Mature students don’t fit the government’s narrow, utilitarian vision
In the second of a series of guest blogs on the decline in part-time and mature student numbers in higher education, Aaron Porter, who was President of the National Union of Students during the tuition fee debate of 2010-11, analyses the causes of the decline.
If you have followed the debate surrounding the reforms to higher education, and certainly if you have tracked the press coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was just about full-time, undergraduate students. Of course, those of us working and interested in higher education know that the changes have been more significant than that and the impacts more far-reaching. The rise in tuition fees for full-time undergraduate students has grabbed all the headlines, but I remain convinced that it was the initial withdrawal of teaching funding for the bulk of subject areas across the arts, humanities and social sciences which is the root cause for concern. And it is this unprecedented cut to the teaching grant which needs to be the start point for any analysis of what is happening to part-time and mature students specifically.
As January’s UCAS application statistics indicate, we may have seen the beginning of a recovery in the applications from 18-year-old school leavers. The government has been quick to use this small uplift in school leavers applying to higher education as an excuse to justify their reforms, although they conveniently forget to mention that total numbers are still considerably lower than in 2011 and 2012. More shameful was the Conservative Party press release which greeted the UCAS figures, which had the audacity to accuse the Labour Party of ‘scare-mongering’ students away from higher education. Perhaps if the Tories spent a bit more time looking at the figures and less time trying to blame others, they may realise that the figures for part-time and mature students are incredibly worrying, and not worthy of playground blame-game politics.
From a narrow, utilitarian perspective you could reasonably have expected that the increase in tuition fees should have seen an uplift in applications from mature and part-time students. Quite understandably, the extension of tuition fee loans for a significant number of part-time students arising from 2010-11 reforms was seen as a major step forward. Given that repayments are not made until earnings reach £21,000 a year, and that after 30 years the ‘debt’ is written off, the data would suggest that the majority of part-time and mature students are unlikely to pay off their tuition fee in full. But this requires a focused and calculating assessment of whether going into higher education pays or not. Now whilst members of the coalition government may well see higher education as a simple equation of outlay versus potential earnings, many students do not. And for many good reasons – age, family circumstances, prior educational experience, to name a few – part-time students and mature students are some of the least likely to view education through this narrow calculation.
To reverse this trend in downward applications from part-time and mature students, no amount of tinkering with policy will really suffice. Ultimately, this is a question of political philosophy. If higher education policy continues to be built on a market philosophy then certain groups of students will always find themselves at odds with a utilitarian judgement about whether higher education is worth it or not. Instead, we need to begin by making the case for higher education as an inherently good thing – of benefit to the individual, society and the economy broadly – and that teaching is worthy of the restoration of large parts of the teaching funding it has lost. Perhaps then we might see a reversal of the market forces which do not serve all students, and certainly run contrary to the motivations of many part-time and mature students.
Aaron Porter is a higher education consultant working across higher education. He was President of the National Union of Students during the high-profile tuition fee debate of 2010-11.
Aaron’s article will feature in a special issue of Adults Learning, focusing on part-time and mature student recruitment, published later this month.
