A University Education

By David Willetts

Oxford University Press, £25

Review by Jonathan Wright

FORMER Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts is chipper about many aspects of British higher education. In 1962 there were 118,000 university students; in 2015/16 there were 1,741,000. This astonishing expansion has been "one of the great achievements of post-war Western societies". He urges us to "go still further with more students and an even wider range of universities". Don't believe all the chatter about silly courses (it's all media hype, apparently) and don't worry too much about the fact that three out of 10 graduates announce that they could do their job perfectly well without a degree.

All of this has to be paid for, of course, but Willetts insists that an equitable approach is available, at least in England. He announces that "income-related graduate repayment is a fair and progressive way of financing education" and that "we have at last ended up with a model which properly delivers and funds what the great reformers of the early sixties envisaged". Willetts is dismissive of the Scottish alternative. He chides Alex Salmond for announcing that "the rocks will melt with the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scottish students". Willetts argues that the percentage rise in students from lower social echelons has been greater south of the border and notes that Scottish universities have developed a penchant for English students who bring their handsome funding with them. Scottish "claims for moral superiority”, he concludes, “are rather hollow".

Willetts does not go full tilt with the Panglossianism, however. He sees room for improvement, across the British system, not least as regards the quality of teaching. While singing the praises of research conducted in many institutions, he worries that using this as the chief source of prestige may be misguided. He’s absolutely right to suggest that "an academic can get onto a treadmill where the task is just to keep churning out the papers for the peer-reviewed journals". The mechanisms of assessing research have become ridiculously oppressive, scholars feel obliged to rush to publication and, on some levels, the quality of the product has declined. This, though, is the fault of the system and need not undermine the vital symbiosis between teaching and research.

Willetts's ambivalence about the dominance of research-led universities perhaps reflects his suspicion of a culture in which academics raise alarms against “markets, managers and ministers". He appears to regard such people as obstinate purists. Though all for universities' autonomy, Willetts can't quite understand why they are often allergic to market ideas or to seeing students as, to some extent, consumers.

The ideological underpinnings of Willetts's analysis are not hard to spot but at least he offers a wide range of tweaks and solutions. Embrace a global vision, get smart about technology, and buy into the concept of "heterogeneity". Alternative providers of higher education are to be encouraged, and vocational courses are a blessing.

Willetts is certainly passionate and he moves far beyond a stale utilitarian perspective by rhapsodising about the broader cultural benefits of a university education. Even his critics will be impressed by his grasp of the detail. He explains that "as a politician and a minister I was always, rightly, being told of the importance of the evidence-based policy” that demanded “rational empirical analysis." One suspects that when he was Minister in the coalition government he was the kind of incumbent who drove the Sir Humphrey Applebys to distraction: he doubtless knew as much, if not more, than his civil servants. These talents are deployed to great advantage in this fact-rich book.

Willetts also makes various attractive suggestions for the future, not least his desire to eradicate the blight of early specialisation. Here, he has kinder words for Scotland with its broader secondary education in the final years and its four-year university courses which allow students to cast a wider net in the early stages. He wants future English teenagers to take five A levels which must include maths and at least one humanities subject. Perhaps this will narrow "the gap between the sciences and the humanities and the deep ignorance amongst so many British adults of what lies on the other side of the divide". That, at least, is one goal to toast at the class reunions although, before too long, you may have to hire stadiums to accommodate the crowds.