Malcolm McLean's Blog: Faith schools and Catholic culture. - Posts Tagged "university"

In the UK, university participation has increased from about 10% of the population to about 50% within the past generation. Part of this is artificial because the polytechnics were relabelled "universities" (so you've got universities with the word "city"in their names to distinguish from the city's established university). But mostly it's real, it's a massive expansion of higher education.

One unfortunate effect is that government is no longer able to fund it. So students now have to borrow about 50,000 pounds to fund tuition fees and living costs. A lot of that money is proving difficult to repay, despite the fact that the repayments are deducted directly from wages. It's privileged debt. 50 thousand pounds is two to three years' gross earnings for most people.

Another unfortunate effect is that being in the 50% who don't go to university is very different socially from being in the 90% who don't go. If 9 out of 10 don't go, then except for a few professions, most jobs have to be open to non-graduates. if 50% go, then employers use a degree as an automatic filter. There's no easy alternative, as of yet.

However the seemingly impregnable position of higher education is in fact very delicate. The students, once you get beyond the top few institutions, care little for any academic subject for its own sake. They're looking for certification as a member of the top 50% of society, and they resent having to pay so much money for it. And a few large companies are starting to offer high quality apprenticeships. If these apprenticeships proliferate, children who would have been to middle-ranking universities will compete ferociously for them. That then creates a situation whereby if you have a degree, that means that you applied for an apprenticeship at 18 and was rejected. And no-one wants to pay 50,000 pounds for something with a stigma attached to it. I think we are close to the end of the mass higher education era.