Grateful though I am for this first-class teaching, it saddens me to think that BPP will come to represent the future of higher education provision. If Universities Minister David 'Two Brains' Willetts has his way, the coalition government will create a market in further education with students acting as consumers and businesses supplying degrees. Willetts intends to make it easier for private colleges such as BPP to compete with publicly funded institutions. This is part of a package of whole scale reform in this area, which has seen tuition fees trebled at public universities and more emphasis being placed on the publishing of graduate recruitment statistics.
At first glance, any attempt to improve the standards of higher education should be welcomed. In my last post I lamented the awful graduate employment prospects facing those currently leaving university. Therefore, the government is surely right to prioritise careers and to focus on students getting better value for money.
There is something fundamentally troubling, however, about students being turned into consumers. At BPP there is a strange atmosphere, which is totally different from the atmosphere I experienced at my undergraduate public university. It does not feel like a centre of academic discovery. That's not to say the standards are low; the tuition is of high quality and the assessment process is rigorous to say the least. Rather, it feels like a place where people pass through as a means to an end, not a place that it is enjoyable to be for the sole purpose of learning.
In order to understand why this is problematic it is necessary to consider the purpose of higher education. Is it to produce top graduates? Or is there more to it than that?
Certainly, one of the key aims of a university education is to gain a good qualification that will lead to a prosperous career. That is why most young people make the decision to spend money and head to university. In the global economy it is nothing short of essential for the UK to produce the best graduates in order to support our industries. So the government is right to be fixated with driving up standards and improving graduate recruitment.
This is surely not enough by itself, however. One of the core aspects of a university education must be to stimulate intellectual curiosity. To foster thinking for no reason other than to think. To learn more about one's opinions. My fondest memories of undergraduate life include having discussions with my tutors about points of law for reasons of interest alone, not to pass an exam or succeed in a job interview.
Willetts seems to forget this with his desire to commoditize higher education. 'Two Brains' has overlooked the need to learn how to use one's brain. His plan to allow more private universities to run degree courses is a recipe for taking the soul and meaning out of academic endeavour. In my last post I also mentioned the New College of the Humanities, a private university which will offer the best possible teaching in exchange for fees of £18,000 a year, making BPP look cheap. No doubt the graduates of the New College will be in an envious position in the labour market. What of their university experience though? Will there be genuine intellectual curiosity when the students are mere consumers? Or will it be, as at BPP, that the majority of students attend because they see it as a means to an end, having paid so much money?
Maybe the view I have expressed is a romantic vision of further study. It may be possible that the notion of spending three years debating and thinking for no vocational gain is simply outdated in the modern economy. If this is right though I think it is a sad reflection on our society. As with most things, the government seems to know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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