Global BUzz

The last Friday of the month, and what a busy day it is! To start, we see lots of coverage to the Hepi publication, It’s the finance, stupid! The decline of part-time higher education and what to do about it, published yesterday. The collection of essays come from a range of organisations involved in HE, and offers both causes and solutions to what is considered ‘the single biggest problem facing higher education at the moment’. Universities UK has welcomed Hepi’s publication, as their previous submission to the 2015 Comprehensive Spending Review on 7 September 2015 also calls for government to address the collapse in part-time education. We also see support of Hepi’s publication in news coverage as the BBC, the Guardian, BT.com, ITV News and other news media warn government how the falling numbers in part-time education is harming the economy. Also in the news is an equally important and concerning announcement from Theresa May that Universities may be sanctioned for having high rates of students overstaying their visas. ‘Exit checks’ data linking over-stayers to universities could be available by next year, and may include the removal of a University’s right to recruit non-EU students. Theresa May also reiterates that she does not ‘care what the university lobbyists say’, and is failing to see that once a contractual relationship with student and university ends, there are further contracts that can be built through encouraging graduates to stay and contribute to the UK economy through employment, or even self-employment. For example, according to a 2013 report by Duedil, the number of entrepreneurs below age 35 in the UK grew from 145,104 to 247,049 between 2006 and 2013. Chinese news suggests that ‘more young Chinese graduates are setting up businesses in the UK’. Graduates are a tremendous contribution to society, whether they are full-time or part-time, or whether they earn above or below £20,800 per annum. As we have seen recently through the Lords parliamentary clash over tax credits, policy matters have to be understood beyond financial or immigration targets and must include other very relevant concerns. At this point, university lobbyists do matter, and Government could do well to listen to those who understand the values of HE and its students.