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SOCRATES Making it Work:
European Universities and Lifelong Learning
National report: England and Wales
by John Payne
and Stephen McNair
SOCRATES Making it Work
England & Wales National Report
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England & Wales National Report
Foreword
This is the ‘national’ report on lifelong learning in the Higher Education system of England. It focuses
on:
what is changing in relation to higher education and lifelong learning,
the implications for policy at all levels (institutional, local, regional, national and European),
the implications for institutional structures and cultures.
Although the term “lifelong learning” is increasingly used in policy debate in Britain, it is interpreted
very differently by different groups, and it has no formal legal status. For the purposes of this report we
take it that a change in higher education relevant to lifelong learning is one which leads to one or more
of the following:
enlarging
- involving more people in learning
lengthening
- involving people in learning for a longer period of their lives
widening
- involving a wider range of people in learning
The report is concerned mainly with Higher Education in England. The history and organisation of
universities in Scotland and Northern Ireland is very different, and there are also some significant,
though smaller, differences in Wales. Where statistics refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland, this is made clear in the text.
The glossary explains terms and abbreviations which may not be obvious to readers from other
countries and cultures.
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Contents
Foreword
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Contents
4
Summary
Key Features
Policy Discourses
Participation
Institutions
Learning Experience
Funding
Partnership
Conclusion
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Chapter 1 - Context and Purposes
The meaning of “Lifelong learning” in the UK
The definition of ‘Higher Education’
Functions and status within higher education
Higher education, lifelong learning and the education systems of England and Wales
The boundaries of higher education
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Chapter 2 - The Policy Framework
The policy debate
Government policies and institutional policies
Lifelong learning and ideology
Sectoral policies
Where does lifelong learning policy come from?
Summary: the driving forces of policy change
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Chapter 3 - Participation
Ways of measuring
Headline figures
Part-time and full-time
Social class
Labour market status
Gender
Age
Ethnic Origin
Disability
Employment outcomes after graduation
Summary: Changing Participation
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Chapter 4 - Institutional structures
Homogeneity and diversity of institutions
Two ‘special case’ institutions
New institutional forms?
Planning processes
Lifelong learning within HEIs
Types of higher education
Academic staff
Quality issues
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Chapter 5 - The learning experience
The Context
Admissions requirements or practices
Advice, guidance and information services
Subjects studied
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Curricular processes
Levels of learning
The locations of learning
Modes of study and learning processes
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Chapter 6 - Funding
Funding of individual learners
The funding of institutions
Distribution of funds within institutions
Resources for lifelong learning
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Chapter 7 - Partnership and Co-operation
Levels of formal education
Knowledge
Formality
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Chapter 8 - Conclusions
Diversity and Hierarchy
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Necessary Changes
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References
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Glossary
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Summary
Key Features
The term “Lifelong Learning” is a new one in British national policymaking circles. It first began to be
used in the late 1990s, and was formally adopted by the current Government in 1998 in a major new
policy paper “The Learning Age”. However “lifelong learning” has no formal legal or institutional
status, and is used as an “umbrella” term for a wide range of activity, of which higher education forms
a relatively small part.
The majority of higher education students in England and Wales are “mature” (over 21yrs.) at entry,
and most institutions carry out a substantial volume of continuing professional development work with
mature and work based learners. Despite this, however, perceptions of higher education in England
and Wales, both within the system and in the wider community, remain dominated by its role in
educating young people.
Although institutions are all (with one exception) substantially dependent on State funding, they are
very diverse, and they compete for reputation and for students, which leads to unofficial hierarchies of
status. The result of this is that the highest status attaches to those institutions with high research
reputations and those which succeed in recruiting the most able young people. Both these reinforce
traditional stereotypes, and tend to focus attention away from the lifelong agenda. Although a number
of institutions seek to challenge these norms, they do so in opposition to the mainstream of public and
professional discourse.
Policy Discourses
There are three broad elements of Government policy which have a particular relevance to higher
education. The first is economic competitiveness, which dominated Government interests in the 1980s
and early 1990s, and continues to be a high priority. The second is social inclusion, which became of
much greater importance after the change of Government in 1997, but the special contribution of
higher education (as distinct from other sectors) to this remains unclear. The third: a concern for
cultural dissemination and citizenship, features in the rhetoric of Government statements, but attracts
much less policy attention.
Alongside, and to some extent in tension with, these Government priorities, is a powerful academic
culture. Here the major concern is with the maintenance of academic and professional cultures and
values through international research, and the induction into those cultures of the most able school
leavers through teaching.
Government, and many institutional managers, have been seeking since the early 1980s to make higher
education more responsive to its policy priorities, while maintaining institutional and academic
autonomy. There is a good deal of evidence of change taking place, but it is very uneven, and
institutional responses remain diverse and sometimes contradictory.
Participation
Higher education in the UK has expanded rapidly since the mid 1980s, in response to concern about
economic competitiveness, and in the light of international indicators showing much lower
participation rates in the UK than in comparable countries. This expansion was seen as a response to
economic priorities, rather than to a lifelong learning need, or to a concern with social equity, and
expansion of student numbers was much more rapid than planned, causing a variety of disruptions.
The distinction between full-time and part-time students is of major importance in understanding the
nature of participation. Full timers, who represent two thirds of those on first degree programmes are
largely young, and have traditionally received different (usually more generous) public support. The
norm for such students is to leave home to study in another part of the country for three years, whereas
part-time students are much more likely to study at an institution near their home. National data on
part-time students (mainly mature, returners, work based and with substantial numbers from
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traditionally excluded groups) is generally much less detailed and less reliable (which reflects their
perceived marginal status).
Participation is heavily influenced by social class, age and disability. For the higher socio-economic
groups participation in HE is now the norm for young people, but this is not at all the case for lower
groups. Participation correlates strongly with age, and although there is no maximum age limit for
entry (and there are HE students in their 90s), public financial support is not available for those
entering after the age of 55 years. Most ethnic minorities are well represented (in most cases they are
proportionally over represented in the student population). Ethnic minority students are, however,
strongly clustered in a relatively small number of institutions, mainly in the major conurbations, and
there are some groups, including women of Bangladeshi origin, and young Afro-Caribbean men, who
are seriously underrepresented.. Disabled students are generally underrepresented, although there have
been a number of initiatives designed to make their participation easier, through provision of support
services and modifications to buildings and equipment. The gender imbalance of the student body
which was very marked until the late 1970s has now been rectified, and women constitute a slight
majority at all levels except full time postgraduate study. However, there are notable gender
imbalances among students in particular subject areas.
A particular focus of expansion in recent years has been in work based learning, enabling those already
in employment to study part-time alongside work, sometimes in their workplaces.
Institutions
All institutions are substantially dependent on public funds, but national policy is to encourage
institutional diversity, rather than to impose a single pattern of higher education. Funding mechanisms
therefore seek to reward a variety of kinds of institutional mission, but they give particular emphasis to
international level research. Each institution sets its own policies and practices, and quality assurance
processes seek to measure performance against those expressed aims, rather than national norms.
Institutions range in size from a few hundred students to over 30,000, and while the majority of
students attend institutions which offer a very broad range of subjects, many institutions specialise in a
few (like medicine, the visual arts or drama). The Open University, (the largest institution, with over
100,000 students) is the only one to provide all its teaching by distance learning, though most
institutions do some distance teaching. Birkbeck College is the only one to provide only part-time
programmes targeted at mature learners.
Continuing education has traditionally been part of the mission of most institutions, but it has been
organised and delivered in very different ways in different institutions. While some institutions have
separate departments, of “extramural studies” or “adult and continuing education”, for example, others
operate through central support units which co-ordinate, broker or promote activity, and others simply
distribute programmes for mature or part-time learners throughout the institution as a routine part of
the Department’s work. This pattern is in constant change.
Although the preservation of institutional and academic autonomy is widely regarded as necessary,
Government has, directly and through its funding Councils, sought to encourage change, and has
probably been more interventionist than most other Governments in the EU. However, attempts to use
central policy levers, through regulation, funding additional places or development programmes of
various kinds, have had mixed, and sometimes unexpected, effects.
During the 1990s Government has intervened much more than previously in the quality assurance
regimes in all education in the UK. One reason for this in higher education is the need to maintain
public confidence in the quality of teaching and research at a time of rapid expansion, and it has
produced a much more open system, with reports being made public on institutional quality assurance
systems (“quality audit”), and on teaching quality in individual subjects and institutions (“quality
assessment”). While this has made it possible for individuals and employers to have a clearer view of
institutional and course strengths and weaknesses, many of the indicators used do not reflect the
priorities of lifelong learning.
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Learning Experience
The rapid expansion of student numbers in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to a severe reduction in
the staff:student ratios of higher education. This has had a significant, but largely unmeasured, impact
on the learning experience. Although some policymakers have sought to encourage institutions to
address this problem strategically, looking at new ways of delivering learning to a wider and more
diverse clientele, most development has been piecemeal, and some institutions have changed little.
One important development has been the modularisation of the curriculum, with most institutions now
offering programmes in a form which allows students (in theory more often than practice) to pursue
individually tailored programmes drawing from several traditional “courses” or even institutions. This
raises a major issue about how to maintain intellectual coherence when many students are pursuing
individually designed programmes, and students themselves are much more diverse in age, social
background and ambitions, and are no longer part of a single cohort all studying broadly the same
material over several years. There has been much discussion about how to develop guidance and
tutoring processes to assist with this, but less actual development on the ground.
The nature of the learning experience is substantially affected by the competitive admissions processes,
whereby those institutions or subject areas with high reputation can be very selective in choosing who
to admit, while others have to make major change to adapt their ways of working to a less selective
intake. This operates at both institutional and subject level, and entry requirements are typically lower
in subjects such as Physics and Engineering, where student demand is low, and high in medicine and
some humanities, where it is high. The most commonly used measure of the “quality” of entrants to
higher education is their scores in the “A level” school leaving examination, but most mature entrants
enter by other routes. As a result, where demand exceeds places, institutions often prefer to recruit
school leavers with high A level scores, and recruiting non-traditional students (mature, from ethnic
minorities or excluded communities) tends to be seen as a “second best” option.
There has been substantial national intervention to encourage the use of information and
communications technologies (ICTs) in higher education, and the four Funding Councils for HE in the
UK have jointly supported the development of a national network to support distance learning, the
joint development of teaching and learning materials, and the promotion of innovative approaches to
teaching, learning and research. These have clearly had an effect, although individual institutional
cultures and traditional practices have resisted major change. A growing number of institutions are
now using ICTs to provide distance learning programmes for students outside the UK.
Funding
All public sector HE institutions in the UK depend substantially on public funding, which is channelled
through two routes. The largest element is channelled through the Funding Councils for England and
for Wales, while the bulk of student fees are paid by central Government through Local Authorities.
Individual full time students are required to pay a proportion of the fees (subject to a means test) while
part-time students must pay all fees themselves.
Although the Funding Councils are appointed by Government, they are not subject to detailed direction
(although the annual Ministerial “letter of guidance” has become more prescriptive in recent years).
The majority of Funding Council resource is allocated by formula according to numbers of students (at
different rates for different subjects), and in relation to numbers of staff for research, at rates based on
the institution’s rating in the five yearly “Research Assessment Exercise”. Recently the Funding
Councils have weighted the teaching formula to fund part-time, mature, and disabled students at a
higher rate, and they have announced their intention to add a further weighting in respect of students
from socially disadvantaged areas. In 1999 a new fund will reflect for the first time institutions’ work
with local and regional industry and communities. It has been suggested that this might, in time, come
to form a “third leg” of the funding method, alongside and perhaps with equal status with teaching and
research.
These latest developments are stimulating institutions to pay greater attention to some aspects of the
lifelong learning agenda, especially since institutions are required to have published policies for
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widening participation and plans for community involvement if they are to receive the additional
funding.
Partnership
The dominant policy culture of the 1980s introduced market notions into most areas of public life, and
this led to the stimulation of competition, for students and in research, between HE institutions. More
recently there has been increased emphasis on partnership, encouraging institutions to seek
complementary skills and expertise in other HE institutions, in other educational and community
organisations, and in the private sector. Most HE institutions are now actively involved in a wide
range of such partnerships. This includes partnerships with further education institutions to enable
learners to begin their higher education in more familiar local surroundings, to provide new access
routes for students without traditional entry qualifications, and to change public perceptions of higher
education and its relevance to everyday life.
The 1990s have also seen the emergence of a range of new private sector providers of higher education
level teaching. Large firms like British Aerospace and the car parts producer Unipart have launched
their own “universities” to provide a wide range of higher education teaching and research for their
own staff, often in partnership with public sector institutions. At present this is a relatively small but
growing element of provision, and it frequently ignores traditional sectoral and national boundaries,
offering education at a variety of levels including both higher and further education.
There has also been some development of partnership with community and voluntary organisations to
deliver learning programmes to their members or the communities which they serve. Such initiatives
most commonly stem from adult or continuing education departments of Universities, and represent
small but important part of the changing pattern of provision. Government has recently sought to
encourage the development of local and regional planning involving all public and private sector
education providers through “Local Lifelong Learning Partnerships”.
Conclusion
Generally the response of English and Welsh higher education to lifelong learning has not been overtly
hostile, but it has been very uneven, reflecting the autonomy and diversity of institutions, and their
response to their perceptions of their own position in a competitive market for teaching, research and
delivery of other services (like consultancy to industry). It has also been confused by the very rapid
change in the overall environment, with a rapid expansion of traditional student numbers, a reduction
in unit of resource and of Government financial support, and the growing international competition in
both research and student recruitment. Through exhortation and funding levers, government has been
encouraging developments to make curriculum more flexible, to widen admission and to improve the
quality of teaching and learning, but despite their hold on funding, government priorities are only one
of many pressures on institutions, and Government policy itself is not always consistent in its focus
and impact.
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Chapter 1 - Context and Purposes
The meaning of “Lifelong learning” in the UK
Until recently the term lifelong learning was only used by a limited group of people whose
professional interest was in the study of post-compulsory1 education and training. As public policy
interest in the field began to increase in the early 1990s, the British Government sought to establish the
term “lifetime learning” to distinguish what it saw as a uniquely British approach. However, in 1997,
the incoming Labour government adopted more widely recognised international term, “lifelong
learning” and made it a significant thrust of government education policy. In early 1998 the
Government published its policy paper The Learning Age which laid out a national strategy for lifelong
learning.
“Lifelong learning” in England does not represent a kind of institution, or a legal entity. Rather, it is
used as an “umbrella” term, linking together a wide range of activities, including the work of
compulsory schooling, post-compulsory further and higher education, industrial training and informal
community education for adults.
The current policy debate is driven by three priorities. One is the need to overcome social exclusion. In
this area education is seen as a means to enable the potentially excluded to remain within the
mainstream of society, and to help the excluded to re-enter it. Furthermore, exclusion from education is
itself an element of social exclusion. This priority is of greater importance to Government than to the
other stakeholders in the system, and does not feature strongly in the concerns of most of the higher
status institutions.
The second priority is the response to changes in the world of work, with technological change, and
declining numbers of low skilled jobs, creating a need to improve the employability of adults with low
skills, with a perceived need to move towards a high skills economy, and to regularly update the skills
and knowledge of the majority of the working population. This priority is a major concern for
Government, and this is shared by many institutional managers, by the employer community and some
academics.
The third priority concerns the civilising role for education, which the current Secretary of State, David
Blunkett, endorses in his introduction to the government’s Green Paper on lifelong learning:
As well as securing our economic future, learning has a wider contribution. It helps
make ours a civilised society, develops the spiritual side of our lives and promotes active
citizenship. Learning enables people to play a full part in their community. It
strengthens the family, the neighbourhood and consequently the nation. It helps us fulfil
our potential and opens doors to a love of music, art and literature. That is why we
value learning for its own sake as well as for the quality of opportunity it brings. (DfEE,
1998a:7)
This priority is shared by a political community and a relatively small minority of higher education
staff, mainly those with a strong adult education background. It does not figure strongly in the
concerns of institutional managers or most academics, despite its links to some traditional notions of
higher education.
In some senses the first two themes are converging. A major focus of social inclusion policies is
employability, i.e. encouraging people to acquire skills which will enable them to enter the labour
market. Yet government policy contains a number of ambiguities, sometimes stressing an agenda of
social inclusion, sometimes an agenda of vocational education and training. Gustavsson (1997) has
emphasised how these ambiguities operate at a European level with the term ‘lifelong learning’, which
originated in the broad context of UNESCO in the 1970s (Fauré, 1972), being used to refer to a
narrower vocational agenda which was previously known as ‘recurrent education’.
1
Education is compulsory in England and Wales between the ages of 5 and 16. It is free in public (i.e. state)
schools, but 7% of children in England and 2% in Wales attend private, fee-paying schools.
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These policy trends are reflected unevenly in higher education. As early as 1992 Duke observed: ‘We
are certainly moving, possibly by now downhill and with accelerating speed, towards adopting a new
paradigm for higher education…. captured in the words lifelong learning and the meanings resident
behind them’. (Duke, 1992: 120) In this paradigm, higher education would no longer be an elite
system, and would construct the “student”, not as full-time, young, and with few responsibilities but as
a mature person combining full-time or part-time study with work and other adult responsibilities in
the home and community. This view was widely welcomed in the policy community when NIACE
promoted it in its policy paper An Adult Higher Education (McNair 1993). However, such a notion is
not by any means widely accepted at present, and although a majority of students in British higher
education are mature (i.e. over the age of 21 at entry), the dominant culture reflects a traditional model,
dominated by 18 year old school leavers.
The definition of ‘Higher Education’
In English law, the term ‘higher education” (HE) refers to education “of higher level”, provided
through Universities and Colleges of Higher Education. The definition was created at a time when
almost all students in higher education entered directly from school, and the notion of what “higher”
means was not contentious: it simply meant what had not been covered in school. However, a lifelong
perspective, where students are entering higher education at many stages of their lives, and their
learning no longer follows a simple cumulative sequence, makes the definition of “higher” a much
more difficult task, and there is no clearly accepted definition.
Furthermore, many HE institutions (HEIs, whose primary business is higher education) also provide
education at “lower” levels, while a further group “franchise” HE work to institutions outside the
formal HE sector (especially further education colleges and overseas institutions). A third group also
undertake a range of work which might be found in other kinds of institutions, for example informal
community education, continuing professional development, trade union education and so on.
Formally, the kinds of education which are recognised for legal purposes as “higher” comprise:
 Honours Degree courses leading to a Bachelor’s degree (BA and BSc): normally taking three years
of full-time study (or four if a work experience year or year abroad is included) or part-time
equivalent. In some institutions these are delivered in a modular form, allowing students to
personalise their programmes in varying degrees.
 Certificate in HE: equivalent to the first year of a first degree
 Diploma in HE: equivalent to the first two years of a first degree (or the part-time equivalent).
 Vocational first degrees in some vocational subjects such as Medicine and Architecture.
 Postgraduate degrees (Masters programmes - taught or by research): typically one year full-time or
two years part-time. It is normal to complete an undergraduate degree first, but non-graduates may
be admitted if they have appropriate work experience.
 Doctorate: usually a minimum of three years is specified.
 The Open University awards all the above degrees, but its programmes are modular, and students
may take many years to complete a general or Honours degree, assembling one or two “credits”
per year, to form a general degree of six credits or an Honours degree of eight credits.
Although these elements all exist, the Honours Degree is generally regarded as the benchmark higher
education qualification, with much smaller numbers taking the intermediate (certificate and diploma)
courses, or postgraduate ones.
In practice, most British definitions of “higher” derive from a traditional initial education model. The
benchmark is the kind of education traditionally undertaken by an elite of 18 year old school leavers,
who in Britain traditionally leave home to study full time for three years. As a result, in policy
discourse, the idea of “higher” is closely linked to age, and to elite status. Both these are unhelpful in
moving towards a more ‘lifelong learning’ perspective, and some commentators have tried in the last
decade to explore different notions of what “higher education” might mean. Barnett has argued
persuasively and at length that ‘critical understanding’ is the unifying feature of higher education, both
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academic and vocational (Barnett, 1990, 1997), and his arguments were explored in the context of
lifelong learning by McNair (1993).
The ambiguity of what “higher” means produces particular problems for those who seek to develop a
model of HE more relevant to lifelong learning. As Davies argues:
… on the one hand we ascribe more value to that which is ‘higher’, while at the same
time holding definitions of ‘higher’ which are frequently obscure and contradictory and
are located in a discourse of selectivity and exclusion rather than inclusion or lifelong
learning. It is a terminology which has no resonance with the idea of continuing
education in which people move in and out of a university, or indeed other places for
formal learning, to learn different skills and acquire different knowledge at different
levels at different points in their life.’ (Davies, 1997: 14)
Functions and status within higher education
British higher education is provided by a very diverse set of institutions, each with its own particular
vision of its mission and place in the system. At least six broad types can be identified, but there is
considerable diversity even within these categories, and most of the distinctions are the result of
historical development, not of formal administrative or legal classification.
Historically, higher education in the UK has been elitist and selective, and until the mid 1980s fewer
than 20% of school leavers entered HE. As a result of Government policy this proportion has now risen
above 32% of the age-group, but this percentage figure is much lower for lower socio-economic
groups, for members of some ethnic minority groups, and for disabled people (see also section 3).
Unlike those European countries where success in the school leaving examination confers a right to
HE, in the UK, institutions select students according to performance in the “Advanced Level” (“A
levels”) examination. Those with poor results either do not get a place or go to low status HEIs.
Since able students compete to enter the “best” institutions, within an open market where institutions
can select who to admit, it is not surprising that there are hierarchical distinctions between and within
HEIs. In public and academic esteem the relative merits of institutions, or Departments within them,
are often based on the level of entry qualifications of their entrants (the “best” institution can demand
the highest qualifications for admission). This militates against the admission of “non-traditional”
learners - mature learners and those from particular groups who are admitted at the discretion of the
individual institution, but whose entry qualifications are not normally recorded in published “league
tables”.
Institutional status is also affected by the relative status of research and teaching. The former generally
has higher status, and is measured every five years through a national peer based “Research
Assessment Exercise”, whose results are published, and result in higher levels of funding for the most
highly rated Departments. Institutions with a high proportion of research at “international” standard
are very much more generously funded, and many staff and institutions aspire to reach this, sometimes
at the expense of teaching students. This is compounded by the fact that teaching students on
postgraduate courses is generally seen as attracting a higher status than teaching undergraduate
students, and teaching full-time students (who are more likely to be aged 18-21) of higher status than
part-time students (who are more likely to be over 21). The result is a series of pressures to discourage
those institutions whose places are in high demand from recruiting non-traditional or older learners,
and encourage them to concentrate on research rather than teaching. In effect, high status, research
funding, and recruitment of the most able young people to full time degree programmes tends to be
concentrated in a select group of “old” universities, while low status institutions have little research
work, and recruit high proportions of non-traditional and part-time students.
Higher education, lifelong learning and the education systems of
England and Wales
While at one level, lifelong learning encompasses all stages, levels and types of the national education
and training system, in practice none of the elements which go to make up the whole would regard
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their core activities as ‘part of’ lifelong learning for other than rhetorical purposes. The importance of
lifelong learning at the policy level is in creating an ideological framework for institutions, within
which practices can be reviewed to see how far they fit in with the objectives of lifelong learning.
There is also an important sense in which lifelong learning proposes an inclusive educational agenda
which may be contrasted to the present position in England in Wales in which, for example, working
class people, those with disabilities or certain ethnic minorities are much less likely to achieve
success.
Higher education has an established place as a higher level of both vocational and academic education
usually pursued by young people aged 18-21. The most usual course is three-years of full time study
of a single subject leading to an Honours degree (BA or BSc). Some, mainly vocational, courses have
an intermediate certificate achieved after one year of full-time study (or part-time equivalent) or a
diploma achieved after two years of study.
In order to qualify for higher education, young students have to take a highly specialist two-year preentry course (the Advanced level examinations) in only three subjects. This in turn distorts school
education since more resources are put into achieving this qualification for the minority of students
(30%2) than into the majority, who do not go on to higher education after leaving school. The
‘Advanced level’ examination results are regarded as an indication of the status and quality of a school,
and they are also widely used as an indicator of the quality of an HE department – the ‘best’
departments are perceived to be those which recruit the entrants with the highest scores by this
standard.3 While the vocational education framework has equivalence with the academic path in
theory, in practice this framework has little relevance beyond the higher education entry level, since
degree-level vocational higher education uses the same award system as academic higher education.
The boundaries of higher education
HE institutions in England and Wales can be seen reacting in one of two broad ways to increasingly
permeable boundaries between educational sectors. The first is a defensive reaction based on the
‘mainstream’ academic culture which is built around a set of values which justify “learning for its own
sake”, protecting quality, excellence and standards, and liberal cultural practices in a scholarly,
research-led collegiate setting. There is resistance to change, seen as threatening values, which take
precedence over policy initiatives proposed from outside (e.g. by government) or by corporate
management within the university. The second reaction is to welcome the new possibilities that such
permeability brings in order to pursue pre-existing and different objectives which challenge the
‘mainstream’.
Both reactions have their characteristic discourses (Williams, 1997) but while the first discourse tends
to unite around terms such as ‘culture’, ‘standards’ and ‘quality’, the second discourse tends to be more
varied. While those who believe that higher education should be closer to economic objectives
welcome new links between higher education and employers, and curriculum initiatives designed to
make higher education more ‘vocationally relevant’, those who believe higher education should
contribute to social justice (equity) stress the discourse of ‘access’ (for groups previously excluded
from HE), ‘commitment’ (to social justice) and ‘social inclusion’. While both of these discourses are
widely observable in the literature of higher education, neither the ‘economic’ nor the ‘socially’
inclusive view have achieved the widespread acceptance of the ‘mainstream’ view of academic culture.
It should also be noted that there are considerable tensions between the two groups. Thus the
supporters of equity may want to ensure access to the ‘mainstream’ academic culture rather than to
more vocational forms of higher education, which are seen as of lower status.
2
For schools in working-class areas, the figure is much lower, and is correspondingly higher in middle-class
areas.
3
The four entry paths to higher education are: Academic – Advanced level examination passes; Vocational –
achieving a level 3 vocational qualification; Access – taking a special university access course, which usually has
a minimum age attached to it; Special – being able to provide other evidence of ability to benefit from an HE
course, again usually with a minimum age attached.
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Chapter 2 - The Policy Framework
This Chapter explores how higher education policy is created in Britain, and how notions of lifelong
learning have, and have not, influenced this.
The policy debate
A valuable source of information on attitudes to lifelong learning in higher education is contained in
the evidence collected by the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (Barnett, 1997;
Billing, 1997). The Committee was established under the previous government (but with inter-party
support) and led to the publication of the Dearing Report4 (NCIHE, 1997). The present government’s
policy on higher education (DfEE, 1998c) has developed in response to this report, which argued
strongly for HE to be seen in a lifelong learning context. This view was widely supported by those
consulted by the Inquiry (over 60% of all groups responding supported this). For example, the Open
University evidence stated:
The Open University looks to the Dearing Committee to make lifelong learning the
defining feature of higher education in the twenty-first century. The Committee needs
to plan for a world in which continued learning, both structured and informal, will be
of critical importance to individuals as they seek to accommodate and embrace change
in their lives and in the world around them. (Open University, 1996: 3)
However, it seems equally clear that a substantial group of HE Institutions are content with their
present role as part of an initial elite education system, linked to a strong international research profile,
and do not wish to move towards the mass lifelong model advocated by NIACE, UACE and other
individual institutions. There is furthermore at least a suspicion that such attitudes may be deeply
ingrained in the actual practice of many of the institutions which gave support in principle to the
concept of lifelong learning (this is a research question in its own right). There is a cultural problem
rooted in the English obsession with status and hierarchy.
The dominant voices in policy-making, as will be made clear in chapter 2, are institutions and
professional bodies. In civil society, there are small indications that community organisations may in
future attempt to put pressure on their local university to behave like an ‘institution of lifelong
learning’ rather than an ‘institution of higher education’ but their voices are weak However, there is a
substantial group of “new” universities (mainly those former Polytechnics designated as Universities in
1992) who see their work as responding strongly to “stakeholders” who include their staff and
students, schools and colleges, employers, trade unions and the organisations of civil society, and this
notion was a central organising concept within the Dearing report (NCIHE, 1997).
Government policies and institutional policies
The British government is in the process of developing lifelong learning policy. The key document is
its “Green Paper” (technically a consultative document) “The Learning Age”, published in 1998. This
explored a range of issues, and has been followed by a series of papers on specific issues (on
educational and careers guidance, on individual learning accounts, on the University for Industry and
others). In addition, Government has announced a number of specific initiatives, including the funding
of 35,000 additional student places in HE in 1999-2000, with a particular emphasis on “sub-degree”
programmes (an area where research has found the UK at a competitive disadvantage economically
with other OECD countries). Government has also encouraged the Funding Council to take a more
interventionist stance in relation to Government policy in HE, shifting the traditional balance, under
which HEIs (unlike their counterparts in some other countries), had considerable autonomy to
determine policies within a national legal and funding framework. Elements of current government
proposals for higher education (DfEE, 1998c) which relate to lifelong learning include:
 Plans to extend participation to groups underrepresented in HE
 Expansion of student numbers at sub-degree level
4
Named after its chairman, Sir Ron Dearing
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
Joint work between FE and HE to promote progression (especially to encourage more students
from vocational courses to go into HE)
 An extension of advice and guidance services within higher education
 Expansion of professional updating and post-experience work.
However, there remains a danger that current policies will reinforce divisions between those
institutions which wish to incorporate elements of the lifelong learning agenda and those which wish to
retain their historic role, since it is proposed when allocating funds for HE expansion to prioritise
‘those institutions which can demonstrate a commitment to widening participation, and have in place a
participation strategy, a mechanism for monitoring progress, and provision for review by the governing
body of achievement’ (DfEE, 1998c: 12). As Scott has suggested:
Because of the expansion in student numbers between 1987 and 1992 it has come to be
assumed that there is no tension between higher education and lifelong learning. That
complacent assumption seems to have been shared by the Dearing committee, along
with most of the higher education establishment. Yet it can be argued that higher
education, with its still-exclusionary structures and obsession with grades and levels, is
the problem not the solution if the goal is lifelong learning.’ (Scott, 1997: 54)
A further aspect of change is the active development of regional government (both for the national
regions of the UK, and for the English regions). This is heavily focused on economic objectives, and
the new Regional Development Agencies are likely to seek to actively involve HEIs in work to support
regional economic development, in collaboration with employers and Training and Enterprise Councils
(TECs).
Lifelong learning and ideology
Lifelong learning is a contested concept within which a number of competing discourses attempt to
establish a claim to public resources. The dominant discourse of a self-contained academic culture is a
‘quiet’ discourse in the sense that it is hegemonic within higher education institutions themselves,
particularly those which pre-date 1992, and its supporters tend to regard it as a self-evident truth.
Without doubt the loudest and most successful alternative voices are those which link investment in
higher education (both initial and continuing) with economic prosperity. However, there is an implicit
recognition of the link between this discourse and agenda and that of social inclusion. At one level
social inclusion claims that the economy will be more effective if it uses the talents and energy of a
higher proportion of the population; at another level social exclusion acts as a drag on the economy by
increasing welfare costs and threatens the stable social conditions necessary for capital accumulation.
Williams’ (1961) alliance of public educators and industrial trainers against the old humanist elite
seems very much alive.
In relation to citizenship5, there are two points to be made:
 on the basis of citizenship, all citizens may claim a right to access higher education;
 the fostering of good, or active, citizenship may be seen as a desirable outcome of HE.
Both these notions cut across the individualism (neo-liberalism) encouraged by the previous
government. Thus entry to HE is intensely competitive for prospective students seeking to enter elite
institutions and curriculum areas, with the principal aim of personal advancement and material benefits
rather than sharing in a common culture, social inclusion or community benefit.
In general, HE links with civil society are weak. The notion of HE as part of the resources that
individuals and communities have in order to build a qualitatively different future for themselves is
poorly developed, and exists largely on the Continuing Education fringe of HE rather than at its heart
(see for example Elliott, 1996; Stuart and Thomson, 1995).
Citizenship is an important and contested concept in England and Wales because ‘citizens’ are in law subjects
of the Queen rather than citizens with clearly defined rights. The legal position will change soon when the
European Convention on Human Rights is incorporated into UK law, but differing attitudes to citizenship are
likely to persist.
5
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Despite government concern, there is still little discourse which would bring together economic, social
inclusion and citizenship arguments for lifelong learning in the context of a society which experiences
globalisation in both its economic and cultural life (cf. Scott, 1997).
Sectoral policies
Two major sectoral reports, the Dearing report on Higher Education (NCIHE, 1997) and the Kennedy
Report on Further Education (FEFC, 1997) were commissioned under the previous government. The
present government has responded to those reports and accepted many of their recommendations
(DfEE, 1998c). The publication of the Green Paper on lifelong learning (DfEE, 1998a) and the
Pathfinder prospectus on the University for Industry (DfEE, 1998b) also contain some policy elements
of relevance to HE. The University of Industry, whose aim is to act as a broker between adult learning
needs and the providers, with a particular emphasis on uses of Information and Communications
Technologies (ICTs) may well offer access to learning ‘at a higher level’ but HE institutions have no
privileged status in this work. In policy terms, the end product of lifelong learning is yet to be
specified, so it is not yet clear what adequate provision for lifelong learning might amount to in
practical terms.
Policy on schools and pre-school are quite separate from policy on FE and HE. There are thus
elements of separate thinking and elements of unified thinking. However, there is little reflection in
government policy or indeed institutional policies of a more radical approach to higher education
which McNair provided in his personal evidence to the Dearing Inquiry, which questions the future
viability of future institutional forms:
My argument is that the accelerating speed of knowledge creation which has created
the policy impetus for lifelong learning implies a level of participation which is quite
unprecedented, and which cannot be delivered through current institutional forms. It
also implies a much closer integration of learning with life and work. The seeds of a
new model of higher education can be seen, but an adequate response must involve
higher education institutions in reconfiguring themselves to serve two functions – to
become centres of knowledge management, and places for the development of skills.
(McNair, 1997)
The two questions which NIACE proposed in its own response remain substantially unanswered:
 How should a lifelong mass higher education differ from the models which we have
inherited from an initial elite education system?
 What is the case for maintaining “higher” education as a separate sector, distinct
from other forms of post initial education?
(NIACE, 1997; emphasis in original)
HEIs are still far from being the ‘resource centres for the learning society’ which Duke envisaged in
1992 (Duke, 1992: 112/3). This argument has a number of strands, in each of which HEIs are
implicated:
 The ‘learning society’ refers to a society in which the notion of lifelong learning is embedded in
government policy, and reflected in cultural practices and institutional forms
 The ‘learning organisation’ is especially used within business organisations to mean an
organisation which invests in the learning of its employees and adopts a reflexive, problem-solving
approach
 ‘Learning town’ (or city or county) involves the articulation of educational institutions, employers
and civil society at a local government level to optimise lifelong learning opportunities for citizens.
Where does lifelong learning policy come from?
The pressure for a ‘lifelong learning’ perspective in higher education policy has come largely from
professional interests within the education and training world. These have included individual
institutions and academics, but also collectives such as NIACE, the national organisation for adult
learning, UACE, representing the continuing education sector of higher education, the Royal Society
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of Arts (RSA) representing a complex set of interests spanning the links between education, training
and business. Additionally, employers through the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and trade
unions through the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have argued the case for lifelong learning without
explicitly linking it to policies for particular sectors of education, e.g. schools, FE, HE.
Two further perspectives must be taken into account: the professional interest and the student interest.
How academic staff perceive themselves - as scholars, researchers, teachers of adults or teachers of
young people - matters enormously. So too does the experience that students, young, old, full-time,
part-time, work-based, distance and so on, have of higher education. As colleagues from the European
Society for Research in the Education of Adults (ESREA) have recently argued:
Another approach to HE institutions’ behaviour in terms of access is to study the way it
is experienced by the students themselves. This biographical or phenomenological
approach is extremely fruitful to identify and assess the impact of various aspects of
institutional arrangements on targeted students in relation to their individual and group
needs and characteristics. (Bourgeois, Duke and Merrill, 1997: 3)
There do not appear to be feedback loops in place to enable either younger or older students to
contribute to the formulation of lifelong learning policy in relation to higher education.
There are powerful external forces pushing for policy and institutional change. For example,
employers exert pressure through national bodies such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI),
the Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) or the National Training Organisations (NTOs,
operating within specific occupational sectors). Employers are involved in the governance of
individual HEIs and may also be perceived as the ‘customers’ of HEIs: they employ students after
graduation, sponsor programmes of continuing professional development, provide work placements for
students on vocational courses, and so on. Such influence is not confined to the private sector, with the
National Health Service acting as a powerful voice in the development of higher education in medical
and paramedical fields.
However, the evidence that these pressure groups are effective in overcoming the resistance of many
professional academic staff is slim. There are also unanswered questions about the relative power that
academics, students, employers, government and so on ought to have in the formulation of higher
education policy, and what mechanisms ought to exist to give these different groups a ‘voice’ in
decision-making. The notion of academic autonomy, with roots both in principle and in self interest,
remains strong.
Outreach activities take place in a number of HEIs. Examples include:
 New organisational structures in partnership with other organisations, such as the University of the
Valleys in South Wales (Elliott, 1996, chapter 18; Humphreys and Saunders, 1998);
 Education and training work with community groups (see, for example, Taylor and Ward, 1986;
Elliott, 1996, chapter 16);
 Education and training work with disability organisations (see, for example, Stuart and Thomson,
1995; Coare, 1997);
 Oral history projects;
 Projects which stress the guidance function of Higher Education (see, for example, Preece et al,
1998, and also chapter 5 of this report on ‘guidance’);
 Networking activities with schools and colleges (see, for example, Payne, 1995).
These initiatives express a ‘connectedness’ with local communities which is rhetorically present in
lifelong learning discourse but often absent from specific policies. Further information on partnerships
will be found in chapter 7. To put it another way, the sum of the parts of different lifelong learning
initiatives does not add up to the whole of HEIs as ‘institutions of lifelong learning’.
Summary: the driving forces of policy change
To summarise, a number of forces may be noted:
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The need for people, in a late modern world, to respond to change in technologies, culture, etc. and
to use education and training as a way of doing this at various stages in their lives
Increasing responsiveness of HEIs to financial pressure from government (see section 6 for
details), and therefore to policy initiatives coming from that direction
Financial pressures on HEIs have made them more responsive to both individual and corporate
clients beyond their traditional 18-21 full-time student cohorts
Pressure to make more efficient use of educational resources (which are currently unused for much
of the year).
Pressure for social inclusion on the grounds of economic competitiveness, equity and social
stability
Competition within the global economy and pressure on national economies to be competitive:
Pressure for diversification of products of higher education, paralleling the increasing
diversification and individualisation of products in other markets.
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Chapter 3 - Participation
This chapter will consider how participation in higher education is changing - is it widening,
lengthening or enlarging (or none of these), and how far is such change uniform across institutions and
the country?
Ways of measuring
Discussion of policy issues surrounding HE and lifelong learning is severely handicapped by the lack
of good statistical data. The sophisticated systems which monitor participation are all designed around
full time 18-21 year old full time students, and treat mature and part-time students as exceptions.
(Williams, 1997). They also assume a linear progression which bears little relation to higher education
viewed from a lifelong learning perspective (Davies, 1997). For example, the principal measure of
participation is the Age Participation Rate, which measures the proportion of an age cohort who enter
HE, and the figure normally quoted relates to the 18-21 year old group, whose APR in 1993 in England
was 28% up from 16% in 1989) (HE Statistical Agency, 1996). The APR is a much less useful
indicator for other age groups (it produces figures of 3.60 at 25-29 declining to 0.28 at 50+) who are
much more likely to participate intermittently. Systems cannot track the same individual returning
repeatedly to HE, nor distinguish mature student who is entering HE for the first time in their mid-30s
from someone with two or more degrees returning for professional development or interest. National
data on social class is not reliably available for those starting HE at 21+ or for part-time students, and
is particularly difficult to collect since young entrants are classified by their parents’ occupation, while
older learners should be classified by their own.
Further, aggregated national statistics of the type produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency
(HESA) do not necessarily reveal important differences between different institutions and types of
institution, and between different parts of the same institution. One important recent development is
the use of “postcode analysis” which links postal address to demographic data to produce approximate
profiles of social class among the student body. HEFCE is currently introducing this as the basis for
allocating funds for widening participation.
Headline figures
Mature students6 have formed an absolute majority of all students in HE in the UK for a decade, but a
large proportion of these are in the age range 21-25, and the majority are studying part-time. As a
result they are less visible, and less influential on the culture of HEIs than their simple numbers might
suggest.
The following are the key facts about the profile of the student body in 1995-5 (the latest year for
which full data is available)
 In 1995/96, 1,720,094 students were studying at higher education level in HEIs in the United
Kingdom.7
 705,995 (42%) of these students were over 25 years old
 32% of all students were studying part-time
 5% of students were aged 50 and over
 260,000 (72%) of post-graduate students were over 25, mostly studying taught courses of
professional development
 Mature students (over 25) were under-represented in some subject areas, such as Medicine (5%)
and Mathematics (7%)
The statutory definition of “mature” is over 21 at entry to a first degree programme, and over 25 at entry to a
postgraduate one.
7
These figures are for the whole United Kingdom, rather than England and Wales. Where percentage figures are
given, these may be assumed to be similar for England and Wales, unless otherwise stated.
6
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
In 1995/96, 941,236 were following non-credit-bearing courses of professional training and
personal development in HEIs.
(Sources: HESA, 1998; Taylor and Watson, 1998)
Part-time and full-time
For most people, during most of their lives, studying is something which must be combined with paid
employment and domestic responsibilities. The availability and take up of part-time study is therefore
an important indicator of the responsiveness of an HE system to lifelong learning. The balance
between full-time and part-time students varies within different parts of the higher education system
Figure 1 Part-time as percentage of full-time HE students
Total
32
Undergraduate degree courses
16.5
Other undergraduate
62
Postgraduate
57
(Source: Taylor and Watson, 1998)
The distinction between full and part-time students in Britain is an important one in regulations which
affect costs of study and entitlement to financial support. However, in reality the distinction has been
rapidly dissolving. As a result of financial pressures, the majority of “full-time” students in HE now
undertake paid employment during term time as well as during vacation periods (in some institutions
the proportion working in term time has been estimated as over 75%). At the same time, there is a
significant, albeit unmonitored, proportion of “part-time” students who do not have paid employment.
However, the ‘primary identification’ as one or the other remains important to students themselves.
Most full-time students would identify themselves in relation to their studies (as “students”), whereas
most part-time students would identify themselves in relation to work or family relationships (as
“workers” or “housewives”). This in turn confirms the popular image of a “student” as a young person
engaged in full time study, and continues to reinforce perceptions and public policy.
Four other points must be made:
 The largest contribution to the figure for part-time students on undergraduate courses is made by
Open University students. When the DfEE changed its statistical basis in 1994 to include Open
University students for the first time, part-time postgraduate numbers rose from 112,000 to
141,400, and part-time first degree numbers more than doubled from 71,000 to 155,600
(Haselgrove, 1996).
 Increasing number of courses now include work experience and other combinations of work and
study (often called ‘sandwich’ courses, for obvious reasons).
 The percentage of part-time students peaked at 37.5% in 1988/89 and has only recently begun to
increase again. This was mainly because the ‘new’ universities (then polytechnics) made a
deliberate attempt to move out of what was perceived as low status (i.e. part-time - work
(Williams, 1997: appendix 2).
 There is uneven access in urban and rural areas: ‘Individuals living in conurbations may therefore
have a choice of HEIs with which to pursue various forms of part-time study; those living in rural
areas may not be so fortunate.’ (Haselgrove, 1996: 14/5)
Social class
There is a strong correlation between social class and participation in higher education, especially in
high status institutions, which is reinforced be parental experience and expectations:
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Socio-economic group
% APR8 for 18-21 year olds (1995-6)
I - professional
79
II - associate professional
45
IIIN - skilled non-manual
31
IIIM - skilled manual
18
IV - semi-skilled
17
V - unskilled, unemployed
12
source Watson and Taylor 1998
The skewing of participation to the top two socio-economic groups is very clear from the following
chart (fig 2), which shows that the top two socio-economic groups account for almost two thirds of all
entrants although they only represent 40% of the economically active population.
Figure 2: Participation in full-time degree programmes by social class
(Source: NCIHE, 1997)
Although lower SEG groups show a greater percentage increase in recent years, larger absolute
increases go to higher groups because of their higher starting base. Robertson and Hillman (1997)
calculated ratios between middle class and working class students to be 75:25 at pre-1992 universities
and 68:32 at the post-1992 universities. They comment: ‘These ratios have remained unchanged over a
long period’. (ibid: 40) There is a significance difference between pre- and post-1992 universities,
with the latter having greater participation among lower SEGs (Smithers and Robinson, 1995). Steele
suggests that the continuing low participation by working class people in higher education suggests a
continuing role for a distinctive adult education intervention in the future:
The argument that, once greater access for working-class students into university had
been created, adult education was no longer necessary, is patently false. Adult
education did (and perhaps still does) something different, namely it works with
students, collectively as well as individually, for socially relevant ends without
unnecessary regard to formal academic boundaries. As such it is ideologically and as
a practice quite distinct from full-time undergraduate education and from the whole
paraphernalia of awards and assessment which have been forced on it. The era of
‘mass’ higher education – the adjective is ironic – will not for the foreseeable future
APR is the Age Participation Rate – the proportion of a given age group who participate in higher education. As
with many such measures, it is more relevant to admissions of school leavers than to adults.
8
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include the majority of working-class children for whom in later years adult education
could provide for their first tentative steps. (Steele, 1997: 138/9)
Labour market status
For young people aged 18 who have passed the relevant school-leaving qualification and have either
not obtained or not looked for full-time employment, full-time study is the norm. For older people
who are unemployed or non-employed (up to the age of 55 years), there may be advantages in full-time
study in terms of access to publicly funded student loans. In order to gain access to higher education
they may either attempt to gain the pre-entry qualifications taken by students aged 16-18, or take
special access courses, or to obtain ‘direct entry’ on a variety of ‘special case’ grounds. For both of
these groups, some part-time work is becoming very common in order the supplement the grant / loan.
For those in employment, the options are part-time study (usually organised in the evenings or at
weekends), or the Open University (which is a dedicated provider of distance learning courses of
higher education, sets no entry qualifications and recruits on a first-come, first-served basis). Part-time
study may involve a curriculum parallel to that taken by full-time students, or modules of a full-time
programme, or accredited courses developed as part of continuing education provision and not
normally available to full-time students. Some of this provision is available as distance learning. A
further option is workplace modules accredited by an HEI but where the learning is done at the
workplace. Grants / loans are not yet available for part-time study. Some part-time students are postgraduate students doing courses related to their profession and paid for by their employer.
As pointed out above, the majority of younger and older ‘full-time’ students also work part-time and
seasonally to compensate for the decreasing value of government maintenance support. Taking the
figure of 32% of students studying part-time, and adjusting this to allow for over 50s not in the labour
market and for unemployment among other age groups, this means that about 400,000 (23% of all
students) are in employment. Additionally over half of non-credit courses are aimed at professional
groups, so it is probable that two-thirds of these nearly one million students are in employment. Taken
together, then, more than one million adults in employment are taking courses in higher education and
this is a considerable contribution to lifelong learning as an aspect of economic development. The
development of lifelong learning policy thus needs to take account of the parallel needs and
experiences of both those mature students who are able to study full-time, and the rather larger number
who are studying part-time.
Gender
One of the most significant features of the expansion of higher education in the UK has been the
growth of participation by women, from 29% in 1965/66 to 52% in 1996/97. While male numbers
doubled between 1965/66 and 1989/90, female numbers trebled, and in 1995 women’s figures rose by
6.5% compared with 0.9% for men. (Williams, 1997: appendix 2) However, there are still status
distinctions, with a majority of men still among full-time postgraduate students, and the highest
concentration of women in the lowest level courses (figure 3). Women are also more likely to be
studying part-time at each level.
Figure 3: Men and women students
Type of course
% men
% women
Postgraduate
50.5
49.5
Undergraduate
degree
48
52
Other undergraduate
40
60
While women have made remarkable progress in numerical terms, there are still a number of ways in
which the position of women in higher education reflects their subordinate position in society:
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
Women predominate in particular curriculum areas (especially Humanities) and are
underrepresented in other curriculum areas (e.g. Chemistry and Physics; Engineering). For
younger students, such choices are substantially determined by choices made at school. For older
students, there are a lack of access courses in Science and Engineering and it is much harder to get
‘special case’ entry to Science and Engineering courses, despite a reported national shortage of
professionals in these fields.
 Labour market outcomes do not match those for men. Average starting salaries are lower, and
career progression is more difficult.
 The low participation rate of women in high status management courses such as the MBA.
In many ways, participation of women in higher education reflects their participation in the labour
market. There is overall increased participation but women are more likely to be found in part-time
and lower level jobs. Interestingly, this is also true of the academic profession, with women more
likely to occupy junior, fixed term and part-time contract positions than men. Very few senior
academic staff (professors and principals) are women.9
Age
There is no age limit on university study in the UK, and there are students over the age of 90 enrolled
in some institutions. However, in general, younger students are more likely to be enrolled under the
(more generous) regulations affecting full-time study, and older students under part-time regulations.
However, the proposed move from student grants to student loans for full-time students (DfEE 1998c)
has maintained an upper age-limit (55 years), and will make full-time study very hard for all but the
wealthiest of third agers. Most HEIs will only waive formal admission requirements (i.e. the two-year
pre-entry qualification or its vocational equivalent) for students over the age of 24 or 25
The majority of students in higher education are now mature, defined as over the age of 21 at the point
of entry to an undergraduate programme. This has been the case since the late 1980s, but older learners
are not evenly distributed across institutions. A very few recruit a large proportion of older people
(Birkbeck College and the Open University most clearly), while a substantial number of institutions
(including some high status ones) recruit very few.
There is some debate about the statutory definition of “mature” learners (over 21 yrs. at entry to
undergraduate programmes and over 25 yrs. at entry to postgraduate ones) in relation to the most
rapidly growing group, who are in the 21-25 age group. It can be argued that it is the combination of
study with work and other adult responsibilities in the home and community which mark the new
lifelong dimension of HE. For some of these “young mature” learners, entry has simply been delayed,
and their experience of HE is more like that of traditional entrants a few years younger. Others, on the
other hand, have entered the labour market with the intention of remaining there, but have then
changed their minds, deciding to reshape their careers, taking up an option to continue education which
they abandoned as many as seven years ago.
Some other characteristics of mature students may be noted:
 They are particularly well represented in undergraduate study of Education, Law, Social and
Economic Studies and “subjects allied to medicine”, and in postgraduate study in Education and
Business Studies
 Mature students are under-represented in undergraduate study of Medicine and Mathematics, in
taught postgraduate courses in Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering
and Law, and in research in Mathematics and Physical Sciences.
 Mature students between 26 and 59 obtain better degree classifications than younger ones
 If postgraduate study is excluded, the percentage of students over 25 declines to 34%
9
Unpublished research findings by C. Bryson reported in The Guardian, 12/5/98, suggest that 42% of all
academic teaching and research staff are on fixed term contracts.
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
Within undergraduate HE, a much higher proportion of mature students is found in lower level
“sub-degree” courses (Certificates and Diplomas), where over half of students are 25+. Indeed
these courses do not generally attempt to recruit 18 year old school-leavers.
 Mature students are more common in the ‘new’ universities than in the ‘old’ ones.
Weatherald and Layer (1998) have urged an intergenerational approach to traditional non-participants,
which stresses class and ethnic identity rather than age differences. This can be seen as part of a longterm strategy, in partnership with schools and colleges, to raise aspirations. This might include early
exposure of school and college students to HE or the use of HE students as role models in schools and
colleges.
Ethnic Origin
The most recent evidence on ethnicity and higher education is contained in the Dearing Report
(NCIHE, 1997). This is shown in figure 4, with figures in brackets for the UK population as a whole.
Figure 4: ethnic composition of higher education student population by age-group
Ethnic
group
Age 18-20
Age 21-27
Age 28-37
Age 38-47
Age 48 +
White
87.8 (92.7)
83.5 (93.1)
86.4 (93.1)
91.8 (94.8)
93.1 (97.3)
Black
1.7 (1.8)
5.8 (2.1)
7.7 (2.5)
3.7 (1.2)
2.8 (0.9)
Indian
4.5 (2.0)
3.6 (1.8)
1.4 (1.8)
0.9 (1.8)
1.1 (0.8)
Pakistani
2.0 (1.4)
2.4 (1.1)
0.6 (0.8)
0.4 (0.7)
0.3 (0.3)
Other
4.0 (2.1)
4.6 (1.8)
3.9 (1.8)
3.3 (1.5)
2.7 (0.6)
(Source: NCIHE, 1997)
As early as 1993, Madood reported that ‘the numbers of ethnic minorities admitted (to higher
education) in 1990 and 1991 cast doubt on long-standing claims of under-representation’. His views
are supported by the more recent figures, which suggest that the participation of ethnic minority
students in HE is now at or above that of white students in most age-groups. The most obvious
exceptions are for younger black students, which perhaps reflects the difficulties Afro-Caribbean boys
experience at school, and for Bangladeshi and Pakistani women, which reflects cultural factors similar
to those which influenced low participation by white women of an earlier generation. Conversely, the
relatively high proportions of older black students reflects some success in attracting these students to
HE, particularly via special Access courses (Benn, 1997: 20).
Madood (1993) also emphasised that ethnic minority students are more likely to be found in the ‘new’
than the ‘old’ universities. The picture is therefore anomalous: ethnic minority students are well
represented at some HEIs while other institutions make considerable efforts with special schemes to
attract ethnic minority students. Williams and Fry comment: ‘Over-representation of minorities in
higher education is not uncommon and is almost certainly a result of further and higher education
being seen as a way of achieving acceptance by the dominant culture.’ (1994: 15) However, if the
analysis in this report is correct, ethnic minority students are mostly to be found in lower status
institutions, and their access through education to the dominant culture is therefore problematic
(Robertson, 1997). There is also differential access between subjects, with younger South Asian
students opting for Medicine, Computing and Business Studies and relatively large numbers of AfroCaribbean students studying Social Sciences. Many ethnic minority students continue to live at home
for cultural reasons, which may also tend to exclude them from elite, residential institutions.
Higgins (1994: 33) suggests that there is indirect discrimination against ethnic minority students in
admissions procedures in HE, because they so often come via routes other than the ‘good Advanced
level examination results’ route. More disturbingly, he suggests that some HEIs may be in breach of
the Race Relations Act by not admitting black students with the same entry qualifications as white
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students (ibid), and data from the Universities Central Admissions Service confirms a different
admission to application rates for different ethnic groups. Connolly (1994: 33) asserted the need for
‘bodies like the CVCP10 (to) take urgent action to advise institutions on their legal obligations, and to
conduct a review of admissions in this light.’
Most recently concern has been expressed in policy circles about the under representation of young
white men among participants in HE generally (McGivney 1998). The view has been expressed that a
significant cohort of such young men are increasingly excluded from society by their reluctance to
participate in any form of post-school learning.
Disability
Taylor and Watson estimate that 2% of the student population aged 18-30 years old have some form of
disability, compared with 7% of people in the 18-30 year old group (Taylor and Watson, 1998: 8). The
Open University evidence to the Dearing Committee (Open University, 1996) states that 14% of the
UK population has some form of disability but only 3.7% of first year HE students have a disability
(HESA figures for 1994/95). Weatherald and Layer (1998) give a figure of 5.6% of students with
disabilities for a single ‘new’ university. For many potential students with mobility problems, the
Open University has until recently been the only answer. There are some special projects aimed to
encourage participation by disability groups (HEFCE, 1996) but no equivalent of the Tomlinson
Report on inclusive education in the FE sector (FEFC, 1996). There is some baseline information in
the report by Robertson and Hillman (1997) for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher
Education, although this has been criticised by Hurst as marking a retrograde move from a focus on
‘inclusive learning and learning support’ back to a focus on ‘categories of disability’ (Hurst, 1998).
Clearly, more detailed information is required about:
 How far participation rates overall and in individual institutions reflect overall numbers in the
population at large, and in particular localities and age-groups.
 What the experience of students with disabilities in HE is, and how far HEIs have been able to
make the necessary arrangements for their support.
 Whether there are particular forms of disability to which HEIs find it especially difficult to make a
supportive response.
 What types of financial support for both institutions and individual students would make higher
education more inclusive of people with disabilities.
 The persistence of negative attitudes towards disability in higher education which make the move
towards inclusive learning problematic.
There is a specialist voluntary organisation concerned with advocacy for students with disabilities – the
National Bureau for Students with Disabilities (SKILL).
Employment outcomes after graduation
One of the major findings of evaluations of the Swedish experience of using adult education policy as a
lever for social equality during the 1970s and 1980s, was that older graduates seldom achieved the
outcome in career terms or salary of their younger counterparts. While there is little hard evidence on
this point for England and Wales, there is some evidence which suggests that similar forces may be at
work. In particular, the likelihood of being unemployed after graduation increases with age11
Figures are more encouraging for the sub-degree qualifications (diplomas and certificates), where
unemployment rates remain at about 6% until over the age of 50. Such qualifications more often have a
directly work related element, and their graduates are much more likely than their younger fellowstudents to go straight into work, and less likely to continue studying (for example to obtain a degree).
A considerable minority return to a former employer, peaking at 19% for the 40-49 age-group. It
would also be fair to assume that there are positive employment outcomes for the large number of non10
11
The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals
HESA (1998) p8.
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credit students in HE, many of whom are in employment and taking work-related courses. Robertson
and Hillman also point to evidence that there is a hierarchy of labour market outcomes from white
males (with the greatest likelihood of employment) in turn to black males to Asian males to males with
disabilities to Asian males and to all females (with the lowest) (Hogarth et al, 1997)
There is also some evidence that at the low point of the economic cycle in the early 90s, some young
people and adults were taking HE courses as an alternative to employment, and that this may have
become a persistent pattern:
For many students, of course, mass higher education is an antidote, rather than an
avenue, to work. Mass systems shrink the years of structured employment, by delaying
entry into the labour market and offering meaningful opportunities to the prematurely
retired and to the growing number of older people. They offer similar opportunities to
many employees whose jobs do not provide them with sufficiently stimulating
experiences. Under post-industrial conditions, mass higher education is as important
a form of socio-cultural consumption as investment in high-technology skills.’ (Scott,
1995: 174)
It is a useful reminder of the position of lifelong learning astride the production / consumption divide
in the economy.
Summary: Changing Participation
It is clear that the move from an elite to a ‘mass’ higher education system in the UK has been carried
out with little concern for social equity. As Scott puts it: ‘British higher education has become a mass
system in its public structures, but remains an elite one in its private instincts’ (Scott, 1995: 2). Actual
inequality at all levels has been masked by a discourse in which quality is linked to formal entry
qualifications, which are themselves directly linked to previous schooling for young people. Since
success in such examinations is closely related to social class and school, a department in an ‘old’
university with high demand for admissions, can select entrants with high examination passes at
Advanced level, effectively discriminating in favour of those students who have attended state schools
in middle-class areas and private schools. Those with less good entry qualifications acquired at state
schools and colleges in inner city and working-class areas are relegated to lower status institutions.
The outcomes of higher education reflect a similar trend. While the policy rhetoric links employability
with transferable skills acquired during higher education, the reality is that high status employers,
faced with much larger numbers of potential applicants, often only consider applications from
graduates from ‘good’ departments in ‘good’ universities, recruiting them to generic roles with clear
progression to senior levels. Where they seek specific technical knowledge and skills they are more
likely to recruit from specialist departments, and work placement during the degree (less common in
high status institutions) can be an important recruitment tool.
It is important to recognise the limitations in the power of HE by itself to challenge deep features of a
culture. Many of the biases evident in participation reflect such hierarchies and value systems, and
although they are changing, this is happening only slowly. While more flexible arrangements within
higher education with regard to age, entry qualifications and mode of study have clearly benefited
individual members of excluded groups, the benefits to those groups as a whole are not apparent.
It is to the question of institutional diversity that we turn in the next chapter of this report.
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Chapter 4 - Institutional structures
This chapter will consider how institutional structures are changing in relation to lifelong learning,
including reorganisations, emergence of new institutional forms or new institutions or services.
It is clear from chapter 3 that HEIs are making a major contribution to lifelong learning. They are
doing this not just in the context of mature students studying full-time courses originally designed for
younger students, but in the form of part-time and post-experience courses which interact with the
world of work and the wider social world in which students occupy a wide variety of responsible roles.
At the same time, as this chapter will indicate, formal institutional structures are still premised on the
full-time, initial education view of HE; lifelong learning happens on the margins of institutions (with a
couple of notable exceptions which are explained below). As Kasworm puts it: ‘ … research and
policy studies in both adult and higher education have predominantly excluded consideration of adult
learners in higher education contexts.’ (Kasworm, 1997: 255)
Homogeneity and diversity of institutions
HEIs in England and Wales may be divided into a number of categories for analytical purposes:
Figure 5: diversity of HEIs
Nation
England
‘Old’
universities,
‘New’
universities: ex-
founded before
1992
polytechnics
established by
1992 Act of
Parliament
38
33
(including the 8
colleges of
University of
London but not
separate colleges
at Oxford and
Cambridge)
Wales
Colleges of
Higher
Education
Open
University
regions
48
10
(most are exTeacher Training
Colleges founded
by religious
organisations but
which have
diversified their
range of courses)
1
1
(represents the 5
colleges of the
University of
Wales, cf.
Morgan 1996)
(University of
Glamorgan)
8
1
(Adapted from: Parry, 1995)
In theory, all these institutions are national institutions. But, in practice, they all have a dual role as
both national and local institutions. This is crucial for the possible role of HEIs in lifelong learning,
which by definition involves learning opportunities for adults who have work and societal roles at a
local or regional level. Its importance may decline in future, as more universities follow the example
of the Open University and use new learning technologies to provide local learning opportunities from
distant bases. Many of the large universities which we now think of as ‘national’ institutions (Leeds,
Birmingham, Manchester) still had a majority of local students living at home until the 1950s (Taylor
and Watson, 1998: 84).
It is clear that the ‘new’ universities, with their background of local government control and
involvement with local employers and communities retain strong local ties. They attract larger
numbers of adult and ethnic minority students than ‘old’ universities. While Parry (1995) stresses the
importance of these adults in achieving a break-through to ‘mass’ higher education, they can also be
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seen as an advance guard of lifelong learners. The case of Wales is instructive here. The ‘old’
University of Wales with its colleges in Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, Lampeter and Swansea recruits
44% of its students from within Wales, while 56% of students come from other parts of the United
Kingdom. But for the ‘new’ University of Glamorgan these figures are approximately two thirds and
one third (Istance and Rees, 1995). However, these broad differences are not necessarily determinant:
the University of the Valleys initiative (mentioned below, Ch. 7) involves both Swansea and
Glamorgan. A further consideration is that Bangor in particular provides courses using Welsh
language medium which gives it a distinctive role in those parts of North and West Wales where Welsh
is still in daily use. Yet even this is not without its ironies: the percentage of Welsh students is lowest
at the three institutions in Welsh-speaking areas: Bangor (33.6%), Aberystwyth (28.1%) and Lampeter
(27.2%) (Rees and Istance, 1997). Istance and Rees (1995) also make the point that the lifelong
learning tradition in Wales is one of independent, male, working-class education with limited
involvement of formal educational institutions. If HEIs are to make a greater contribution to lifelong
learning, it requires a high degree of connectivity with local communities and social movements, as
outlined in chapter 7 of this report.
Two ‘special case’ institutions
Birkbeck College. The University of London has one college (Birkbeck College) dedicated to
offering part-time degree courses, and personal and professional development courses to adult
students. A typical degree course requires attendance on 2 – 3 evenings a week for 4 years. Despite its
radical difference from other universities, in practice it has tended to preserve many traditional
features, but with some points of change and development:
 Admissions: students on degree courses have usually been required to obtained the Advanced level
examination passes normally demanded of 18-year old students. However, there is some use of
credit exemptions (students can gain credit for previous relevant study at other institutions), while
access programmes are run in-house and students recruited from access courses at other
institutions.
 Subjects: degree courses reflect traditional views of the construction of academic knowledge. The
few exceptions to this pattern reflect general practice at older universities. For example Gender
Studies cuts across traditional subject boundaries.
 Personal and professional development: these courses (inherited from the old University of
London Extra-Mural Department) provide personal development opportunities for people who, in
general, have good previous educational experience; professional development courses are usually
for people in middle-class occupations.
 Teaching and learning: there is a strong emphasis on formal teaching, with regular attendance
required and little use of open learning techniques, or the wealth of mature student experience. But
there are exceptions such as a multimedia Crystallography course which uses the Internet.
Other problems for mature students, such as limited access to libraries, have not been solved. Thus
while Birkbeck College points a way forward in its rejection of the ‘full-time, younger student model’
it remains an open question as to whether it can reposition itself in the new world of lifelong learning
with its weak boundaries, flexible modes of provision and learner-centred approach. There are signs of
significant change, but this has yet to reach critical mass. There is also some suspicion that because of
the existence of a specialist ‘part-time’ college, the University of London may well have felt that it had
met its responsibility to adult students.
The Open University. If Birkbeck College represents an older tradition of lifelong learning, based on
‘self-help’ and the willingness of some adults to subject themselves to a demanding discipline of faceto-face study, the Open University (OU) represents a more modern approach, which recognises the
complexity of adult life, its multiple commitments, and the need to achieve national coverage through
decentralised open learning structures and the use of electronic media.
Sargant (1990) estimates that the OU, established in 1969 and recruiting its first students in 1971, has
been the model for analogous institutions in more than 30 countries. In 1994 it had 133,000
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undergraduate students, 10,000 postgraduate students and a body of community and continuing
education students which brought the total to 200,000. In 1997 the figures were put at 150,000
following courses and 50,000 using self-study packs. More than half of UK part-time students are OU
students. Two-thirds are between 30 and 49 and about half are women (Open University, 1997). One
third of OU undergraduates did not have the normal university entrance qualification on starting their
studies.
Other countries have adopted the OU model, and there are now more than 50 public open universities
around the world (Daniel 1996). The basic learning mode is supported open learning: in addition to
written and audio-visual learning materials, the student has access to a tutor, and to a regular
programme of study centre tutorials and day-schools, and contact via telephone, video-conferencing
and computer networks with the tutor and other students. The University sees itself as in the front-line
of HE developments in the UK:
Open learning, then, has significant potential for helping the transition to mass higher
education and to lifetime learning in the UK and further afield. It has the potential to
increase access, widen choice, enhance quality and reduce unit costs. But to be truly
cost-effective, it needs to achieve critical mass and to generate economies of scale.
(Open University, 1997)
The Open University’s commitment to this vision is reflected in its creation of a Knowledge Media
Institute, with a large body of researchers explicitly appointed to advance the leading edge of
understanding of the application of technology to learning.
While in general England and Wales have moved in an uncoordinated and uneven way towards mass
HE and lifelong learning, the OU does represent one major policy intervention in the field. It might
also be said to correspond to the ‘broad’ view of lifelong learning rather than the ‘narrow’ view (cf.
chapter 1, above). Its policy of open entry on a first-come, first-served basis, but offering additional
support on broad foundation courses for undergraduate students, represents a complete break with the
selective and elitist traditions of HE in England and Wales. It has also developed a wide range of
courses at all levels for personal, professional and community development. While it has been
suggested that the existence of the Open University has allowed other parts of HE to ignore the needs
of the mature student without formal entry qualifications (Wagner, 1992), it is certainly the case that
the OU has influenced practice in other HEIs in a number of ways:
 Partnerships with other institutions in relation to study centres, summer schools, preparatory
courses
 Use on a flexible, part-time basis of the staff of other institutions to tutor OU courses
 Use of OU materials (print, video and audio) in other institutions
 A credit framework which has influenced local and national moves towards an overall HE credit
framework, and also allowed movement of students between the OU and other institutions12
 An emphasis on learning support for students rather than formal teaching
 The provision of evidence that the ‘pool of talent’ is not limited and that adults will respond to the
provision of new learning opportunities presented in a flexible way.
It should also be noted that the costs per student within the Open University are consistently lower than
the costs of other HEIs (Sargant, 1996). This means that an additional reason for adopting OU
methods has been pressure from government to teach more students for less money (usually referred to
as the ‘unit of resource’ – see chapter 6). Sargant notes that in 1994, the OU received the largest grant
and the largest increase in grant of any HEI (ibid: 303). It has recently (1998) received a substantial
additional allocation of HEFCE funds for part-time students.
12
Of particular significance was the 1997 agreement with CNAA, which validated degrees in many HEIs which
are now ‘new’ universities, to allow reciprocal transfer of credit (Sargant, 1996: 299)
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New institutional forms?
Two broad approaches can be outlined for the future of lifelong learning. In the first, existing
institutions adapt their working methods to become institutions of lifelong learning. In the second,
existing institutions retain their existing roles (with some disappearing as a result of increasing
competition) while new kinds of institutions appear ab nihilo as a result of public policy or commercial
opportunity. Government is in a position to promote both tendencies:
 It is the major source of funding for all HEIs and could use this funding to push HEIs in particular
directions (see chapter 6)
 It can provide initial funding for new organisational structures, as it is currently doing with the
University for Industry (see Glossary).
Writing in the 1970s and 80s, Trow (1974 and 1989) expressed doubts that the elitist form of HE in
England and Wales could develop towards lifelong learning because of its stress on common standards
of admission and outcome (i.e. a ‘degree’ was to be of the same standard wherever it was obtained).
More recent commentators (e.g. Parry, 1995) have stressed the way in which existing institutions have
both used their autonomy and (contradictorily) responded to government pressure, to move towards a
mass higher education and adopt aspects of lifelong learning without new organisational types
emerging.13 However, this is still far from lifelong learning and it is perhaps useful at this stage to
review the steps along the road:
1. (Past) An elite HE for 10% of the population, mainly in the form of initial education for 18-21
year olds
2. (Present) A mass HE for up to one third of the population, with a mixture of initial education,
postponed initial education and lifelong learning opportunities
3. (Future scenario 1) An exclusive (narrow) lifelong learning, in which HE continues to make a
broadly similar contribution, with particular expansion in the field of professional development
4. (Future scenario 2) An inclusive lifelong learning, in which new organisational structures emerge,
but where HE makes an expanded contribution based on a series of partnerships (cf. chapter 7)
with other institutions and organisations (including state, private sector and civil society).
As early as 1990, Barnett saw the fragmentation and differentiation of the academic community as part
of the ‘wider fragmentation of the culture of modern society.’ (Barnett, 1990: 201). Seven years later,
Usher and Edwards viewed the situation as volatile and characterised by uncertainty:
Thus even as the education of adults becomes more central in response to processes of
globalisation, it becomes reconfigured as lifelong learning with new texts and new ways
of meaning making which challenge traditional conceptions of its role, values and
purposes, as new settings and a wider group of practitioners enter the terrain of
pedagogical work with adults. So even as we suggest that (dis)location may be central
to pedagogy in conditions of globalisation, processes of (dis)location also impact upon
the hitherto bounded field of adult education, de-differentiating the borders and opening
up a ‘moorland’ of lifelong learning where adults are now more aptly seen as deterritorialised ‘learners’ rather than firmly located ‘students’. (Usher and Edwards,
1997: 138)
It is to the planning process which might support either the move towards new institutions or the
transformation of existing one that we now turn.
Planning processes
In the face of uncertainty, Bauman presents the relative autonomy of HEIs as a strength in coming to
terms with change, in particular the fact that academics no longer have a monopoly of knowledge and
authority in society:
13
Possible exceptions might include at least one proposal for a university to merge with a Further Education
sector college, and the shift of various forms of Medicine-related vocational education courses into HEIs from
the National Health Service.
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… it is precisely the plurality and multi-vocality of the present-day collection of the
‘gatherings for the pursuit of higher learning’ – the variety which so jars with the
legislators’ love of harmony and which they treat therefore with the disgust and
contempt due to public threats and personal offences – that offer the universities, old
and new and altogether, the chance of emerging successfully from the present challenge
… It is the good luck of the universities that despite all the efforts of the self-proclaimed
saviours, know-betters and well-wishers to prove the contrary, they are not comparable,
not measurable by the same yardstick and – most important of all – not speaking in
unison. (Bauman, 1997: 25)
The notion of policy as a contested arena is familiar within education policy theory (e.g. Ball, 1990),
which has largely turned its back on ‘managerialist’ approaches which assume policy formulation and
implementation to be unproblematic. Policy theorists stress ‘the importance of not divorcing the
‘educational’ from the ‘social’; that is, of not divorcing changes in education from more general
ideological and economic shifts in global society’ (Ball and Shilling, 1994: 4). At the same time, there
is considerable debate as to the real extent of institutional autonomy and about the interaction of microlevels of educational policy (institutions) and macro-levels (government). This debate is exemplified
in Hatcher and Troyna (1994) and Ball (1994). A complicating factor is the relative autonomy of HEIs
which Bauman asserts (above). A resolution of this point is beyond the scope of this paper, but what
appears to be happening is that while particular government policy thrusts are transmitted directly to
institutions through funding regimes, there is considerable scope for different institutions to make very
different decisions. Thus an HEI under pressure to increase student numbers might choose to
emphasise its national role or its local role, part-time or full-time students, younger or older students.
There has been little detailed study of issues of this sort in higher education policy research.
An alternative approach to policy formulation which is perhaps more appropriate given the relative
autonomy of HEIs is to express the desirable outcomes and leave institutions to sort out the detail.
This is the approach advocated by NIACE, in their 1993 paper (McNair, 1993): ‘… NIACE proposed
a shift from conceptions of HE built around institutions, disciplines, research and teaching towards one
based on five underpinning mechanisms which would characterise an “adult HE” ‘ (McNair, 1998).
These five mechanisms are:
 A coherent framework of learner support (incorporating ‘guidance’ and ‘tutorial’ functions)
 An agreed core curriculum, based around the development of critical and analytical capacities, and
active participation by learners, and including an agreed range of provision in all regions
 A stronger focus in quality assurance systems on explicit outcomes
 A resourcing system which recognises expenditure on education as investment and guarantees
equitable access to public resources.
Interestingly, the Dearing Report appears to support a diversified approach to the lifelong learning
agenda. Certainly it produced no blueprint for a system-wide movement towards lifelong learning; its
key recommendations included increased resources for those HEIs with successful experience of
widening participation and also the expansion of sub-degree work, some of which would be in the
Further Education (FE) sector rather than in HE. It seems probable that planning will be largely at the
level of individual HEIs, despite the involvement of HEIs in local partnerships (see chapter 7) and also
their likely involvement with key central government innovations such as the University for Industry.
It is too early to assess the likely impact of the regionalisation of government now in progress. The
likelihood is that we shall continue to have a decentralised policy framework in England and Wales but
with the government playing an active stake-holder role, both as provider of public funding and
through its own initiatives such as University for Industry and regional economic development
agencies.
Lifelong learning within HEIs
Clearly once adult learners have obtained places on full-time courses, they are likely to be in a
comparable position to younger full-time students. However, many mature students need more support
than traditional full-time students. Those that have entered without formal qualifications will need
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particular support at the beginning of their courses. Those who have come via the Access course route
may miss the supportive and encouraging atmosphere which has characterised such courses. Further,
the picture for full-time students is itself changing, largely due to reductions in the value of the unit of
resource, and in turn is different for part-time and non-credit students. Many of these problems will be
familiar to European colleagues, particularly in systems where open access has led to massification on
undergraduate courses.
To take the changing overall picture first, it is quite clear that departments are making more use of a
variety of methods based on open learning to teach core course material, usually combined with some
form of tutorial provision. However, a few institutions have gone much further than this, replacing
departmental personal tutorial systems with central ‘Learning Services’ departments offering students
support with essay-writing skills, Information Technology and generic skills.
On part-time courses, students will have to contend with the fact that many central services of the
university have traditionally been organised with full-time students working an approximately 09.0017.00 day in mind. Libraries, Computer Centres and Student Services are only slowly adjusting to
such changes. As Haselgrove (1996: 15) remarks: ‘.. most institutions are still operationally driven by
the perceived needs of full-time students whatever their actual student profile’ (her emphases). Where
courses are wholly or partly located within industry, there are further problems, with occasional visits
by university staff to the employer (or of students to the HEI) and variable systems of mentoring within
the workplace.
While ‘new’ universities have always had substantial numbers of adult learners, the most obviously
‘adult’ part of the ‘old’ university has always been its Continuing Education department. However,
given that the clientele of such departments has often been people with relatively good educational
backgrounds, there has not always been the development of student support services which one might
expect. Further, Continuing Education students have often been refused use of general university
facilities on the grounds that their fees pay the cost of tutoring but not of access to central university
facilities. However, one outcome of the merging of the old Polytechnics into the University sector in
1992 was the harmonising of funding systems for continuing education. As a result, a much larger
proportion of part-time and evening students are now treated in the same way as their mainstream
colleagues, and some institutions have extended to them the full range of facilities and services
available to traditional young full time students.
In general, there is an uneven development of student support for students who do not conform to the
18-21 year old norm. There is certainly nothing like the ‘coherent system of student support’ urged by
NIACE.
Types of higher education
Although the differences between institutions are many and varied, and there are exceptions to almost
any typology, there are some broad distinctions which can be drawn between the “old” universities,
and the “new” ones (with the Colleges broadly similar to the “new”). However, there is no formal
distinction in law of funding to correspond to those applied in some EU countries. Some of the major
elements of this “old/new” divide are shown in figure 6 below.
Figure 6: types of higher education
Type of HE
‘Old’ university
‘New’ university
Range of traditional
academic disciplines
Wide
Narrower
Interdisciplinary approaches
Some example, e.g.
Women’s Studies
Many examples
Traditional
vocational/professional
(Medicine, Engineering,
Law, Theology
Most of these
Some of these
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More vocational (Business
Studies, Hotel and Catering,
Medicine-related)
Some examples (e.g.
Management)
Many examples (often
related to local economies)
Continuing Education for
personal development
Some - probably declining
A small amount
Continuing professional
development
Some, especially related to
the traditional professions
A lot
A number of further comments may be made while emphasising the great diversity between HEIs:
 Although the notion of ‘academic knowledge’ is a key part of higher education discourse,
universities have always had vocational purposes. The reasons, for example, why Clinical
Medicine is found in old universities and “Subjects allied to medicine” in new universities has far
more to do with the relative positioning of various medical professions than the academic
knowledge base of these subjects. In the same way, the growth of Business Studies and
Management in ‘old’ universities has more to do with the perceived status of a qualification from
an old university than the complexity of the knowledge base.
 Some continuing professional development and continuing education for personal development
courses will be organised in separate Continuing Education departments, but some by academic
departments. Some will take place on HEI premises, some at the workplace and some in a wide
variety of community settings.
 Non-university HEIs are not shown in the table. Most have diversified from their original role as
monotechnic teacher training institutions, to incorporate academic courses and other vocational
education courses. Some may also include Continuing Education for personal and professional
development. They are usually smaller than either old or new universities.
Academic staff
There has never been any formal qualification requirement to work in British HE, apart from holding a
first degree, institutions have generally resisted pressures to insist on staff holding PhDs (as is the case
in some countries), and only a minority have undertaken formal teacher training. In the case of
continuing education, the large body of part-time staff bring a plethora of qualifications and
experience, in which no systematic pattern is evident. However, most institutions have, in recent
years, introduced some form of induction training in teaching and other parts of the academic role, and,
as a result of the Dearing review, an Institute of Learning and Teaching has now been established to
formalise the professional skills of academic staff. Individuals can apply to become members of the
Institute. Staff will be expected to progress through a series of levels of membership, demonstrating
their competence to teach in HE, and that they are continuing to update their skills and knowledge.
In very many of the examples of mass HE referred to in this report, mature students will be working
for degrees and diplomas alongside younger students under the supervision of, and with the support of,
the same teaching staff. However, the closer to the margins of part-time degrees and Continuing
Education we move, the more likely it is that staff will be part-time staff contracted on a sessional basis
to teach a given number of hours, although a few will be acknowledged experts from outside the HEI
drawn in for this particular purpose. In the old paradigm of HE this is a cause for concern since,
although these casualised staff are just as likely as full-time tenured staff to be gifted teachers, devoted
to the wellbeing of their students (and many are in fact established professionals, or tenured staff of
other institutions) the status of such staff is lower. Furthermore, their treatment in terms of employment
practice, staff development and support is often less satisfactory, and they tend to be excluded from the
mainstream academic community. However, it is arguable that a truly lifelong model of higher
education would call for an increase in the proportion of teaching done by practitioners from
communities and fields outside the university, with staff, like students, moving much more often across
the boundary between the university and the world outside.
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A large part of the problem about lifelong learning in HE is that there is no shared vision of it among
staff.14 This implies a large programme of staff development, and it is much more difficult to organise
such staff development for casualised staff. Part of this process of staff development relates to
connectivity: how an institution which is concerned primarily with formal education can relate to a
wider public where there is enthusiasm for learning but little knowledge of (and sometimes hostility to)
formal education institutions. At the moment this knowledge is locked up in relatively few hands,
usually Continuing Education staff who are employed to manage projects in partnerships with
voluntary organisations, firms, other educational institutions, or to liaise between the HEI and
particular target groups (e.g. ethnic minority groups, people with disabilities, the unemployed). This
knowledge needs to be more widely shared within HE.
Quality issues
The maintenance of “quality” in HE has been a major concern of public debate in the UK during the
late 1980s and early 1990s. The British policy community has traditionally taken the view that the
quality of its HE was unusually high, as a result of its selective entry, and intensive residential
experience (which is why it was thought appropriate to complete a first degree in only three years,
compared to longer periods in most other countries). There was therefor a fear that change would bring
about a dilution of the quality. Added to this was the concern that Britain is a major provider of HE to
international markets (both through overseas students coming to Britain to study, and through British
courses delivered overseas), and that any perceived decline in quality would damage an important
source both of academic status and of external income for institutions.
The rapid expansion of the system, and the merging of the Polytechnics and Universities into a single
sector, raised concern among policymakers that quality might decline. For some, the anxiety reflected a
reaction to expansion itself, based on the widely held public assumption that increasing the proportion
of the population engaged in HE in itself meant a decline in standards (since standards were defined by
exclusion). For others, the concern was with the mixing of very different traditions of quality assurance
of the two sectors.
The systems of the “old” universities depended strongly on relatively small collegial communities, of
peer scrutiny and trust, with each university responsible for its own quality assurance, assisted by
external examiners from similar institutions. The Polytechnics, on the other hand, had been subject to a
very strong national supervision through the Council for National Academic Awards, which applied
more formal standardised external procedures to all its institutions.
Any move to harmonise these two systems was bound to cause alarm, and both feared loss of their
unique traditions, as well as increased cost and bureaucracy. To counter policymakers’, and perhaps
public, fears, a new quality structure was established in 1992, with three components:
Quality Audit
audit was designed to examine each institution’s procedures for quality
assurance. A national agency, the HE Quality Council, owned by the
Universities collectively, was set up to examine and report on the quality
assurance processes of individual institutions, and to undertake development
work designed to improve quality
Teaching Quality Assessment
Assessment, on the other hand, was designed to examine the quality of
teaching itself. It was carried out by an arm of the Funding Councils, which
sent teams of staff to visit institutions, inspect teaching and examine and
report on standards of teaching and learning in individual disciplines and
institutions.
Research Assessment
a regular process was established to review academic research in each
institution and each discipline every five years. The research work produced
by members of relevant departments was reviewed by external panels, and
14
We are grateful to Stella Parker of Nottingham University for drawing this point to our attention.
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each department was given a rating, where the highest rating indicated that
the majority of staff were engaged on research of international standing
In addition there are other quality assurance systems in place. Professional bodies in fields like
Medicine, Architecture, and Engineering maintain their own requirements for scrutinising the courses
which lead to their own membership, and have procedures in place for inspecting quality, including, in
some cases, restrictions on entry to courses. In a number of areas, like school teaching and some areas
of health, Government itself monitors quality through separate procedures and agencies.
One major reason for reforming quality assurance was to maintain public confidence in the whole
system, and to encourage the emergence of a better informed market for education and research. To
achieve this, all three processes were required to produce public reports on each department or
institution, available on request from the relevant agencies, and these have increasingly formed the
basis of unofficial “league tables” of institutions and departments, widely published in the national
press. These are increasingly used by potential students and staff to assess the standing of an institution
or Department.
Other drivers for improvement were also introduced. From the beginning, research assessment scores
were used as a basis for research funding by the Funding Councils, who gave much larger research
funds to the most highly rated departments, with the aim of concentrating research expertise. In the
case of teaching, however, the arguments for giving more funds to the higher or lower quality
departments is less clear, since funding poor quality departments better does not necessarily produce
improvement, and rewarding the best is not necessarily cost effective.
In the light of experience of the operation of these systems, and following the Dearing report, the
system was further reformed in 1997, with the creation of a new national HE Quality Assurance
Agency to oversee both audit and assessment functions. This proposed a new methodology, which will
require institutions to publish much more specific information about the nature of their programmes
and their outcomes. This has been endorsed by government and is currently being implemented.
The impact of the reform of quality assurance on lifelong learning is mixed. In so far as it increases
public understanding of the variety and range of opportunities available it opens the system to wider
and better informed participation. However, one clear effect of the publication of more information is
the emergence of unofficial “league tables” of institutions, which can have the effect of reinforcing
stereotypes of institutions. It is not surprising that, in most such tables, the “old” universities appear at
the top, mainly because the tables reflect measures which are more relevant to traditional young full
time students than to the broader, and less easily defined, functions of lifelong learning. At present it
can certainly be argued that the indicators being used do not adequately reflect factors relevant to
lifelong learners, with their intermittent patterns of attendance and complex learning careers and
objectives.
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Chapter 5 - The learning experience
This chapter will consider how far the learning experience of students in higher education is changing,
and how far the experience of non-traditional and mature learners is different from that of traditional
entrants. It will take account of the development of new technologies and their uneven application to
learning.
The Context
Watson and Taylor (1998) use CVCP and DfEE data to calculate that in England between 79/80 and
89/90, the unit of resource index fell in the polytechnic (now new university) sector from 100 to 75,
while it remained unchanged in the “old” university sector after reaching a peak of 107 in 83/84. From
1990/91 to 96/97, the overall unit of resource in HEIs funded by HEFCE fell from 100 to 76. Both the
arrival of mass HE and the declining unit of resource are forcing HEIs to confront the question of what
are the core and what are the peripheral functions of their institutions. Diverse answers are possible:
some institutions may decide that research and consultancy are the core activities with all other
activities as peripheral; at the other extreme, learning support may be defined as the core activity as it
is in the Open University, with departmental teaching, research and consultancy seen as peripheral.
Within student support itself, the hall of residence, central to the notion of residential initial education
for young people, may become a lower priority than the crèche for mature people needing childcare.
Admissions requirements or practices
From a lifelong learning perspective, admissions is one of the most unsatisfactory aspects of HE in
England and Wales. There is a broad distinction between those elite institutions and departments
which select students and the rest who attempt to recruit students (Payne, 1995). For most students,
choice is clearly constrained by the procedures used (ibid.). There is little advice and guidance work
within the admissions procedures of most HEIs, and it is common for students to end up on an
unsuitable course. Much of the admissions work is done by departmental staff, although more
centralised systems have been introduced, especially in the ‘new’ universities. There are problems at
each end of the spectrum:
 In elite institutions and subjects, very high Advanced level grades are required which discriminate
against adult learners, students whose school education took place in poor communities, and more
generally students educated in the public sector as opposed to those who attended private schools,
with their better resources and lower staff : student ratios.
 In other institutions and departments, pressure to fill places and to secure student-linked funding
leads to places being offered to students who lack the necessary learning skills to benefit from
those courses. There is no equivalent of the Open University procedure of contacting all students
without formal qualifications or evidence of recent study and offering advice on how to prepare for
HE.
Overall only limited progress has been made to the achievement of the three key proposals for reform
laid down by Fulton and Ellwood a decade ago:
 The ability to complete a course, not the highest entry grade, should be the basic
criterion for admission
 Performance indicators should be used to assess and reward recruitment and
successful graduation of non-traditional students
 All Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) should produce a formal admissions policy
statement, should arrange clear organisational locations for developing admissions
policy … and should undertake staff development on admissions issues. (Ellwood and
Fulton and, 1989: 6)
There is no widespread support for proposals which seek to lay down rational criteria for HE
admissions (Payne, 1995; Brown and Brimrose, 1993) and move towards a system much closer to
personnel recruitment practices. There is a lack of transparency and a lack of feedback in the methods
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used. However, there is also anecdotal evidence that HEIs are reviewing the appointment of
admissions tutors, with more senior and experienced staff taking on this role. Support and training
may be provided by Staff Development departments in older institutions and by the new central
Admissions offices in newer institutions. In some ways, prospects for a rational system appear better
for mature students and lifelong learners than for younger students: most HEIs now have links with
other institutions (especially FE colleges) in their area and are able to recruit students from known
student cohorts (including, but not exclusively, mature access courses) with some curricular coordination between levels.
Advice, guidance and information services
Traditionally, HEIs provide five types of service in support of learners:
 A counselling service which offers individual support to students experiencing problems with
relationships, finance, the experience of living away from home, and so on.
 An Information Technology service which offers computer support to students across a range of
subject areas (e.g. word-processing, databases, spread-sheets).
 An Accommodation service helping students living away from home to find suitable
accommodation.
 A Careers Service which assists students in finding work after graduation.
 A Health Service for students living away from home.
It will be noted that only one category refers to learning needs: in general students who have obtained
entry qualifications are assumed to be well able to cope with the demands of HE study. In response to
increasing numbers of adult learners (and non-traditional younger learners) in HE, these services are
adapting, most noticeably in those ‘new’ universities which have the largest numbers of mature
students. They are moving towards the Further Education model of significant Student Services
departments having responsibility for advice and guidance for both prospective and existing students,
student counselling, and learning support. In those universities with developed modular schemes,
guidance services also offer guidance in relation to the construction of a coherent degree by individual
students.
In some ‘new’ universities, pre-course guidance for students is seen as part of the outreach activities of
the university. There is a lack of knowledge of the opportunities offered by the university and the
procedures by which people can access them, especially in working-class communities. Guidance is
seen as a two-way process of communicating to local communities what the university has to offer, and
of informing the university about the cultural and practical obstacles which people experience in
accessing those opportunities.
Learning support may include English language skills (essay-writing and English for Special Purposes
for second language learners), Information Technology, Mathematics, dyslexia support and disability
support (e.g. for hearing or visually impaired students). As Payne commented in the context of
progression of non-traditional students from FE colleges to HE:
The development of learning support strategies within higher education will not only
ease the burden of increased student numbers without increased resources, but make
the progression of students to higher education much easier. Students who have become
used to the level of support in the best colleges not only need but expect ongoing support,
not only for specific disabilities, but also to fill the gaps which come from having an
interrupted education (immigrants and refugees) and to support students who are
continuing to live at home in circumstances which are not conducive to study. … it is
not just a question of efficiency, but of equity too. (Payne, 1995: 37)
The decline in the unit of resource for HEIs over a twenty year period has both made it more difficult
for HEIs to implement student support strategies but also, contradictorily, made it more urgent, with
more and more students chasing lecturers, library books and places, computers and so on.
Considerable autonomy is required in the way in which students access the various services available,
and a new discourse is developing around the ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ of the higher education
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student. Increasingly, student services run transition courses to help the new student adapt to the new
regime of higher education.
Subjects studied
There is a perceived gap between what more and more students want to study (Arts and Humanities)
and what government wants them to study (Science and Technology). For lifelong learning purposes,
this again reflects the gap between broad and narrow definitions of lifelong learning. Thus the Green
Paper on lifelong learning asserts: ‘The government is committed to maintaining a world-class science
and research base.’ (DfEE 1998a: 49) However, other developments such as interdisciplinary degrees
and modular degrees can be seen to support other parts of lifelong learning strategy (this time broad
and narrow) which assert the importance or broad, transferable skills which can be applied in a variety
of contexts including work and the local community, and which include learning skills which will
enable the individual to continue to learn throughout life.
From a lifelong learning perspective, the move away from science and technology and towards arts and
humanities has other implications for the ways in which student choice is constrained and constructed:
 Arts and humanities courses are less likely to have strict discipline prerequisites and are therefore
easier for mature students to access. On the other hand, humanities courses in most old and some
new universities may be harder to access because of greater competition for places.
 Science and engineering departments are under increasing pressure to adopt a lifelong learning
perspective in order to survive. This alone gives them the incentive to look critically at present
admissions policies. For example, if advanced Mathematics is necessary for an Engineering
degree, such Mathematics could be taught on the course rather than being a required prerequisite,
in the same way as Modern Language departments often offer degrees which require no previous
knowledge of the language.
Finally, the increasing number and range of vocational degrees available in HEIs has been welcomed
by government, employers and students alike. This has obviously positive implications for lifelong
learners who wish to link their studies to their existing work or to a future career change.
Curricular processes
Length and timing of courses
The variety and length of courses was explained in chapter 1. Generally courses take place between
the hours of 09.00 and 17.00. However, part-time degree courses are normally available as evening
courses, as are many Continuing Education courses for personal and professional development. Some
part-time courses, including some taught post-graduate courses, are available on Saturday mornings.
In general, the norm is still considered to be the full-time, daytime, term-time degree course over three
years, and this is a major obstacle to the development of HEIs as lifelong learning institutions. The
intensive two-year accelerated degree, the Open University degree and the ‘Saturday morning Masters’
may appear to have little in common. Yet all of them reflect the variety of ways in which lifelong
learners may be able to integrate HE into their lives. Above all, adults need to be able to take their
learning in manageable pieces. A blue-print exists for a unit-based credit framework for lifelong
learning (HEQC, 1994), and this is as much a priority in HE as it is in FE. The particular progress
made in Wales towards the achievement of a national credit framework in HE is especially promising
(Fforwm, 1995).
Levels of learning
As indicated in chapter 1, ‘level’ is one of a number of ways to define higher education. It was also
indicated that the situation in the UK was complicated by a number of factors: the existence of
substantial courses of Higher Education level in the FE (college) sector; the existence of a substantial
body of work within HEIs of a lower academic level. The situation has been further complicated by
the desire of the present government for expansion of higher education to include a major element of
sub-degree work to be located in FE (DfEE, 1998c).
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The conventional levels of academic work have been described above. However, a key question in
considering the move towards lifelong learning is how these levels relate or otherwise to learning
levels in the wider society. It is quite clear from the remarkable expansion of student numbers in
recent years, and in particular from the Open University and Access courses experiences, that the ‘pool
of talent’ concept – that there is a limited percentage of people able to benefit from HE – is now dead.
What, then, are the continuing cultural barriers which face mature students who want to study at higher
education level?
Firstly, within the adult education and training system, there has been a lack of ladders and bridges to
enable adults to progress from one kind of educational provision to another. Young et al (1994) refer
to this as ‘connectivity’. Where such support has been provided (noticeably through the Access
movement) successful progression has taken facilitated, but this has been the exception rather than the
rule. Parry (1996) points out that the history of Access courses goes back to the 1970s and that they
have been officially approved as a route into HE since 1987 (DES, 1987). Put succinctly, there is no
such thing as an adult education and training system.
Secondly, the kind of projects that could have delivered a mass (and socially diverse) student
population to HE through learning based in communities rather than in HEIs has been seen as the
preserve of a marginalised Continuing Education sector within HE (Taylor and Watson, 1998: 156-65).
Such work emphasises partnership between HEI and other educational institutions and civil society
bodies.
Thirdly, and related to the previous point, there has been a reluctance to engage in a dialogue with
knowledge as it is created, shared and used in non-academic settings – what Taylor and Watson (1998:
136) have memorably described as a ‘symbiosis between academic knowledge and the lived
experience of the real, social world.’ They argue for ‘a new flexibility … which recognises and values
such learning and integrates it with more established, formal patterns of learning (ibid: 137) The
current success of the ‘new’ vocational education courses and of continuing professional education in
the new universities are an example of what can be achieved in the work-related field. Similar
initiatives are urgently required in the social and community fields, and chapter 7 will consider some of
these under the general theme of partnerships.
In summary, from a lifelong learning perspective, a consideration of ‘levels of learning’ in HE must
embrace the connectivity or otherwise of HE with other knowledge sites and learning settings in
educational institutions, in the workplace and in civil society.
The locations of learning
Most HE takes place within HEIs. But within Continuing Education, there is a long tradition of
making learning available much closer to where people actually live and in locations with which
people not familiar with educational institutions feel comfortable. Such work continues, although it has
diminished in recent years under pressure from Government and Funding Councils to improve or
demonstrate quality in forms which are easier to ensure on campus.
A growing body of higher education work is taking place in the workplace, through the delivery of
modules of degree programmes, but more often through the provision of tailored courses designed for
particular groups of employees to meet individual employers’ needs. This is commonest in
management, but extends into other fields. Some employers enter partnerships with HE institutions to
deliver abroad range of learning opportunities to employees in the interests of their personal and
general development.
A substantial minority of undergraduates undertake some element of work experience during their
degree programmes. This can range from a full year spent in the workplace, with a small element of
supervision from academic staff, to much shorter placements and project work. The Dearing
Committee recommended that all undergraduates should do this, in order to increase their
employability, but it is doubtful whether the labour market is capable of absorbing such large numbers
of students, although some initiatives are in hand to develop ways of doing this.
The home is another location for learning. The majority of study within the Open University takes
place at home, and a growing number of other institutions are offering some programmes by distance
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and open learning methods, some making substantial use of ICTs for delivery of some materials and
for interaction between remote students and staff..
Modes of study and learning processes
It is interesting to reflect that the Open University was originally called the ‘University of the Air’ and
that the use of broadcasting was seen as the ‘delivery mode’. While students certainly made use of
audio and televisual material, the main emphasis was on an older tradition of correspondence tuition
with students working through written materials at home and sending written assignments to a tutor.
‘External’ University of London degrees had been available on this basis for over 50 years. Indeed it
was recognised from the beginning that not all students had access to television and arrangements were
made for broadcasts to be available in study centres (Sargant, 1996: 290). Since then, the widespread
use of video and audio recorders has increased the flexibility of the OU model, while computer-based
learning (including electronic teleconferencing and the Internet) is also used on some courses.
However, this has involved the OU in considerable expenditure on equipment for student use, since it
is axiomatic that an institution which aims to widen participation must take account of the issue of
access to ICTs.
Traditional teaching and learning methods in HEIs have been very simple. The mass lecture was
supplemented by small tutorial classes and/or workshop and laboratory classes with strong learner
involvement. Students were required to buy and read a small number of books and use libraries to
access wider reading lists. The major crisis point in the system is the tutorial: not only has it always
been difficult to overcome the problem of the ‘good’ lecturer who finds it hard to relate face-to-face
with students, but as numbers have grown, it has become more and more difficult to get the student
involvement and interaction on which a ‘good’ tutorial depends. We have already noted that some
Open University material has found use in other HEIs, which is unsurprising as they share staff. But in
more recent years it is the techniques themselves which have aroused most interest: as the unit of
resource has reduced, the example of the Open University with its reduced costs has attracted more
interest. Some universities have developed their own distance courses, sometimes in conjunction with
professional bodies or trade unions (Thomson and Payne, 1998). But the most significant
developments have been in the use of various forms of open learning methods to supplement the more
conventional forms of lecture and tutorial. If HEIs become significant providers of lifelong learning,
then it is likely that new ICTs will form a significant part of their learning offer.
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Chapter 6 - Funding
This chapter will consider how funding systems for higher education are helping or obstructing a move
towards lifelong learning.
Funding of individual learners
Full-time students
Traditional full-time younger students have generally been funded jointly by their parents and the state.
The peak period of state involvement began in 1960 with the introduction of regulations which paid the
fees of any students achieving the minimum university entrance standard of two Advanced level
examination passes. Students also received a maintenance grant with a parental contribution which
varied according to parents’ income. For older students, the regulation was later changed to enable
students with other entry qualifications to receive a grant, the value of which was enhanced to take
account of parental responsibilities. There was also access to state welfare benefits for poorer students.
After 1979, the situation began to change: benefit regulation changes made it harder for students to
supplement their grants through state benefits, the value of the student grant was frozen, and from 1990
part of the grant was replaced by a loan system. “Access funds” are made available through
institutions to students who are in serious difficulty with their personal finances, but these are usually
inadequate to meet the needs and reserved for the most pressing needs among mature students with
dependants.
Part-time students
The funding indicated in the previous paragraph was not available to part-time students.
Continuing education and part-time undergraduate and postgraduate students were
funded by a combination of general university funding, fees which they paid themselves
(or which an employer might be persuaded to contribute to) and state welfare benefits
in the case of some unemployed part-time students. Parry (1995: 108) also notes the
absence of paid education leave policy in the UK. Given the major problem facing
universities by the early 90s in relation to funding full-time students, part-time students
did not even merit a mention in a major report on the future of higher education for the
Committee of vice-chancellors and Principals (CVCP) (Williams and Fry, 1994).
Student funding and the Dearing Report
The Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997) outlined a number of possibilities for future student support.
However, the solution adopted by the government is not one of them: grants are being replaced by
loans for all full-time students, with a means-tested flat rate fee contribution of £1,000. The loans
element has been criticised as socially regressive and the means-testing as unduly bureaucratic (Taylor
and Watson, 1997: 90).
In relation to lifelong learning, there has been no move to offer part-time students access to the funding
made available for full-time students, although student loans are to be made available from 2000.
Research by London Economics for the Open University suggested that this could be done without
greatly increased expenditure (Open University, 1997).A survey conducted as part of the Dearing
enquiry calculated that 35% of part-time students had their fees paid by their employer, yet OU figures
suggest that only 17% of all OU undergraduates get any help from an employer towards fee payments.
The funding of institutions
Dependence on public funding
Almost all the higher education institutions in England and Wales receive the majority of their funding
from public sources. 38% of their income is paid through the Higher Education Funding Council, with
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a further 12% being paid as student fees by local authorities for students from their areas. A further 5%
derives from Government funded Research Councils. The remaining 45% comes from privately funded
research (10%), overseas student fees (5%), the sale of a wide range of services, including
consultancy, provision of accommodation and catering etc., and from investments. However, the
balance of these elements within individual institutions varies greatly, with some institutions almost
exclusively dependent on funding related to student numbers, others with a major element of public
research funding, and others with a large proportion coming from privately funded research. However,
few if any would be financially viable without public funding, and even those which receive large
private research funding usually do so because of reputation and expertise built up through publicly
funded work.
The Funding councils are appointed by Government but Government does not intervene directly in
their decisions, although the annual “letter of guidance” from the Secretary of State to the Chairman of
the Council which offers guidance on broad policy issues has become more prescriptive in recent
years.
Funding and the student experience
Total expenditure per student in higher education has been declining since 1980, and between 1989
and 1997 it fell by 30% (it has since remained level). Since 1980 the problem has been exacerbated by
rising student numbers, which means that a disproportionate amount of increasing expenditure on
higher education goes to student maintenance and loans rather than to capital and recurring expenditure
(Taylor and Watson, 1998: 95; NCIHE, 1997). It was suggested in chapter 5 that the result is a
worsening experience of higher education for students. This is a particular problem as far as the
possibilities of lifelong learning are concerned, given the fact that so many mature students are
concentrated in the ‘new’ universities. ‘Old’ universities, by contrast, have often found it easier to
access other sources of funding such as private endowments, alumni relations offices, research funding
and overseas student fees. Nevertheless, Taylor and Watson (1998: 101) argue that there was a
common financial crisis by 1995 which led directly to the setting up of the Dearing Inquiry.
Levels of funding
The proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent on higher education (currently just over 1%)
declined from 1980 and increased between 1989 and 1994 as a result of increasing student numbers.
Currently the UK lies in a middle position in a league table of Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) countries (Taylor and Watson, 1998: 95; NCIHE, 1997).
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Figure 7: expenditure on tertiary education in OECD countries
(Source: NCIHE, 1997)
As far as general expenditure on higher education is concerned, the position is complex. The new
government in the UK, elected on 1st May 1998, is committed to keeping public expenditure within the
limits set out by the previous government. Some of the extra money demanded by HEIs has been
made available, but the majority of this will go to sub-degree work, for example two-year diploma
courses, in further education colleges. Successive statements by the government have made it clear that
any additional money will be spent on ‘widening provision’, that is to say, attempting to move forward
from the position outlined in chapter 3, in which higher education is dominated by the children of
middle-class parents. While this is to be welcomed by advocates of lifelong learning, it remains to be
seen how the overall financial crisis will impact on the ability of HEIs to reach out to, recruit and
support learners from non-traditional backgrounds.
Funding allocation
The bulk of funding from the Funding Councils is allocated through a formula whose main elements
are teaching and research, with a smaller proportion devoted to special initiatives to encourage
particular kinds of activity or to fund central services like information networks. In 1998-9 the
distribution between these was:
Figure 8: Funding for elements of HE
£M
%
Teaching
2694
70
Research
829
21
Special Funding
334
9
3857
100
Total
HEFCE 1998
The teaching element is allocated on the basis of numbers of students, with a higher weighting for
those subjects which involve higher costs for laboratories, workshops etc. Recently the Funding
Councils have introduced an additional weighting for mature, part-time and disabled students, and they
have announced their intention to add a further weighting for students recruited from disadvantaged
geographical areas, as part of the Government’s strategy for overcoming social exclusion. However,
these weightings are relatively small.
Research funding is based on volume of research activity, through a formula which counts numbers of
research active staff in individual departments, weighted according to an assessment of the quality of
the research in that Department. Quality is judged through a “Research Assessment Exercise”
conducted through national peer groups of academics in each subject area. Each Department is given a
Research Rating on a scale from 1 (the lowest) to 5*. Departments rated 1 or 2 receive no funding and
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the weighting is progressive, so that a Department rated 5* receives more than four times as much
money per staff member as one rated 3b. The result of this is that, although the total sums available for
research are much smaller than for teaching, and Department which is likely to score 3 or above has a
powerful incentive to pursue research excellence, if necessary at the expense of teaching.
Special initiative funding is used to encourage institutions to pursue national policy and development
priorities, including developments in teaching and learning, in widening participation, in developing
the use of Information and Communication Technologies in learning. Examples include the 4 year
programme for Widening Participation, which allocated £3.8M to 46 institutions on a competitive basis
for innovative programmes (McNair et al. 1999), or the parallel programme which allocated £5M to 31
projects to develop facilities for disabled students.
Distribution of funds within institutions
Until recently, UK governments had not in general attempted to direct HE policy through funding
levers. However, during the 1990s a number of such attempts on the margins of higher education may
be noted, of which two relevant examples are:
 “Enterprise in Higher Education” was a Government programme which supported institutions in
developing ways of becoming more responsive to the needs of the labour market. It was the largest
ever single development programme in HE, spending in total over £100M over eight years in 64
institutions.
 “Non-Award Bearing Continuing Education” was a funding programme from the HE Funding
Council for England, aimed at developing Continuing Education work with a variety of socially
disadvantaged groups in society. It spent £4.6M p.a. over 4 years to 1999.
In addition, some HEIs have used their own funds to finance schemes to try to recruit students from,
for example, working class backgrounds or ethnic minorities. This is usually done in conjunction with
institutions in inner city areas (Payne, 1995). However, the numbers involved are so small that they
fail to have an impact on institutions dominated by white middle-class culture, and use precious
funding which is not then available to support such students who have gained access.
Resources for lifelong learning
There have been many attempts to intervene financially to encourage HE institutions to address
lifelong learning issues since the early 1980s. These have come from central Government, the Funding
Councils and from institutions themselves. However, even when one adds in the resources which
individual institutions commit to development work, such initiatives have always been small scale, and
even the largest, the EHE programme (which was arguably quite influential), with a public budget
exceeding £50m over 8 years contributed less than 0.3% of the annual budget of the typical University.
Most such programmes spent less than £3M p.a. nationally against a total expenditure on HE of over
£6B.
It is arguable that such funding has produced cultural change as well as change in recruitment profiles
in institutions, although the evidence of cultural change is far from clear, and certainly uneven between
institutions. More resource is now being put into such developments than ever before, but there is
increasing emphasis on basing these on formal institutional strategies and plans, rather than special
projects, reflecting the experience that project based approaches often remain marginal and temporary.
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Chapter 7 - Partnership and Co-operation
Much of the text of previous chapters assumes that the most significant planning link for universities is
with government, government policy and government funding. However, universities also exist within
society in a number of other ways and have autonomous links with other aspects of the social world,
notably other educational institutions, civil society and employers. These locations include sites where
knowledge is produced and reproduced in both formal and informal ways. The quality of such links
will influence in a major way the ability of the HEI to evolve as a lifelong learning partner. This
chapter will consider what kinds of partnerships HE institutions are entering into with other agencies or
institutions to encourage or develop lifelong learning (with public sector, private sector or not-forprofit agencies).
This chapter comments on three kinds of partnership based on:
 “Levels” of formal education: how ‘higher’ education articulates with other ‘lower’ forms of
formal education
 Knowledge: how knowledge created and reproduced in the university articulates with that created
and reproduced in the workplace or in civil society
 Formality: how formal education and knowledge relate to informal processes of learning and
knowledge in society.
Each of these will be considered in turn in this chapter, while noting that other approaches are possible.
For example Robertson and Hillman (1997, section 3) list ten examples of good practice in widening
participation in HE which can be cross-referenced with the categories suggested here (figure 9). It
should be noted, however, that their approach fails to address the knowledge question as effectively as
the approach suggested here, and still tends to privilege the educational sites.
Figure 9: connectivity and good practice in HE
Aspect of good
practice in
Robertson and
Hillman, 1997
Levels
Knowledge
Open access
Formality
Yes
Open University
‘2 + 2 degrees’
involving FE and
HE
Yes
Warwick University
FE / HE links
Yes
See Payne, 1995 and
Young, 1994
Community
initiatives
Yes
Yes
Use of
Information and
Communications
Technologies
HE – school
compacts
Yes
Yes
University of the Valleys
(Wales)
Sheffield Community
Literacy campaigns
(Sheffield Hallam
University)
Yes
Birkbeck College
(Crystallography)
See Bird and Yee, 1994
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Mixed mode
study (e.g. workbased or open
learning)
Access courses
England & Wales National Report
Yes
Yes
Yes
CPD
Trade union / HE schemes
Yes
See Parry, 1996
Levels of formal education
The starting-point here is that HE has traditionally articulated with the rest of the education system
through the mechanism of the Advanced level examination taken by young people aged 18 years old.
This has enabled them to select their undergraduate students in ways which have discriminated against
working-class students, as indicated in chapter 3. In recent years, a number of other developments
have taken place:
 The development of access courses (full- and part-time) which teach study skills and subject matter
which will enable mature students to enter HE directly. Some of these are directed at particular
social groups, e.g. women15 or ethnic minorities.
 The growth of school – higher education “Compacts”, usually including visits by school students,
school students working on HE premises, and some kind of special admissions procedures
 The growth of college – university (FE-HE) links emphasising progression routes and curricular
links. This has been particularly successful with students on vocational courses wishing to
continue to HE courses in similar subject areas. Payne (1995) and Young and colleagues (1995)
both argue for an extension of such progression links, while Robertson and Hillman argue for a
more comprehensive approach via a ‘unified qualifications / credit framework linking further and
higher education’ (Robertson and Hillman, 1997: 65).
 ‘2 + 2 degrees’ in which the student studies for 2 years in an FE college (starting at pre-HE level)
and 2 years in an HEI. This takes the student from lower level work in a familiar environment at a
local centre to higher level work at a regional or sub-regional centre.
However, the most widespread and most controversial links between institutions have been through
franchising courses. This has been used as a cheap way to increase student numbers in HE in the
1990s, without having to make new investment in plant and staff. While local colleges have been the
most usual partners, some franchising has been in other countries, especially in south-east Asia.
Davies et al (1997) calculate that, in 1993/4, 12% of all HE students were studying in further education
colleges. Some institutions appear to have misunderstood the basic principle of commercial
franchising – the need to ensure consistent quality standards across a number of diverse outlets. The
Dearing Report was particularly severe in its criticism of multiple franchising arrangements, where one
FE college has franchising arrangements with a number of HEIs (NCIHE, 1997, recommendation 23)
and the government has moved to place control of franchising with the new Quality Assurance
Agency (DfEE, 1998c: 27). Bocock and Scott (1994) also criticised franchising from the point of view
of the student experience which they judged to often be inferior to that experienced on a university
campus.
There is perhaps something to be said for institutions recognising the boundaries of their expertise as
well as facilitating passage across those boundaries for students. The recognition of higher education
as normally regionally based, rather than nationally based, opens up possibilities for more effective
collaboration between sectors and institutions: ‘Those universities and colleges that have collaborated
most effectively have done so in the realisation that for higher education the future is local and that in
this respect the UK is moving gradually closer to the predominant European pattern.’ (Woodrow and
Goldman, 1996: 47).
15
The fact that over 50% of students are now women does not exhaust the gender equality issue. For example,
older women are much less likely than men of the same age cohort to have attended university.
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Knowledge
This report has emphasised on a number of occasions the typically post-modern argument that
academics and the HEIs in which they work no longer have a monopoly over knowledge (Bauman,
1997; Usher and Edwards, 1997). However, it is necessary to discriminate more finely in this
argument. Such commentators are generally referring to elite knowledge (the knowledge necessary to
run global corporations and national governments and to devise mechanisms for the surveillance and
control of subordinate social groups). But knowledge has, of course, been created, defined and
reproduced in many different subordinate settings which may or may not have used education as part
of that process (Mayo, 1997). A major obstacle to the elaboration of partnerships between HEIs and
outside organisations across the divide of elite / subordinate knowledge formations is the absence of a
convincing intellectual framework which can accommodate an amoral capitalist economy within a
moral societal setting (Payne, 1996). For the sake of clarity, the argument around academic knowledge
and the economy will be dealt with here, while the argument around academic knowledge and civil
society is dealt with in the next sub-section, alongside the overlapping argument about levels of
formality.
There are two rather different examples from Continuing Professional Development (CPD) which can
be offered of cross – fertilisation between academic and workplace knowledge within higher
education and both have implications for lifelong learning developments.
1. Private sector. The term ‘learning society’ has been frequently used (usually in an uncritical and
generalised way) to describe a society in which the production and reproduction of knowledge
occurs in a generalised way. In practice, most attempts to pin the concept down have focused on
the notion of ‘learning organisations’ (Burgoyne, 1993) and the ways in which organisations deal
collectively with new ideas, new problems and new potential. It is also the case that this cannot be
reduced to a ‘personnel management’ or ‘training management’ issue but also includes the whole
field of research and development departments, with their large budgets and close ties with
university departments and their personnel (Schuetze, 1996). While this is undoubtedly an
important aspect of what is at stake in considering the interface of academic and workplace
knowledge, it is beyond the scope of this study, and the primary focus for knowledge production
and reproduction in the workforce remains on the individual employee / learner. Here the stress is
no so much on knowledge content as on knowledge transmission, and how individuals can keep
abreast of developments in their professional field. Sandelands has argued that:
Learning to learn is the most fundamental skill a professional person needs if he or she
is to remain relevant to the workplace. Taught knowledge quickly becomes dated. Being
able to update core knowledge through the ability to learn on an ongoing and lifelong
basis, is what separates the innovator from the rest. (Sandelands, 1998)
However, it might also be observed that the view of knowledge and skills in much continuing
professional development is exceptionally narrow. Gelpi’s view that lifelong learning should be
informed by working life but not controlled by it, is relevant here:
Education is becoming a part of the social and productive process and not … only an
initiation to work. The productive process is changing permanently and this means a
need for flexibility, mobility, innovations, and psychological equilibrium to deal
positively with these changes; this means also permanent creativity in education, not
only to pick up skills, but to understand the complex nature of the emerging productive
process and its relationship to the working and non-working environment. This
creativity is reserved not only for the top managers, it has to become the patrimony of
the entire workforce of the productive structure.’ (Gelpi, 1986: 233)
2. Public sector. HEIs have a long history of involvement with the professional education and
training of a number of public sector professional groups, particularly doctors. This includes both
initial training and subsequent development. In recent years, a larger number of paramedical and
caring professions have come within the parameters of higher education (e.g. physiotherapy,
radiography, social work, nursing). There has been an emphasis on the integration of theory and
practice which in turn has led to changes in the methods used in medical training itself. The
concept of the reflective practitioner recurs frequently in the literature (for example: Gobbi, 1995;
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Fairbrother and Hibbert, 1996; Hunt, 1996). Bright (1996) has criticised the frequent use of
‘reflective practice’ in a limited and technical way which denies the critical and political potential
of reflective practice:
Such is the state of entropy that surrounds ‘reflective practice’ that as a distinctive and
integrated concept and practice it has been marginalised at the price of popularisation,
and in this process, been rendered meaningless, specious and instrumental. It has
become a mantra and a slogan which legitimises rather than questions existing practice;
an instrument of political and professional convenience and conformity rather than a
process of critical enquiry. (Bright, 1996: 36)
He traces some of the confusions and limitations of the term, and the practice it has inspired, back
to early works by Schon and Argyris (Argyris and Schon, 1974; Schon, 1983 and 1987).
Formality
As Merrill (1997: 116) has argued: ‘The process of lifelong learning raises fundamental questions
about what being a citizen means and what type of society is desirable.’ She quotes approvingly
Alheit’s view of ‘the idea inherent in the concept lifelong learning, namely that links be established
between educational processes and everyday practice, between formal learning and informal learning.’
(Alheit, 1996: 4) There is an overlap here between the categories of formal / informal; education /
everyday life; global / local which corresponds to the classic Habermasian distinction between systems
world and life-world (Welton, 1995). It comes as little surprise to learn that a quarter of HEIs do not
refer to regional objectives in their strategic plans. Coffield states that local involvement by HEIs ‘is
currently patchy … but that it needs to turn to active and systematic engagement’ (Coffield, 1997:
190).
The problem is a considerable one. Sticking to higher education indicators alone, there is an enormous
divergence within London between Barking in east London where 1.5% of the population have
university degrees, and the City of London (central London) where 30% have degrees (Gordon and
Forrest, 1995). It is in response to deep and widening social divisions of this sort that Coffield and
Williamson argue:
This is the social context within which new models of higher and further education need
urgently to be developed: existing divisions appear to be deepening and new divisions
are also being created. In response, universities need to renegotiate their relations with
their local communities and be differentially funded to take account of varying regional
needs. (Coffield and Williamson, 1997: 16)
There is evidence of considerable activity on the fringes of higher education, designed to bring HEIs
closer to local communities. Reports on these projects are usually found in edited publications such as
Elliott et al (1996) and Preece et al (1998). This body of practice consists of projects aimed to bring
universities into contact with ethnic communities (Steyne and Wetherald, 1995), working class
communities (Humphreys and Francis, 1996), linguistic communities (Morris, 1996) and disability
groups (Stuart and Thomson, 1995). In a few cases, community groups have been encouraged to
publish their own commentaries on their education and training activities within continuing education
(e.g. Barrett et al, 1996 and 1998). What is not clear from such reports is how far these projects are
seen as central to university policy rather than the work of committed individuals in Continuing
Education departments.
In some cases, it has been a matter of the university making the subject expertise available to
community groups through taught courses which may take place either within the university or within
premises owned by the community group. More commonly, continuing education staff act in a
facilitating role to encourage the autonomous learning of individual members of these community
groups. In this way, they have set a pattern for developments in universities which appoint full-time
staff with a development role to act as the presence of the university within civil society.
It should also be noted that HEIs are able to span the gap between the workplace and civil society by
working with trade unions to develop learning opportunities for their members. This may be at a
relatively high academic level, as with the Open University / Engineers and Managers Association
(EMA) MBA, a bridge between representative training and higher education as with the University of
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Leeds / Manufacturing, Science, Finance (MSF) scheme, or a relatively low level course to introduce
union members to changes taking place in their own industry, as in the University of East London /
Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU) scheme (Payne and Thomson, 1998).
A number of obstacles to the development of partnerships may be noted:
 A tradition of competitive rather than co-operative behaviour between institutions, officially
encouraged by the previous government (1979-97)
 The self-referential nature of academic culture
 Hostility in both the workplace and civil society to the elitism of higher education
 The absence of funding mechanisms which reflect the actual costs of partnerships
 The incomplete move to national credit accumulation and transfer systems in both England and
Wales.
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Chapter 8 - Conclusions
Diversity and Hierarchy
Much change is happening in Higher Education in England and Wales, but there are competing
pressures and trends, many of which have only an indirect relationship to lifelong learning, and some
of which encourage development away from lifelong concerns. The tension can best be described in
terms of a dialectic between diversity and hierarchy.
A feature of English culture is a strong interest in defining and elaborating hierarchies of status,
seeking to identify “the best” institution, service or individual, and rank all others in order below that.
This pressure leads to institutional “league tables”, to the Research Assessment Exercise and simplistic
interpretations of (often complex and contradictory) quality assurance evidence. In tension with this is
a discourse of diversity and autonomy in higher education, which stresses the right of institutions and
individuals to pursue individual and distinct missions. This principle is enshrined in the national
quality assurance systems, which seek to measure institutions against their own published mission
statements, rather than some overall national ideal.
The commitment to diversity allows individual institutions, departments and staff to pursue lifelong
priorities, even when these are in conflict with traditional academic values. This provides many
opportunities for experiment and change, and it can be argued that the English higher education system
has allowed a more creative and innovative approach to the lifelong agenda than many others as a
result. However, lifelong learning is not the dominant discourse of the HE policy community, where
the idea itself is little understood.
Outside higher education the rhetoric of “lifelong learning” is becoming commonplace, but the
dominant understanding (and personal experience) of higher education among the broad national
policy community (including leaders of industry as well as professional politicians and academics) is
still of institutions whose purpose is to provide the final stages of initial education to a highly selective
group of middle class school leavers.
This personal experience links to the cultural concern with hierarchy, to exert a powerful pressure
away from widening participation, extending part-time study, and expanding work and community
based learning. While these activities may be encouraged by Ministers on grounds of equity, economic
competitiveness or the need to promote a broader notion of citizenship, and while many individual
enthusiasts and pressure groups may support this, the dominant discourse presses in the opposite
direction. The more successful an institution is in addressing these concerns, the more likely it is to be
perceived as offering a “second class service”, and open to the criticism of “lowering standards”
against some tacit set of dominant values. As a result, the more an institution recruits non-traditional
learners, the more likely it is that the education they receive will be seen as “second class”.
This problem is exacerbated by the political power exerted by the higher education system. Graduates
of the most selective institutions dominate the policymaking community, and this is especially true of
politicians. Government is traditionally extremely sensitive to accusations of threatening the proper
autonomy of HE institutions, and Governments of left and right have been defeated on issues involving
HE in the House of Lords, whose membership includes many University Chancellors and retired vicechancellors from the more conservative institutions.
The English system is thus both more open to change, and more resistant to it when it happens than
more centralised systems, whether that centralisation is at national, institutional or faculty level.
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Necessary Changes
If higher education in England and Wales is to respond to the lifelong learning agenda identified at the
beginning of this report, there are a number of changes which would appear to be particularly
necessary and important.
1. To change public perceptions of what higher education is and what it can contribute to broader
social policy objectives. This applies to policymakers and to potential learners. The former tend to
define lifelong learning in terms which exclude HE, on grounds of irrelevance, or to avoid it
because of its political influence. The latter tend to have no sense of HE as an agency which can
help them to address the problems of their everyday lives.
2. Secondly, there is a need to creating stronger and more explicit links between HE and the three
elements of the current policy agenda:
 social exclusion
 economic competitiveness
 citizenship and culture
3. Addressing the social class bias of current participation, and the under representation of older
people, disabled people, and members of some ethnic minorities. Current initiatives by the Funding
Councils to attach additional funds to students recruited from such backgrounds are in their early
stages, but may make some impact on this, particularly since, to qualify for additional funds
institutions must demonstrate not only recruitment of people from such groups, but that this is
related to a formal institutional strategy for widening participation, and most institutions, including
those with the least successful records, are currently developing such strategies
4. Expanding and developing work based learning, both as an access route for non-participants and as
a means of integrating learning and work more effectively. This was a strong element in the
mission and practice of the former Polytechnics (the “new” universities), and most institutions
provide a range of programmes for professional updating. A smaller number provide programmes
in partnership with employers for existing employees, although some are developing such
approaches for less well qualified employees as part of “employee development programmes”.
5. Refining the criteria used in quality assurance processes to make them less likely to discourage
institutions and individuals from considering lifelong issues. The research assessment system still
discourages academic staff from focusing attention on teaching and participation issues, since high
research scores deliver greater financial benefit, as well as personal satisfaction for many staff. The
assessment of teaching quality still focuses strongly on traditional modes of delivery, and
scrutinises non-traditional modes of delivery and modular provision more rigorously than the
traditional three year degree.
6. Further development of modularity to allow individuals to use the resources of higher education
more flexibly. Almost all institutions are nominally modular for a large proportion of their work,
but there is relatively little evidence of this opportunity being used by learners to build flexible and
personalised learning careers.
7. Substantial expansion and development of tutoring and guidance services to support a more
flexible system. If individuals are to use higher education institutions more flexibly across their life
span they will need better support to help them understand, plan and manage their learning careers,
which may involve drawing on the resources of several institutions, and participation spread across
decades rather than years. In general the most developed tutorial systems are those which support
traditional learners, whose needs are in many ways the simplest, and least challenging for the
institution and system as a whole.
8. Continuation of development work on the use of ICTs to widen participation and make HE
knowledge and expertise more widely accessible. British HE institutions have made much progress
in the use of technologies in learning, but despite the efforts of the Funding Councils to take
advantage of economies of scale, and to share expertise and materials across the system, there
remains powerful resistance to common programmes. The culture remains dominated by individual
academics developing their own programmes and approaches. It is possible that the emergence of
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the University for Industry will exert pressure for change, through a powerful central quality
assurance system for the materials which it commissions and endorses.
9. Development of the “third leg” funding stream, to encourage closer dialogue between HE
institutions and their local and regional communities. The focus of funding systems on research
excellence (narrowly defined) and on teaching quality (traditionally defined) has led to a
convergence of priorities in all institutions, and a gradual “squeezing out” of much of the activity
through which British Universities have traditionally interacted with their local communities
(extramural programmes, public lectures, collaborative community development work). There is a
need to develop a funding stream which encourages Universities to revive this powerful tradition.
However, the initiative currently being launched, the Higher Education Reach Out to Business and
the Community (HEROBIC) fund is being focused more strongly on employability and technology
transfer to small firms. Both these are worthy objectives, and relate to the broader lifelong learning
agenda, but neither address the issues of social exclusion or wider community capacity.
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SOCRATES Making it Work
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Glossary
AE
APR
adult education
age participation rate: refers to the percentage of an age-group studying in higher
education
BIFU
Banking, Insurance and Finance Union, a trade union
CATS
Credit Accumulation and Transfer. Embryo of a national system for recognising and
transferring credit between educational institutions.
CBI
Confederation of British Industry. National employers’ organisation. (The CBI and TUC
represent the social partners in the UK)
CE
continuing education (usually within a university context)
CIHE
Council for Industry and Higher Education
Colleges
non-profit corporations (previously under local government control) providing a wide
range of further education and some higher education
COSHEP Committee of Scottish Higher Education Principals
CPD
continuing professional development (usually within a university context)
CVCP
Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals
CVE
continuing vocational education (usually within a university context)
DES
Department of Education and Science, before merger with the Employment Department to
form the DfEE
DfEE
Department for Education and Employment (government ministry)
DTI
Department of Trade and Industry (government ministry)
EMA
Engineers and Managers Association, a professional trade union
ESREA
European Society for Research in the Education of Adults
FE
further education
FEFC
Further Education Funding Council: more correctly FEFCE for England, and FEFCW for
Wales
HE
higher education
HEFC
Higher Education Funding Council: more correctly HEFCE for England, and HEFCW for
Wales
HEIs
higher education institutions, including universities and colleges of higher education
HEQC
Higher Education Quality Council
HESA
Higher Education Statistics Agency
HMSO
Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, official government publisher.
ICT
information and communications technologies
ILAs
Individual Learning Accounts (see footnote 13)
IPPR
Institute for Public Policy Research. Independent research organisation.
mainstream the central activity of an organisation (cf. ‘hegemonic’ or ‘normal’)
MBA
Master of Business Administration: postgraduate management qualification
MSF
Manufacturing, Science, Finance: a trade union
national
may refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or to Scotland,
Wales and England separately
NCIHE
National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: produced the Dearing report, 1997
NHS
National Health Service
NIACE
National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (England and Wales). The national
organisation for adult learning
58
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NTOs
OECD
OU
PCET
National Training Organisations, organised at industry level
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Open University
post-compulsory education and training: all forms of education and training for people
older than the minimum school-leaving age of 16
RSA
Royal Society of Arts. A non-governmental organisation linking industrial and education
interests
SCUTREA Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults:
professional body for the study of adult learning
SEG
Socio-economic group. Standardised method of referring to social class, based on
occupation of self, marriage partner or parent.
SKILL
National Bureau for Students with Disabilities
SRHE
Society for Research in Higher Education: professional body for the study of higher
education
TECs
Training and Enterprise Councils. Promote education and training at work.
TUC
Trades Union Congress. National trade union organisation.
UACE
Universities’ Association for Continuing Education. Professional body for continuing
education staff in universities
UfI
University for Industry: government plan to promote learning at work through the use of
ICTs
UK
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
UNESCO United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation
VET
vocational education and training
59