Jonathan Todd

Is it more striking that only barely a quarter of News and Star readers think that university is “the passport to a better job” or that students at the University of Cumbria are expected to graduate with debts of £35,000? And to what extent are these things related?

In today’s global economy there can be little doubt that better skills are the key to higher earnings. But what is meant by better skills? Not qualifications per se but skills and attributes which can add to the productivity of an employer. Therefore, university is the passport to a better job if it can instil these things. It may be that this year’s low student satisfaction scores at the University of Cumbria indicate that students feel this is not the kind of experience which the university is giving them. However, we’d need to look at data on the earnings of University of Cumbria graduates to properly assess the extent to which the university has equipped them with skills valued by employers.     

Irrespective of their earnings, it appears that University of Cumbria students are graduating with debts £10,000 above the national average. With tuition fees now capped at £3,000 a year, it seems that the vast majority of debts owed by University of Cumbria graduates cannot be attributed to tuition fees. While much debate has focused of late upon whether a graduate tax would be a fairer means for students to contribute to the costs of their tuition, it seems clear that public policy needs to look again at student finance more broadly and in Cumbria, in particular, questions need to asked about why student debts are so much higher than the national average.

It is undoubtedly the case that such high debts will deter people from going to university, but, equally, better skills, which are really valued by employers, are the key to career advancement. It was because Labour wanted to open this door to career advancement to more people that universities were expanded under the last government, including the creation of the University of Cumbria. The need to finance this expansion was part of the reason why tuition fees were introduced in the first place.

Now we need a system of HE finance that incentivises universities to instil the skills and attributes that employers really value, so that university is genuinely a passport to a better job for every graduate who wants it to be. For Cumbria to reap the maximum benefit from having a university, the skills and attributes which it instils should be those valued by Cumbrian businesses. Cumbria’s university and economy should grow alongside one another.