There are deep roots to the crisis in higher education. Labour’s policies on multiple exam retakes for troubled students and restrictions on the rights of international students will add to the sector’s woes, say Don Flynn and Trevor Fisher.
The government’s recent policy pronouncements on immigration policy are likely to have negative consequences that extend far beyond its hapless migrant victims.
Collateral damage is expected for the higher education sector as the impact on international students takes a greater toll.
Though it follows the drift of Tory/Reform UK hostility with respect to this group, deeper roots can be seen in Tony Blair’s policy of setting high academic standards across the educational system, forced by OFSTED and the target of 50 per cent graduate cohorts among 18-22 year olds, which was finally achieved by the Tories.
It needs to be acknowledged that the schooling of many young people was damaged by this drive for higher standards. It involved an insistence on high grades at GCSE level, especially in English, which has led to repeated resits for 16-plus students and a surge in alienation from education for many, particularly working-class males. The growth of this cohort of disaffected young people has aided far-right political movements.
As a possible counteraction, Starmer’s commitment to apprenticeships given at the recent Labour conference is welcome, but is currently nebulous. More apprenticeships will not greatly decrease the number of young people classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training).
NEETs, angry and frustrated young people, and the rising importance of international students to the higher education system, are a mess of issues cynically fused together by the agitation of Reform UK and the Tory populist, Robert Jenrick. The promise to millennials that their futures would be assured by opportunities to partake in university-level education was undercut by the austerity policies inflicted across the public sector during the Cameron/Osborne years.
As central government support for universities was eliminated and the opportunity to raise finance from student fees was capped, the institutions increasingly looked to international students as a solution to the crisis. Attracting them to courses in the UK meant immersing the whole sector in highly competitive, international market structures. The race to pack courses with a group of students who could be charged full cost plus a respectable profit margin became a central part of the higher education business plan.
The outcome of this is a set of policies which alienates a segment of indigenous working-class students who are sealed out of the education and training they need to feel they have a place in modern Britain and, at the same time, expands the places in higher education being made available to migrant students.
The far right has seized on this as an opportunity to rally forces to their cause. The demands increase for an end to the expansion of educational institutions that are not tailored to the needs of “our people”, which includes the growth of student accommodations that are becoming visible in the centres of many towns and cities.
This has led to the tightening of immigration policies with regard to international students under Labour, with restrictions on rights to family reunion (a policy which also extends to the families of people admitted on skilled worker visas and refugees).
Meanwhile, the insistence on high academic standards as a condition for entry into further education continues, meaning the universities have a limit on the recruitment of young Brits who would benefit from being properly tutored through their studies if only they were given the chance. And throughout all of this, financial support for the higher education sector remains as precarious as ever.
What does it look like for the international student who has come to the UK in the hope of getting a high-quality education and a good start in their chosen profession? The possibility of post-study work opportunities – a vital part of the educational package for many overseas students – is being curtailed by Labour, and the qualifying period for settled status has been doubled from five to ten years. The effect of these measures is to reduce the appeal of the UK to prospective international students and migrant workers and provide a reduction in net migration – a victory that Labour is earnestly reaching for.
Both the higher education sector and currently low-achieving NEETs will be left short-changed by policies which place further pressure on university financing without creating any extra space for young people who have no proof of making progress through traditional schooling. They will remain excluded because the mechanistic approach of OFSTED as the guardian of “standards” offers them nothing more than an eternal round of dispiriting hoop-jumping as a precondition for entry into university and training places.
Meanwhile, the loss of opportunities to bring international students into UK universities is a blow to the financing of higher education, which will not be offset any time in the near future by a return to central government support. Labour’s promise to expand education and training as it pursues its goal of making the country a haven of high-skilled, tech-savvy jobs is being placed on the line by policies which strive to exclude young people who have not yet found their footing in the educational system. At the same time, it also cold-shoulders the international students who not only want to come and study in the UK, but also pay over the odds to support the finances of the system.
Both the higher education sector and currently low-achieving NEETs will be left short-changed by policies which place further pressure on university financing without creating any extra space for young people who have no proof of making progress through traditional schooling. They will remain excluded because the mechanistic approach of OFSTED as the guardian of “standards” offers them nothing more than an eternal round of dispiriting hoop-jumping as a precondition for entry into university and training places.
Meanwhile, the loss of opportunities to bring international students into UK universities is a blow to the financing of higher education, which will not be offset any time in the near future by a return to central government support. Labour’s promise to expand education and training as it pursues its goal of making the country a haven of high-skilled, tech-savvy jobs is being placed on the line by policies which strive to exclude young people who have not yet found their footing in the educational system. At the same time, it also cold-shoulders the international students who not only want to come and study in the UK, but also pay over the odds to support the finances of the system.