This article was taken from the January issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
In 1999, Tony Blair pledged to get 50 per cent of young people into higher education by 2010. The 1999 figure was 39.2 per cent, now it's rocketed to 39.8 per cent. At this rate, we'll hit the target around 2123.
But why 50 per cent? Blair didn't tell us. Maybe the idea was that since university education is good, more of it must be better.
In which case, why not 60 per cent, or 80? In fact, it's time to get tough on higher education and the assumptions behind it.
Eating pretzels may be good, but that doesn't mean it's best to stuff as many as possible. In 2009-10, universities in England and Wales will bag £8bn of public money. Spending per student as a fraction of per-capita GDP is roughly comparable with New Zealand, Finland and Ireland. But once you've adjusted for GDP, those countries are doing far better, as measured by their showing in the top 500 universities rankings. And accounting procedures can be chaotic - HEFCE, the universities' funding body, is trying to claw back a £50m overpayment to London Met, whose estimate of student numbers proved optimistic. Meanwhile, students graduate with debts averaging around £20K, and fees will soar after the election.
Campus assets need to work harder through two-year degrees.
Course structures should be loosened. Costs - and hence fees - should be cut by virtualising learning wherever possible: the googlisation of print books is booming, as are online lectures: see
fora.tv or academicearth.org. What Demos calls the "edgeless" university is becoming reality. Last month the wholly virtual and free International University of the People launched. Even traditional unis like Oxford are catching on, podcasting lectures via iTunesU.
Of course, education has always been used in Britain to take youngsters out of circulation. The 50 per cent target partly reflects this aim. But that can be done by putting people through national service (civil or military), as in Germany and Finland, which promotes social cohesion and civic-mindedness - and imparts skills training. One thing the 50 per cent policy overlooked was the high ratio of vocational degrees in places like Japan.
Oft-ridiculed subjects, like hamburger technology or golf-course design, at least teach vocational skills. The state should loan-fund vocational degrees, but call time on pointless qualifications.
Despite Blair's famous mantra, he never really understood education. Historically, the whole point of university education has been that it is useless. Civilised societies from the ancients to ancien régime France have kept classes of useless people, of whom I'm proud to be one. There's no reason why this noble tradition shouldn't continue. We just don't need nearly so many of them, or at such public cost.
Glen Newey is professor of politics and international relations at Keele University, and currently a visiting research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Read other articles from the Rebooting Britain series - Tax people back into the cities - Teach kids to see in four dimensions - Exercise a green foreign policy - Open democracy to the online masses - Reinvent the way we live together - Live life as a lottery - Pull the plug on broadcast regulation - Enact beta versions of new laws - Make carbon emissions hurt - Make policy using prediction markets - Transform cities into green jungles - Promote another crash - Ditch Twitter: it's dangerous for democracy - Encourage failure - Make education more flexible - Set government data (radically) free
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
