Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch?aped Keir Starmer this week in devoting part of her conference speech to announcing “radical reforms” to higher education.
But her “new” proposal bore a striking resemblance to?one put forward in the party’s 2024 manifesto.
Both pledged to increase funding for apprenticeships by closing university courses with the worst outcomes. Badenoch’s language around “rip-off courses” has also been?used repeatedly in the Tory playbook?in recent years.
During its 14 years in power – under nine different universities ministers – the Tories raised tuition fees to ?9,000, launched a new regulator, created a new method for measuring teaching, established a new lifelong learning funding system – and ended maintenance grants.
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They were in power for so long they removed number controls, temporarily reintroduced them during the pandemic and then scrapped them all over again – and changed the student loan repayment terms three times.
But now it appears that the UK’s most successful and oldest party might have run out of ideas for higher education.
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Asked by?糖心Vlog?via email what the party should do about universities, Michael Gove, education secretary when tuition fees were increased in 2010, said he had “nothing really interesting to say”. Neither did Laura Trott, whose first speech as shadow education secretary at the conference avoided any mention of universities.
Part of the problem is that Labour may have stolen their lunch by?scrapping its own 50 per cent participation target?the week before in favour of more apprenticeships.
David Willetts, universities minister under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition from 2010 to 2014, told?糖心Vlog?that the effect of Starmer’s policy was merely to raise the target for higher education participation from 50 per cent to 67 per cent.
“What the Conservatives say is we don’t believe in targets but we want people making well-informed choices. If there is someone who can benefit from participation in education, they should not be turned away as a result of controls on the number of places. I think that should be the authentic Conservative position.”
He also has mixed views around apprenticeships and?is cautious of the “nostalgia” and “endless popularity” around them.
‘All my Christmases come at once’
But Robert Halfon, executive director of Make UK and the penultimate Tory universities minister, described Starmer’s announcement as “all my Christmases come at once” and a continuation of the work his party had done.
“I don't care whether it’s a Conservative prime minister or Labour prime minister, when it comes to skills, I’m not party political focused, I just care about what’s good for skills. I’ve always felt that the Blair target was wrong. It should be skills, skills, skills rather than university, university, university.”
Going forward, Halfon wants the Tories to “go further” than they have in the past and further than Labour has under Starmer. “I think what we need to do is to champion apprenticeships even more than we have done.”
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He wants to see the party “rocket boost” degree apprenticeships and cut down some of the disincentivising regulation around them. But unlike Willetts, he does want a target set – of 50 per cent of students doing a degree apprenticeship.
Labour also revealed that their 6 per cent tax on international student fee income will go towards funding maintenance grants.
Halfon said universities will have been surprised by such a “hardcore” policy from a Labour government. He expected that it will “shake things up” but doubted whether smaller universities will be able to pass on the cost to their students.
Willetts welcomed the return of maintenance grants but he warned that the “onerous” levy was not the right way to pay for them, with a risk it could deter international students.
And Jo Johnson, universities minister from 2014 to 2018 and again in 2019, warned that many overseas students who would have studied in the UK would go elsewhere – damaging the country’s scientific capabilities and restricting options for domestic students.
“The last thing our HE funding system needs is another cross-subsidy. It is obviously not sensible to tie funding for maintenance grants and all the other policy priorities to international student tuition income in an increasingly volatile domestic policy environment and in a climate of heightened geopolitical uncertainty.
“If the overseas student flows slump, does this mean the value of these newly restored maintenance grants automatically will as well? And funding for skills too? The levy is clearly a sloppy and poorly thought-out proposal,” he said.
Johnson may find himself at odds with the likes of Neil O’Brien, a former shadow education minister who is now the Tories’ policy guru, who?warned at the conference?it is “unsustainable” to continue admitting as many international students as the UK does.
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Badenoch said she wanted to abolish “the status quo” around higher education – but what that means?for the structure of the sector and funding is unclear. The Tory leader, who spoke of the “debt trap” that students face, is also unlikely to propose increasing tuition fees – which could disappoint former ministers.
Tories’ ‘catastrophic error’
Willetts is very frank on the mistakes of his party – blaming the likes of Halfon for feeding misconceptions by saying the cost-of-living crisis prevented the uplifting of tuition fees, and criticising the “catastrophic error” made by Theresa May to increase the repayment threshold, as well as the significant damage to social mobility then-chancellor Sajid Javid caused by abolishing maintenance grants.
A regret of his own was not taking the “tough decisions early on”, such as indexing tuition to inflation or securing a mandated review every five years to adjust fees and repayment terms. He said there had been too much “ad hocery” and too much “bouncing around of repayment terms” under successive governments.
However, although it is “unloved”, the current system of finance was the most stable option, said the president of the Resolution Foundation – although he would like to see fees increased, with more of a focus on explaining to people?that?it is not money borrowed upfront.
John Penrose, chair of the Conservative Party Policy Forum and a former MP, praised Willetts for helping create “one of the more enduring and long-term successful cross-party elements” of British policy. But during a fringe session, he said that system?would?need changing or even more university finances would come under serious pressure.
Former science minister George Freeman?told delegates that the Conservatives should advocate for top universities to be allowed to charge more in tuition.
Halfon said he would have?preferred to have had a graduate tax?rather than a loan, which would have been “cleaner and easier”. “I also think it was unfair to ask millions of people who don’t go to university to subsidise the higher education of those who do.”
With?the party now out of government, Halfon said he wanted to see a new system to keep up with a “changing world” – one with more specialist universities and a fewer courses.
“The model where you have lots of universities fairly near each other teaching similar courses, I think that is going out the window…I just don’t think it’s cost-effective in this day and age.”
Instead, he highlighted “disruptor universities” such as the Dyson Institute?and?NMITE?and wants to see the sector geared towards skills and jobs – with every course involving work experience.
“There are many universities doing great things…but I think that a lot of the sector is operating in a black cab world when everyone’s moved to Uber. It’s virtually the same system as when I was a student.”
Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, took time to single out the UK’s universities?as the best in the world?during his conference speech. In sharp contrast, Reform leader Nigel Farage?accused them of “poisoning the minds” of students?during his own speech.
If Labour has copied the Tories’ policies on apprenticeships, Farage has followed their lead rhetorically and occupied much of the ground to the right.?Reform has also poached?a growing number of Tories,?including former universities minister Andrea Jenkyns.
Freeman warned that Reform will attack universities and “clean up” in the next general election if the Conservatives fail to make the case for why higher education needs to change.
The Conservative Party has a particular problem with students. A cheer went up in Manchester when the Keele University Young Conservatives celebrated their?highest number?of members for a decade – 11.
Badenoch, who is popular with the youth wing of the party, has clearly attempted to rectify this with a new policy to scrap stamp duty, and Willetts urged for more to be done within the university sector. “There has to be an offer for young people, and participation in HE should be a part of it.”
But Badenoch’s ideas for higher education appear to be a continuation of those put forward by Rishi Sunak’s collapsing government – and critical of a “rigged system” her party helped put in place. They risk being boxed in by Reform’s attacks on universities and Labour following through on their push for apprenticeships.
There may have been lots of space in the sparsely populated Manchester Central venue but for higher education policy at least, the Tories appear to have limited room to manoeuvre. Outside the convention centre, a line of black cabs was waiting.
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