Having worked in both higher education establishments and industry, I believe I can see something of how we got started on this road to 50%. The consensus used to be that some went to university, some went to other tertiary institutions, some went into apprenticeships, and the rest got jobs (or not). With the growth in student grants (without which I would have been very unlikely to have been to university), and greater job mobility, industry quite reasonably thought it unfair that they should fund apprenticeships and so they set about hiring on the open market. And little companies like the one that I was a Director of objected to a levy to fund industry led training when that training wasn't producing the types of skilled people that we needed. That all I think encouraged the state to get more and more involved in funding the closing of the skills gap by way of new state funded education rather than working out how to support embedded skills training in industry and the expanding commercial sector.
OK Tyler, I think we can all see that 1:1 officers:other ranks is crazy. But if not 50%, what figure do you suggest, and why? I think we managed on about 6% in the 1960s, when I was enjoying my own grant-supported university education (mostly beer, snooker and pistol shooting, as I dimly recall).
50% is just a desperate attempt to push us up the OECD productivity league tables, which includes how many people have degree-level qualifications (which also explains why so many joke courses are still classed as degrees).
The fact that there is no alternative to post-18 training apart from university just makes things worse.
"But if not 50%, what figure do you suggest, and why?
red admiral"
This is the problem with state education at its core; it thinks it can "deem" things to be so and they will be so; they could spend ever increasing amounts of money on education to get it entry to 50% (and they do) but the laws of diminishing returns make sure that the drop out rate plus the gross additional lifetime earnings erode this figure to its more fluid, natural pattern.
I went to University in 2000; I did chemistry and am only now just getting established (albeit due to my inability to be as transient as I would like to make the sort of money the report mentioned). My younger brother went a few years ago, left after 3 months and is now working in recruitment earning a good few grand more than me and getting massive OTE's, trips to the smoke, car allowance (if he could drive...)...
My sister started out on medicine, failed her first year miserably, started her first year AGAIN, failed AGAIN and then restarted on an English course (incidentally she is also the only one of us who went to a Public Grammar School, on scholarship).
It is not naive to believe that internal market forces for education (as a whole) would sort out the problem of getting brighter pupils into better education (from any background; there is a reason why children who's parents are doctors tend to float towards medicine themselves, other than issues with class). It is naive to think we can force these changes by making big swathing demands and targets - the market corrects for this.
Surely, we should say to hell with a target %, restore discipline and excellence back into our education system and de-politicize it.
The resulting % participation will then be an output of the system and not an ideological input.
As to life time benefit, how can a correct figure ever be derived? I understand that we currently compare two groups each with similar numbers of "A" levels, one group which went to university and one which didn't.
If this is how the studies are designed a key variable will be ignored. Recalling my 6th form pals, those that passed “A” levels but went no further included a significant proportion of feckless, lazy, and insecure individuals. Those that grasped the opportunity of a degree were more ambitious, motivated and outgoing. I don’t see how any study could take these factors into account, factors which might go a long way in explaining greater life time earnings with or without a degree.
In any case, the "degree premium" has always had as much to do with the fact that people who take degrees tend to be brighter (and perhaps harder working) than those who don't, so how much is down to the actual acquisition of the degree is debatable.
Cynical old me just assumed that encouraging masses of totally unsuitable kids to go to Mickey-Mouse universities was just another slant to the process of reducing the unemployment figures by any means possible.
Professor Eastwood: There is a target to continue to grow the sector.
From Private Eye, Christmas 2007
“The verb grow, when used transitively for anything other than crops, is generally a strong indicator of bullsh1t.”
Further comment would be superfluous!
"But at least they've established the economic benefits of getting a degree.
Haven't they?"
My case:
I left school at 15 with no qualifications whatsoever. Life was just fine for the next 20-some years.
Went to university at 36. Four years later, after also enrolling in a second university, I was educated to postgrad level. Good universities too - Wales Bangor and Birmingham Edgbaston.
Since then - employment has been virtually zero. Couldn't even get a job as an administrative asistant at a jobcentre - four times.
Go figure.
I was at OSI (as was) when the 50% target was being fully formulated, I thought it was b******s then and think it is b******s now. Wat you are entirely correct that the 50% target came first and the evidence later (as a little aside, South Korea has decided that it has too many HE students - 85% participation rate, as there just isn't enough graduate grade jobs around, and is now in the process of reducing student numbers) The graduate earnings premium doesn't really stand up, when everyone has got a degree, then the premium disappears. I could drone on and on about this as I lived and breathed it for a few years. But I have some real (i.e. non civil service) work to go and do
Its interesting that the chart shows engineering and science graduates having a better lifetime earnings outcome than all others except those in medicine, at a time when we keep on hearing that we do not have enough scientific and technical people. Could it be to do with those who become high earners having gone into jobs that are not science or engineering based? (They go there for the career prospects and the money.) Reality based careers have become debased, along with the dumbing down of much else.
Commenting by HaloScan
