Universities

Coffee House has already touched on David Willetts’ interview with the Times (£), highlighting his view that the 50p tax rate is important to prove that “we’re all in this together”. Willetts does not limit his words to the top rate of tax. In addition to his universities brief, he discusses equal pay issues, social reform and the recent riots. Willetts confesses to being a “muser”, never happier than when applying his renowned brain to the broad sweep of government policy. “I wouldn’t be able to function properly as a politician unless I was able to range across some of these wider issues. It just wouldn’t be worth it,” he says.

The Gap Year has been declared dead. It’s A-levels day today, and the annual scramble for university places has been intensified ahead of next year’s tuition fees rise. According to this morning’s Times (£), the last count had 669,956 pupils sprinting after 470,000 vacancies. An estimated 50,000 students with adequate grades will not enter higher education this year as many universities have raised entry requirements to manage increased demand. This means that competition during clearance will be even more stiff than usual, particularly as universities will offer many fewer clearing places according to various surveys. Needless to say, UCAS’ website appears to have collapsed under the weight of this unparalleled

When I visited the US recently, I got talking to some American teenagers about university. They (like me) had just left school and were trying to decide where to go next. I explained that in the UK, the Government’s plan to raise tuition fees to £9,000 a year had led to riots. Their jaws dropped. They couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. In the US, fees can reach $40 000 a year for the private Ivy League colleges. The reaction in the UK seemed ridiculous to them. They felt we should be grateful that we didn’t have to pay $40,000. [Although, to be fair, some state universities only charge

Until now, the debate over universities has dwelt inevitably on how much students need to stump up in tuition fees. With the release of today’s White Paper, the government will hope that the emphasis shifts to what students receive in return for that cash. Basically, it is all about fixing a subverted market by making it more transparent. With universities good, bad and indifferent rushing to charge the maximum possible amount for fees, the idea is that forcing them to release more information about their courses — about teaching standards, job prospects and the like — will help students decide which are offering value-for-money. Who knows? It might even shame

One new institution does not a revolution make. But there’s still something a little revolutionary about the New College of the Humanities that is set to open, in London, in September 2012. Perhaps it’s the idea behind it: a private university that charges fees of £18,000 a year (with bursaries available to those who can’t afford that). Or perhaps it’s the names who are fronting it: AC Grayling, Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, etc. They will, apparently, be conducting tutorials themselves. The public academics, it seems, are pitching their tents on the private sector. Mary Beard lists some reasons no to get too excited here. This is, she says, little more

What a knotty problem David Willetts has created for himself today. Speaking to the Guardian this morning, he floated an idea to help the universities make a bit of cash: they could, he suggested, sell extra places to students who were prepared to pay exaggerated fees up front. This isn’t yet government policy, and the students needn’t do the paying themselves (they could be sponsored by charities or employers, for instance), but the Guardian pounced nevertheless. “Extra places at university for rich students,” blared its front page headline. Not a good look for the coalition, at a time when access to university is such a general concern. Not a good

The most extraordinary row has broken out after the Prime Minister appeared to suggest that Oxford University has a racist admissions policy. He today said that, “I saw figures the other day that showed that only one black person went to Oxford last year. I think that is disgraceful.” But the university has since hit back, pointing out that, “the figure quoted by the Prime Minister is incorrect and highly misleading — it only refers to UK undergraduates of black Caribbean origin for a single year of entry, when in fact that year Oxford admitted 41 UK undergraduates with black backgrounds.” Laura Kuenssberg tweets that No10 is nevertheless sticking to

The most important planks of the coalition’s social mobility strategy are its education and welfare reforms. Raising the standards of state education in this country will give far more children a chance to get on in life. While reducing the number of children brought up in workless households will, hopefully, halt the development of a hereditary non-working, benefit-dependent class.   But these measures will take time to work. Which raises the question of what should be done in the meantime?   One thing would be allowing academics to use discretion in admissions. We don’t expect the England cricket selectors to pick the side based solely on county averages and we

Today’s OECD Economic Survey of the UK (download the complete pdf here ) contains some devastating passages about our education system. As it’s 148 pages in size, we thought CoffeeHousers might appreciate some highlights. Here’s your starter for ten: “Despite sharply rising school spending per pupil during the last ten years, improvements in schooling outcomes have been limited in the United Kingdom.” This is rather a staggering indictment of Tony Blair’s “education, education, education” policy. But what about the ever improving exam results that we hear about each summer? Again, the OECD:   “Official test scores and grades in England show systematically and significantly better performance than international and independent

No wonder some backbench Tory MPs are apoplectic: courtesy of David Cameron, Simon Hughes has been elevated from soapbox to pulpit. Hughes’ first statement as the government’s university access adviser is to suggest that universities should limit their intake of students from private schools. He told the Guardian: ‘I think my message to the universities is: You have gained quite a lot in the settlement. Yes, you’ve lost lots of state money, but you’ve got another revenue stream that’s going to protect you. You now have to deliver in turn. You cannot expect to go on as you are. It has failed miserably.’   Hughes’ appointment was controversial, another instance of