Marina Warner writes:
[T]here is a central contradiction in the [UK] government’s business model for higher education: you can’t inspire the citizenry, open their eyes and ears, achieve international standing, fill the intellectual granary of the country and replenish it, attract students from this country and beyond, keep up the reputation of the universities, expect your educators and scholars to be public citizens and serve on all kinds of bodies, if you pin them down to one-size-fits-all contracts, inflexible timetables, overflowing workloads, overcrowded classes. Diary, Marina Warner, 'London Review of Books' dated 11 September
Quite. There are some easily quantifiable benefits of education, such as universal literacy and numeracy, but not many. Government can and should target such goals and it could also usefully target attendance at approved educational establishments for children up to the age of 16 or 18. But when it comes to higher education, government should perhaps step back; it could still fund institutions if there's a public will for it, but there is a strong case for making its funding conditional only on certain minimum standards, rather try to apply the narrow, accountancy-based, short-term goals that are a feature of the business world. The demand for tertiary education is relatively informed; students relatively mobile. Government in this, and other policy areas, needs to exercise some humility. Diversity of funding sources, as between government and other sources, and within government, would also be helpful. I've done a short piece here on how an outcome-focused Social Policy Bond regime could approach education.
An update: released today (8 September) is a report done by the charity Save the Children, which says, referring to the UK: "The most comprehensive study of pre-school and primary school-aged children in a generation found disadvantaged children are the worst affected, with four in ten not reading well by the age of 11."
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