A retrospective outlook in the higher education sector is damaging the UK’s economic growth and global competitiveness, asserts Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK
Universities in the UK are outstandingly strong on many measures, including: teaching and research, business-industry links and driving social mobility. However, they are operating in an increasingly competitive environment, both nationally and globally. To survive and flourish in the new world order, we have to ensure that our line of vision is set forwards and outwards, not backwards – but that does not always happen.
Analysis of higher education in the UK often adopts a historical perspective – comparing investment, student participation or research outputs by reference to our previous performance. This may be logical, and even necessary, but it is certainly not sufficient. Basing judgements about appropriate levels of achievement on past figures is similar to driving down a motorway by looking in the rear view mirror.
A misdirection of focus
Not only do universities need to look forwards, but more than ever, they also need to look outwards to what business and industry, and our global neighbours, collaborators and competitors are doing.
Undergraduate participation is one example of this. Higher Education Funding Council for England data shows year-on-year increases in participation, including that amongst lower participation groups. Young participation in higher education has increased from 30% in the mid-1990s to 36% at the end of the 2000s, making young people today over 20% more likely to enter into it than in the mid-1990s. In the light of these statistics, some people, including some politicians, maintain that we are producing too many graduates.
The problem is that they are looking in the wrong place, and, in particular, are ignoring the evidence of our competitor countries that shows we are by no means leading the way on higher education participation for an advanced economy. In terms of the proportion of 25-64 year olds with a higher education qualification, we lag behind Canada, Israel, Japan, the US, New Zealand and Russia. Comparing a younger cohort – 25 to 34 year olds – we are also behind Korea and Norway.
Political and economic power is shifting east. China and India have vast ambitions to lead the world in intellectual terms, as well as by manufacturing the products of western innovation quicker and cheaper than we could ourselves. China is projected to produce more graduates than the US and Europe combined by 2020.
This is not just a question of looking at what our global competitors are doing; it also means looking at what employers want. In the UK, major employers are demanding larger numbers of graduates with higher level skills. According to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, two million additional jobs are expected to be created in higher skilled occupations by 2020, increasing their share of total employment from 42% to 46% over the 10 year period.
As things now stand, the UK performs relatively poorly in terms of productivity compared with some other developed economies. The 2006 Leitch Review found that output per hour worked is almost 30% higher in France and more than 10% higher in Germany and the US than in the UK. Leitch pointed to evidence that suggests the low overall level of skills in the UK is a contributory factor in our productivity performance.
Not only do universities need to look forwards, but more than ever, they also need to look outwards to what business and industry, and our global neighbours, collaborators and competitors are doing.
Looked at from this perspective, it is clearly not enough to compare our performance in higher education with our historic position.
Other areas of rear mirror policymaking
This misdirection of focus is also apparent in research. The preservation of the science ring-fence in 2011 was a tremendous outcome in difficult circumstances. However, in terms of finance, we are standing still and have cut investment capital projects. Yet many of our competitors are doing the exact opposite. Between 2002 and 2007, China, India and Brazil more than doubled their expenditure on R&D, and China and Brazil aim to increase their levels of investment in R&D to 2.5% of GDP by 2020 and 2022, respectively. The US target for R&D investment is 3% of GERD. However, the UK level of investment currently stands at 1.8% of GDP.
Immigration policy is perhaps the best example of rear mirror policymaking. For understandable reasons, the government is keen to cap immigration and reduce the number of people coming into the country. For university-sponsored students, that translates into an uneasy tolerance of current student numbers, representing a compromise between maintaining a cap on international students and universities’ desire to expand the market.
However, determining policy by reference to historic trends ignores the global market for international students. This is a deeply competitive area, and other countries are looking to expand international student numbers. Although overall the UK is the second most popular destination for international students after the US, we have seen our market share reduce from 10.8% in 2000, to 9.9% in 2009. This is not so much attributable to anything that the UK is or is not doing, but to what its competitors are doing: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Korea have all been actively seeking to increase their share.
We should be ambitious for our universities as a source of export income. As Universities UK’s recent report Driving Economic Growth demonstrates, education exports are already worth £7.9bn to the economy. By 2025, projections indicate they could be worth £16.9bn. The government’s unashamed adoption of industrial activism, supporting areas of the economy where we have the potential to lead the world, must extend to education.
Looking at the road ahead
Universities are complex and multifaceted organisations that fulfil many social, cultural and economic aims. It is unsurprising that there are different ways of measuring their success. However, an overly historic approach is dangerously insular. We need to look outwards, assess our performance in part in response to the shifting demands of industry, but also in part to what is happening in the dynamic and ambitious world beyond our shores.
Universities have a critical role to play in pulling our economy out of the recession, in driving social mobility, and providing the skills and ideas that our economy needs. However to realise their potential, we have to set our sights firmly on the future, on what is happening outside academia and on what is happening in Europe and internationally.
So instead of looking backwards in its rear mirror, the UK needs to focus on the road ahead and be more ambitious. Real goals must be set around increasing the proportion of GDP invested in education, research and development – and not despite of the economic challenges we face, but because of them.
A version of this article first appeared on PublicService.co.uk
