A key turning point in British politics was Tony Blair’s famous three priorities: “education, education, education”. A giant step was his 1999 conference speech: “Today I set a target of 50% of young adults going into higher education in the next century.” By 2017-18 that symbolic threshold had been crossed in England, with more than half of young people taking that leap forward. In 1980 it was just 15%.
But universities are falling into severe financial crisis. Unsurprisingly, the Tories are not unduly bothered. They attack universities all the time, calling for cuts in student numbers. Now they are plunging the knife into vital funding from foreign students. They ignore pleas from major companies, which wrote to the government this week, to stop a migration policy that is threatening investment in the UK by blocking foreign students.
Tories and their pollsters see as clear as day that the growth in highly educated citizens, above the OECD average, is a social and political revolution not in their favour: the more educated people are, the less likely they are to vote for what John Stuart Mill called “the stupidest party”. Graduates already outnumber school leavers among those aged under 50, Prof Rob Ford’s research shows, and education has become “one of the strongest predictors of vote choice and political values”.
As Labour wins the graduates, “the Conservatives’ base has shifted towards those with GCSE qualifications or less”. And they are dying out, as the oldest cohorts, who had fewest education opportunities, are the most authoritarian on crime, migration and nativist sentiment. The young are not turning right the way previous generations did, and there are shrinking numbers of seats where less qualified school leavers are the majority. While graduates tended to cluster in the same seats, reducing their voting power, Ford predicts that by 2031, there will be 249 seats where graduates dominate. But this doesn’t fix the future for Labour: once in power, if Labour disappoints, these are fickle voters likely to veer off to the Greens and Liberal Democrats.
The Office for Students’ financial report published this week finds that 40% of English universities expect to be in deficit this year, with many more in cashflow trouble. The number of foreign students, who pay up to £38,000 a year compared with home students paying £9,250, has fallen sharply this year. Data from the Enroly admissions management service finds 37% fewer acceptances for postgraduate courses next year from foreign students, while a different survey found there were 27% fewer applicants overall. Barring them from bringing dependants while they study, and raising the amount they must earn to take a job, is deliberately designed to deter them. It does nothing for what voters really care about, that futile “stop the boats” promise. It’s hard to think of a stupider policy, except as a way to cut the number of universities and UK graduates.
Never mind that higher education is a rare and envied UK asset. This week a joint letter from Universities UK and Creative UK urged the government not to cut foreign student visas: international students are not just cash machines but “integral” to the creative industries, which in the UK are “bigger than aerospace, life sciences and the automotive industry combined”. They need the crucial visas to stay two years after graduating, with the letter citing the likes of Jimmy Choo, who studied at Cordwainers, staying to develop a great company.
But this government, in its death throes, inhabits a realm way beyond considering the good of the country or listening to major companies, from Siemens to Anglo American and EDF. All that matters is immigration and culture-war sallies (lanyards?), so the home secretary, James Cleverly, duly commissioned a report from the Migration Advisory Committee “to ensure the graduate route is not being abused” by people using study visas as a covert route to immigration. What a disappointment when the MAC reported this week no evidence of abuse of the scheme, which allows students to work two or three years after graduating. Nor were foreign students “undermining” the integrity and quality of the higher education system.
The Tories’ unpatriotic culture war fights against all Britain’s soft power assets, from the National Trust and museums and galleries, to the British Council and the BBC and its prized World Service. How can this government not be impressed by the astounding fact that a quarter of the world’s leaders have been educated in Britain? This is influence you can’t buy, yet they pay us for. Of course we need foreign students: a recent study suggests four out of five of them leave within five years, taking a British connection back to their influential roles at home.
Amid the Vesuvius of need that Labour will inherit, with every threadbare public service desperate for funds, universities will be low in the queue. (So they should be, since every pound spent on education at the youngest ages yields most.) But at least Labour will do all it can to encourage lucrative foreign students and welcome them in. It would be wise to take them out of migration figures, too: the great majority are not migrants at all. Nor do students worry voters alarmed by small boats: local people know they bring wealth and employment to towns north and south.
But living within the incomes they can attract, universities may reconsider how they are organised: some will question why degrees need three years with such short terms, why vice-chancellors’ salaries, some higher than £500,000, are much higher than their European neighbours, why university teaching careers are so hard on beginners and why sixth-formers get so much more teaching time than university students at far lower cost. Whatever answers struggling universities might come up with, a measure of radicalism, with different choices between universities, looks inevitable. But at least under Labour there will be encouragement, not disparagement of this great national asset.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
