Alexander Bowen: In Britain our Higher Education could do with some ‘rationing’ – or be made to
How is this acceptable?
Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.
I have for some time, pretty rigorously, refused to watch Question Time.
Its format of a squirmy Labour MP doing what they no doubt think is an exceptional own, that is to say screeching “you were in government!!!” at one of the two remaining Tory MPs, whilst a non-entity MP and some obnoxious post-modern poet talk about needing to all get along coupled with some Reformer grinning like the Cheshire Cat in the background, makes for remarkably dull television.
Last Thursday was however an exception to my rule and largely a result of one clip.
In it, Oli Dugmore, left-ish populist-ish New Statesman writer, the person that is intended to serve as our post-modern poet, delivered a brilliant-ish takedown of the higher education system.
It was going so well – ‘The government likes RPI apart from when it takes my money’ is a genuine banger – until the very end when, rant over tuition fees over, Fiona Bruce meekly pipes up to ask, “How else are we going to pay for it?”. Dugmore’s “Uh… well”, followed by ‘the state – uhm’, ruined it all by exposing a simple reality – nobody is willing to talk about what an alternative to tuition fees actually means.
As someone who has, at one point or another, been enrolled in four different higher education systems, I’ll present these options and their trade-offs, and in the spirit of Question Time’s audience engagement schtick, you can decide what you like best.
Among European countries today, and they really are the useful comparator here rather than fantasies of 1950s Higher Ed, there are essentially three models for what higher education looks like – the Nordic, the Germanic, & the Mediterranean. Denmark, Switzerland, and France typifying each model best.
Every system, and I mean every system, has some rationing element. A good provided for free can never go unrationed, demand will always outstrip supply, and any conception of a ‘public good’ rather starts to break down when the return on education investment, both private and public, collapses.
Let’s start then with the Mediterranean and French model – the system I was enrolled in for the longest time. The Mediterranean option is defined by its open access – you pass your A-Level equivalent and, with a few limitations for medicine or dentistry, you can enrol in any subject at any public university for just about free, which unfortunately everyone does.
Courses are genuinely gigantic, teaching quality is poor at best, students don’t like their studies, academic excellence is shall-we-say-lacking, and degrees take far-longer than anyone believes is reasonable.
France in particular, and Italy to an extent, fix these …
How is this acceptable?
Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.
I have for some time, pretty rigorously, refused to watch Question Time.
Its format of a squirmy Labour MP doing what they no doubt think is an exceptional own, that is to say screeching “you were in government!!!” at one of the two remaining Tory MPs, whilst a non-entity MP and some obnoxious post-modern poet talk about needing to all get along coupled with some Reformer grinning like the Cheshire Cat in the background, makes for remarkably dull television.
Last Thursday was however an exception to my rule and largely a result of one clip.
In it, Oli Dugmore, left-ish populist-ish New Statesman writer, the person that is intended to serve as our post-modern poet, delivered a brilliant-ish takedown of the higher education system.
It was going so well – ‘The government likes RPI apart from when it takes my money’ is a genuine banger – until the very end when, rant over tuition fees over, Fiona Bruce meekly pipes up to ask, “How else are we going to pay for it?”. Dugmore’s “Uh… well”, followed by ‘the state – uhm’, ruined it all by exposing a simple reality – nobody is willing to talk about what an alternative to tuition fees actually means.
As someone who has, at one point or another, been enrolled in four different higher education systems, I’ll present these options and their trade-offs, and in the spirit of Question Time’s audience engagement schtick, you can decide what you like best.
Among European countries today, and they really are the useful comparator here rather than fantasies of 1950s Higher Ed, there are essentially three models for what higher education looks like – the Nordic, the Germanic, & the Mediterranean. Denmark, Switzerland, and France typifying each model best.
Every system, and I mean every system, has some rationing element. A good provided for free can never go unrationed, demand will always outstrip supply, and any conception of a ‘public good’ rather starts to break down when the return on education investment, both private and public, collapses.
Let’s start then with the Mediterranean and French model – the system I was enrolled in for the longest time. The Mediterranean option is defined by its open access – you pass your A-Level equivalent and, with a few limitations for medicine or dentistry, you can enrol in any subject at any public university for just about free, which unfortunately everyone does.
Courses are genuinely gigantic, teaching quality is poor at best, students don’t like their studies, academic excellence is shall-we-say-lacking, and degrees take far-longer than anyone believes is reasonable.
France in particular, and Italy to an extent, fix these …
Alexander Bowen: In Britain our Higher Education could do with some ‘rationing’ – or be made to
How is this acceptable?
Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.
I have for some time, pretty rigorously, refused to watch Question Time.
Its format of a squirmy Labour MP doing what they no doubt think is an exceptional own, that is to say screeching “you were in government!!!” at one of the two remaining Tory MPs, whilst a non-entity MP and some obnoxious post-modern poet talk about needing to all get along coupled with some Reformer grinning like the Cheshire Cat in the background, makes for remarkably dull television.
Last Thursday was however an exception to my rule and largely a result of one clip.
In it, Oli Dugmore, left-ish populist-ish New Statesman writer, the person that is intended to serve as our post-modern poet, delivered a brilliant-ish takedown of the higher education system.
It was going so well – ‘The government likes RPI apart from when it takes my money’ is a genuine banger – until the very end when, rant over tuition fees over, Fiona Bruce meekly pipes up to ask, “How else are we going to pay for it?”. Dugmore’s “Uh… well”, followed by ‘the state – uhm’, ruined it all by exposing a simple reality – nobody is willing to talk about what an alternative to tuition fees actually means.
As someone who has, at one point or another, been enrolled in four different higher education systems, I’ll present these options and their trade-offs, and in the spirit of Question Time’s audience engagement schtick, you can decide what you like best.
Among European countries today, and they really are the useful comparator here rather than fantasies of 1950s Higher Ed, there are essentially three models for what higher education looks like – the Nordic, the Germanic, & the Mediterranean. Denmark, Switzerland, and France typifying each model best.
Every system, and I mean every system, has some rationing element. A good provided for free can never go unrationed, demand will always outstrip supply, and any conception of a ‘public good’ rather starts to break down when the return on education investment, both private and public, collapses.
Let’s start then with the Mediterranean and French model – the system I was enrolled in for the longest time. The Mediterranean option is defined by its open access – you pass your A-Level equivalent and, with a few limitations for medicine or dentistry, you can enrol in any subject at any public university for just about free, which unfortunately everyone does.
Courses are genuinely gigantic, teaching quality is poor at best, students don’t like their studies, academic excellence is shall-we-say-lacking, and degrees take far-longer than anyone believes is reasonable.
France in particular, and Italy to an extent, fix these …
