People want their children to go to university

If you chat to people who regularly conduct opinion polls, you will likely hear that higher education – as a topic – has a low salience.

What this means is that while people will certainly have an opinion on higher education issues it is unlikely to be something that they spend a great deal of time thinking about, or something that they will have a fully considered position on.

If you’ve read a non-specialist piece about higher education (illustrated by a familiar image of three late 00s University of Portsmouth graduates) in recent years you will be aware that universities are just awful. Expensive, largely useless, possibly fraudulent, certainly mismanaged, and even “woke” (whatever that now means in 2025).

You read more news (and specifically more news about higher education) than the average UK citizen, so it must have crossed your mind that if people are generally told that universities are the absolute worst that may be what they end up believing. Which is why it is lovely to see polling (such as today’s poll from YouGov/University Alliance) that suggests 84 per cent of UK parents or grandparents of children under 18 would be in favour of their child attending university.

[Full screen]

The wording of the question is important – making the university specific to “your” child or grandchild makes people more likely to find themselves in favour of higher education. Even so, responses vary by subgroup: but even so 70 per cent of those who voted Reform UK in the 2024 election were in favour. Younger parents/grandparents were more likely to be in favour than older ones, as were people with a higher level of education.

What’s also interesting is the tie in with graduate public service – respondents were clearly in favour of loan forgiveness or bursaries for graduates working as NHS staff (85 per cent), social workers (68 per cent), teachers (75 per cent), and police (65 per cent). As in previous polling, the public feel that undergraduate courses should be more focused on skills and experience (57 per cent) – with a similar age and political gradient in responses. What we don’t get, which would have been interesting, is opinions on support for courses leading to named professions (very few graduate teachers did an undergraduate degree in teaching).

Overall, there is support for the idea that maintenance funding is inadequate (46 per cent chose action on this issue as one of three priorities). The survey also offers split answers on changes to maintenance between an (undefined) high, middle, and low income student’s entitlements: there was evidence that there should be more rather than less means testing (41 per cent felt that funding for high income students should decrease, 63 per cent felt the funding for low income students should increase, 72 per cent felt that funding for middle income students should increase or stay as currently). Reform and Conservative voters were more likely to want decreases in support funding than other groups.

Despite an interest in vocational, job-focused, training there is still very little interest in the Lifelong Learning Entitlement – 59 per cent were unlikely to borrow funds to complete shorter and more flexible HE courses and those that were keen were more likely to be highly educated, young, and from an ABC1 social background.

As usual, the polling does not provide a consistent narrative. People want vocational and job-led higher education, but not for themselves. Better support for students, but focused on those from less well off backgrounds (though we really should have defined those terms). People want their children to attend university, but don’t want more university places. It’s a dilemma.