Stop us if you’ve heard this one. The entire funding policy of the English HE sector since the late 90s has been driven by a particular treatment of student loans within the national accounts. It flatters the deficit, moving the possible income from interest payments to the start of the cycle, and the costs of the write-off (the actual policy choice to subsidise a certain proportion of the loan book) into the 2040s. It’s why the UK has the highest student fees in the world and a byzantine income-contingent government backed loan system to help pay for it. Pullinger’s ONS is currently engaged with global statistical agency counterparts to develop a more accurate portrayal of this system of funding in public accounts.
Reporting some time over the next year, its conclusions could turn the throw-away line in the post-18 review remit, that any suggested new scheme must contribute to the lowering of debt and deficit, into a call for a rather more radical revolution for HE funding than Theresa May might have had in mind. Forget everything you know about the HE fees question to date, ONS could reset the dial. If it turns out that it’s “real” money that we’re spending on subsidising loans, and the fiscal illusion is really coming to an end, then we’ll need a completely new system to fund universities or face cuts and downsizing of the sector on a scale never before imagined.
And it won’t just be the English system – the future of income contingent loans, wherever they might be found in national HE systems, will be cast into doubt.
The treatment of international students in immigration statistics is another heavily politicised issue that falls to the ONS to pass judgement upon. There’s not currently any sign of a review being conducted on that, but the trouble with pointing to a statistical higher power is that they do, occasionally, make pronouncements that don’t go your way. John Pullinger, politically and in the sector, is an almost unknown figure. But nearly every major policy decision awaits the call he will oversee and ultimately be held accountable for.