Apparently, people like universities
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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I’m sure it has been around for a while, but for me the rise of “world leading” rhetoric about the UK is indelibly linked to the premiership of Boris Johnson.
It’s boosterism, pure and simple. Other, more secure, countries tend not to obsessively rank themselves against “competitors” at every available opportunity. We really are “world leading” at this kind of angry divorced dad energy.
Status anxiety fuels, alarmingly, public policy decisions. This morning’s Russell Group commissioned polling, carried out on the mission group’s behalf by Survation is ostensibly about public attitudes to student and graduate immigration, but for me some of the most telling polling (and the thing The Sun picked up on) is on comparing UK performance to the rest of the world.
It is, seemingly, a win for the higher education system. Public perceptions see it as “stronger” than comparable sectors in the world – doing slightly better than financial services, with manufacturing and fossil fuels bringing up the tail end.
It’s not a huge sample (1,064, weighted) but there are some fascinating splits available. For instance, Conservative voters (voting intention) are more boosterish about just about every sector (including higher education) – with technology being a notable exception. Given that we have a Conservative Prime Minister who is always keen to talk up UK technology, and does not appear to be that keen on universities, this suggests something of a mismatch between the party and supporters.
But the political impact is nothing compared to prior experience. You are more likely to see UK universities as world leading if you hold a qualification at level 4 or above. In comparison, those with level 3 qualifications are the most likely to disagree that higher education in the UK is world-leading (the group is also a notable negative outlier on many other sectors).
Drilling even further in, those who attended a Russell Group university (n is 63, so we’re not sensibly able to talk about significance here) are prouder of pretty much anything, but astonishingly more than three quarters feel universities are stronger compared to other parts of the world. The only other sector that comes close to that massive level of approval among Russell Group graduates is sports.
Among those who didn’t attend universities at all the support is less resounding, but universities are still rated as the sector most likely to be world leading.
This might feel like a bit of polling fluff – but when you read as much coverage of higher education in the media as I do, the finding that large swathes of UK residents have a very positive opinion of universities is a surprising and welcome one. It also supports the established finding that “culture wars” interventions (a major theme in coverage of universities in recent years) do not play well – if you think the sector is among the best in the world, why would want to see people attacking it?