The Conservative party has conjured up 100,000 more apprenticeships as part of its election campaign. They will do this at the expense of many degrees and more than 13% of university students. Perhaps even triggering university closures. But in doing so there is a clear admission of their past failings and the end of a policy of expansion of universities. Making this announcement has dragged post 18 Higher and Further Education front and centre in the election battle. It is yet another example of crude social engineering that aims to divide young people into the well-off elite and the rest. It may end up being an early casualty in the election.
The announcement in many media outlets that the ‘Tories would swap ‘rip-off’ degrees for apprenticeships’ emerged as yet another piece of ‘wild west electioneering’. It has met with widespread resistance because the overt plan is to divert less advantaged students away from university with little offered for those who do not attend university anyway. The results of a survey by the Sutton Trust out today asked ‘do the British public think opportunities in society are open to all?’ Whatever the promises on social mobility and levelling up were, it is clear that the vast majority say no.
“83% of those surveyed, cutting across groups from different social and economic backgrounds, think there is a big class gap in Britain today, with 63% saying it is bigger or the same as 50 years ago”.
Any government that emerges from the election has a lot of convincing to do. Sunak’s post on X will not help much. Would he have become an investment banker without a degree from Oxford after Winchester? People will not fall for this fallacy.
Failure and ‘ripped off’?
The term ‘rip off’ might seem to some to be an invention of the snarling media. However, it is what the government itself calls these degrees that it has steadfastly failed to identify. The assumption is that Arts, Humanities. Politics and some Social Sciences will be the first casualties.
Last July the Department for Education with ‘Crackdown on rip-off university degrees’ announced,
“Under the plans, the Office for Students (OfS) will be asked to limit the number of students universities can recruit onto courses that are failing to deliver good outcomes for students.”
But this is not the only failure. They have been slow to act upon their own repeated failure to deliver more apprenticeships.
Figure 1 (using the latest source data from ‘Apprenticeship statistics for England’, House of Commons Library January 2024) shows the number of apprentices starting has steadily declined. This means the current plan is simply trying to repair the damage already done.
The complete data provides comparisons across constituencies and the simple fact is that apprenticeships have fallen dramatically under the Conservative government. Indeed, as much as 26% in the Prime minister’s own constituency as reported by FE News.
Which employers are involved?
Larger employers would be expected to dominate, but the data may surprise many. Released last June were the government’s own figures, ‘Apprenticeships Top Employers 2023’. They revealed that the Army leads the charge with the Royal Navy and Royal Airforce not far behind. That young recruits to the forces are afforded technical skills education has been taken as a given for many years and is clearly a good thing. However, stripping out these existing commitments and the further expansion of apprenticeships begins to look more difficult. We wait for the results from 2024 out very soon.
Sceptical Responses.
The response has not been favourable from most observers. Universities UK (UUK) responded by pointing out more evidence for a well-established fact that ‘New analysis shows students who choose to learn more, earn more – with extra boost for students from poorer backgrounds’. In the past, they have been keen supporters of degree apprenticeships but the plan to contract university provision as a trade-off will not have inspired confidence. CEO, Vivienne Stern on X (@viviennestern) posted a long thread that was very critical and concludes,
“I just don’t get the determination to put people off going to university. This is especially frustrating when it is driven by people who have degrees (Gillian Keegan has two)”.
She’s not the only one. The social engineering drive to divide the nation is fully visible now.
The University and College Union (UCU) reiterated that ‘The Tories-have-repeatedly-failed-on-apprenticeships’ to drive home the point with some force.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IfS) were more analytical with, ‘High-skilled apprenticeships have high returns – but funding via a ‘crackdown’ on higher education courses is challenging’. This was a measured understatement.
Alternative approaches.
Most people would welcome the idea of more apprenticeships if possible. Certainly, this is the view of TEFS. But doing so at the expense of university degree opportunities that targets the least well off is not a sound approach. The government has already overseen a stark reduction in apprenticeships with fewer opportunities for the large numbers not destined for university. This was deliberate and clear in policy decisions over the years.
Alongside the reduction in apprenticeships over recent years has been a severe cut in funding for colleges seen as a decline in funding for students (House of Commons library ‘Further Education Funding in the UK’ June 2023). Adult post-19 Further Education spending is “down by two-thirds since 2003-04”. In 2022 The IfS reported that (‘Annual report on education spending in England: 2022’),
“Further education colleges and sixth forms are in a particularly difficult position at present. They saw larger cuts than other areas of education after 2010”.
This has been a key fault in government policy that deters employers. Employers would expect to provide work experience for apprentices, but this must be matched by well-funded college and university training. Neither seem to be delivered at the level needed and colleges and universities are under increasing strain. It’s a recipe for failure.
In its mission statement 5 ‘Breaking down the barriers to opportunity’ the Labour Party will replace the stalled ‘Apprenticeships Levy’ on larger employers with a new and more flexible ‘Growth and Skills Levy’
“Labour will get our economy growing again by gearing apprenticeships to young people and delivering a new Growth and Skills Levy to provide the skills businesses need. We’ll create a new generation of Technical Excellence Colleges, working with employers and our world class universities, to get people into good jobs in their area.”
Bridget Phillipson, Labour Shadow Education secretary in FE News.
What and where are ‘low quality’ degrees?
WONKHE has crunched that data on so called ‘poor quality’ degrees and concludes that this must be done by assessing degrees down to degree level. It’s currently not possible. The problem is that the Conservatives plan to use the Office for Students (OfS) so called B3 outcomes criteria of,
a. Student continuation and completion.
b. Degree outcomes, including differential outcomes for students with different characteristics.
c. Graduate employment and, in particular, progression to professional jobs and postgraduate study.
These cover the performance of whole institutions and would fall at the first hurdle in identifying ‘poor quality’ degrees. The only way for a government to identify such degrees would be to drill down to look at data for individual degree pathways. They will of course not do this easily and it will cost a lot. Instead, they will rely on institutions doing the heavy lifting themselves when put under pressure. With degree pathways being closed off and redundancies mounting, this is already happening at pace and damaging the UK brand (Financial Times 2nd May 2024 ‘UK universities warn of more course closures and job cuts without state help’).
A failure of regulation.
Assuming we accept that there are ‘low quality’ degrees being offered across our universities, then we must also conclude that years of regulation have failed spectacularly. Since the Higher Education and Research Act, 2017, this has involved the Office for Students (OfS). Indeed, it has come under fierce criticism and its future may be in some doubt if much needed reform is done (TEFS 18th May 2023 ‘Office for Students under scrutiny: students must be silent: UPDATE: the inquiry trundles on’).
Yet the OfS had been forced by the government to plough its own furrow. It was astounding that they decided to interfere with the working of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), who were the Designated Quality Body (DQB). Essentially the QAA then decided in March 2023 they were being undermined and could no longer assure quality in universities in England to accepted international standards. Meanwhile the OfS is beginning to do their own inspections of universities using a “a large pool of academic assessors “.
Why do students end up in non-graduate jobs?
This does not seem to have been addressed in a realistic manner. The reality is that most students with degrees end up in better paid jobs in time. Universities UK have shown this clearly with analysis (pdf) of progression tracking earnings from the age of 17 to 31 using the government’s own data. It is this fact that attracts capable eighteen year olds from the social shadows and into the light of a university.
However, there are of course multiple reasons why some students lose out. These are topped by simply gaining a lower-class degree. This could be down to loss of interest and effort or lack of ability. More often it’s lack of time to study due to commuting and part-time jobs. The degree subject itself may be a factor but then you must add the simple fact that many graduate employers are using their own assessments. These often measure ability and aptitude to sift out the best candidates. Add to this the lower paid jobs awaiting many graduates simply because that’s the way it is. Nurses, biomedical scientists and social work might fall into this category.
How is it to be funded?
The announcement was high on rhetoric but sparse on detail. The idea seems to be to reduce the number of undergraduates and divert them into apprenticeships by using the money saved. But it’s hard to see how the figures add up. Certainly, with fewer students taking out loans for university, there would be a saving on the initial outlay. In time this would save on any loss through the Resource Accounting and Budgeting (RAB) charge (currently around 25%) on loans that are not paid back. This might assume that the graduates remaining will earn more and can pay off the loans to lower the RAB charge in time. But many students will plough on and will simply apply for other courses. Universities will have to increase capacity in these as the avoidable disruption settles down.
The IfS estimate that the yearly cost of an apprenticeship is £9,000 and would cost around £900 million each year. But the proposal to finance additional public expenditure through savings from scrapping existing degree courses for 13% of students may be achievable but it is,
“Unclear whether the savings would be large enough to fund this expansion of apprenticeships”.
The ’Social engineering’ project.
In the end this is the conservative social engineering project stepping up a gear.
The problem is that currently over 50% do not go to university and the new apprenticeships do not seem to target them. Instead, it is a continuation of a policy to deter the least advantaged students from university on the grounds of cost. Only the most advantaged will consider university while for the least advantaged the level of maintenance support is far too low. If a less well-off student risks it, then they might expect a lower-class degree as a result of time lost to commuting and part-time jobs. Add to that the imposition of weekends doing ‘national service’ and this effect gets worse.
The conservatives offer two alternatives to those students. Military service and apprenticeship on low pay.
The author, Mike Larkin, retired from Queen’s University Belfast after 37 years teaching Microbiology, Biochemistry and Genetics.