A Call for Radical Reform: Higher Education for a Sustainable Economy
Too many students studying full-time honours degrees at university are causing higher education to be ‘over-consumed’.
A new Debate Paper from the Higher Education Policy Institute by Professor Tim Blackman argues that full-time honours degrees were created when universities were small and elite institutions. They were rolled over into the modern mass system of higher education we have today with little thought about the appropriateness and affordability of providing such a large volume of learning straight after school, with the educational content expected to last a lifetime.
Instead, Professor Tim Blackman says more people need to be studying shorter courses, spreading the cost over time while encouraging lifelong updating of skills and knowledge.
The author, who previously led The Open University, argues that a new system would better suit learners at different life stages and would make commuting or online learning more feasible, instead of incurring the expense of relocating to study residential courses.
This is one of several far-reaching recommendations made in A Call for Radical Reform: Higher Education for a Sustainable Economy (HEPI Debate Paper 41) to reshape higher education so that it focuses on two challenges that Professor Blackman says are ‘existential’:
- An unsustainable economy caused by over-consumption driving climate change.
- Misinformation, which is corroding common standards of knowledge and our ability to act together as a society to tackle these challenges.
Universities, the report argues, are uniquely placed to prevent what could be catastrophic breakdowns in our economy, environment and democracy. They can provide the skills and knowledge needed for the transition to a sustainable economy, which requires re-industrialisation on a huge scale. And they can establish common standards for agreeing facts and how certain we can be about them, based on respect for evidence and openness to criticism.
The recently announced plans for post-16 education and skills provision in England are a step in the right direction by strengthening education and training for all young people and introducing more flexibility into lifelong learning. But Professor Blackman argues that the higher education reforms do not go far enough, add more complexity to an already complex system and fail to learn from past policy failures.
He calls for more radical action, with direct government intervention in higher education, greater standardisation of courses and leaner regulation. He singles out the complex and expensive ‘apparatus’ of England’s Office for Students for criticism, suggesting that an alternative, less costly approach to regulating the quality of higher education would be commissioners overseeing universities’ strategies and how performance is reported to their governing bodies.
Commenting on the post-16 education and skills plans, Professor Tim Blackman said:
The commitment to two-thirds of young people entering higher level education and training is welcome, but higher education needs to be universal, like secondary education. There is no biological basis for believing that less than about 90 per cent of the population would not succeed in higher education.
Sustainable economic growth depends on wide participation in acquiring high levels of skill and knowledge – including working with artificial intelligence – and our ability to act as a society on the risks we face depends on respect for evidence and openness to criticism being universal and not confined to conversations among scientists. A lot of higher education is about passing on knowledge, on the basis that this is information and not misinformation, and in particular passing on the critical skills to tell the difference. We should not restrict this ability to less than half the population.
Now is the time for government and higher education to work together on these urgent tasks, not by tinkering with the system but fundamental reform.
Commenting on this Debate Paper, Nick Hillman OBE, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said:
This report deserves to be read by every policymaker, vice-chancellor and university governor because its bold and radical ideas paint a completely different future.
Professor Blackman addresses the key issues of our times, including disinformation, climate change and the pressures on public spending.
Not everyone in higher education will agree with what he has written but everyone should engage with what he has to say.
Notes for editors
- Tim Blackman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at The Open University and was its Vice-Chancellor from 2019 to 2024. His previous influential HEPI paper from 2017, The Comprehensive University: An Alternative to Social Stratification by Academic Selection (HEPI Occasional Paper 17), is still available on the HEPI website.
- HEPI was founded in 2002 to influence the higher education debate with evidence. HEPI is UK-wide, independent and non-partisan. HEPI is funded by organisations and higher education institutions that wish to support vibrant policy discussions as well as through events. HEPI is a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity.
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