Whats new about New Labour and Higher Education

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Whats new about New Labour and Higher Education?

• Keynote presentation for the AUA Conference
• Queens University, Belfast
• 11 April 2006
• David Watson, Institute of Education, University
  of London

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Outline

• Whatever happened to the Dearing Report?
• Unfinished business
• Funding and organisation
• Widening participation and social justice
• HE and the public interest
• Facing the future

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Whatever happened to the Dearing Report?
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(No Transcript)
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David Blunketts agenda for HEIs (1)

• Balance teaching, research and knowledge transfer
• Improved quality
• WP and social inclusion
• New markets
• Maintain traditional scholarship
• Improve management capacity
• Staff development

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David Blunketts agenda for HEIs (2)

• Accountability to government and society
• Links with employers and others
• Careers guidance and work placements
• ICT
• Equal opportunities
• (Greenwich 2000)

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(No Transcript)
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New Labour Mark II (2003)

• Variable fees
• Research concentration
• Institutional re-stratification
• new new new universities

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The third term letter of direction (31.1.06)

• Diversity
• Employer-led provision
• Widening participation for people from low
  income backgrounds
• Reducing bureaucracy
• Equal opportunities

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Funding and organisation

• Whatever happened to the unit of resource?

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The traditional view
Unit of Public Funding, 1979 2005
Figures 2002/03 onwards exclude private fees
Source CVCP (1995) HEFCE (2003) UUK (2003)
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The unit of FC funding 1996-2004
Average funding council income per FTE student
(adjusted to constant 2004/05 prices)
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What is going on I?

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What is going on II?

• Unit of Public Funding, by Country, 1996/97 and
  2003/04

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What is going on III?
Funding council income compared with all FTE
students (), 1996/97 (adjusted)
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What is going on III? (cont)
Funding council income compared with all FTE
students (), 2003/04
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Why is this important?

• Setting the base-line for full-funding
• Assessing affordable expansion
• home international policy
• Funding diversity
• Review of the HEFCE teaching methodology

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2006-07 funding settlements (HEFCE)

• Real terms increase
• Reduction in special initiatives
• Increased WP funding
• More to come?

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HEFCE dilemmas managing the post-2006 market.

• a high quality sector
• the threshold
• a minimum fee assumption
• credit-based funding (but not yet)
• PT and WP

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Participation and social justice

• Who is under-represented?
• Should universities look like their communities?

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What WP is not about

• Inadequate admissions tutors
• Irrational choices by students
• Debt aversion
• Supply-side defects

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What WP is about

• Improving schools
• Parental expectations
• National ambitions for Level 3
• Genuine employer engagement

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Some wicked issues

• Expansion and participation
• Lack of patience
• Displacement
• Header-tank policies
• Policy leadership
• Human and social capital

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HE and the public interest

• How do we establish the public interest?
• HE and civil society
• How does the university work?
• Who belongs to the university/who does the
  university belong to?
• Whats the university for?

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Facing the future some tests

• 14-19
• Youth employment without training
• Employment discrimination
• Lifelong learning
• a world-class higher education sector

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Discussion