UKIP are on the rise. Nigel Farage has become a permanent feature of political shows as recent polls have shown his party finding unprecedented levels of support.
UKIP has been consistently ahead of the Lib Dems, building support amongst discontented Conservative voters over issues such as the EU and gay marriage. While the party does not have any MPs and will struggle with the first-past-the-post system (described rightly by Farage as “brutal to a party” like UKIP), it seems likely to feature far more prominently in 2015 than it did in 2010 and it is likely to do very well at next year’s European Parliament elections. So, what does UKIP, which describes itself as a “libertarian, non-racist party seeking Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union”, propose for higher education?
In the absence of a coherent or complete policy platform, deciphering what they believe about higher education is difficult. UKIP’s literature about higher education only include various statements from Farage, a selection of online videos and a few policy documents, both from the national party and local sections such as County Durham and Tunbridge Wells. UKIP were contacted during the researching of this article but did not respond.
Funding, shape and size
UKIP are in opposition to the current income-contingent loans system, describing the introduction of fees as “a retrogressive step”. Unlike the other main parties, UKIP does not propose tweaking the current model. It also does not favour a fully private market for higher education in which the state would no longer pay the costs upfront. Instead, UKIP has called for a “return to a student grant system”, with the state footing the full bill. It would be a generous system, for those allowed to attend, but hardly one that fits with UKIP’s declared libertarian approach. Instead, it is more familiar as the approach taken for most of the post-war period when the size and shape of the student population was markedly different.
Given that higher education is to be made free, and free provision inevitably means greater demand, how would UKIP control the cost of this provision? In essence, how many people do UKIP want to attend university? The party clearly want far less people to reach higher education than do currently. A 2007 policy statement said the party would “scrap the nonsensical target of making 50% of school leavers go to university”, a sentiment echoed in a November 2011 statement.
The party faithful’s support for such a view is indicated in a video of the divisive former Chief Inspector of Schools in England, Chris Woodhead, speaking at the party’s 2012 conference. “Why do we have to pretend that 50% of the population has to go to university to get a Mickey Mouse, dumbed-down…” he appealed to his audience, only for the rest of his sentence to be drowned out by ecstatic cheering. A percentage is not put on the number that UKIP wants to attend higher education, but it would presumably be far lower than it is at present.
Under UKIP then, the provision of higher education is not to be controlled by student demand but by the state, an interesting position for a supposedly libertarian political party. The rationale for this reduction in higher education provision is explained in a rather mystifying sentence by UKIP’s Tunbridge Wells section: “The simple fact is that many jobs do not require qualification to degree level, and that degrees from some educational establishments are recognised by the students themselves as worth considerably less academically than those from the older universities such as the Russell Group.”
The Robbins principle, which stated that “courses of higher education should be available to all those who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and who wish to do so”, is not favoured by UKIP. UKIP insists that university education “should only be available to those with a genuine thirst for knowledge and the acumen to handle it” and they have decided that the current system does not achieve that. It seems to be a view rooted in the belief that far too many people go to university in the UK, something that international comparisons refute. It is clear that given the opportunity, UKIP would oversee a large reduction in university participation.
Just as the demand for higher education would not to be left to students under UKIP, nor would the supply of higher education be left to universities. Again, there are signs of an approach that would have the state dictating which favoured institutions students should attend. One UKIP document favours “a nationwide review of higher education with the intention of distinguishing between those institutions that deserve the title of university and those that do not, and between those courses which merit degree status and those that do not.” Again, rather than a mixed market, the Government would have far greater control over who goes into further study, what subjects they could study and where they would be able to go.
Social mobility
In this area, UKIP’s policies are easily summarised: re-introduce grammar schools and abolish of the Office for Fair Access. The party has called for an end to “social engineering”, opposing contextual offers. Again, Chris Woodhead’s statement that “grammar schools are the most successful institution we have ever had in this country if we’re interested in social mobility” seems to be keenly endorsed by Farage. Reading their literature, one gets the sense that this is more to do with a convenient sense of nostalgia than an actual analysis of the impact of the grammar school policy on social mobility.
Immigration
Finally, UKIP unsurprisingly have very strong views on immigration that would affect higher education. The emphasis throughout UKIP literature is on reducing overall immigration and leaving the EU. Indeed, a November 2012 document recommended freezing “permanent immigration for 5 years”. Exclusion for overseas students from an immigration cap seems unlikely to form part of a UKIP policy platform. The UKIP County Durham paper even said “preference” should be given to UK school leavers. It would not bode well for the 430,000 overseas students in the UK in the academic year 2010-11, according to UKCISA, or the universities that depend on them.
Overall, the UKIP higher education policies have one common theme: nostalgia – or a faux nostalgia that conveniently fits their reactionary views. Their proposals would drastically limit students’ choices, both in terms of potential subjects and institutions. UKIP also seem casually derisory of the public benefits of both UK universities and the students that attend them.
Despite their professed libertarian nature, UKIP would seem to favour a far larger role for the state in the funding, provision and control of higher education. The preference for this expanded state control does not seem to derive from a confidence in state provision. Instead, it is about achieving one desired aim: taking higher education back several decades, reversing massification by drastically limiting the opportunities for so many and shrinking the UK’s world-class university sector to a handful of state-funded elite ivory towers.
The policy platform reminds me of quote from John Major, who was once caught on camera complaining that his party was “still harking back to a golden age that never was, and is now invented”. Throughout UKIP’s higher education policies, a common feature is a yearning for the past, be it grammar schools, fewer people at university, student grants or no more “social engineering”.
UKIP’s higher education policy may well evolve as the party comes under further scrutiny (it is also currently incomplete, e.g. there is no mention of research or innovation). But currently it is a backwards looking, surprisingly statist platform that would permanently wreck the UK’s higher education sector, do unfathomable damage to our economy and wind the clock back on decades of hard-won social progress.
“Reading their literature, one gets the sense that this is more to do with a convenient sense of nostalgia than an actual analysis of the impact of the grammar school policy on social mobility.” Social mobility data in the post war period to date has overwhelmingly demonstrated that Grammar Schools had the most positive impact on social mobility ever. Comprehensive education has led to an education divide: between children who attend them and those whose parents can afford private education. The dumbing down which took place in the State sector, so that teachers could manage classes with extremes of ability,… Read more »
Sounds very like Willets and Gove – going back to an imagined past they have reinvented. (See Ainley and Allen forthcoming ‘The Great Reversal’.)
A more complete account of UKIP’s thinking on post-school provision was given in their 2010 election manifesto.
Rationing the number of higher education places is indeed a bizzare policy suggestion. To deny access to a product to those willing to pay is usually regarded, for good reason, as economically inefficient – if people benefit more from the product than it costs to provide it, then surely it makes sense for the trade to take place. There is something both nanny-statish and ludicrous about the implication that government is a better judge of what education suits the needs of an individual than is the individual herself. In today’s world, the policy would be worse than just inefficient. Where… Read more »
@Boudicca
Chris Cook in the FT today explains why you are wrong: http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/01/28/grammar-school-myths/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Mountains of other evidence that show similar things available as well.
Thanks for comments, thought I should probably reply. Boudicca, I would point to the link Mark put up; Chris Cook has written quite a lot on this subject and has been pretty convincing to me. What reading / studies could you link to to support your view? Patrick, thanks for the suggestion. When is it due to be published? David, the 2010 manifesto does not expand on anything I have included here, unless I have missed something out. http://www.ukip.org/media/pdf/UKIPmanifesto1304a.pdf seems to only have 2 paragraphs on higher education on page 8, adding nothing to what I have included in the… Read more »
Checking the 2010 manifesto, I commend Tom’s thoroughness, with the only thing that adds to what Tom has said being that UKIP were offering ‘Student Vouchers’ for study at university or other forms of training. The latter point indicates an important point that UKIP, as I understand it, favours more routes open to people into careers than having to go to university – an idea with much to recommend it. I would imagine that if students want to fund themselves entirely then UKIP would have no problem with that, but even with the current regime in England that is not… Read more »
Thanks David. Favouring other routes into careers than university is quite a different thing to using the state to remove funding from a large number of institutions of higher education. Increase extra vocational training, fine. UKIP’s proposals are much more concrete on pushing back the size of UK higher education though. I am not sure how students funding themselves could co-exist alongside a system of grants. That would surely just mean that ability to pay would, past say 30% of the year group, would determine access to higher education, rather than ability. I too would criticise the current loans system… Read more »
Very interesting, a great (scary) read. Just wondering, though, what a response to this might be. Can we ignore them, because they’re obviously not going to get in, or do we worry that the Conservatives, in their efforts to get UKIP voters back, might lean more towards this point of view? They too want less students but the market/state thing seems an enormous difference.
Thanks Terry. On the market/state thing, UKIP seem to be a lot more like the Tory party’s 1980s stance, or even like that adopted by the tories against tuition fees pre 2005. Like you I doubt they’ll get enough MPs for it to make a difference to national policy post 2015. I think it’d be interesting to highlight the weird contradictions of their HE stance to UKIP. Policy clearly seems to be an issue for them at the moment: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/27/ukip-local-elections-emails However, HE is such a minor part of the policy platform that it really won’t be on the top of… Read more »
The 50% target for university is one that has caused a great deal of damage to young people irrespective of their next step, into further education or work. We now have 50% of university graduates doing a non-grad job. They were told from a young age that all the best and brightest must go to university and that their degree will get them a well-paid job afterwards. Unfortunately this is a lie and has left them with no additional prospects and a large debt. Those who did not have the right educational discipline to study a university degree have also… Read more »
The problem with the expansion of what you call “higher education” is that the new students are not receiving a university education at all, or even one that was on a par with that of the former polytechnics. It’s a con. I don’t care for UKIP, but agree with them on this.
Boudicca is factually incorrect to repeat Chris Woodhead on grammar schools having the most positive impact on [upward] social mobility ever’ which is also endorsed by UKIP because the limited upward social mobility that took place in an expanding economy after the war and which came to an end coincident with but not as a consequence of the official introduction of comprehensive schools from 1965 on, also took place in other developed economies, especially the USA where of course they did not have selective secondaries but all-through high schools since 1945. Further details in the book I mentioned in my… Read more »
I meant to add that I agreed with John Bald and this is another issue we deal with in our book but, essentially, widening participation to HE was presented by New Labour as professionalising the proletariat but actually disguised a proletarianisation of the professions leaving graduates overeducated and underemployed but, since the £9000 fee rise and given the teaching by numbers that is going on in schools, many students hardly see (higher) education as a way forward for them in their lives and merely go through the motions. This corosion of education afflicts all levels of learning.