Does any party have a higher education policy?

The political parties have decided higher education is a toxic subject. But they can’t just leave universities in the lurch, says Peter Scott The party conference season is almost over – and the new parliamentary year will begin soon. But it is fair bet that, just as higher education barely figured in party conference debates, so it will hardly feature in the coming Westminster season. Higher education was relegated to the fringe of the party conferences. The main conference sessions ignored it. All the Liberal Democrats could manage was to get round to reversing their pledge to abolish fees – high time after conniving at their tripling. The would-be next government, Labour, had almost nothing to say. In their hearts they would like to abolish fees; in their heads they know it is no longer practical politics. The best that can be hoped for from Labour is a reduction to a more moderate level – say, £6,000. But even that looks hopeful. It also carries risks because there is no guarantee the funding gap could be filled against a background of promises of fiscal “prudence” and competing priorities from the National Health Service (and HS2?). The Conservatives are unlikely to shed much light on their future policies for colleges and universities this week. After all, the government shied away from legislation last year. Following the lost vote on Syria they are hardly likely to risk a vote in the House of Commons. Politicians in all the main political parties seem to have come to the same conclusion. Higher education is a toxic issue on which there are potentially many – political – losses and almost no gains. Does it matter that they seem to have abandoned higher education? It has nearly always been a below-the-radar issue. The traditional view was that the further politicians kept away from higher education the better. We once gloried in arms-length funding and “buffers” between universities and the state. But those days are never going to return. Over the last two decades or more higher education has become increasingly politicised as (hopefully) media-catching initiative had been piled on initiative. We live in an age of hyperactive politics, with all its doleful effects on sound public administration. So the politics cannot be taken out of higher education. But for that reason politicians should not be allowed to get off the hook and pursue a line of malign neglect, which is what seems to be happening at the moment. If higher education is allowed to remain almost an invisible political issue, a serious democratic deficit will remain. No voter at the last election could possibly have known the government would triple fees and cut funding to universities – for the very simple reason that neither coalition partner said it would. One, of course, promised to do exactly the opposite. Another reason for not allowing politicians off the hook is that the present changes are half-baked. At the heart of them is a regulatory “black hole” because there is only a fragile legal basis for what the government is trying to achieve. Regulation is now becoming a hot topic, as next week’s report from the bipartisan Higher Education Commission will demonstrate. It may not suit ministers to have legislation – but it is still badly needed. Nearly all the powers of Hefce, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, relate to funding, of which it will be doing a lot less. Now it will just have to bluff its way through as lead regulator without proper legal powers. Quality too could be at risk as new – untried – private providers are exempted from the standards imposed on long established public universities. Also at the heart of the government’s reforms is a funding time bomb. The Treasury has to provide the up-front funding for loans to students to pay their much higher fees. Even when graduates start to pay back, many will be exempt – leading to permanently high levels of public subsidy. Even if the student loans can be sold, it can only be on such advantageous terms that it will really continue to be disguised public expenditure. Almost anyone could raise the funding to buy the loans book if the government continues to carry almost all the risk. But there is little scope for other cuts, because that would mean cutting support for high-cost subjects such as science and engineering or cutting what is always lauded as world-class research. Neither would be compatible with the platitudes of (all) politicians about the role of higher education in the global knowledge economy. Add in other stuff, such as the mixed messages on visas for international students (“The UK as pioneer of international education”, “Foreigners keep out”) and the frightening disintegration of a coherent UK system under the pressures of devolution, and you get what can only be described as a terrible mess. Only politicians can sort out this mess. And it is their responsibility to do so. They – coalition or Labour – have no right to expect colleges and universities to muddle through. • Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education Source: Education News