Equality and British Higher Education: A Contradiction in Terms?

Tim Blackman, Vice-Chancellor, Middlesex University

‘Q. I have this daydream that one day a big-name university shocks the world by announcing that it plans to fill half of its first-year class with students who have mediocre grades … this super-prestigious university would essentially set out to prove that its faculty really is as great as it’s cracked up to be, so great that it can take less-than-spectacular students and make them better. Does that strike you as cuckoo?

A. It’s a grand idea. If you’re going to experiment like this, it would be a lot easier for an elite institution to do it. Today, the fact is, most of the wonderful outcomes at elite institutions are a result of the inputs.’

UK Trends in GDP and population

Real GDP

Population

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

UK Students obtaining degrees

men women total

Estimated average total benefits of a student’s higher education

Net private earnings benefits p.a. $31,174

Non-market private benefits p.a. $38,080

Direct social benefits p.a. $27,726

Total p.a. $96,980

Direct social benefits are 29% of total benefits but these include indirect social benefits (contributions to the value generated in private earnings and private non-market benefits). Once this is included, social benefits total 52% of the average value of higher education.

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% of pop 6% 25% 6% 15% 14% 19% 15%

Income £89k £47k £37k £29k £13k £21k £8k

Savings £142k £26k £66k £5k £10k £1k £1k

House value £325k £176k £163k £129k £127k £18k £27k

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Child's social class

Parent's occupational class %

Senior managerial Middle managerial

Intermediate/technical workers Manual workers

Source: Mike Savage (2015) Social Class in the 21st Century

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Elite Establishedmiddleclass

Technicalmiddleclass

Newaffluentworkers

Traditionalworking

class

Emergingserviceworkers

Precariat

% of each social class who are graduates

What’s the evidence?: Grammar schools entrench social division, rather than solve it

• Grammar schools left non-attendees behind in terms of grades…

• …and pay in later life• Grammar schools take

fewer poor students• Grammar schools did not

necessarily provide a good education … especially for the poorest

• Teacher expertise is the main single factor that matters for outcomes

• Peer-to-peer learning is effective and is enabled by mixed ability

• Streaming makes no difference • Students need to experience and

share passion about their subject• Students ‘learn their place’ in

class and this needs challenged• Excellent schools create dialogues

about the impact of teaching and use their data

• Disempowering cultural attitudes: success is about ability rather than effort and teaching expertise

Senior manager or traditional professional elite membership %

Semi-routine/routine elite membership %

Universityattended

Independent school

Comprehensive school

Independent school

Comprehensive school

Oxford 64 49 36 39

Other Golden Triangle

54 37 29 32

Other Russell Group

49 29 35 16

Other 41 23 18 12

None 39 9 9 7

High cultural capital Medium cultural capital Low cultural capitalHighbrow Emerging

High economic capital

Cambridge, Durham, King’s, LSE, Oxford, UCL

Bristol, City, Exeter, Heriot-Watt,Imperial, London South Bank, Manchester, Queen Mary

Aston

Medium economiccapital

University of the Arts, Edinburgh, London Met, LoughboroughMiddlesex, OU, Royal Holloway, St Andrews, Wales

Bath, Newcastle, Nottingham,Nottingham Trent

Aberdeen, Birmingham, Brighton, Brunel, Cardiff, Coventry, DMU, Dundee, East Anglia, Napier, Essex, Glasgow, Greenwich, Hull, Keele, Kent, Kingston, Lancaster, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Brookes, QUB, Reading, Salford, Sheffield, Southampton, Surrey, Sussex, Swansea, Warwick, UWE, Westminster, York

Bradford, East London,Hertfordshire, Portsmouth, Robert Gordon, Strathclyde, Sunderland

Low economic capital

Goldsmiths BournemouthDerby, Lincoln, Northumbria, Sheffield Hallam, Southampton Solent

Central Lancs,GloucestershireHuddersfield, Leeds Beckett, LJM, Staffs, Teesside, Ulster, West of Scotland, Wolverhampton

Source: Mike Savage (2015) Social Class in the 21st Century

• Large variations in graduates’ earnings by subject and university

• Graduates from wealthier families earn more after graduation than graduates from poorer families, even with the same degree from the same university

Vikki Boliver (2016) Lies, damned lies, and statistics on widening access to Russell Group universities (Radical Statistics 114: 29-38.)

• Challenges claim that Russell Group has made real progress towards closing the access gap– 75% from state

schools cf. 93% of 15 year-olds overall

• Underrepresented applicants to highly selective universities less likely to be offered places even when comparably qualified.

• Russell Group publications misrepresent the poor progress made

• Elite law and accountancy firms target recruitment strategies at the Russell Group

• Russell Group students are more likely to apply and be successful

• Social classes are represented in HE in reasonable proportion to their prior qualifications

• ‘Subjective opportunity structure’ still a problem

• Nature of the higher education sector is the issue

• School and university systems are diversifying and thereby segregating students by socio-economic status

• Funded opportunities for adults reduced

‘Perhaps discrimination by qualification will soon seem as unnatural as discrimination by sex, class, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and age do now … There is a high correlation between level 3 qualification and university success and between university outcome and success in employment … largely because we create them.’

Time for a comprehensive revolution in higher education

• Just banning academic selection would be difficult

• Use quotas?– Academy schools precedent– Peer-to-peer learning, which

is very effective– Diversity, which has

educational benefits too

• Require all universities to create access and exit pathways to cater for range of prior attainment: comprehensive reform

• Attract high flyers to lower tariff universities with scholarships funded by a levy on highly selective universities that reduces as they widen access