In this article, student finance campaigner, Paul Wiltshire, argues that better graduate outcome data will not be enough to fix the fundamental flaws of mass Higher Education.
Note: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Intergenerational Foundation. Paul Wiltshire’s full report can be read here.
Will more statistics fix mass Higher Education?
You don’t need to scratch around too much to notice that the Mass HE policy of the last 30 years is producing ever more ‘losers’ compared to ‘winners’. Of course, many will enjoy their degree and sail into a decent well-paid career, but a growing proportion of graduates are being failed by the HE sector. They are emerging into a jobs market that doesn’t value them or their degree; and many will be stuck in a graduate debt trap for life with no career benefit to show for it.
The Government has indicated that it may have finally noticed that Mass HE is going awry and has dropped its 50% HE participation target, but the prevailing view is that to fix the problem all that is needed is better Graduate outcome data. There are a number of changes proposed for 2026, largely involving an increase in detailed granular course level outcome statistics being produced and making them more widely available on UCAS and for them to form part of the Office for Students’ course quality evaluation process. The assumption being that school leavers will make rational decisions based on a value judgment about whether to enrol in university, and what course to choose, so that the HE market will self-regulate %HE participation rates to the ‘correct’ level.
My new report “Why Graduate outcome statistics won’t fix the malfunctioning bloated HE Sector market” instead claims that the HE market is stuck so firm in a groove of incessant growth, that the proposed extra blizzard of detailed statistics will make little difference; as the commercially motivated HE sector will continue to be able to manipulate the HE market so that % participation remains high.
The pitfalls of graduate statistics
The first problem with graduate statistics is that they are never going to be that accurate for a multitude of reasons, and it is wrong for the DfE statisticians to give the impression otherwise. Not least of which is the age-old statistical problem of proving causation as opposed to merely correlation. One simple example is the ‘M&S Buyer conundrum’ i.e. a Graduate with a career in buying at M&S may have completed a History degree; so that what they actually studied in their degree had no relevance to the job they end up doing. But Graduate statistics will give the impression that it is appropriate to attribute their pay and employability entirely to the fact that they are a Graduate and have studied History. Yet they could have started working for M&S at 18 as a trainee and still had the same career, so there could be little or no real causal effect of the process of studying for a History degree.
The second main problem is that the statistics tend to overestimate the benefits of HE which is fuelling a positive societal narrative that feeds through to the school leavers. These statistics are often deceptive for a multitude of reasons. There is the aforementioned problem of correlation not causation, the survey questions used are often misleading and the main report that has been highly influential issued by the IFS from 2020 regarding undergraduate lifetime earnings has many flaws according to my analysis.
Why do students apply to university?
But no matter what the detailed course data statistics supposedly reveal, it won’t improve decision making if the school leavers are never going to look at it anyway. Students’ decisions are primarily motivated by other factors such as societal and peer pressure, their desire for independence that university offers, as well as the ease of entry due to ever-increasing acceptance rates. Research has shown that university applicants have minimal understanding of the lifelong consequences of student debt, yet they are acutely aware of the lack of alternatives for non-graduates.
There is a great deal of this type of data already on Discover Uni, which is largely being ignored. Why would pumping out even more make a difference?
The Mickey Mouse scapegoat
Perhaps ironically, the only function of the course level statistics will be to provide cover for the HE sector from being regularly attacked for so-called Mickey Mouse courses. As the existence of the supposedly credible and useful data can be held up by them as a way of enabling bad courses to be whittled out through ‘championing’ school leaver consumer choice. However, it is unlikely to result in any more than a handful of courses ever being closed down. It certainly won’t serve to regulate the %HE participation rates to a sensible level as the % of school leavers choosing to become students each year won’t change at all, which plays nicely into the hands of the commercially motivated HE sector growth and profit imperative.
Recommendations
There are many recommendations in my report to reduce and improve the Government’s graduate statistical output. But even if these improvements are made, there is a limit to what these statistics will ever produce in the way of answers to the complex issue of whether so many should go to university, as it is simply not possible to untangle the intertwined causal web of factors by statistical data alone.
The politicians need to take a step back from the false notion, claimed by the HE Sector and its supporters, that outcome statistics are going to solve the malfunctioning of the HE market (which always lead to too many graduates being failed); and realise that deciding on the optimal %HE participation rate needs to be a political choice which gives due regard to the below home truths about HE: –
A- That we are not doing school leavers any favours by interpreting the Robbins principle from 1963 “courses of higher education should be available to anyone who is qualified by ability and attainment and wishes to pursue them“ whereby we are treating ‘qualified by ability‘ as having almost no lower-level threshold of academic ability at all and that virtually everybody should qualify – hence minimum entry standards need to be introduced to avoid the harms of a bloated Mass HE system.
B – Nowhere near 50% of the jobs that need doing in our society need the job candidates to have spent an extra three years in study beyond 18 – hence drastic caps on student numbers need to be implemented.
C- Learning on the job can be just as effective, and often more so, than classroom-based teaching, so we need employers to be prepared to take on more 18-year-olds. Employers need to be banned from advertising jobs as graduate-only where studying 3 years for a degree isn’t absolutely necessary. And even if an element of formal study is required, then shorter courses can work better, they can start at A-level instead of post-18, and can replace the need for the default option of 3-year degrees for far too many of our young adults.