http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Education/article1248867.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2013_04_20). Estimates that 4 out of 10 student loans will never be repaid only confirms  The Great Reversal of education policy by Coalition education ministers Michael Gove and David Willetts.  The last thirty years have seen huge increases in participation in post compulsory education. Ironically some of the sharpest increases coming in the reactionary … Continue reading As the Treasury recognises it’s ‘financially unsustainable’, will the university tuition fees ‘bubble’ burst? →

Even though there are still about seven million full- and part-time students in further and higher adult education, half a million of them postgraduates, already overall undergraduate home applications to English universities were down by about 10% for 2012, though  UCAS data   still shows applications from school leavers, even those from less well-off back grounds, … Continue reading University numbers. A Great Reversal? →

  Patrick Ainley reviews Blue Skies: New thinking about the future of higher education – a collection of short articles by leading commentators edited by Louise Coiffait, published by Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning     http://pearsonblueskies.com   Campaign for the Public University  http://www.publicuniversity.org.uk  A  sorry collection Under New Labour ‘Blue Skies Thinking’ or ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’ … Continue reading ‘Blue Skies Thinking’ Shows ‘Two Brains’ May not be as daft after all! →

Patrick Ainley Post-16 Educator  Issue 63  May/June 2011 http://www.post16educator.org.uk  ‘Two-brains’ Willetts, the Tory HE Minister, is schizophrenic. One brain acknowledges that from 2012 an undergraduate borrowing £9,000 a year plus maintenance loans ranging from £3,575 to £5,288 (depending on their family’s income) could end up, once they earn over £21,000, indebted up to £83,000 at current … Continue reading Two-Brains Speak with Forked-Tongue →

Patrick Ainley  Post-16 Educator (No 62)   http://www.post16educator.org.uk Introduction: Social immobility What is the point of different forms of indirect democracy if MPs do not represent the electorate anyway, viz. Clegg – fees? And if government and opposition are both headed by male Oxbridge humanities graduates – Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, Balls and Osborn? No wonder celebrity … Continue reading OXBRIDGE REDIVIVUS →

Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen With customers queuing to get into HE, it would be irrational from a business point of view for government not to raise fees as high as it can. It is therefore almost inevitable that – urged on by the Russell Group – the recommendations of the Browne review will be … Continue reading Lost Generation? Paying more for less →

        Patrick Ainley    Times Higher Education Supplement  07/02/08       Widening participation is a cruel con but the people academics fool the most with it are themselves.  The government target of 50 per cent of 18-30 year-olds entering higher education by 2010 presents itself as a professionalisation of the proletariat but it … Continue reading The cruellest con of all →

Patrick Ainley   Letter   Education Guardian   27/11/07    Malcolm Grant, provost of University College London and chair of the Russell Group of universities, is sponsoring a non-selective mixed academy in his borough of Camden as a way of widening participation to elite higher education (A university is the best kind of sponsor for an academy, Education Guardian … Continue reading Dropping selection? UCL and the Camden Academy →