The Telegraph’s report this week that universities are tilting against applicants from “advantaged” backgrounds undermines ministers’ efforts to restore post-Covid sanity to pupils’ grades.
The number of young people into higher education keeps on rising and has gone over 50 per cent. It is nothing to do with any target.
Getting more A* students to Oxbridge or building more technical colleges is not equal to the task of poor quality degrees, cancel culture, and pointless student debt.
It has real democratic authority including with the Lords which might not be so inhibited from voting down new measures which didn’t feature in that manifesto.
The vast majority of students will not go to Oxbridge, or on Love Island. The Minister for Higher Education is their champion.
What turns young people away from the Conservatives isn’t more education. It’s the retreat of the property-owning democracy.
His Mais lecture revealed more about what he’d be like as Chancellor during the normal times that once again are denied us.
We need to stop the obsession about whether more or fewer people are going to university.
The final piece in our series on levelling up comes from our fortnightly columnist – as the White Paper looms.
New reforms will mean academic institutions change their focus to getting on rather than just getting in.
We are the party of mobility and enterprise. But we are also the party of community and belonging. What is it to be – roots or wings?
We continue our series, putting this year’s local elections under the magnifying glass to find changes and trends.
Academic institutions have revived towns and cities, spreading opportunity and reskilling the workforce, among other benefits.
Zahawi, the new Education Secretary, should consider whether the bill as it stands is a sticking plaster.
The situation will fester, which will pose major challenges for statecraft, and for the stability both of Ukraine and of surrounding areas.