Remarks given at the DIUS Future of HE Debate hosted by David Lammy MP on Tuesday 24th February. Session title: 'The landscape of HE and its place in our society and the world'

Good afternoon, I’d like to begin by thanking the Department for the invitation to speak at this important event considering the future of higher education. Although the review of funding will be critically important, we consider the opportunity to review higher education more broadly, and the future direction of travel, as a debate of even greater importance. We want to engage fully over the coming months – and ensure the student voice is heard prominently in that debate.

Today though, we’ve been asked to consider the session title ‘the landscape of HE and its place in our society and the world’. It’s certainly a very broad heading, and one on which I would normally struggle to restrict myself to 5 minutes or so.

So I want to put a particular focus on one issue. I’m concerned, for a combination of reasons; the introduction of fees, the league table culture, students increasingly considering themselves as consumers, the pressure to get a job upon graduation and increasing pressure on academic staff – just to name a few, that an ambition of lifelong learning through higher education is in danger of being lost.

In considering UK higher education it is heartening to remind ourselves of the marked increase in participation in recent years, whilst still retaining a place at the top table of global higher education. We have reached a level of over 40% of 18 to 30 year olds having experience of higher education, which is not only good for the economy, but in my eyes more important because of the opportunity for social mobility this enables. I’m not wishing to go down the well trodden path as to whether social mobility is the core purpose of higher education, however it is certainly a critical function – and needs to be able to support this in a meaningful way. Even more importantly, it represents a living, breathing improvement in the knowledge of our people. To have more people acquiring knowledge they didn’t have before is the sign of a healthy society. I by no means want to represent that as an unproblematic statement – it’s deeply problematic, in fact – but we should keep it close to our minds.

What matters is that there are many good reasons to pursue a lifelong learning model for higher education. And for a time, that seemed to be the aim. But today, I’m not sure it is really the central aim. There are too many developments that have pushed that notion down the pecking order.

For example:

The growth of market systems and other symptoms of marketisation, such as the shape and form of the modern university prospectus, now play an indelible role in dominating decisions for students in the process of considering to enter HE, but also whilst they are studying there. The league tables are dominating more and more, and are hugely influential in shaping perceptions of higher education.

Students are increasingly adopting a consumer mentality, and this is slowly changing the nature of higher education, heading in a Utilitarian direction which is chiselling away at many of the foundations which I think we should be seeking to preserve and protect. Students are worried about the pressure to get the best results, so that they can compete in a very difficult labour market – so many tend to opt for what they find easier than they find harder. This isn’t a comment about so called ‘dumbing down’, because it’s contextual to every individual – but it is a comment about risk-taking and the pressure not to take risks.

I think the structure of higher education still lends itself far too heavily toward the full-time, traditional 3 year degree. The paltry entitlement of student support for part-time students is perhaps the most damning evidence for this. Yet students today, for many of the pressures I mentioned at the start, shouldn’t necessarily consider the ‘traditional’ 3 year degree as the most appropriate way to proceed, particularly in light of the current economic position we found ourselves in. Higher education in the UK needs to be a great deal more flexible, allowing students to access education at different times, in different modes, alongside work, by distance study, but also fostering a culture that we should be learning for life and that there shouldn’t be ceiling on when and where we can access education. The change to the ELQ policy last year is also instructive in this – and has set back the idea of lifelong learning in a much more significant way than has so far been seen.

I am concerned about these issues, and I hope we can talk some more about them today. I consider the upcoming debate into the future of higher education as one which shouldn’t leave any stone unturned in finding solutions for a sustainable and accessible university system – one which delivers for the economy, but crucially also fosters a culture of learning for life, and the continued ability to transform the lives of those who enter into it.

Thank you.

Aaron Porter
Vice President (Higher Education)
National Union of Students (NUS)

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