We need a more mature higher education system
This week, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) published data for higher education applications received by 15 January for the 2013 academic cycle. As well as showing a 3.5% rise in applications to UK universities on the same point last year, the data revealed an increase in applications from 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged areas (up 9% since 2004).
This was encouraging news, though applications are still down compared to January 2011 (-4.2%) and January 2010 (-2%) – and we do well to remember that we have a very long way to go before applications from the poorest neighbourhoods (and, particularly, from young, working-class men) reach anything like the levels among those from the richest.
However, while the indications are that applications from 18 and 19 year olds are bearing up well, it was not all good news, and one trend in particular should give ministers (and institutions) pause. The biggest decreases were, once again, to be found among older students. There were 842 fewer (-3.9%) applications from 30 to 39 year olds this year than last and 718 fewer applications from people aged 40 and over – a drop of 7%. This follows the publication of UCAS’s end-of-cycle data for 2012 which showed that while accepted applications from people aged 20 and under fell by a modest 3.1% between 2010 and 2012, there were much bigger falls of 12.1%, 12.3% and 10.2% for people aged, respectively, 21 to 24, 25 to 39, and 40 and above.
Still more worrying, while national statistics for part-time students (most of whom are mature) are not yet available, reports from individual institutions suggest we will find a big decline for 2012 – despite the removal of some of the barriers faced by part-time students, notably through the provision of tuition fee loans for part-timers for the first time. Set this against a context of shrinking opportunity for adults to access higher education, and, in particular, the decimation of university lifelong learning overseen by the last government, and we are looking at a higher education system which is rapidly becoming less age-diverse and much less adult-friendly.
Yet, despite what are now fairly well-established, and, for NIACE, deeply worrying, trends, the profile of the issue is low, and the out-dated notion that university is all about 18 and 19 year olds undertaking full-time, three-year residential degrees remains prevalent. Given that the new fees and loans system, with its 30-year repayment window, has plainly been designed with 18 year olds in mind (though it has much to offer older students), and all the government’s communications activity seems targeted at young people, it is no wonder many adults simply don’t think of HE as being for them.
NIACE thinks this perception needs to change. During February we will be publishing a series of guest blogs on the decline in mature and part-time numbers and what needs to be done to reverse it, as well as producing a special issue of our journal Adults Learning, focusing particularly on part-time higher education and giving a range of key stakeholders an opportunity to debate the issues and challenges facing part-time higher study. We will also be asking government and institutions to think about the barriers to mature access to HE, how they communicate the costs and benefits of HE to older people and how they can better encourage and incentivise adults to participate in higher education.
An age-diverse higher education system, accessible, attractive and affordable to mature and part-time students, is essential to the country’s economic success, to the health of our democracy and to improving social mobility. As Raymond Williams wrote, ‘Old images never die; they have to be publicly broken’. It may be that only when we are finally able to put aside the outmoded notion of universities as finishing schools for young people treading the (usually) well-worn path from school will we be able to deliver an HE system that is for everyone, young and mature alike.
