As ever when the A-level results appear in the middle of August, there was a mad scramble by would-be students to get onto the university course of their choice, or at least the best compromise between what they wanted to do and what their exam results would enable them to do. But this year it wasn’t just a matter of students fighting to find a university and department that would accept them. Universities, too, were desperate to attract enough students to get the maximum income from their paymasters. From newspaper and TV adverts to teletext announcements, universities vied to publicise themselves and those of their courses that still had vacancies.
The government boasts about the expansion of university education, but as usual what lies behind such assertions is more revealing than the claim itself. In part the “expansion” has been achieved by simply renaming polytechnics and some colleges as universities. The growth in numbers of students to over a million (double the figure 15 years ago) has not been matched by increases in university funding, meaning accommodation shortages, larger classes and overcrowded libraries. Most significant of all, student grants, which were never exactly generous, have been replaced by a mixed system of grants and loans. With the recession meaning that vacation jobs have all but dried up, and with restrictions on the claiming of benefit, students are now in a really precarious financial situation. Half finish their courses with a debt of £4,000, while one-in-five have considered giving up their courses because of financial problems. One-in-four take part-time jobs during terms, which is bound to affect their academic performance
About one student in eight now fails their course or drops out “voluntarily”. This is due in part to financial pressures, and in part to the increased staff-student ratio, which means less individual attention. Also many students end up in the rush for a degree place by taking courses in which they have little interest but which still have vacancies. In the recession a degree is no guarantee of a job ( not that it ever was) but it is still a qualification that many employers demand. One simple sign of the extent to which job requirements have invaded the university system is the number of courses with “Applied” in their titles: everything from Biology to French or Social Sciences can now be “applied” (to the real world of profit-making, of course).
The government decision to expand higher education was intended to provide a supply of trained graduates for a technological society demanding a high level of scientific and managerial skills. As we just said, this was to be done on the cheap, with the cost per student being drastically reduced. The teaching year is gradually being increased, and the pressure for two-year degrees is mounting. Universities were instructed to pile-’em-high, with financial penalties for not reaching their quota of students. The high drop-out rate is a complete waste as far as the government is concerned. The recession put paid to the need to carry on increasing the supply of graduates, but student demand for university places continued to rise. This seems now to have reached its peak at 400,000 applications for 270,000 places.
Since they ceased to be privileged enclaves where the sons of the ruling class could study Classics, universities have never been ivory towers. Rather they have come more and more to resemble factories with production lines and quotas. Money and the demands of capitalism are the vital criteria, while educational considerations take a back seat.
Paul Bennett
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