---

Education: Adult Learners

asked Her Majesty’s Government why at a time when they are encouraging people to upgrade skills and continue working later in life, adult learners seeking a second qualification at an equivalent or lower level to that already held must pay full-cost fees. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, on 7 September, the Secretary of State for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills wrote to the chairman of the Higher Education Funding Council for England setting out the CSR settlement for 2008-11. In that letter, he announced that he was seeking a reallocation of some £100 million used at present to subsidise those who are taking bachelors’ degrees or other lower level qualifications when they already have a degree. Instead, he wanted to see the money used for expanding provision for those who had never before been to university. The announcement came without any consultation with those involved. There is a consultation exercise taking place now, finishing at the end of this week, on 7 December, which makes this debate apposite. It is clear from discussions taking place that Ministers have made their decision and that, although they are listening through the consultation exercise, they do not intend to change much substantively. The problem has been dubbed the ELQ problem—equivalent or lower qualification problem—and it has caused considerable furore in the higher education and further education worlds. The number wishing to speak in tonight’s short debate is a good illustration of that. The Secretary of State’s argument is that it is a matter of allocating scarce resources in a fair way. There is no bottomless pit to fund higher education, and government priorities lie with getting as many as possible up to degree level to meet the challenging Leitch target of 40 per cent of the working population with degrees by 2020. That £100 million will finance some 10,000 full-time university students, more if they are part-timers or foundation degree students. Why should those students be denied university places in favour of students on whom the state has already spent some £15,000 or £20,000 in higher education provision? Put that way, it is difficult to fault the logic. None of us would argue that there are unlimited resources; trade-offs have to be made, and on the face of it those who have already had considerable resources lavished upon them should not take priority over others who are knocking on the door of higher education wanting to get in. Yet there are good reasons to reject this proposition. First, it is not obvious that there are at present many knocking on the door of higher education and being denied entry. On the contrary, most of those with the relevant qualifications are found places, while the falling secondary school rolls mean that the number of teenagers coming forward in the next few years will free up places for adults. The hope is, of course, that with all the Leitch initiatives there will be an increasing number of adults coming forward to fill those places, but until they begin to emerge, is it right to make these cuts? There are also questions of cost-effectiveness and, perhaps even more, unintended consequences. Maybe there will be places for 10,000 extra full-time students, but the Open University alone reckons that it is going to lose 29,000 of its 120,000 students as a result of the changes. As Brenda Gourley, its vice-chancellor, remarked to me, ““That is three medium-sized universities. Is that really what the Government intended?””. That is not all. In many universities, particularly the post-1992 universities, all part-time courses have a fair number of participants who are taking second qualifications. One such university reckoned that 60 per cent of its 450 full-time equivalent numbers in its centre for lifelong learning were such. Losing those students will make those part-time, often evening, courses non-viable and the universities will be forced to close them down. That illustrates all too well the unintended consequences of taking decisions without prior proper consultation. In any case, it sits oddly with the Leitch agenda, which encourages upskilling and reskilling to meet the challenges of global competition. Most people would reckon that the shelf life of a bachelor’s degree is about 15 years and, in any case many recognise, even when they graduate, that had they had better advice they might have chosen a very different undergraduate degree. Overall, the proposals privilege the young and those with employer support and disadvantage those over 25 who want to choose their own learning pathway. It hits disproportionately those whom the Government are trying to entice into higher education, namely part-timers. It has been estimated that some 20 per cent are going to be affected, compared to 2 per cent of full-timers. Those people are already earning their qualifications the hard way, giving up their evenings and weekends to acquire better and more appropriate qualifications. They already get much less than their full-time equivalents; they have to pay fees up front; there are no interest-free loans and if they borrow via career development loans they have to pay commercial rates of interest; and they get little by way of maintenance support. Who are they? They are disproportionately older students. The Open University reckons that 68 per cent of those affected will be over 35. Many are training for new careers, and many are teachers. Teacher training will be excluded, but not the degree behind the training. Some 25 per cent are taking qualifications in maths, science and technology; many are women returners who are retraining after years out with childcare; others are older people who are retraining in the hope of getting a better job, gaining a management qualification or returning to the job market after redundancy. Some professions are going to be particularly hard hit. Many train in social work, counselling and psychotherapy only after experience in the workplace; and with the new Layard initiatives we are in need of large numbers of such people. The clergy are going to be very hard hit, since nearly all take degrees in theology after a first degree, again often later in life. What is tough is that precisely at a time when the Government are telling us that we need to keep our skills up to date and think in terms of working through to 70, they are putting a damper on precisely that opportunity. It hits disproportionately precisely those institutions—universities and further education colleges—which have been doing most to widen participation and encourage those who have traditionally not gone into higher education to do so. It is not just Birkbeck and the Open University, but the likes of the London South Bank University, Westminster, Anglia Ruskin University, Barking College and Lewisham College. Lastly, but by no means least, we have no way of checking who has a previous qualification and who has not. Do we have to rely just on people being truthful? Or is this going to be an excuse for yet another big database? The Government are proposing some compromises. Medicine, architecture, nursing, some but not all teacher training, and for the moment the STEM subjects—science, technology and engineering—which are part of the strategically important and vulnerable subjects, are being exempted. There are some social work exemptions, but many of the professions allied to medicine, including pharmacy, will be hit. Foundation degrees will be exempt. One cannot help feeling that perhaps the whole enterprise is an underhand way of forcing universities into offering two-year foundation degrees and helping therefore to meet government targets in this area. Again, the Government are promising transitional help—funding guaranteed at 2007 levels for the Open University and Birkbeck until 2010 to help them ““reconfigure”” their programmes—but does this mean moving to foundation degrees? Are these compromises enough? Can the Open University and Birkbeck really be expected to change that rapidly? Surely, the Open University’s suggestion that the issue be considered as part of a revamp of the part-time student deal in 2009 is reasonable. I come back to the trade-offs and value for money. Essential the trade-off being offered here is only within the HEFCE budget and we are, of course, being assured that the money is being used within the higher sector to help widen participation. Equally, however, this move needs to be seen as part of the wider education and skills agenda—the Leitch agenda. Here, only last Monday, the Government announced a doubling of the Train to Gain budget for employer training, with a doubling from £500 million to £1 billion a year. Yet there are real doubts as to whether this sector—employer-based training—has either the will or the capacity to absorb this money and expand that fast. There are serious questions about value for money. The IFS evaluation of the pilots suggested that 85 per cent of expenditure on these pilots was dead weight—namely, that employers were being paid for training they would do anyway. Surely the £100 million needed to meet the Leitch higher education targets could be funded from the Train to Gain budget. I must stop there; I was going to conclude with a quotation from David Blunkett, but I will leave it at that.