In a YouGov poll of 1615 people last August, 52% of those polled thought that the proportion of ‘young people who go on to University’ is too high. The next largest proportion, 25%, said that the numbers were ‘about right’ and the remainder were split with 12% saying that the numbers were ‘too low’ and 11% modestly saying that they didn’t know whether the proportion was too high or too low.
http://today.yougov.co.uk/politics/university-blues
The poll is presented as revealing the public’s apathy to university education, hence the title of its press release ‘University Blues’. It would be worth knowing how the recent student protests have affected responses to a poll of this kind.
It is not clear whether the pollsters told the respondents that there are approximately 2,396,000 full time students in higher education in the UK and gave that as a percentage against the overall population. Neither is it clear whether the respondents were given the opportunity to question whether all those who ‘go on’ to university are ‘young people’. And the timing of the poll makes it impossible that respondents could have known that just over 200,000 university applicants this year failed to get a place due to restrictions imposed by Government.
It would also be interesting to know whether responses to the question about numbers of young people going on to university is adversely affected by the fact of asking a question about student funding in the same poll. The only other question in the poll was this:
“The coalition government are considering abolishing the current system of university tuition fees, normally paid with student loans, and instead making graduates repay their university fees through a higher graduate rate of income tax. which of the following do you think would be the best way of funding university education?”
Nevertheless, these quibbles aside, the poll is a significant indicator of the public’s perception of higher education.However you look at the demographic breakdown, the largest percentage of those polled thought that too many young people go to university. There are, though, interesting differences in the response rates when broken down by, for example, gender: 55% of men think that the proportion is too high, but 49% of women would say the same.
There are differences too in the response rates when broken down by voting intentions: 69% of Conservative voters and 41% of Labour voters think that the proportion is too high. But perhaps the most telling perspective is that offered by the income bracket or ‘social grade’ of those polled: 58% of those in ABC1 grade thought that the proportion of young people going to university was too high, but 44% in the lower grades thought the same. Conversely, 9% of ABC1 grade respondents thought that the numbers of young people going to university was too low compared with 15% of C2DE grade respondents.
The department for Business Innovation and Skills made the statement on the 3rd of November 2010 that: “Universities play a key role in promoting social mobility as well as economic growth”.
http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=2&ReleaseID=416343&SubjectId=2
The YouGov poll appears to indicate that those in the lowest social grades are most likely to agree with this statement. Maybe it is because people from low-income backgrounds can see the economic advantages of higher education that they are less likely to agree that the numbers of young people going to university are too high and comparatively more likely to agree that numbers are in fact too low.
However it may be that people from poorer backgrounds have more faith in education as a good thing in itself. It is perhaps because of this ‘old-fashioned’ respect for education that they are less likely to be alarmed at too many young people going to university. Higher education is, no doubt, a vehicle for social mobility. But it is something else, too. It is, at its best, the means by which lives are enriched irrespective of a corresponding material enrichment. "Education for education's sake" is not a luxurious catch-phrase. If it means anything at all, it means that education has a value that is independent of economies.
Dr Owen Gower
Senior Fellow
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