What not deciding will have cost by the election
Wonkhe examines where student finance will stand by the time Labour faces the electorate: thresholds frozen, balances growing, and access decisions being made by students who now treat a degree as a financial gamble. Inaction is itself a policy here, and this sets out what it compounds to.
“Education is inherently worthwhile”
Readers respond to the argument that degrees should be judged by the jobs they lead to, making the case that a university course is for acquiring understanding rather than for satisfying a labour market forecast — and that the two are not opposed as often as policy assumes. It is the counter-argument to the skills agenda, put briefly.
A Reform candidate on who universities are full of
Reform’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Matt Goodwin, has been criticised for comments describing universities as full of “childless women”. It is campaign rhetoric rather than policy, but it is the register in which higher education is now being discussed by a party polling well, and students are the subject of it.