Willetts on the worth of university
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
Tags
Whether university is worth it depends on your definitions of the words “worth”, “it”, and – for that matter – “university”.
David Willetts is out to correct what he describes as the “edu-sceptics”, but as it turns out he’s far more interested in the limits of the available data than the kinds of people making the majority of these criticisms. His argument – broadly stated – is that the economic arguments against mass (and growing) higher education are overcooked and flawed by an inappropriate use of data.
He correctly points out, for example, that more young people are going to university than ever before – that the majority of them will rate their experience positively on a variety of official and unofficial measures, and that graduates from higher education will overwhelmingly see a significant salary premium over their lifetime, and be engaged in work they are more likely to describe as fulfilling or meaningful. He notes that discounting used to derive lifetime earnings is unduly “aggressive”, understating a more impressive lifelong benefit. Of particular delight to me is a well argued analysis of the B3 and salary data that is often used to identify “pockets of poor quality provision”. And – notably – it’s not that he’s calling for more or better data, more the intelligent and appropriately caveated use of the data we have.
You’ll also find the former minister rounding on the valuable public and economic contributions made by graduates. As you may expect, he is generally fairly well disposed to higher education – and he’s not just focused on inaccuracies.
Today’s narrative around universities is far more negative than the evidence justifies. But all that negativity is having an effect. Universities have had a 25 per cent cut in the real resource for educating each student, far worse than any other stage of education. Universities and their graduates are accused of intellectual snobbery and an assumption of superiority. Such attitudes are repellent.
Of course, calling out the “costless virtue signaling” among the kind of well-to-do graduate commentator who will argue that people do not need to go to university (other than their kids and people like them) addresses only one element of the modern case against higher education. Willetts has less to say about the cultural critiques exemplified by the noisy likes of Matt Goodwin – and the type of “freedom” is expressed by the wide variety of subjects of study and the opportunity that a school leaver has to choose only what really excites them.
There’s, to be fair, even less systemic high-quality evidence that universities are tools for limiting free speech and inculcating an orthodoxy of progressive thought than there are for low quality courses and poor graduate outcomes. No matter how you put the question, you are never going to much more than about 10 per cent of current students that feel unable to express themselves – and as Jim Dickinson eloquently argues this morning these are overwhelmingly students from non-traditional backgrounds struggling to engage with the middle class norms that (still) surround higher education.
Time will tell whether Kemi Badenoch or her successors on the right of the centre can square the circle of being a political party of individual aspiration while criticising one of our more successful (“world-class”, if you will) means of supporting people in realising these aspirations. Certainly any good salience poll will demonstrate just how unimportant such “culture wars” issues are to the actual working people whose “common sense” is ventriloquised for the supposed edification of a small number of extremely online activists.
In an era where we have long since passed the 50 per cent target of legend (the generally forgotten rules were people under 30 any study at level 4 and above) you can’t credibly talk about a popular sense that “university is not for the likes of us”. University is for the likes of all of us, and it is gradually getting better at this new civilisational role – that we can educate such a large proportion of our young people and still maintain a decent graduate premium feels like something that needs a little more celebration.
That’s not to say that the former minister has hit the nail on the proverbial. As you might expect given his antecedents you will look in vain for any serious thinking on what the state should be contributing to the system based on the benefits it gets – if you are going to take the luxury position that universities are underfunded and this has gotten worse over time, you can’t really suggest that the best solution is to take a further bite out of the individual benefits with higher fees.
Likewise, the role that universities can and should have a role in the lives and life chances of those who do not attend – the civic and placemaking end of activity that meshes most closely with the current trend for localism – is conspicuous by its absence in Willetts argument. A few lines on maritime qualifications at Southampton Solent doesn’t really cover it.