well thank you very much
he’d written what
about universities and it starts with a
belief that universities are some of the
most important and valuable institutions
that we’ve got in the modern world if we
believe in the values of the pursuit of
truth that our argument should be
rigorous that they should rest on
evidence the custodian above all of
those values is the University and
people who pursue those values through
their lives have normally had the
opportunity of studying at university so
I love universities I was on the
receiving end of some student protests
in my time as Minister for universities
but I still love universities the
trouble is in Britain we have so many
misunderstanding so many fixed views
about universities and I want just in a
few minutes to challenge three of the
ways in which we think about them the
first way in which we think about them
is very heavily shaped by our history
and this chart I think tells us
something very important about how
unusual our English picture of
universities is this tells us that way
back in the Middle Ages there were a
dozen or so universities there was we
all know Bologna Sorbonne Oxford and
Cambridge we had two universities in
that first wave but then look at the
later dates and the chart running right
up to the French Revolution what you
find we find that in France in Germany
in Italy they carried on creating
universities all of those countries had
got more than 20 universities by the
time of the French Revolution even
Scotland which had started behind
England had by then got four
universities the exception is England
England had two universities by 1209
when Cambridge was
created actually as a offset of Oxford
but we needn’t go into that and then for
600 years
we had no new universities until first
University College London was created
and Kings College so in other words is
what every commuter would recognize you
eight six hundred years for a new
university and then to come along
together that six hundred years of only
two universities is unlike any other
country’s experience of higher education
and I think it’s shaped our picture of
universities to this day first of all
it’s why Oxford and Cambridge have such
a dominant role in our culture in the
way in which we think about universities
indeed the only reason that no other
universities were created is Oxford and
Cambridge used their power to suppress
the creation of other universities only
a few years back the University of
Northampton celebrated its 10th
anniversary as a university and the
seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of its suppression by Oxford when it
first tried to create a university so
Oxford in Cambridge used you opti power
to stop the creation of other
universities it also means but whereas
on the continent
you were very likely to have a local
university all the main cities had
universities so universities were linked
to a local area and increasingly they
developed systems where when you passed
your school leaving exams you’ve got
above a certain mark you’re entitled to
go to University in England uniquely the
only way to go to university was to go
away from home to to national
institutions which reserve the absolute
right to choose who to admit with nobody
with any right to go so our system
competitive admission no right to go no
assumption you stay at home no links to
local universities is a result of that
history and to this day we have a
picture of the good University Oxford
and Cambridge which are fantastic
institutions we can be very proud of
them they do excellent research but
those other universities that came along
later are all too often dismissed as
bad universities when often it just
means they have different missions
developed in the past hundred years
including serving their local city or
community so we have a far more unusual
model of universities than we recognize
and it has a big influence on the way we
think about them to this day that’s not
the only attitude that I think we need
to challenge there’s another attitude
which is very prevalent at the moment I
call it the edge you skeptics every day
in the papers there’s too many people
going what’s the point of going
graduates are all unemployed of course
at every stage of the growth of higher
education that has been the story fifty
years ago when Lionel Robbins proposed
and visited about 5% of people going to
university back in 1963 that report was
criticized why on earth could we
possibly do with so many people get into
university at every stage in which we’ve
gone from 5% participation to 50%
participation which is roughly where we
are now
people have said too much too many are
going what’s the point there’s no value
in it interestingly we don’t say that
about any other stage of education we
don’t say what’s the point of going to
secondary school or what’s the point of
going to primary school or why don’t we
stop at 15 university is just another
form of education and it’s got it
it’s got considerable value and I try in
this little chart to summarize the value
that it’s got and it’s got value for
individuals and it’s got value for
society as a whole
that’s one axis one way of thinking of
it it’s also got economic value and it’s
gone not non-economic value as well that
gives you the four categories that I
show in this chart and incidentally far
too much effort is wasted by whenever
you draw attention to one of these
categories people getting terribly upset
because it can taken as implying that
the other arguments don’t apply if you
refer to the economic effects are you
don’t realize there are wider social
benefits all these all these four
categories all apply and behind each one
of those there’s now proper empirical
research that shows the benefits so
start with the chart the quadrant in the
top left-hand corner individual
non-economic benefits we know that
people who go to university have higher
life expectancy we know they enjoy
better health we know that they that is
not just physical health we know they
enjoy better mental health now of course
as soon as you start saying this it can
be insensitive arrogant dismissive there
are lots of decent people leaving
completely worthwhile lives who didn’t
go to university so is this just the
kind of arrogance of that university
that puts everybody else off no it’s not
for a start it’s not saying that people
the people go to university are somehow
fundamentally like that one of the great
anxieties you see is oh well this is
just a selection effect people who go to
university like this in the first place
know this is the real effect of people
being changed by the experience of going
to university going away from home in
the English model and doing three years
at university changes you as much as
three years in prison would change you
as much as three years conscription in
the army would change you it changes you
and we know it changes you and people
you do all the classic social science
identical twins one of whom goes to
university one of them dozen countries
have got lottery system some people with
similar characteristics gets through on
the lottery others don’t whichever way
you do it you find going to university
then changes people and it changes them
in non-economic ways secondly it also
has a clear economic effect on average a
graduate earns 32,000 pounds a year and
on graduate maybe 22,000 pounds a year
there’s a significant economic effect
although that again is maybe partly
selection it’s not just that it’s the
skills you learn it’s what you develop
when you’re at university that instantly
is is why it’s reasonable to expect
graduates if they are in well-paid jobs
and only if they are to pay back towards
the cost of their higher education so
there’s an individual economic benefit
then there are wider benefits wider
non-economic benefits and this is where
I do think the advic
of university can learn from the far
more effective advocacy of people who
are focused on a very different stage of
education the first three years think of
what we are told all the time about the
value of the first three years that
belief that somehow it’s when our brain
is particularly plastic and can be
molded and then take shape there’s no
evidence that the first three years that
the brain is any more plastic than in
other stages I argue in my book that
actually the three years at university I
was changed can change us as much as any
other stage of Education and that
includes wider if wider effects which
have benefits to society people one of
them arguments for early years is lower
rates of incarceration of people who’ve
participated in early years programs a
fantastic social benefit exactly the
same effect you find amongst people who
go to university their rates of
incarceration afterwards and then
finally there are the wider economic
benefits for many of our cities
especially outside the southeast the
university is now the greatest asset
that they have got one of our great
advantages is we now have universities
spread and distributed evenly across the
country they have really important for
regional economies they’re the biggest
export industry in many of these towns
and cities because of the overseas
students who pay to come and stay at
university and then go back home so our
universities are incredibly valuable and
the evidence shows the effects they have
both on individuals and on wider society
so that’s the second way I’d like to
change out is I’d like to I think
universities have had quite enough of a
kicking I think it’s about time we
celebrated some of the things that they
achieve there’s a third and final
picture of university that I want to
share with you this is an image from
Bologna in the 13th century it’s
actually not completely unlike what is
happening here today so this tells us
that some forms of communication and
education have remained remarkably fixed
interestingly this is
one example of what we think of as the
modern role of university in that the
lecturer is henry of germany this is an
international institution taking
lecturers and students from across
europe indeed one theory is that the
first use of the word nation to identify
groups of people who come from a common
area is the different nations that were
represented at bologna and other
medieval universities but this is a
picture of Education and what we’re
going to see in the next few years is
this is finally going to change
radically because of the digital
revolution and the digital revolution
has not really reached higher education
yet but it’s going to and there’s going
to be I don’t think this scene is going
to completely disappear but for many
more people they’ll be learning far more
interactively online all the all the
tricks and techniques we’ve learned from
computer games being applied to keep us
interested in what we are studying in an
educational context and the biggest
single dividend we will get from more
online learning is the massive amount of
data that will then be available to us
on how people learn imagine someone’s
working through a text book online and
it can be maths and it could be history
whatever if every keystroke is recorded
and analyzed and you can see 17% of
people made the same mistake on that
question the time that it took them to
answer was four seconds slower on that
point than at any previous one a lot of
them clicked the following option why do
they all go for that option in other
words we will start seeing how
educational materials work and where
people can benefit from them and where
they’re not working that will make
education a much more empirical a much
more evidence-based subject than it has
ever been in other words it will
transform pedagogy and that revolution
will happen above all in our
universities it will create challenges
to them as well you may
when you’ve completed the course if you
the fact that you’ve completed the
course with some kind of validation will
be sufficient you can put that onto your
LinkedIn profile getting that degree
from the prestigious name University may
matter rather less for your career than
it does at the moment but what we’ve got
here institutions of fantastic value
we’ve got a rather unusual model in
England and we don’t recognize how
unusual it is they have fantastic
benefits for all of us they’re going to
be embracing that it the digital
revolution and a good thing too and I
think we should be very proud of them
thank you very much indeed
[Applause]
he’d written what
about universities and it starts with a
belief that universities are some of the
most important and valuable institutions
that we’ve got in the modern world if we
believe in the values of the pursuit of
truth that our argument should be
rigorous that they should rest on
evidence the custodian above all of
those values is the University and
people who pursue those values through
their lives have normally had the
opportunity of studying at university so
I love universities I was on the
receiving end of some student protests
in my time as Minister for universities
but I still love universities the
trouble is in Britain we have so many
misunderstanding so many fixed views
about universities and I want just in a
few minutes to challenge three of the
ways in which we think about them the
first way in which we think about them
is very heavily shaped by our history
and this chart I think tells us
something very important about how
unusual our English picture of
universities is this tells us that way
back in the Middle Ages there were a
dozen or so universities there was we
all know Bologna Sorbonne Oxford and
Cambridge we had two universities in
that first wave but then look at the
later dates and the chart running right
up to the French Revolution what you
find we find that in France in Germany
in Italy they carried on creating
universities all of those countries had
got more than 20 universities by the
time of the French Revolution even
Scotland which had started behind
England had by then got four
universities the exception is England
England had two universities by 1209
when Cambridge was
created actually as a offset of Oxford
but we needn’t go into that and then for
600 years
we had no new universities until first
University College London was created
and Kings College so in other words is
what every commuter would recognize you
eight six hundred years for a new
university and then to come along
together that six hundred years of only
two universities is unlike any other
country’s experience of higher education
and I think it’s shaped our picture of
universities to this day first of all
it’s why Oxford and Cambridge have such
a dominant role in our culture in the
way in which we think about universities
indeed the only reason that no other
universities were created is Oxford and
Cambridge used their power to suppress
the creation of other universities only
a few years back the University of
Northampton celebrated its 10th
anniversary as a university and the
seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of its suppression by Oxford when it
first tried to create a university so
Oxford in Cambridge used you opti power
to stop the creation of other
universities it also means but whereas
on the continent
you were very likely to have a local
university all the main cities had
universities so universities were linked
to a local area and increasingly they
developed systems where when you passed
your school leaving exams you’ve got
above a certain mark you’re entitled to
go to University in England uniquely the
only way to go to university was to go
away from home to to national
institutions which reserve the absolute
right to choose who to admit with nobody
with any right to go so our system
competitive admission no right to go no
assumption you stay at home no links to
local universities is a result of that
history and to this day we have a
picture of the good University Oxford
and Cambridge which are fantastic
institutions we can be very proud of
them they do excellent research but
those other universities that came along
later are all too often dismissed as
bad universities when often it just
means they have different missions
developed in the past hundred years
including serving their local city or
community so we have a far more unusual
model of universities than we recognize
and it has a big influence on the way we
think about them to this day that’s not
the only attitude that I think we need
to challenge there’s another attitude
which is very prevalent at the moment I
call it the edge you skeptics every day
in the papers there’s too many people
going what’s the point of going
graduates are all unemployed of course
at every stage of the growth of higher
education that has been the story fifty
years ago when Lionel Robbins proposed
and visited about 5% of people going to
university back in 1963 that report was
criticized why on earth could we
possibly do with so many people get into
university at every stage in which we’ve
gone from 5% participation to 50%
participation which is roughly where we
are now
people have said too much too many are
going what’s the point there’s no value
in it interestingly we don’t say that
about any other stage of education we
don’t say what’s the point of going to
secondary school or what’s the point of
going to primary school or why don’t we
stop at 15 university is just another
form of education and it’s got it
it’s got considerable value and I try in
this little chart to summarize the value
that it’s got and it’s got value for
individuals and it’s got value for
society as a whole
that’s one axis one way of thinking of
it it’s also got economic value and it’s
gone not non-economic value as well that
gives you the four categories that I
show in this chart and incidentally far
too much effort is wasted by whenever
you draw attention to one of these
categories people getting terribly upset
because it can taken as implying that
the other arguments don’t apply if you
refer to the economic effects are you
don’t realize there are wider social
benefits all these all these four
categories all apply and behind each one
of those there’s now proper empirical
research that shows the benefits so
start with the chart the quadrant in the
top left-hand corner individual
non-economic benefits we know that
people who go to university have higher
life expectancy we know they enjoy
better health we know that they that is
not just physical health we know they
enjoy better mental health now of course
as soon as you start saying this it can
be insensitive arrogant dismissive there
are lots of decent people leaving
completely worthwhile lives who didn’t
go to university so is this just the
kind of arrogance of that university
that puts everybody else off no it’s not
for a start it’s not saying that people
the people go to university are somehow
fundamentally like that one of the great
anxieties you see is oh well this is
just a selection effect people who go to
university like this in the first place
know this is the real effect of people
being changed by the experience of going
to university going away from home in
the English model and doing three years
at university changes you as much as
three years in prison would change you
as much as three years conscription in
the army would change you it changes you
and we know it changes you and people
you do all the classic social science
identical twins one of whom goes to
university one of them dozen countries
have got lottery system some people with
similar characteristics gets through on
the lottery others don’t whichever way
you do it you find going to university
then changes people and it changes them
in non-economic ways secondly it also
has a clear economic effect on average a
graduate earns 32,000 pounds a year and
on graduate maybe 22,000 pounds a year
there’s a significant economic effect
although that again is maybe partly
selection it’s not just that it’s the
skills you learn it’s what you develop
when you’re at university that instantly
is is why it’s reasonable to expect
graduates if they are in well-paid jobs
and only if they are to pay back towards
the cost of their higher education so
there’s an individual economic benefit
then there are wider benefits wider
non-economic benefits and this is where
I do think the advic
of university can learn from the far
more effective advocacy of people who
are focused on a very different stage of
education the first three years think of
what we are told all the time about the
value of the first three years that
belief that somehow it’s when our brain
is particularly plastic and can be
molded and then take shape there’s no
evidence that the first three years that
the brain is any more plastic than in
other stages I argue in my book that
actually the three years at university I
was changed can change us as much as any
other stage of Education and that
includes wider if wider effects which
have benefits to society people one of
them arguments for early years is lower
rates of incarceration of people who’ve
participated in early years programs a
fantastic social benefit exactly the
same effect you find amongst people who
go to university their rates of
incarceration afterwards and then
finally there are the wider economic
benefits for many of our cities
especially outside the southeast the
university is now the greatest asset
that they have got one of our great
advantages is we now have universities
spread and distributed evenly across the
country they have really important for
regional economies they’re the biggest
export industry in many of these towns
and cities because of the overseas
students who pay to come and stay at
university and then go back home so our
universities are incredibly valuable and
the evidence shows the effects they have
both on individuals and on wider society
so that’s the second way I’d like to
change out is I’d like to I think
universities have had quite enough of a
kicking I think it’s about time we
celebrated some of the things that they
achieve there’s a third and final
picture of university that I want to
share with you this is an image from
Bologna in the 13th century it’s
actually not completely unlike what is
happening here today so this tells us
that some forms of communication and
education have remained remarkably fixed
interestingly this is
one example of what we think of as the
modern role of university in that the
lecturer is henry of germany this is an
international institution taking
lecturers and students from across
europe indeed one theory is that the
first use of the word nation to identify
groups of people who come from a common
area is the different nations that were
represented at bologna and other
medieval universities but this is a
picture of Education and what we’re
going to see in the next few years is
this is finally going to change
radically because of the digital
revolution and the digital revolution
has not really reached higher education
yet but it’s going to and there’s going
to be I don’t think this scene is going
to completely disappear but for many
more people they’ll be learning far more
interactively online all the all the
tricks and techniques we’ve learned from
computer games being applied to keep us
interested in what we are studying in an
educational context and the biggest
single dividend we will get from more
online learning is the massive amount of
data that will then be available to us
on how people learn imagine someone’s
working through a text book online and
it can be maths and it could be history
whatever if every keystroke is recorded
and analyzed and you can see 17% of
people made the same mistake on that
question the time that it took them to
answer was four seconds slower on that
point than at any previous one a lot of
them clicked the following option why do
they all go for that option in other
words we will start seeing how
educational materials work and where
people can benefit from them and where
they’re not working that will make
education a much more empirical a much
more evidence-based subject than it has
ever been in other words it will
transform pedagogy and that revolution
will happen above all in our
universities it will create challenges
to them as well you may
when you’ve completed the course if you
the fact that you’ve completed the
course with some kind of validation will
be sufficient you can put that onto your
LinkedIn profile getting that degree
from the prestigious name University may
matter rather less for your career than
it does at the moment but what we’ve got
here institutions of fantastic value
we’ve got a rather unusual model in
England and we don’t recognize how
unusual it is they have fantastic
benefits for all of us they’re going to
be embracing that it the digital
revolution and a good thing too and I
think we should be very proud of them
thank you very much indeed
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: