One in five of Professor David Phoenix's 20,000 students at London South Bank University (LSBU) have all their fees paid for by employers – one of the highest percentages for any university in the UK.
It is a trend that Professor Phoenix, the university's vice-chancellor and incoming chairman of the university think-tank million+, would like to see replicated in more universities throughout the country.
“We need more people to be educated to university level,” he says, “and we can't keep just pouring money in. There are three ways of financing the system. Firstly, through the individual – and most of the burden is falling on them under the current system. Secondly, through state-funded contributions, and thirdly through employers – and perhaps that third group is the one where there is room for more support.”
He would like to see any increase in student numbers concentrate upon providing courses leading to developing professional skills in industries such as engineering and creative sectors such as the digital industry.
Medicine, he argues, is a rare example of a profession where those who train to go into it get the degree-level skills at university that they need for when they start their job. “Why not develop degree-level skills in all the areas that the country needs?” he argues. “The test of whether we have achieved that will come when somebody doing just vocational routes can look at what they have achieved and their career progression and get the same recognition as [they do] in medicine.”
The advantages to the employer are obvious. If it sponsors a student through university and he or she learns the degree-level skills that they need for the career they're going into, they are going to be of far more use to the employer from day one than someone coming straight out of university without that experience.
London South Bank will talk to employers about the skills and courses they need for their students. “You can't just say to employers, 'Well, we offer this on a Thursday or a Friday' and leave it at that,” he says.
The focus on professional skills, he argues, should begin earlier than university level. Undergraduates of the future need to be engaged in learning for their future from an early age, Professor Phoenix argues. “If you're not engaged, you're not learning,” he says. “It is as simple as that.”
To that end, the university is sponsoring an academy – the University Engineering Academy, across the road from its headquarters in Walworth Road, south London. There, pupils from the age of 12 are designing their own model racing cars – which they can then race on a track at the school. In maths lessons, they talk about acceleration – relating the subject to their interest in racing.
“This is just the [school's] second year, and this year we are going to be oversubscribed,” he says. “We also have a 97 to 98 per cent attendance rate when the national average is 95 per cent. The fact that we've got that level of engagement and that level of attendance pleases me. Our students are excited by science and by engineering and by education if it is delivered in the right way.”
The next venture is the opening of a new University Technical College (UTC) sponsored by the university in nearby Brixton, south London. The South Bank Engineering UTC will specialise in the kind of engineering needed by the building and health sectors – with leading local employers such as Guy's and St Thomas' and Kings College NHS Foundation Trust as co-sponsors. In line with other UTCs around the country, it will offer a clear technical pathway to 14- to 19-year-olds.
London South Bank will talk to employers about the skills and courses they need for their students (Rex)
He believes the cluster LSBU has created could be a blueprint for the future – offering young people an exciting blend of technical and vocational education from the age of 14 on to a full university degree. “Forty per cent of those who enter for degrees now come through BTec,” he says. “I wonder if in 10 years' time, as things get tighter and we look at a more rapidly developing curriculum whether these kinds of clusters of institutions meeting regional needs may be the model that is used to transform the education system.”
It would, he argues, be cheaper, as the academy and the UTC could make use of some of the facilities that the university possesses rather than having to buy them for themselves.
It is a vision that would fit in with the concept of any modern university – such as those that Professor Phoenix represents in his role as chairman of million+. Though often described as a think-tank, it is more than that – representing 18 institutions, mostly former polytechnics, that are well placed to provide the level of highly skilled courses that the UK has so often failed to provide in the past.
Of course, there will be pitfalls along the way. He is clear that million+ will have to closely monitor the impact of the Government's decision – announced in Chancellor George Osborne's Budget – to replace maintenance grants with loans. It will, he argues, disproportionately affect those from low-income backgrounds – effectively increasing their debt to higher education from £40,000 to £53,000. Only those with a parental income of lower than £25,000 a year are entitled to the full grant.
He is, however, glad that the Government has moved to the concept of the loan – thus still maintaining the principle that higher education should be free at the point of delivery, a principle he credits former universities minister David Willetts with maintaining when tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year were introduced. As a result, the impact from fees on students from disadvantaged backgrounds has been negligible – indeed, applications from that quarter have risen.
There is also the question of postgraduate education – at present suffering, he believes, on cost grounds. Many academics have claimed that students – already facing £30,000 worth of debts – are reluctant to pay the cost of further study. “They put it off,” he says. Then they face rising bills with family commitments, mortgages and the like and never take up the opportunity. Even if they do, they face repaying 9 per cent of their income above £21,000 a year for their postgraduate loan and the same for their degree-level tuition fee. “Even those on middle incomes end up effectively paying nearly 50 per cent tax,” he says.
He would like to see an entitlement for all to four years of higher education, so a student could do a three-year degree course and then a year's masters' degree and just repay at 9 per cent when they reached the £21,000 threshold.
Professor Phoenix still believes more needs to be done to encourage participation from disadvantaged groups – among whom he includes white, working-class males. The help is not just in encouraging them to apply but in supporting them while they are at university.
He singles out LSBU's £4m student opportunity fund. “It doesn't amount to much per student,” he says, “but it can be really crucial in providing support. We shouldn't get beaten up over access – we're actually doing a good job – but we could do more to help student achievement.”
He cites the instance of students taking up placements overseas. The fees to travel there could be prohibitive for them, whereas the better-off take them in their stride.
There is no doubt that his vision for the future will see universities concentrating more on giving their students the skills that industry needs and – if they do that – there may be less cause for a furore about the number of graduates doing non-graduate jobs when they leave university.
Above all, though, he believe million+ must still continue to take up the cudgel for broadening participation and be a thorn in the side of the Government if its policies in any way threaten that.
