The great student loans swindle
The university sector in the UK is in financial trouble. The annual fee of £9,250 paid by British students has been frozen for a decade. Given inflation, this is a drop of around 30 per cent in real terms. The number of overseas students is starting to fall. The Russell Group has estimated that English universities […]
Starmer is right, we need to give up on the cult of a university education for all
Labour leader Keir Starmer came under fire for his recent reverse ferret on abolishing university tuition fees. Some see it as an inability to stick to a pledge, while others view it as a further betrayal of the policies of Jeremy Corbyn. From an egalitarian perspective, Starmer’s decision is absolutely correct. Abolishing fees would cost over […]
Poor educational outcomes for today’s children could create a future wave of crime
During the pandemic, those most at risk of illness were the elderly and the vulnerable. But it was Britain’s youngest who felt the development and social impacts the most. The full scale of the problem is still slowly unravelling. As children started at school, we heard horror stories of kids arriving not yet toilet-trained or […]
Universities follow perverse incentive models out of touch with the labour market
The days tick by to the summer ritual of the announcement of A-level results. Yet panic is already spreading among those wanting to start university in the autumn. The number of applicants has risen by 5 per cent this year, according to the university admissions service (UCAS). In addition, many universities are cutting back the […]
Schools across the country have forgotten how to teach kids to aspire to be better
Omicron, the new Covid variant, has had an unexpected victim: the long-awaited White Paper on levelling up. Boris Johnson’s plans to put his 2019 election pledge into reality will not be published until New Year, to give the government more time to focus on containing Covid. The document, set to span industry, skills and transport, […]
Universities have sown their own demise with blended learning and short courses
The start of autumn has seen the start of the university term for students since time immemorial. This time round of course, the ritual of hauling luggage round the country to the halls of residence has not quite been on the same scale as usual. Some universities, including members of the prestigious Russell Group, are […]
Universities are failing us: they’re expensive, ill-equipped and entrench ‘left-behind’ towns in the UK
A record number of students have applied for university, with just over 300,000 submitting applications, according to UCAS. This represents 44 per cent of the entire year group, up 10 per cent on what was then a new record total in 2020. One of the main drivers has been the uncertainty the pandemic has created […]
Student loans perpetuate a broken financial system, it’s time for them to go
Whitehall is preparing for a major tussle over student loans, with the Treasury increasingly concerned about the growing burden and its impact on the nation’s finances. The principle of a student loan seems simple: take one out to cover the cost of your time at university and pay it back when you start to earn […]
Crisis could be a chance to change education for the better
In the mid-19th century, Japan was an impoverished feudal backwater. A fleet of American warships totally humiliated their navy, and compelled Japan to sign a highly disadvantageous treaty. Within a matter of just a few years, the Japanese completely transformed their system of government and industrialised very rapidly. This is just one of many historical examples […]
The ‘graduate premium’ is little more than a myth — invest in further education instead
Universities and their students are seldom out of the news. Ever since Tony Blair pledged to send 50 per cent of 18–21 year olds to university, they have been a persistent topic in political economy. University towns now notoriously favour Labour at the ballot box, often an island of red in a surrounding sea of […]
The left’s support for university students is fuelled by political self-interest
Why do left-wing politicians want to shower money on privileged members of society? In general, university students have a higher intellectual ability than non-students, and often come from more desirable socio-economic backgrounds. But leftists can’t do enough for them. For instance, Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 promised to abolish tuition fees from 2018 onwards. He went […]
Why we should allow second-rate universities to go bankrupt
The political spotlight remains focused on Brexit, but an important dogfight is developing in the area of higher education. The specific issue is whether universities in the UK should be allowed to go bankrupt. It is not merely a theoretical question. In the past year, a number of universities have announced deficits running well into […]
The misguided sugar tax is an ineffectual way to price the externalities of obesity
One of George Osborne’s last acts as chancellor in 2016 was to announce the so-called sugar tax. This came into force last week, in line with the original timetable. Drinks manufacturers are taxed according to the volume of sugar-sweetened beverages they produce or import. The tax increases with the sugar content. The aim is to […]
The university pensions strike is a selfish bid to hold future generations to ransom
University lecturers began a strike over their pensions last week. The dispute may even run on and jeopardise the summer exams. The main issue is that the universities’ pension scheme seems to be in substantial deficit. To solve the problem, a move from defined benefits to defined contributions is proposed. With the former, the pension […]
Old-fashioned educational values offer the UK’s most deprived children a future
Economics is the gloomy science, but we can end the year on a cheery note. Newham Collegiate Sixth Form College is in one of the most deprived and ethnically mixed areas of the country, with high numbers of immigrants. Yet the example set by Mouhssin Ismail, the headteacher, is inspirational. At the start of every […]
