Higher education and the law of unintended consequences
On a recent visit to a further education college, Baroness Sharp, Chair of the Colleges in their Communities inquiry, heard a group of ESOL students talk about their motivations for study. She then visited an Access to Higher Education class attended by students who all had places at university. When she asked how many of them started in the ESOL class, half a dozen hands went up.
The story illustrates how the law of unintended consequences operates in adult education policy. Reductions in provision in one bit of the system can have disastrous consequences for other courses, stifling progression and frustrating the ambitions of students who have a real contribution to make in their communities. This is nowhere more evident than in Government’s higher education White Paper, consultation on which ended this week.
The White Paper emphasises parity for part-time students, commits to making educational opportunity available to people throughout their lives, and sets out policy to improve the student experience, widen participation and create a more ‘diverse and responsive’ higher education sector. However, far too often, these ambitions fall foul of the unintended consequences of decisions made elsewhere.
The Government’s plans to widen participation and improve social mobility are a case in point. The White Paper gives prominence to social mobility and fairer access and includes welcome initiatives to provide more generous support for low-income students and to improve careers guidance for adults. However, proposals set out elsewhere in the paper mean that, overall, the reforms are likely to have a negative impact on participation from disadvantaged and non-traditional groups.
The ‘core and margin’ system, to take one prominent example, will give elite institutions the chance to compete for students with AAB+ A-level grades, while other, middle ranking, institutions will be forced to cut costs in order to compete for the ‘flexible margin’ of places open to institutions charging £7,500 and less. The ‘unconstrained recruitment’ of AAB+ students is likely to privilege the already privileged whose higher A-level grades often reflect social circumstance rather than a superior capacity for higher study. This will make it more difficult for bright, mature students who have come to higher education by a non-traditional route (very few mature students have AAB+ qualifications) to gain a place at these universities. Loss of non-AAB+ places will mean more pressure to recruit AAB+ students to maintain student numbers and, hence, fewer students from less advantaged backgrounds attending these prestigious institutions.
NIACE is concerned that this will reinforce social immobility, with disadvantaged students disproportionately represented in less prestigious institutions charging less for their courses and thus with less resource to spend on teaching. The new, post-1992 institutions which have done the most in recent years to widen participation – and where so-called hard-to-reach groups remain concentrated – will be among those obliged to lower their fees to compete for their lost places
Reforms already announced in other parts of the system also stand to have a negative impact on efforts to widen participation in higher education. We are, in particular, concerned at the impact the removal of public funding and the introduction of government-backed loans for further education students over the age of 24 taking qualifications at Level 3 and above will have on demand for courses, particularly among those from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds. It will mean that students aged 24 and over will be asked to take on a loan to fund themselves through an Access to HE course. The prospect of having to pay back two sets of loans could act as a significant deterrent to risk-averse and hesitant non-traditional students weighing up the costs and benefits at the start of their higher education journeys, particularly in a climate where the returns are, at best, uncertain.
NIACE has long argued that higher education should be viewed not in isolation but as part of a wider framework of lifelong learning. These examples demonstrate just how important it is that, in formulating policy for the sector, the Government takes into account all aspects of the system that supports adults into learning, and recognises their interconnectedness. We hope that, in the light of its consultation, the Government will look again at policies, such as the introduction of Level 3 loans and the restriction of the entitlement to face-to-face careers guidance, which could impact negatively on wider participation, and consider ways in which the negative consequences of the ‘core and margin’ system might be addressed.
NIACE’s full response to Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System, the Government’s higher education White Paper, is available here.
