Lord Bilimoria, Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, recently spoke about the need to invest in higher education in the UK in an article for the Telegraph. He stressed the discrepancy in funding received by US universities, compared to their UK counterparts, and argued that the neglect of Britain’s universities has contributed to the productivity gap currently facing the UK.
Britain’s universities have been neglected
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
One does not have to be an economist to understand these words, written by the American statesman Benjamin Franklin in 1758.
An investment in education lasts longer than any other.
Though not the oldest in the world, Britain’s well-established universities have long set the standard for higher education, for the world’s future lawyers, doctors, financiers, business leaders and politicians.
One in seven world leaders are educated in the UK, the British Council has found. This makes our higher education sector a tremendous cultural and political force at a time when the greatest superpowers in the twenty-first century continue to be driven by innovation and supercharged by discovery in the laboratory and specialist research hubs.
And as other nations charge ahead in economic fields, particularly in productivity, I would urge the Chancellor to consider that public sector expenditure in higher education is far below where it should be.
“The neglect of Britain’s university faculties is starkly reflected in our low productivity rate, which sits around 15 percentage points below pre-crisis predictions for 2015.”
Real-term investment in both higher education and R&D has been dropping for decades and now sits well below the United States, as well as the EU and OECD average. Universities are vital to filling our hospitals and factories with skilled, talented staff and supplying the world of business with inquisitive and resourceful minds.
The neglect of Britain’s university faculties is starkly reflected in our low productivity rate, which sits around 15 percentage points below pre-crisis predictions for 2015. To bounce back from the blows dealt to the economy in the last decade, our nation needs a sturdy pipeline of skills and talent in every field.
If we look to the United States, public expenditure on Higher Education is over twice the size of ours, just in proportion to our GDP.
The United States suffered barely a blip in its labour productivity as a result of the financial crisis, but it cannot go unnoticed that it has for decades invested consistently and uncompromisingly in its keenest minds from Berkeley to Boston.
Their economy is more balanced and grows continuously, whereas growth and equality still remain points of contention in the United Kingdom. These blights do not befit an advanced economy like ours, and our deficient higher education investment may be culpable.
American universities such as Harvard benefit from greater public expenditure
On other fronts too, our universities are more vulnerable than ever. Coupled with the effects of the Home Secretary’s vengeful homilies on the soaring numbers of immigrants entering the country, deterring the brightest prospective students from approaching Britain’s shores, Britain becomes powerless to fill the ranks of its top businesses and manufacturing workforces, despite having no small share of the world’s business giants.
An increasingly unwelcoming policy agenda sees teenagers opting instead to study at new and competitive universities in Canberra and Melbourne, neglecting the UK institutions that have been formative for many of the world’s minds.
For example, in five years, Britain has suffered a 50 per cent drop in the number of Indian students studying in Britain, some of whom presumably sense that the international communities in Britain’s universities – who are still wrongfully included in net migration statistics – have a diminished voice.
“The less we stimulate growth in the higher education sector, particularly through public expenditure, the less productive and influential Britain will be.”
As a university Chancellor myself, this raises concerns for my colleagues and I. Recent estimates from the Department of Business, Industry and Skills place the value of selling British education to those from overseas at £14 billion.
And in the business world, many entrepreneurs start young. Some skip university altogether, but those who don’t must build global networks and reputations while they study. In this context, Chancellor George Osborne should consider universities an untapped vehicle for economic growth.
The appointment of Jo Johnson as universities and sciences minister offers those in the Higher Education sector hope. Yet a different approach to the universities is needed throughout the Cabinet.
The less we stimulate growth in the higher education sector, particularly through public expenditure, the less productive and influential Britain will be. It only remains for the Chancellor to act.