Starmer: 50 per cent university target ‘not right for our times’

Keir Starmer’s pledge that two-thirds of young people will achieve higher-level skills by 25 is presented as expansion. Nearly £800 million of extra funding for 16–19 education has been promised, supporting 20,000 more students. But the arithmetic shows this is not new money – it is a rebalancing at the expense of universities. At present, around half of young people go to university (by the age of 25). To reach 66 per cent in a cost-neutral way, university participation would need to fall to about 34 per cent, with apprenticeships rising to 32 per cent. On a cohort of 700,000, that means roughly 112,000 fewer university entrants each year. The fiscal logic explains why. Each undergraduate carries a long-run public subsidy of about £24,000 once loan write-offs are factored in. Two apprenticeships cost £18,000–24,000 in training support but avoid maintenance loans and subsidy losses. Moving 16 percentage points of a cohort from university into apprenticeships saves around £0.7 billion a year – almost identical to the “£800 million extra” just announced. This is less about expansion than substitution. The sweetener is for apprenticeships and further education. The bitter pill is fewer university places. The deeper shift is structural: Levels 4 and 5 are being elevated as valid end-points, largely delivered by FE and employers, not universities. Unless universities expand degree apprenticeships, they will lose numbers and influence. Labour will sell this as modernisation and fairness for “working people.” But the balance sheet is flat. The two-thirds skills pledge is not an investment windfall. It is the start of a rebalancing in which universities are no longer the default destination.

As someone who has worked with FE for a number of years, the biggest problem the sector has faced forever is the fact that it is a place, "for other people's children." The Prime Minister is the first British politician to recognise how damaging that reality is for our economy. For example, the introduction of T Levels has created barely a ripple in political or journalistic circles, because journalists and politicians have no knowledge or understanding of their significance or that of wider FE. If A Levels, qualifications which supposedly share parity of esteem with T Levels, were being reorganised, there would be leaflets through every door and leaders in every broadsheet. If this rebalancing does come at the expense of universities and schools (which fight like tigers to keep sixteen year olds studying A Levels in their sixth forms rather than taking vocational courses at college) it will be greatly to the benefit of the economy as well as a healthy dose of what used to be called, "levelling up."

Well you see, this is the key question. Is this re-balancing a good or bad thing. Let's assume, as many do, that it is a good thing for UK society and economy. If so, then we should support it. Of course, it may not be very good for the beleagured University system which will lose out from fewer students if the policy delivers (and I am sceptical). I tink any opposition to policies of this kind have to be ethical and not just ad hoc deployments of argument to ptotect pur own position.

I think you are exactly right. I have worked in the University sector all my career. We are always complaining, but the way the FE sector has been treated given its essential role is nothing short of criminal in my view. The HE sector has been a paradise in comparison. But we work in a red in tooth and claw profession, so we don't worry too much about FE. FE has always been the cinderalla of the adult education sector.

Is this a good or bad decision? is it the right or wrong thing to do?

In 2022 we achieved 58% under the age of 25 at University. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any positive correlation between the percentage of young people a country sends to university and its economic success: in the fast-growing US it is 43 per cent and for catastrophe ridden Greece it is 69 per cent. But there is certainly one clear signal from Sir Keir. This government wants the university sector to shrink far beyond it is already. Apart from University VCs and academics I don't hear anyone as yet speaking up in favour of Sir Tony's policy.

Even Sir Tony is schtum on the issue.

Well we wanted a Labour government to act like a Labour government