial circumstances, or cannot oafford extra-cirricular activities and others can use that time to better themselves through education, it again means that people relying on other sources than themselves are not in poverty.
In the interests of disclosure, I attended a Grammar school, which had the usual entrance exam, however my parents paid to give me some tutorial sessions – an opportunity that I likely wouldn’t have had if I came from a poor family, and likely improved my chances.
Comments requested, please.
Here is a simple alternative.
Currently education costs around the 5K a year mark in the UK.
So we give those that want it, a voucher they can use for their children’s education for 4K. They are allowed to top up if they want.
So what’s going to happen? The middle class will go private. The state sector now has an extra 1K to spend on the pupils that remain, for each that moves.
Take the bigger context of what I like to call “Longest-term Sustain-worthiness”
in what I like to distinguish from each other as
the 25% Workplace
the 75% Lifeplace:
and consider (‘test-to-destruction’)
P1 Any-one who can live in Britain today on the minimum guaranteed income
[£140 per week has been legislated to be a sufficient income for the individual to maintain theirself healthy, citizenlike, and environmentally-supportive)
must be personally-efficient at making-ends-meet in the Lifeplace:
for ease of mental-arithmetic, let this Personal-Efficioency Index be £100 = 1.0000.
sub-Concl 1: therefore any-one having to have twice that amount is only 50% personally efficient in the Lifeplace
(to which must be added that at £200 pw that second person is being twice as environmentally-destructive as the index person).
How do we arrive at the PM (foe instance) “needing” at least ten human-livings per week for his lifeplace ?
(This is quite apart from all Workplace or business costs/expenses, of course).
How should we excuse the psychiatrist for delusorily thinking (as an individual as well as as a member of the Psychiatrist Class) that s/he is ten (or more, or multiple) human-beings ?
[I havn’t ‘the foggiest’ how we should proceed to ‘ to destruction’ either the above or your hypothesis, James;
But I honestly think that some genuinely disinterested ‘think-tank’ should have already done so –
(tested each such hypothesis/argument ‘to destruction’).
There is still such a huge unresolved Issue over what will comprise Schools’ and Universities’ curriculums in Training-for-Jobs & Careers in the 25% Workplace
and
what is sorely needed to be implemented instutionally or associationally as Sustainworthy Lifestyles Education for the 75% Lifeplace,
that you need to be Top-Priority peacefully-revolutionising all Training and Education philosophies, policies, infrastructures, and
skill-bases.
All Jobs & Careers training costs need to be met by the Private/Employer Sector,
as a starter.
Note also the edifying title of a seriously non-fiction human-development book chapter:
“Being called ‘leader/educator’ will never make you one”.
All Jobs & Careers training costs need to be met by the Private/Employer Sector,
as a starter.
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That will be zero. They can always import the skills.
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There is always the Plain English campaign and the forced re-education plan for those addicted to making up jargon. A nice little earner that one for anyone who sets it up.
🙂
@LB:
And, importing so many is the main reason our schools are finding it impossible to teach the population articulate English with a required vocabulary. And these universities that cry out, it is nothing to do with us, when it is those same people that go to the country of origin to recruit as they get more per head than for those than for our children we foot the bill for.
Family news: A relative, now thirty, was at Bristol. Had to pay around £4,000 per annum, but now has a good job. The degree helped a little. He is still paying off that loan today. The interest was/is exorbitant. Now he has had to add to that, a mortgage, as his money was going down the drain in rent. Even a shared rent. So he and girlfriend bought out of town a little way. One of those terrible new build semi’s not big enough to swing a cat. And they call it three bedrooms. Three closets they mean. It was, he said, the least expensive of all those that were not a toilet. He will be in hock for years for that little master piece.
Was the degree worth it. I don’t think so. It ws simply a fudge to ‘prove’ he could read and write. All US waiters have to have it for Macdonalds, and it is getting that way here as well. It’s a con to keep the colleges going. Started in the US years ago, and as they now rule here, they have decided the tax payer must foot their preposterous joy rides of war and high perks and so they must be forced to pay what was always part of the reason you paid tax. Not any more. Now tax is simply to foot the bill for multiculturalism, war and politicians costs. Soon, they will be covered for their health insurance by our taxes and a splendid service it will be. Just as they do across that big pond. I tell you the American public are so easily conned into the line they get on a four year basis.
Another relative, he is mid thirties and has a property. His girlfriend, who also works is having a baby, they desperately need to find a bigger house, but, they are still paying off their university loans, which has been strung out a lot longer than they tell you. It started with less of a requirement, but they hike the interest, depending on how much you make or your potential income. And they do this to make us pay to educate the world at our expense.
Read this.
http://www.scholars4dev.com/1892/government-scholarships-for-developing-countries/
So you see, that story you read or hear about that tells us ‘foreign students’ pay for their education is a fantasy. They are worked a freebie at the good old British expense. But they keep it quiet unless you get filled with wrath at he audacity of it once you go looking for a place for your kid to flourish.
This cash for education was in order to pay for the Blair creature to teach his millions of open door immigrants how to speak, read and write and get get a job here.
Note how well that has worked out can you? The population explosion means there is no school places in four years time in his area for my relatives infant and they are going to have to ‘go abroad’ to survive as they didn’t get educated to set up a land of plenty for foreigners who come in for an easy ride. And they also want their son or daughter to be able to maintain a respectable English level of speech. Which in our schools is virtually impossible as the fashion is scoot speak. And no self respecting kid would dare to speak any other way or their head would likely come right off should they give it a go.
What an inheritance we have given all those we survey. And the idiot smug faces these government clowns flash if you dare raise the fact their kids are in ‘independent’ schools, aren’t they lucky, all paid for by the tax payer as they help themselves to even a larger expenses budget than they ever had before. Fees are going up you see, can’t let that fall by the wayside now can we?
Why do the British public put up with this? Could it be because they have no choice of mouthpiece, as those little loyal’s are appointed before being pushed at us and given in a line of selected specials to keep this ball rolling for the old boys brigade.
Something is going to have to give. And fast.
http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/35
The real problem is that the governments wants students to fund AND pay extra taxes.
It should be either/or.
Foreign aid or (development assistance) is often regarded as being too much, or wasted on corrupt recipient governments
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Of course it is. The same applies to the UK.
For example they are currently taking money for the state pension. They know they can’t afford to pay it, so their response to how much is owed, is we can change the law not to pay it.
Now they aren’t quite a clever as they think with that answer. It’s admitting fraud. If they have to change the law, it means they have to pay it under current laws. To take money with no intention of paying it out when legally required to is fraud.
Corruption is rife in the UK, and the above shows it.
they are going to have to ‘go abroad’ to survive as they didn’t get educated to set up a land of plenty for foreigners who come in for an easy ride. Called Job mobility. People from Africa and Asisa can do it. Why shouldn’t you?
And they also want their son or daughter to be able to maintain a respectable English level of speech.
Wouldjer Adam ‘n Eve it?!
If Maude had a consistent world view she might be able to express her opinions more clearly. She has not.
Well now, GH, help a poor girl out will you? What exactly is your idea of a ‘world view.’ And whilst we are at it, why do you think we, as a nation, should sign up for it in the first place? Clear and concise answers would be gratefully accepted. And leaving the text book jargon behind would also assist in clarification.
And so you now where I’m coming from, you might like to dwell on why it is felt by numerous individuals, akin to your way of thinking, that a ‘world viewing’ country, including the natives of this one, must give up their basic standards in order to accommodate this ‘world’ who refuse to adopt the status quo? Add to that, the thrust to date, having been to not only accommodate the inferior as the order of the day, rather than emphasize a must have requirement to be exemplary in order to dwell in a British university. We pretend we accept the lowering of standards, when that is simply a get out for all you do gooders who truly feel the top is unobtainable to those you sponsor. Which means you do believe, not I who believes, that they are inferior and need your support. In other words, the world getting behind the host cultures they claim they want to be part of is not in your agenda. You prefer inferior to superior achievement. Plus, it makes it easier for you.
And as far as telling me, indirectly, to get out of this country if I don’t go along with your suicide pact, well it’s you who needs to lift up and fly right and do the people you claim to be looking out for a favour. The expectation of second rate performance is an insult to the intelligence of those striving for excellence, no matter their origin.
The way the levels of attainment are being lowered relentlessly, means, those who are here and who come here are unfit for anywhere else. Not even Singapore wants the second rate learned we spit out.
And if you are to be followed this will worsen.
“Poor degress” – “Rich degrees” – .
“Corruption is rife in the UK …”
Not only is corruption by money, and by other material-attractions, rife;
but corruption of the Mind itself,
in Educational, Media, and Community Places alike;
and corruption extends insidiously into the Emotional, Physiological, Environmental, and Spiritual* functions both of Peoples and of their Governancial Advocates, Representatives, and Rulers.
———–
* Religions
(especially Big, and Monotheistic ones
such as Christianity
which persistently fails in its essential Duty to nurture and educate the innate (God-given) sacramental-energy-centres and their individuo-social dynamic-energies, that are within each human as body-mind-spirit, and which need frequently-continual external support, lifelong)
are little more than delusorily profiteering pay-pyramids,
wherein the higher you ‘climb’ the more ‘human-beings’ you become
whereby the more human-livings you can be given and can draw from the Finite Common Purse and Living-Environment.
—————–
Corruption is not only in Money;
it is in every Constitutional, Institutional, and Dictatorial Place and Population,
it is in every Workplace, Lifeplace and Homeplace,
but it is especially lopsidedly and insidiously ‘rife’ in our so-called “First World” and “Western” countries’.
Every degree should have within it a Lifeplace & Workplace practical competency in
“Perceptual Self-Control”
“Sustainworthy Mindset”
“Method III Cooperative Problem Solving”
and in
“Individual and Mutual Holistic Health Maintenance and Building”.
Other degree subjects such as Geography, Environment, Health, Engineering, Astronomy, Law, Languages, and so on through all the (other) essential primary, secondary, tertiary and post-tertiary subjects
would follow on
but no Qualification nor Degree should in future be granted,
nor maintained without annual or frequent up-dating,
without the pre-requisite of Practical-Passes in each of the above named four ‘sustainworthy- lifestyle-ability’ subjects.