There’s a common assumption that when the state gets involved in providing services or investment, it’s to act as a leveller. Whether it’s schools, hospitals or libraries, the job of government is to redistribute opportunities and provide protection to those who fall on harder times.
Yet there are some clear instances where state spending actually increases inequality. Take public investment in transport and infrastructure: in the five years to 2019-20, the government spent about £12,000 per person in London, the richest part of the UK, compared with just £8,000 in the north.
The most egregious, in-plain-sight example of this is government spending on universities. When young people turn 18, the principle that we should spend more on the education of children from disadvantaged backgrounds gets turned on its head. The state invests an average of £29,000 on the education of each of the 53% of young people who go to university. For the rest, there’s nothing like that available; many launch straight into full-time work, which for those without a degree is dominated by low-paid jobs offering few prospects for progression.
It is deeply unjust: significant taxpayer cash channelled towards a disproportionately middle-class group of young people who have enjoyed better opportunities; virtually nothing for those most failed by the school system, such as the relatively high proportion leaving compulsory education without basic levels of numeracy and literacy.
This is why I have some sympathy with Tony Blair’s call to increase the number of young people going to university to 70% by 2040. The former prime minister, architect of the 50% target he set just over two decades ago, has provoked a similarly mixed reaction with his new proposal. Some thought it “actively wicked”: the state encouraging more young people to take on debt for degrees of questionable value, with one in five young people estimated to be financially better off had they not gone to university, one in three graduates finding themselves in non-graduate work and degrees a requirement for jobs that wouldn’t have asked for them 30 years ago.
But others point out that most graduates earn more than non-graduates, that the UK has significant skills gaps and that many employers won’t look at you unless you have a degree. Would those opposed to expansion recommend against university for their kids?
Neither take is quite right. One of the issues with Blair’s original reform was that it took a system of higher education that originated when a tiny proportion of people went to university and expanded it without asking if it needed to be reformed. That has resulted in a system that bakes in existing inequalities much more than it needs to.
There are two mechanisms through means by which this happens. First is the social transition to adulthood. For one group of young people, there is government support to move out of home and experience independent living in a safe environment with pastoral care, with people from different backgrounds. It’s an in-between experience, no longer child yet not quite adult. The other group have to carve their route to independence themselves, with no institutional support, in an economy in which the best jobs tend to be in areas with the most extortionate housing prices. Little wonder that education level is fast becoming the most important political divide; new research suggests that going to university is associated with a decline in racist and authoritarian attitudes (as well as a move to the right on economic policy).
Then there are the extraordinary levels of social stratification designed into the university system. Universities sort young people according to their academic performance. A young person who gets three As at A-level will most likely be siphoned off to a different institution to someone who gets 3 Bs. There is no justification for why we have a school system in which it is widely recognised that mixed-ability, comprehensive schools produce the best overall results, but a university system in which dropping one A-level grade might mean you have to go to another institution altogether.
It comes with huge downsides. Universities award their own degrees, so a 2:1 from one is not equivalent to that from another and employers use university ranking as a rule of thumb for degree quality. Yet the most selective universities have more students from affluent backgrounds, because bright children from poor backgrounds simply do not get access to the same educational opportunities, depressing their A-level performance. So our university system ends up actively funnelling the most socially advantaged young people into the best graduate jobs, regardless of whether having slightly better A-level grades is an accurate indicator of someone’s workplace potential.
Of course, the skills someone develops through learning on their degree are useful for the workplace, whether they are transferable skills such as critical thinking or specific technical skills. But it is difficult to know just how much of the value of a particular degree comes from the social transition to adulthood, or the signal the institution you attended sends to employers, or the academic experience itself.
What if we were to take the £30,000 the government spends per young person on university and allocate this sum as a lifetime investment in the professional development of every 18-year-old? I doubt we would design from scratch the system we have today. Some might go on supporting the social transition of all young people, perhaps by funding expenses-paid opportunities to volunteer together abroad or in different parts of the UK, or helping them relocate to places with jobs in which they are interested. Some would go on intensive support for those who have left school without functional skills. More would go on degree-level apprenticeships, where young people can simultaneously work, earn and learn skills more closely tailored to the gaps employers need to fill. Some would be set aside for lifetime learning, so that post-18 learning is not one-shot, but something people can dip in and out of for the rest of their working lives.
Blair is right that 53% is not enough, but neither is 70%. Instead, we should at least invest the same in every 18-year-old and possibly even tip the balance the other way. But to simply plough the money into an elitist system that shores up class privilege because we lack the imagination to design something different would be a missed opportunity.
• Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist
