The government’s higher education policy is in tatters

By Wes Streeting / @wesstreeting

This has been another bad week for the government on higher education. On Tuesday morning, the Guardian was reporting on government plans to allow students from rich families to pay even higher tuition fees up front to fund extra places at England’s most selective universities. By Tuesday afternoon, David Cameron was forced to appear on television to state that there was “no question” of wealthy students being allowed to buy university places.

As if that were not enough uncertainty for one week, confusion struck again with the universities’ minister floating the prospect of universities offering ‘cut price’ places in clearing. This bargain basement approach to selling university places has drawn widespread condemnation, with the vice chancellor of Worcester University describing the proposal as “harebrained and damaging”.

Before we all rush to condemn David Willetts as harebrained, rather than two brains, it’s worth reflecting on the position he finds himself in. The higher education budget is squeezed. Deep cuts to the teaching budget have placed a huge pressure on the new fees regime to ease the pain. What ministers didn’t appreciate was that cutting the teaching budget and allowing universities to charge up to £9,000 per year would see a rush to the top, rather than the emergence of a market. Willetts, and his Liberal Democrat boss Vince Cable, are now left scrambling around trying to find a way to balance the higher education budget. There is a very real possibility that student numbers will be cut, choking off opportunity at a time of high demand for places.

Throughout the past year, Labour has provided spirited and effective opposition to the government’s higher education policy. Ed Miliband’s staunch support for a graduate tax and the government’s deep cuts to the teaching budget have given us to credibly say that we would have done things differently; a re-elected Labour government with Lord Mandelson at BIS would never have contemplated such deep cuts to our universities.

But principled support for a graduate tax and opposition to cuts and will only take Labour so far. The publication of the government’s long awaited and much delayed white paper next month will establish a direction that will fundamentally alter the character, structure and funding of our higher education sector. Labour needs to start thinking now about what the HE landscape will look like after the next general election and what we plan to do about it.

Undoing the damage inflicted by the Tories and Liberal Democrats will be difficult and expensive. Will a new Labour government want to prioritise spending there, or elsewhere in the public sector? Our universities have not fared well against early years, schools and hospitals in the past, though it is worth remembering that every one of our major competitors are investing in their universities. Britain risks falling behind.

Our universities are engines of economic growth and should be engines for social mobility too. The issues facing the government of 2015 will not be radically different from past debates about higher education: the balance of funding between the state, individuals and businesses, how to ensure that opportunity is available to all those with the ability, how to maintain high quality research and international competitiveness, how to attract the best and brightest students from overseas, how to promote diversity and choice within the sector and how to maximise the benefits of higher education centres to regional growth and opportunity.

But the context will be radically different. Implementing a graduate tax may be harder after the next election than it is now. It’s time to look at our policy with an open mind and a fresh fresh pair of eyes. Ed Miliband has been right to take his time with the party’s policy review process. He should now look to commission a higher education policy review to give us something relevant and credible to say to the electorate at the next general election. The government’s higher education policy is in tatters. Labour needs to start thinking long term now, to avoid a similar shambles after the next election.