Poorer families

We start with the lowest socio-economic groups in developed countries such as the UK, US, much of Europe and countries like Australia or New Zealand. In these countries, the university system is well developed and generally living standards are high.

It is very widely believed that university education is the key way to improve both quality of life and socio-economic position and indeed to enter the middle classes for those who grew up in poverty. In the UK, this view was particularly strong from the middle third of the last century onwards and in the US through much of its history.

That is why Neil Kinnock’s famous appeal, ‘Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?’, resonated so very powerfully with parents and children from both working-class and some new middle-class homes. And that is why Joe Biden plagiarised this in the 1987 US presidential campaign.

For most people, university is seen as the only real route to improve their social class and life expectations. The importance of education to working-class families, for example as shown by the establishment of the Miners’ libraries in the South Wales valleys, is central.

It is certainly possible for a self-made person to reach wealth without any university education, and there are many famous examples of that, or for a landed aristocrat to inherit their wealth and status. But the overwhelming majority of people, across the whole of society, who improve their position in society, do so through higher education which enables entrance to one of the professions, to managerial positions or to successful business start-ups.

Nevertheless, however outstanding individual achievements may be, even a cursory look indicates a far less satisfactory overall situation and that we are not doing enough to meet these needs.

There are very many examples of outstanding individuals from social and class backgrounds where there had been no possibility of high-level education who shine and rise to national leadership positions in all aspects of national life once exposed to real university opportunities. This happened in the UK, beginning just before and building up after the Second World War.

Their inspirational successes, often achieved through highly selective education systems, obscure the fact that the great majority do not do so well. With any system of selection some, perhaps many, fail the test. Those who succeed tend to grow up in families who support their aspirations and indeed help to build them. Those less fortunate are likely to be surrounded by family members and peers who do not value higher education (or indeed sometimes any education). They are doomed, in many cases, to fail at school level and so not achieve a level of accomplishment in their schooling years that makes university entry straightforward.

Where is aspiration going to come from if one grows up in a family where there is nothing to read and little ambition? The answer should be, and often is, the primary and secondary schools system. However, it is an unfortunate reality that there are geographical areas of low educational performance and attainment with poor outcomes, which can reinforce family lack of aspiration rather than contest it. This is usually not because of poor teaching but because of an entrenched culture of poor attainment and low levels of parental engagement. This can be very difficult to overcome, though the initial Academy School programme in the UK from 2000 to 2010 attempted to do that, with many successes.

However, the problem can sometimes seem intractable. Recent figures suggest that less than 5% of Oxbridge undergraduate entrants are from the lowest socio-economic band. This is by far the lowest percentage among UK universities and it is persistent in spite of many years of attempted remedies. In the UK as a whole, the rate of participation of young white men from the lowest socio-economic grouping has stagnated at around 5% while every other societal group has improved at a time when huge gains have been made in overall university enrolment rates. Similarly, in the US, university participation has risen over the past 20 years for all except the lowest socio-economic quartile.

These students from the lowest socio-economic band are from the group who have most both to contribute and to gain from fuller educational opportunities. Their failure to advance educationally is an enormous waste of potential for the country as a whole.

It is clear that interventions are more likely to work when made in primary and early secondary school and are supported by family members. If students have missed the boat early in their school life, attempts to get them ready for university in the latter years of secondary school are unlikely to succeed.

Though it is true that improved schools are the main contribution to progress in this field, universities can certainly play a very important part in improving this situation. For example, the exposure of secondary school students to university students, especially from a similar background, in a mentoring process, can be very powerful. Universities typically have supportive, though usually limited, arrangements with a number of secondary schools in their local areas. And offering opportunities to study university degrees at partnered further education colleges can make a contribution. Sadly, as a generalisation, the more prestigious the university, the less well developed all of these relations tend to be. They are certainly a key aspect of an effective civic university – that is one that has a special relationship with its local community. Too many universities do not do enough.

Middle classes

Moving up the socio-economic ladder, we now look at the children of the middle- and upper middle-class families. Whichever developed country one looks at, this group is the traditional preserve of the universities. The majority of university students come from a relatively privileged social and economic background. The expansion of the modern university system was driven largely by market forces to meet their needs.

Here families understand very well that achievement of university education consolidates both a career and a position at the same or better socio-economic level than that enjoyed by the parents. So families encourage their children to do well at school and to engage with a peer group with similar aspirations, and therefore they enrol their children in a school where most students have the expectation of a university future.

Many students from this background will aim for a career in the professions and see university education as the route to that. In the UK, the first degree is likely to be a professional entry degree whereas, in the US, it is equally likely that a liberal arts college degree will be followed by professional study in graduate school. The value added is clear, the financial gain enormous.

This will continue as middle-class parents do their best to ensure that their children get the chance of university life.

In the UK, the majority of such students will aim to study at research-intensive universities, of the type that we have discussed in Chapter 4.

In the US, most students in this category will study at a large and well-regarded state-linked university, sometimes referred to as a land grant institution. While many students who aspire to study at the highest ranked international institutions will come from this socio-economic group, academic or financial inhibitions will prevent most from aspiring to Ivy League or similar institutions. Nevertheless, the university will do its job for the students. They will leave ready to take up a profession and considerable personal development. The value again is clear.

At the perceived apex of the university world, Oxbridge and the Ivy Leagues represent a pinnacle perhaps now being reproduced by the C9 universities in China and represented in continental Europe by the Grandes Ecoles of France. The majority of students who attend these institutions have aimed (or been aimed) in that direction from early in their school years. Their schools may well have been chosen with that in mind. There may well be a parental history of attendance at such institutions. Many students from their schools will have succeeded in securing places at such universities. There will also be high-achieving students from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds but, relative to the total number of places and the likelihood of achieving a place, a background of entitlement and relative affluence remains a crucial advantage. Some have commented that, in these institutions, students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds may feel out of place.¹

In the UK, 7% of secondary school children attend the great ‘public’ (ie private, paid for by parents’ fees) schools, while 42% of Oxbridge students come from those schools – very substantially greater than the proportion who go from the state school system. Indeed, pupils from just 8 schools filled 1,310 Oxbridge places over three years, compared with 1,220 places from 2,900 other schools.² Similar issues arise for Russell Group universities.

If one looks at leadership roles across the UK,³ 71% of top military officers, 74% of top judges, 61% of the country’s top doctors, 51% of leading print journalists, 42% of British BAFTA winners and 32% of MPs have been privately educated. Oxbridge graduates dominate these roles even more significantly.

Why is this so? Undoubtedly, the highest levels of academic achievement are necessary in the school years to achieve entry to the Russell Group universities but there is enormous overlap with the capacity of student groups in other first-rate universities. Considerations of ability alone cannot explain these variations.

Similarly, it is possible that the quality of education at these universities may be higher in terms of the quality of the ideas and scholarship the students are exposed to and the discussions they have with their peers (though data on teaching quality does not seem to support this view, as we say in Chapter 4). It may be that it is peer aspirations that are influential in final career outcomes.

Perhaps most influential in career terms is the cachet of having a degree, especially a ‘good’ degree (2.i or better), from one of the greatest international universities. This gets most students off to a fantastic start in a career sense and is especially influential if they aspire to work for firms where the leadership comes from a similar background. Cachet may not be everything but it is hugely important now as in the past.

It is possible to acquire cachet, and strengthen one’s CV, by further study in a great university for a postgraduate master’s degree, for example at one of the great London universities. For those who aspire to the highest level in France, it is more difficult if they fail to obtain a place at a Grande Ecole as ‘re-entry’ opportunities are fewer.

The pressures on young people in Asian countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China, to succeed in getting a place in a top university are immense and it is known throughout the world that the pressure young people are under in Japan to succeed in university entry is often excessive.

It may be, at the end of the day, that very ambitious students, for whatever reason – self-driven, historical familial or parental influence or a combination of all of the above – set a pathway early for themselves to achieve at what society considers the highest level.

A recent illustration of the high stakes involved in university admissions is the Operation Varsity Blues bribery scandal in the US, disclosed by US Federal prosecutors and involving at least 50 people, a number of whom have pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty. Thirty-three parents of college applicants are accused of paying a number of prestigious universities, including Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and Southern California more than $25 million between 2011 and 2018 to get their children into the universities.

Taking all of the above into account, we acknowledge the vast intellectual contribution really great universities can offer. The world would be an infinitely poorer place without them. But, in parallel, we say that more steps must be taken to reduce the sharp differences in access to those universities on the basis of social and economic background.

It is an unavoidable fact that demand way exceeds supply for university places in the super elite institutions. These institutions undoubtedly offer a superb educational experience and the number of places relative to demand is still very restricted. Michael Crow⁴ makes the point in many of his writings⁵ that we define the excellence of our universities by exclusion, as opposed to inclusion. And many use the language of inclusion so that, in fact, we are at risk of systematically deceiving ourselves.

This perception relates to the existential discussion about whether the education system, including universities, exists primarily to bring out the best in everyone and enable them to fulfil their potential. Or whether it just offers a sieve to identify and develop the ‘most talented’ of individuals.

Crow argues, rightly, that the harder it is for a student to get a place in a university and the harder it is for a staff member to secure tenure, the more prestigious the institution becomes and so the more value its degree acquires in career advancement terms. He therefore argues that there is absolutely no genuine reason why education at this level is not more widely available.

And of course, in fact, an equivalent education to the high-level Ivy League or Oxbridge institutions is already offered by very many universities throughout the world. But historical kudos is so linked to a handful of institutions that their special place in the university world is as secure as Fort Knox, whether justified or not!

It remains to be seen whether these perceptions will survive the changes flowing with the information revolution and increased student expectations at all levels. However, the evaluation that we describe has so far been extraordinarily resilient and these universities act as reinforcing agents of an increasingly outdated and unmeritocratic social and economic class system.

Wider benefits to the individual of a university education

In the preceding paragraphs, we have looked at the value of university education in markedly reductionist terms considering career advancement and financial gain. However, there are other important advantages that in terms of the full, happy and well-lived life, are usually equally important for the individual.

These include the acquisition of improved analytical skills, the ability to argue one’s case, tolerance and a capacity to cope with ambiguity, an ability to think laterally and, in the case of those students who enter universities as undergraduates, the opportunity to continue to develop their personalities and their moral as well as professional strengths in a place and time protected at least partially from the pressures of the wider world which they will encounter when they fully enter the workforce.

The wide range of co-curricular activities available at all universities and the opportunity to develop real expertise and interest in areas outside of their primary field of study are huge boons to the development of students’ personality and their capacity to fully engage with the opportunities life offers. International experiences are extraordinarily valuable here also. The global economy and the global workforce are more international in both physical movement and mindset than ever before.

Finally, friendship sets that are developed at university often last a lifetime. Students are exposed to peers from a much wider range of backgrounds than they would have encountered at secondary school. For the first time, they may be meeting and mixing with students from many countries and from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. The richness of this experience in framing an open mindset for the rest of their lives is invaluable for many students and not only in career terms.

The expectations and the benefits of a university education are considerable for students from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. It is also extremely valuable for society at large for universities to serve a wide cultural mix and, in doing so, become champions of equity and diversity.

Expectations may differ but the advantages in career development, socio-economic well-being and personal development are very real for the vast majority of students, regardless of family background. By the time they get to university, the great majority of students are truly self-starters in a study sense and have the capacity to benefit considerably from the intellectual stimulation that is on offer, both in general terms and in terms of professional development.

Those who believe that university education should be more tightly rationed, and numbers reduced, often fail to take into account this full range of individual benefits.

These are the tensions and pressures that lie behind the interplay of supply and demand that ultimately determine which potential students get a university undergraduate place and which do not.

Participation rates

In an ideal world, every student who has the capacity to complete a university education should be able to go to university. Rather than setting artificial thresholds, great countries should continue to strive to prepare their young people in the school system for university entry and to provide a university system devoted to further developing specialist and general skills in the young.

In advanced economies, we should aim for the highest university participation rates. Rates approaching 50% are entirely appropriate where the secondary school system is functioning well and where national aspiration in lower socio-economic groups for self-improvement is entrenched.

Of course, a student’s capacity to earn and complete a degree is fundamental. Here the UK and Australia do well. The US does very badly (however measured) with large drop-out rates after the second (sophomore) year of study.

It is instructive to look at the percentage of people from the ages of 25 to 64 who have participated in university education in different countries according to UNESCO data⁶ (which is restricted to OECD membership countries and one or two others) and to correlate that with national wealth and development. Of course, there is an issue here of which is the cart and which is the horse! A series of countries can be identified including Australia, Canada, the UK and the US where over 40% of the population have a university qualification of one type or another. UNESCO data also tracks this information through each decade from 25 on and one sees significant improvement in the extent of engagement in 25 to 34 year olds from that in 55 to 64 year olds in all of the countries mentioned.

There is, then, a significant number of countries with participation rates of 30–39%, including many of the European countries, which also showed improvement from older to younger deciles. The striking correlation between national wealth and development and university participation is in the countries that have participation rates of under 25%, such as Brazil, South Africa and Turkey. These countries also showed a less discernible increase from older to younger deciles.

According to a study from Harvard and the Asian Development Bank, 6.7% of the world’s population overall are college degree holders. This has risen by 0.178% a year during the past decade with an average just below that for the second half of the 20th century. We are moving in the right direction but very slowly! The correlation between national prosperity and the percentage of citizens holding a university qualification appears to be a very clear one.

Clearly, prosperous countries spend more on education and more young people have the opportunity to participate at university level. Yet those countries with very high participation, such as Switzerland and South Korea, are more than maintaining their competitive prosperity in today’s world. The evidence is very strong that a high level of university attainment in the population is one of the underpinning factors in national prosperity.

As stated earlier, one still hears comment at senior levels that too many people go to university and that more should enter vocationally orientated tertiary education programmes. But this is not at all an either/or choice. Clearly, the aspiration should be that almost all young people have a tertiary education appropriate to their potential and capacity. This should involve as many as possible of those who have the capacity for university-level education to experience it. Any other approach significantly devalues the human potential of great countries.

In countries where entry to tertiary education in prestigious institutions has significantly underpinned social stratification, there may be additional reasons for making sure that tertiary participation targets are internationally competitive at the higher level. Fortunately, the UK does well. Canada, Australia, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries do better. Especially in countries without massive natural resources, a well-educated, flexible and adaptable workforce is their greatest asset, and one clear driver of success is an improved rate of university participation over time.

What should students study?

From their own point of view, the student should be able to study whatever seizes their attention and excites their passion. There is a danger here that broadening university entry, possibly with weaker entry requirements for some universities, might encourage some students to enter university who are not academically confident on leaving secondary school and not ideally prepared for the rigours of university education.

Such students in that position may end up attending lower ranking universities, which depend upon them for income, offer courses that are less demanding, impart less useful skillsets and are not so well respected in the employment world. Furthermore, drop-out rates may be high.

This is not only a theoretical concern. For example, in Australia, the first experiment with uncapping of commencing places saw exactly this scenario with a number of low ranked institutions almost doubling their places, admitting students to degrees of lesser worth and tolerating very high non-completion rates in the first year.

Nevertheless, the students who successfully complete even these degrees undoubtedly get some benefit, although the benefits in terms of the first job immediately post-graduation may not be as high as desirable. However, the lifetime benefits in terms of overall skills and widening opportunities are still likely to be considerable.

In an ideal world, full success in university enrolment would see students from all backgrounds widely enrolled in the most demanding professional courses. For some, this might require specialised approaches and the development of tailored pathways, which is where teaching quality is important.

This is one factor that supports the offering of a range of high-level professional degrees in a graduate school setting as in the US. In Australia, professional courses such as medicine and law are often offered by the same university at undergraduate and postgraduate entry level. For many students, a general experience for their undergraduate degree is the optimum choice, with specialisation at postgraduate level. This is the model of the liberal arts colleges of the US and provides a superb platform for life.

The conclusion is clear. What should be studied is driven in the first instance by individual preference and it may take two bites of the cherry for some students to get into the profession that they’ve set their heart on.

Where and when to go?

What type of institution should students go to? This is a crucial issue for the university sector in any country that organises itself sensibly. Students have a wide range of aspirations, as well as different levels of inherent ability and varied experience of school quality. Not all will be able to achieve top-level academic performance. Even if they were, many want to get on quickly with professional careers and their eyes are set on other peaks. As already discussed, countries need balanced workforces with clever people going into a wide range of disciplines. Moreover, students vary in the length of university exposure they desire. Some want to complete an undergraduate degree as quickly as possible and get into the workforce. Others are attracted by deeper or longer immersion in their disciplines. A still smaller group will seek to generate new knowledge in doctoral programmes. None of these options is intrinsically better than the other in terms of individual contribution or individual success. A good university system will offer a range of options that meets both individual and national need. It is also really important that students succeed in their endeavours and that they are guided in the right direction, ideally well before they finish their secondary schooling. This requires good quality and informed vocational and career counselling. For the great majority of students, the path will be reasonably clear from relatively early in their university years, though some students may return and have more than one tertiary immersion before their final level of academic achievement is reached.

An increasing number of students study close to home in their undergraduate years and attend a local university. This was traditional in Scotland (as opposed to England and Wales) and in Australia. In some cases, this is for economic reasons and, in some cases, just the convention. However, significant numbers of students prefer to leave home in their university undergraduate years, supported by often a rather meagre maintenance grant, some parental support or part-time work. They will select a university that has strengths in their chosen discipline and that is well regarded for its general quality of education.

All of these considerations reinforce the case that we have made throughout this book for real variation in universities’ missions and educational organisation. The important thing is that all institutions do really well in their chosen areas of excellence and nurture their students appropriately. These considerations are well understood by the vast majority of university leaders. Clark Kerr understood this well when he developed the University of California system with a range of closely interrelated institutions operating in different but complementary spaces within an integrated system.

The framework he created included the great research universities, notably UCLA, UCSF, UCSD and UC Berkeley. These carry out research in ways that redefine our world and they are linked with teaching-focused colleges that are also very strong in their mission. Clark Kerr’s clarity is not always so clearly reflected in national tertiary education systems, which have grown more chaotically. It is crucial that institutions understand their space and play to their strengths. In the UK, there is also an important place for further education colleges, often linked to universities that can increase the offer and range of opportunities.

Where do national priorities fit into this?

It is entirely legitimate – indeed essential – for nations to set priorities for key workforce areas and professions, whether through subsidy of targeted places, targeted bursaries or other mechanisms of differential support. Inevitably, some professions will be more attractive than others and some places more competed for than others.

This is something that cannot be disregarded by policy-makers and institutional leaders. It is a real danger of the institutional university autonomy that we strongly support that sufficient diversity for national needs may not develop and this requires real leadership not only from university Presidents and governing bodies but also serious dialogue with governments, economic and social institutions and the wider society. This happens far too little.

Such dialogue is essential to ensure that any national university system is fit for purpose in terms of both individual and national needs. It is then crucial that each individual institution understands and plays its part in the national ecology.

In recent years, there has been considerable debate in countries with a more centralised approach than the US to university enrolment, such as Australia and the UK, as to how student numbers should be set in different institutions. The historic approach was to set this centrally with allocation of a fixed number of places built on various criteria including range of disciplines and past performance. Such central planning was initially a function of grant-based public funding, but for many years it carried over into the era of tuition fees.

However, in the early 2010s, both Australia and the UK began a huge experiment where the numbers of students were uncapped to create a ‘demand-driven’ funding system to reflect the transition to a market environment in higher education. Under this model, market forces were allowed to determine commencing enrolment numbers for each institution and the government gave an undertaking through guaranteed domestic loan pools to cover the costs in the short and medium term with long-term recovery from students, through the tax system, as their incomes passed a certain threshold. This experiment was brave in the extreme because it exposed governments to billions of pounds of potential additional cost⁷ and indeed, in both countries, that has turned out to be largely the case, with very significant increases in domestic enrolments to a new threshold level.

The increase in enrolment rates took place across all universities. For individual institutions, this has posed a dilemma. Should they grow and, if so, should this be done by increased competitiveness in a relatively restricted student pool defined by high academic capacity, demonstrated through exam results or alternatively should they grow by reducing entry academic standards?

Interestingly, in Australia, the approach of different universities was completely divergent around this issue. A relatively small number – at the top end of the academic tree in terms of admission standards and with high international demand – decided not to grow. Almost all of them decided to maintain academic entry standards or even to gradually increase them. Any growth in domestic numbers would, therefore, depend on an increase in competitiveness against peer institutions. Without exception, this strategy has been successful for the institutions that adopted it.

Another group of institutions, almost all relatively low ranking in terms of admission criteria, made a decision to drop academic criteria for initial admission, sometimes dramatically, and with resultant massive increases in student numbers and high attrition and drop-out rates. This policy may have improved some university bottom lines but contributed little to their reputation or to the success of the societies around them. Poorly regarded courses with relatively low completion and high cost could be a definition of university failure in serving the societies around them. This will continue to be a contentious area.

In the UK, universities faced similar tensions, dilemmas and competition between each other. The UCAS⁸ End of Cycle Report 2018⁹ analysed patterns of admissions policies and the UK government¹⁰ pointed out that, in 2018, 34.4% of 18 year olds from England, Northern Ireland and Wales received a form of unconditional offer¹¹ whereas, in 2013, this figure was just 1.1%. In some universities, up to 70% of admissions offers were unconditional. It therefore took action to challenge the universities that were making ‘conditional¹² unconditional offers’ in order to pressure students to make that university their first choice.

These kinds of practices could best be changed if schools and universities slightly altered the cycle of their examinations and admissions timetable in order to permit students to apply for university after their secondary examination results are known, rather than before, as now. This currently happens in Scotland and it is tricky but not impossible and would have the advantage of giving more confidence and certainty to student applicants, which would benefit students from poorer backgrounds.

An alternative way of achieving the same end is to encourage students to take a year out between school and university, perhaps with short-term employment options for students who do this.

What, then, is the answer? Should governments set the number of university places in the raw Soviet-style central planning approach with tight control perhaps reinforced through a series of academic five-year plans? Should the market prevail with an uncapping of places and a range of providers offering courses with different structures and knowledge sets? Should this allow for private provider entry?

The tension here is about whether to uncap the volume of student admissions, or the price, or both. In the UK, the 2010 Browne review wanted to uncap price and not volume. The Coalition Government responded by tripling fees and then uncapped numbers. In Australia, the Gillard Labour government uncapped numbers and then her Liberal successor, Tony Abbott, failed to win the debate to uncap price. It’s not an easy problem for politicians selling a message to prospective students, parents and taxpayers.

We discuss some of these issues further in Chapter 8 but we think that it is difficult to see how a tightly controlled system governed and overseen by tight central planning and with enforced uniformity can perform optimally and fully reflect student choices in a modern economy. We think it is necessary to accept that the market does have a role to play in determining the final mix, even though this could cause a degree of chaos and would require toleration of some skills oversupply. And there may well be consequences for possible university bankruptcies and a university version of ‘mergers and acquisitions’.

In Chapter 7, we address postgraduate master’s and doctoral courses and degrees, which are a very important element of university life, not least for international students.

International students

Of course an exceptionally important component of this system of global higher education, notably in the English-speaking countries, is the increasing flow of international students, who provide intellectual breadth and vitality and also the funding which keeps some universities going. It is worth identifying some important trends.

The overall international student population¹³ is rising rapidly, from an estimated 2.1 million in 2001 to 4.6 million in 2017.

Australia (23.8%) has the highest proportion of international students in comparison with its home population, followed by the UK (21.1%), Canada (15.2%) and New Zealand (15.0%). European countries vary from 6% to 12%. The US has 5.3% (though it has the largest absolute number at just over 1 million). Japan (4.7%) and China (1.1%) are much lower.

And the numbers are changing fast, with the biggest increases from 2016 to 2017 being Mexico (58.9%), Spain (24.9%), Canada (18.3%), Japan (12.5%), Australia (12.1%) and China (11.4%). These are all in contrast to the UK (0.9%) where the figure was stagnant because of its negative and nationally destructive policies.

The UK has long placed a great emphasis on the value of an internationalised student and academic community, and successive UK governments have done much between the 1990s and 2010s to encourage UK universities in their attempts to diversify their academic workforce. But that has changed significantly in the past nine years as a result of incoherent and ineffective immigration policies in relation to universities.

Of the 93 UK universities in the top 1,000 universities in the THE 2018 rankings, the average (mean) proportion of overseas students is 30% and the highest proportions are in three of the London universities: the London School of Economics with 71%, the School of Oriental and African Studies with 56% and Imperial College London with 55%.

Of the 35 Australian universities in those top 1,000, the mean proportion of overseas students is 26% and the highest proportions are Murdoch with 48%, South Australia with 41% and Melbourne with 40%.

In contrast to the UK, international students in Australia are not included in migration numbers, have significant defined post-study work rights and are recognised by the Australian people and government as significant contributors to the national society and economy.

American universities are, in general, significantly less international. Of the 157 US universities in those top 1,000, the mean proportion of overseas students is 13%. The highest proportion is 45% at Carnegie Mellon, with MIT on 34% and Columbia on 32%.

However, there’s no doubt that many US universities are targeting international student recruitment, notably from China, to replace falling domestic income, though it remains to be seen how deteriorating US–China trade relations will affect this approach.

China is at the other extreme. Of the 63 Chinese universities in those top 1,000, the mean proportion of overseas students is 5% and the highest proportions are Jinan with 25% and Peking with 16%.

The major bar to international student recruitment in China has been that the universities teach in Mandarin. English has been developed across China as the second language. Some of the newer universities, such as SUSTEC, are offering courses in English and it is likely that we will see international student recruitment grow in China.

South Korea has recently launched an elite university, KAIST, which teaches only in English and is launching itself in the international market. KAIST is also heavily focused on developing strategic partnerships with world-class universities and businesses from other countries.

The fact is that the competition for international students is increasing. Even without the UK’s visa complications, British universities cannot rely upon this as a reliable source of income in the coming decades.

The economic benefits

In Chapter 3 and earlier in this chapter, we have addressed many aspects of the economic benefits of university education, both to the individual and to society. We assert that universities make an enormous contribution to the economic strength and resilience of our society, and that universities need to change significantly in order to do this really well.

In summary, any national workforce requires adequate numbers of young people who are well trained to enter all of the key professions and businesses. And sophisticated education will be even more important in the artificial intelligence world of tomorrow where AI may well have a deleterious impact on a range of highly skilled jobs across the whole economy.

Any workforce shortages have significant economic and social consequences including economic failure in particular localities and the need for substantial immigration to provide workers in key sectors.¹⁴ For example, the current UK economy is suffering a deficiency of individuals with a sound grounding in STEM knowledge and skills, and a related paucity of high-level engineering graduates. For some professions, workforce planning requires a timeframe of decades and this is a major reason why countries, and so their governments, depend on an appropriate number of university graduates across a wide range of professions to populate the workforce in an optimal way.

A generation ago there was a broad acceptance that the main purpose for most students in going to university was to acquire an education at tertiary level that would include a more analytical and sophisticated mindset as well as specific professional training, if appropriate.

However, today there is an increasing view by many in government, notably in the UK, that the prime role of universities is to produce young people who fill ‘graduate-level’ jobs. These are defined in a highly technical way sometimes as crudely as by income at entry, rather than analytical or interactive skills or organising capacity, which are harder to quantify. We consider that the concept of ‘graduate-level’ jobs is difficult to define in a more intellectually valid way.

Such an approach can lead to an incredibly mediocre and simplistic, even dangerous and destructive, view that, if more graduates have been produced than are needed to fill so-called graduate-level jobs, too many people are going to university. This worldview sees universities simply as technical finishing schools, almost a sausage machine, which continue the school journey and churn young people out into the workforce.

The fact is that young people often take some years to find the career of their choice. When they graduate, they follow a range of journeys, not all of which are financially driven. For some time they may well do fairly unskilled jobs. This tends to generate populist headlines about ‘graduates working in Costa’ or ‘graduate underemployment’ that focus upon graduates who are in jobs that do not pay ‘graduate salaries’ or use ‘graduate-level skills’.

This narrative fuels the argument for reducing university student numbers but the point of a university education is that it has increased individuals’ degrees of freedom and the number of options they will have on their life journey. It should only be a good thing for society to have as many of its young people in this position.

This battle continues to be fought. One can only hope that the reductionists lose this battle to those with more insight and breadth.

Helping to form the new generation

Quite beyond the economic benefits of university education to both individuals and society as a whole, university education makes an absolutely fundamental contribution to the strengthening and development of a modern, liberal democratic society that empowers younger generations to take responsibility for, and build, the society of the future. From that point of view, the culture of universities is very important with a focus on debate, critical thinking and intellectual openness.

The extent to which this is true varies across societies around the world. There are many countries whose political systems and cultures could not accurately be described as ‘liberal democratic’ and that limit open discussion either directly or implicitly. There are others where study is strongly focused on, for example, the STEM subjects with a small or altogether absent focus upon the humanities and social sciences.

But whatever the nature of society, universities by their very nature challenge dominant cultures and doctrines as education, of whatever type, inevitably raises critical questions about the societies of which they are a part. Attempts to shut down dissent in universities, which a number of totalitarian regimes have sought to do at various times in history, have eventually been doomed to failure since the economic necessity of educated people cannot be isolated from the society as a whole. In addition, the necessarily international nature of academic study erodes the grip of any regime insulated from the rest of the world. And these challenges are not restricted to totalitarian regimes, as the histories of French universities in 1968 and US universities throughout the Vietnam war clearly demonstrate.

This approach ought also to guide universities’ international contacts. Such contacts inevitably mean that universities work in countries that do not follow a Western model of democracy and human rights. This can throw up difficult working challenges, for example in relation to the position of women in Saudi Arabia, freedom to publish in China or restrictions on research in other countries. And some argue that universities should never work in countries where there are serious human rights violations, and so promote an approach based on boycott.

We do not share that view. All educational organisations, and indeed others, face the same challenges. But the university mission and core values are central and it is vital to ensure that they are applied, as they have been, in the work that universities do around the world. The underlying principles have to be set out, understood and defended as clearly and unambiguously as possible, even when it can seem difficult to do so, and of course that is usually the case.

But the extension of educational opportunity and the raising of education standards in every country represents an expression of the liberal values that are at the heart of the university. The wider extension of educational contacts, and development of educational capacity and critical thinking, is of itself a significant contribution to weakening the grip of oppressive and restrictive regimes of a variety of types. On that basis, such contact should be strongly supported.

This vital role of universities in strengthening democratic and human values as well as fundamental individual freedoms makes it particularly important that universities in their academic and educational practice protect and seek to extend the democratic values that are at their core. As they form the new generation, it is essential that these values are maintained and strengthened. In the same way that universities have the duty to build the capacity and competence of students to make independent and informed judgments and not to be swept along by ignorant and misleading ‘fake news’, they have to inculcate the values of freedom and democracy.

And the best way to do that is to try to ensure that society is comprised of a well-educated and broadly thinking citizenship, a citizenship who can understand the great issues of the time and make considered and meaningful contributions that may influence those around them.

This encompasses a citizenship able to contribute to the political discussion in their countries around both local issues and the global grand challenges so important to us all in the years ahead. A citizenship who understand the importance of civic contributions themselves and volunteering and generosity as a part of their life journey. This is, of course, not only a university responsibility but any university worth its salt should work actively to strengthen these dimensions in its students.

From this point of view, tertiary education is a huge change agent for the better not just for the individual but also for the nation. One just has to look at the quality of public discourse in nations with reasonably high proportions of graduates to those with very few university graduates (who inevitably have a small middle class and a large and poorly educated working or peasant class). This used to be the situation in the West and is no longer so. All countries in the world are somewhere on this trajectory.

So, in short, the widely held acknowledgement of the clear link between a well-educated workforce and national prosperity is not enough. The strong national contribution of universities is about much more than a precise alignment between the numbers of graduating students and those who fill graduate-level jobs. The full university contribution is a much richer and more complex proposition in terms of building nations.

Values, free speech and democracy

In this context, it is absolutely vital that universities maintain these fundamental democratic values, however difficult that sometimes seems. And, in recent years, there has been increasing concern about threats to free speech and democracy in universities as extreme groups of different descriptions try to enforce their own anti-democratic values upon the wider university.

In the UK, for example, successive Universities Ministers expressed concern. In December 2017, Jo Johnson MP claimed that books were being removed from libraries, ‘undermining the principle of free speech’. The Department for Education was concerned that books by Holocaust denier David Irving were being moved within two university libraries. In February 2018. Johnson’s successor, Sam Gyimah MP, warned of a ‘creeping culture of censorship’ on university campuses.

In March 2018, The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights published the report of its Enquiry¹⁵ into ‘Freedom of Speech in Universities’. The report rightly asserted that universities must, within the law, be places of ‘open and uncensored debate’ and highlighted concerns that ‘intolerant attitudes’ threaten free speech in universities and could result in stopping free debate. Red tape, ‘excessive caution’ and confusion over what is permissible are as much of a problem as banning controversial speakers. The Committee’s Chair, Harriet Harman, said: ‘Students must respect the right of other students to say things, no matter how unpleasant, offensive or insulting. They can protest, but they can’t stop them.’¹⁶

In response to these concerns, in October 2018, the BBC published a survey,¹⁷ to which 120 universities responded, about books being removed from libraries, changes to courses and speakers being cancelled.

It turned out that, since 2010, there had been no instances of books being removed or banned and there had been seven student complaints about course content being in some way offensive or inappropriate, most of which had been rectified.

Sixteen universities had received formal complaints about speakers and nine events in all were cancelled including with controversial Islamic cleric Haitham al-Haddad, prominent professor Tariq Ramadan and a planned mayoral debate. The debate was due to include panel representation from the National Front and BNP and was cancelled because of planned demonstrations that caused ‘concerns for student, staff and public safety’.

Feminist writer Germaine Greer and LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell both delivered talks despite complaints about their presence. There have been cases – like those of YouTuber Sargon of Akkad and Maryam Namazie – where talks at London universities have been interrupted by protesters or hecklers.

Universities tend to have external speaker policies for any event taking place on campus, even ones hosted by students or unions. The problem comes if anticipated protests lead to events being cancelled, as has happened on a small number of occasions, or if fear of protest puts off people from booking potentially controversial speakers in the first place.

Six organisations are on the National Union of Students’ (NUS) official ‘no platform list’: al-Muhajiroun, British National Party (BNP), English Defence League (EDL), Hizb-ut-Tahir, Muslim Public Affairs Committee and National Action.

These issues are complicated because, though there is already a duty on the higher education sector to secure free speech within the law, universities have other legal duties that can come into conflict with their duty to secure free speech. In particular, they must have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ under the Prevent strategy – part of the government’s counter-terror laws. They also have a duty of care to students and staff.

We believe that the government was wrong to have included universities in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 because of the danger that interpretation of that legislation can seriously inhibit freedom of speech in universities. Among others, Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former Head of MI5, opposed this aspect of the legislation.

Arising from these concerns, guidance¹⁸ on these matters was produced in February 2019 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with input from the National Union of Students, Universities UK, Charity Commission for England and Wales, Office for Students, Independent HE, Guild HE, Commission for Countering Extremism and Home Office. The guidance is designed to set out the legal rights and obligations to help protect lawful free speech on campuses. Both the outcome and the process by which it was agreed seem to us the right way to approach this difficult issue and make it clear that universities can and should robustly protect freedom of speech on their campuses. This has to be a high university priority and there should be no weaknesses in conceding to the threats of those who want to close down open discussion and debate.

In a similar way, it is very important for universities to be robust about ensuring open academic debate about history, including in areas that are rightly bound to be controversial, such as the history and ethics of the British Empire or of slavery. There are, of course, difficult areas such as the historic funding of universities and physical representations of their past. In our opinion, they are best addressed by open discussion of the history and practical commitment to a present and future which fully respects all human rights and values, rather than conceding to those who effectively want to suggest that the history never happened.

We have addressed these issues in a UK context but believe they also need consideration in all countries. As we say above, there are significant different challenges in different countries where the history and culture vary substantially.

Teaching

The quality of teaching and pastoral care is central to success in the fields that we have addressed in this chapter. We have emphasised the responsibility of universities to work actively to prepare their students for the changing world. This applies both in the narrow economic sense and in the broader sense of providing an education in which teaching, pastoral guidance and welfare are exceptionally important.

This is why, in Chapter 4, we emphasise the teaching role of universities and argue that this needs to be given real priority, which we do not consider to be the case in all universities. It is obviously the case that the teaching challenges vary very significantly between students of different kinds, where social and educational background, intellectual capacity, learning location, aspiration and experience, and language may often be very different and require very different teaching approaches.

Along with the higher level of commitment that is required, more research is needed into the best forms of teaching for different students in different circumstances, which then needs to be applied.

We support the pressure that governments are applying to get universities to focus upon their teaching quality, though we acknowledge that a great deal of work is still needed to find the kinds of metric and feedback that will genuinely raise standards. We address some of these issues in Chapter 4 and it is sufficient here to argue that the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) needs continued development and improvement, but not resistance.

Even more than the cost of university education, we think that students are looking for the highest quality support in their learning journey at university, so that they maximise the benefit they get from their course. And their success in that respect is also the best outcome for society as a whole.