Access and participation is a political question

The question of how we drive access to and participation in higher education among non-traditional groups is intimately linked to the broader question of why we are doing it.

Accordingly, there are different approaches across the UK. Whereas in the English system the focus is on outreach (partnerships between universities and schools), in Scotland and Wales there is a lot more interest in measuring and shaping university recruitment from underrepresented groups.

From a purely instrumental perspective there is clearly value in doing both. It is entirely possible that universities and schools could be doing more to encourage able young people to consider universities, and that there are barriers and complexities within the admissions and recruitment process (not to mention the financial, social, and academic challenges of being a student once you get in) that could be usefully addressed.

The politics of why different approaches have emerged in different places are fascinating. At first though, you might think that a right-of-centre approach would be tied in with the economic benefits of maximising workforce skills and a left-of-centre ideology might be considering utility beyond income generation. Or – for that matter – that the right would foster individual aspirations with the left focused on societal needs.

But it actually seems to come down to how you think people become intelligent.

Hardwired

In his recent book Hayek’s Bastards, Quinn Slobodian characterises the world view of what we might loosely call the postmodern right as “hard borders, hard money, and hardwired human nature”. It’s clearly a politics of status anxiety – but more specifically it has a bearing on higher education policy.

By “hardwired human nature”, Slobodian is pointing towards something that – at one outer extreme – underpins the confusing resurgence of beliefs in eugenics. These are beliefs in the primacy of nature (your genetic heritage) over nurture (the conditions under which you matured) in developing personal attributes, some of which may be described as “intelligence”. Actual scientists tend to agree that both nature and nurture are likely to have a bearing on your life chances, and empirical evidence tends to back this up. But this comes with a huge asterisk, in that it is very difficult to unpick the two experimentally or with any degree of accuracy.

If your personal viewpoint tends towards nature, it makes sense to argue that too many people are going to university in that there will be some people that will “naturally” not be able to benefit from the experience. You could point to a declining graduate premium (the “extra money” a graduate will earn over the course of their life) or a lower proportion of graduates working in “graduate jobs” if you wanted evidence that we are currently educating people to degree level who are not able to benefit from it.

That’s not to say that such evidence is compelling – a sustained and welcome rise in the value of the national minimum wage and rapid changes in the kinds of jobs graduates (and everyone else, for that matter) do offer a counternarrative that sees such “declines” as evidence of a more equitable society and the value of jobs beyond salary or personal benefit.

Tell them that it’s human nature

As a sector that is explicitly setting out to improve the skills and life chances of young people, most people working in education tend to lean towards nurture as the major contributing factor to observed intelligence. From this position stems any number of initiatives that aim to make university study accessible, livable, and achievable to people who would not have otherwise gotten involved. If anyone can benefit from university education, surely the right thing to do is to help them.

From a nature perspective this all looks very odd. Sure, there may be some people who don’t usually go to university that might benefit from such schemes – but applications are merit based anyway. You get in by getting good grades, or interviewing well, or having a good portfolio. When we start flexing these requirements, don’t we devalue the entire experience? Isn’t higher education what we need to be offering the top end of an intelligence hierarchy?

This might also have to do with the quality of our tools. How confident can we be that the tests we have are indicative either of innate talent or the potential to benefit from education? Indeed, there is cause to wonder whether intelligence itself is measurable (IQ tests being a superb measure of a person’s ability to complete IQ tests, A levels being a great indicator of how middle class your background is).

If we think our standard entry requirements are perfect, the focus should be on supporting people (both in terms of capability and aspiration) to achieve these before they apply to university. Indeed, recent English system efforts in widening participation have focused on programmes that do things like this (schools partnerships for example) rather than contextual admissions (where students from particular backgrounds are given different entry requirements reflecting their life chances thus far).

Other peoples children

Politically, contextual admissions are controversial because of where they sit on the nature and nurture spectrum. They explicitly recognise the difficulties that some groups face in achieving the standard requirements, and modify these requirements (alongside offering additional support).

The pushback on this seems to me to be because of the perception that university education – or education at certain kinds of university – is a scarce resource (perhaps it once was, but the last few UCAS cycles suggest otherwise). If people who do not hold traditional entry qualifications are allowed to enter universities, it stands to reason that others that do hold the qualifications may not be able to.

So we are back to status anxiety, in that the perception is that some young people who would otherwise be almost guaranteed access to a prestigious university may no longer have such access, and the addition of students with other backgrounds will change the experience (in academic, or – frankly – social ways) for the traditional students that do get there.

I say “perception” because in the main the expansion of many high tariff universities has been such that the idea of anyone with the right grades being unable to get in is not the threat that it once was. Again, to be blunt, there always will be people disappointed and confused about not getting into Cambridge, Oxford, medical school, or the more selective conservatoires.

The recent Universities UK and Sutton Trust statement on contextual admissions is about clarifying and documenting practices and processes – both to help those who may benefit access what schemes exist, and to reassure those with concerns about the validity of such programmes. It won’t assuage all the concerns, but shedding light on the issue can only help. Of course, for some the mere existence of such schemes – or any suspicion that universities should be encouraged to run them – will be anathema.

Enough?

The elephant in this particular room is, of course, the capacity of the economy to absorb graduates. I’ve often heard it argued that there are simply too many graduates – both in terms of how this “crowds out” the benefits of being a graduate in the job market, and in terms of whether we really need all those graduates to do the jobs they are doing.

For me, this reaches across to the hard borders end of modern right-wing political thought. If you think lots of people in online newspaper comment sections are upset about too many graduates, just ask them about how many immigrants we have! We import a vast number of graduates from overseas (and, indeed, overseas students) in order for them to take on graduate roles in the UK economy. NHS staff are the obvious example, but there are demands everywhere – from heavy engineering to biosciences, from the creative industries to staff working in professional sports.

And a highly skilled workforce is a more productive, and thus more valuable, workforce. The economics are clear.

There are wider benefits too. Graduates tend to be healthier and happier, meaning less pressure on public services. They disproportionally work in public services that benefit us all. They are more likely to develop high value innovations and scientific breakthroughs. More likely to start successful companies that employ others. They are generally paid more – so they spend more. They raise the value of property and businesses in their locality. They commit less crime.

Employers, then, are generally pretty keen on access to graduates. Policy makers, and the rest of us, probably should be too. The choice appears to be more UK people going to university or more immigration – the meaningful policy conversation becomes around what people study when they get there.