Commentary - March 2000

Anticipating the boundaries

David Blunkett’s Greenwich speech, setting out the Government’s view of the future direction of higher education throws up a raft of challenges to anyone concerned with widening participation in the sector. Most obviously, this is because the boundaries of what ‘higher education’ is and what it is for are both expanding and contested.

The debates about student finance, while central, are only addressing a part of the issue. The HE model itself needs to be the subject of review if the government aim of creating inclusivity through widening participation can start to be met. The speech contains some of this in a challenge to the influence which the model of three-year, full-time first degrees has over the sector’s activity. In the same way that the current Learning and Skills Bill is taking the first steps towards an FE sector designed for lifelong learning and recurrent learning, the time may have come to look at Dearing’s view of HE so that it too can embrace a larger and mixed full-time/part-time student base. Such a speedy re-examination is forced by the pace of change, the transformative impact of ICT and the challenges to the traditional dominance of HE in knowledge creation and transmission.

The Government speech made headlines with big ideas of e-universities and vocational degrees but the lengthy passage on universities and social inclusion rewards careful reading. In it Mr Blunkett indicates his belief that HE can act as a force for social justice and equity and sets out the Government’s view that, as well as new financial arrangements, what is needed is a cultural change within the sector as a whole to make it more inclusive and accessible. What is perhaps most interesting of all is the tensions in the relationships between the different parts of the overall speech.

There can be no doubt that the knowledge society will require is an increasingly complex mixture of products from the HE sector. The boundaries between the kinds of institutions that create knowledge are blurring and globalisation will involve larger and more complex organisations operating transnationally. Those interested in adult engagement in HE, and particularly in widening participation, will recognise the tensions in Mr Blunkett’s speech between widening access and creating social justice and the need to compete globally. This is a real tension not a political convenience - global competition is fierce and concentrating on success while also working on an inclusive agenda is asking a lot of the system particularly given our history of educational elitism although some institutions have given us excellent models of how this might be done.

The sections in the speech about HE’s engagement with the world of work and globalisation are written on an epic scale and envisage wide-ranging reforms to fit students for the world of work in the knowledge economy. The section on securing social exclusion is cast in a lower key. It is to be secured by a student support system that has by no means demonstrated that it attracts those of whom it has targeted. It is to rely on projects between institutions aimed at increasing participation by young people who would not normally participate and it relies heavily on institutions changing their culture.

Three main results emerge that are critical: the first is how marginal the needs of adults are in this speech. There are mentions of flexibility, part-time provision and the population changes that will produce older students, but you would imagine that HE has more adults studying than young people. The system envisaged is about labour-market provision entrants not returners.

The second issue is about the distance that adults suffering disadvantage will have to travel to engage in a globally competitive HE and the lack of attention given to the kinds of structures that will need to support both access and continued engagement.

This is linked to the third issue which is about IT and training based at work. There is little recognition of the difficulties of supporting mature learners on-line, even though this is known to be a serious issue, other than a paragraph about how neighbourhood centres might address any deficit. There is also no recognition that learning at work is usually for those who have been successful. The examples illustrate this.

Last of all but most important, as we anticipate a new FE system all the links between FE and HE are about young people’s progression. How will these systems be ‘joined-up’ to help adults?

Sue Cara and Alastair Thomson
NIACE

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