The tum of the year saw the publication of a whole series of statements on education from different elements of the bourgeoisie. Among these were Thatcher's White Paper *Education: a Frame work for Expansion", the White Paper dealing with Public Expenditure, the report of the Commons Education Sub-Committee and the University Grants Commission's expenditure allocations for the next five years. What these statements ratify is an about face in higher education, Gone are the 'Green and Pleasant Land' vistas of Robbins a decade previously. Then "International Competition", "the Technological challenge was intertwined with a picture of education for "the Whole Man" Today those same forces demand a detenoration in all provisions and a ruthless cut-back on unit costs. For Robbins, 'student demand' meant new experiments in expanded University education; for Thatcher 'student demand' means two-year courses crammed into an overciowded Polytechnic. In Robbins' time each sector of education was dealt with separately; now one part (nursery education) is played off against another. SLEIGHT OF HAND Thatcher's White Paper outlines plans for the whole of education but in fact has very little to say about secondary schools; the main proposals are concerned with nursery education which will undergo an expansion. and higher education whose growth rate will decrease in the university and teacher training sectors. The growth rate for the whole of education will also decrease from about 5 percent per year for the last ten years to about 3 per cent between now and 1976, possibly stopping altogether after that. The White Paper on Expenditure recommends a very large increase in government spending but most of this will be eaten up by investment grants to industry.
Most of the nursery expansion will therefore be paid for by the slowing down of higher education growth. It is claimed that provision will be made for "all those children of three and four whose parents wish them to benefit from it". However the White Paper also adds the proviso that "no allowance has heen made to cover higher capital costs and current costs of nursery schools. Any significant expansion of nursery schools would slow down the rate at which the government's objectives will be reached". In other words these trumpetings about nursery expansion are fairly hollow.
They are being used mainly as a cover tor the slowing down of overall growth in education expenditure, in particular expenditure on higher education.
ROBBINS Less than 10 years ago, in 1964, the Robbins report heralded a massive expansion in higher education, mainly in the university sector.
What had happened was that the developments of capitalism, particularly in the latter half of the fifties and in the carly sixties.
had amounted to a 'third industrial revolution"
based upon a qualitatively higher technology.
A much better, and differently skilled labour force was required for the more dynamic sectors. This had an added bonus with the sudden realisation that there were many school leavers clamouring to fill this apparently unlimited potential of highly qualified jobs. All this was backed up by the view that investment in educational training ('human capital')
caused economic growth.
THE NEED TO RATIONALISE No sooner had this whole process got under way however than problems began to emerge.
Having to cater for an unplanned and anarchic system, nothing could be firmly predicted.
The fate of British capitalism during the course Fill in this form and send to: FUND DRIVE, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1. (Cheques should be mede out to The Red Molel.
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i know the following who may also wish to contribute INAME ADDRESS RE JOW Above: Stulents march on the ducation Department of the sixties has shown that the amount of such highly skilled labour was grossly overestimated. Graduated unemployment has started to get quite serious in the last few years. hitting the sciences as well us the arts. Some firms have also started to show dissatisfaction with university graduates, saying that they are not sufficiently adaptable to the "profit motive". The CBI recently published a report claiming that the amount of graduates needed by industry is going down. In the 60's, when the bourgeoisie were much more convinced than they are today about the economic necessity to expand higher education, the forces pushing for pruning and rationalisation were not so strong. Now, however, with the uncertainty about the economic role of higher education and the sharpening crisis of social expenditure, these forces have been more prominent.
THE PROPOSALS The White Paper heralds the end of the Robbins cra. The main restructuring and reorientation to the needs of industry look place in the 60's; the coming years are to be a time of rationalisation through reorganisation of costs. Alongside this of course there is still some chopping and changing since higher education does not provide a good enough "fit" between a graduate's skills and the needs of industry. Also, with Britain's entry into the Common Market, the bourgeoisie desperately needs higher competitiveness in industry and greater economic growth: it hopes that many skilled graduates will be needed.
Within the overall rationalisations, therefore. there is to be a general increase in state supervision not only of costs but also of courses so that this "fil" can be achieved more flexibly: this explains the proposal of the Commons Education Sub-Committee for a manpower planning council. It also explains the fact that expansion is to be led by the polytechnies since the universities with their "academic tradition" would not be sufficiently flexible and would not allow state supervision of costs and courses to be carried out so easily. For example in the polys the course module system has already been introduced: this enables a range of diverse courses to be presented to students from which they choose a certain mixture. With this system it is far easier to modify the content of courses to correspond more closely to industry's needs: the White Paper recommends that this system be extended.
Meanwhile the universities will not only suffer a slowing down in growth of student numbers but the amount spent per student (the unit costs') will also decrease. This process is already taking place with the policy of making catering facilities and residence buildings self financing, provoking mass support for the present wave of rent strikes and eatering boycotts. The U.G.C. five yearly allocation of funds projects that the sciences will be hit especially badly and that the proportion of postgraduates in the total student population will also go down. Expenditure for the polys is not spelt out in the White Paper, which is very strange given the fact that they are to lead the expansion. It seems.
however, that the difference between conditions in the polys and universities could tend to narrow with the erosion of the privileged status enjoyed by the universities (although the difference in function would remain). NUS UNFREEZE HI NIO).• IS POET DWASS DEMAND elitist limb" (because of the lower intake) and "the failure to tackle the inequity of the binary system" are therefore very misleading. One way in which the polys could save costs is if they carrry the bulk of the proposed courses for the two year Diploma of Higher Education. According to the White Paper this "could enable many students to achieve in two years, instead of three or more, as much higher education as they aspire to. Again the exact implementation of the Dip HE is not spelt out and there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty alongside the euphoria in educational circles about the proposed new degree. If there are enough applicats, it would certainly be a suitable means of providing education on the cheap. In the area of teacher training there is to be a large cutback in student numbers which according to many (including the NUT) will mean even more serious classroom shortages. Also teacher training colleges are to merge with polys, specialise in retraining qualified teachers, merge with universities or diversify their courses (mainly in the arts) to become techs or polys in their own right. Similarly, small technical colleges will be required to merge eventually with larger polys or nearby colleges. Thus another strand of the simultaneous cost cutting and streamlining of higher education is that the divisions between sectors within the lower half of the binary system are to be eroded.
STUDENT CONCERN What all this means is that major restructuring in higher education is more or less over and that we are now in a period of rationalisation: that is, a pruning of costs and an overall slow down on governing bodies, making responsible critiques of the present policy, bringing various sorts of pressure to bear, and generally negotiating the best possible deal.
Insofar as this "comprehensivisation" includes a demand for free access of the working class into higher education and opposition to unequal expenditure in the various sectors, it is perfectly correct. Socialists should be absolutely in favour of any change which increases the cultural and technical level of the working class. But insofar as it is a worship of forms rather than analysis of content, it is totally disastrous, It is one thing to note that the percentage of the working class entering higher education is not rising very rapidly, it is quite another thing to make this a main critique of the Thatcher proposals as does the NUS. As we have explained, the main question is that of the rationalisations which are promoted. It is only by totally failing to recognise this that they can then go on to welcome the re port of the Commons Education SubCommittee. This recommends a single body to administer both halves of the binary system. The NUS sees this as a move towards comprehensivisation rather than a proposal for overseeing the pruning of costs.
THE ALTERNATIVE COURSE However, the key questions with which students in the colleges should be (and indeed ure) concerned about are the effects of the rationalisation as they arise in the colleges themselves. This means raising in the colleges themselves the question of the actual organisation of higher education. Of course students cannot provide a solution to this question - we can't have socialism in the colleges alone. However, they can prevent the bourgeoisie from solving their problems at the expense of students. They can struggle to veto the effects of the rationalisations.
Such an approach means breaking out of the framework common to all the left that the 'real' struggle, the "political struggle (even on student issues) takes place outside the college; the struggle inside the colleges can only go ahead within the existing framework -the real content of student trade unionism. In opposition to this we must assert that the key political question - the way the ruling class imposes its solution to society's problems on other social groups, in this case students and workers - has to be taken up as and when it occurs. This is the only realistic solution to the problems which the mass of students face and the only basis from which we can begin to form a political alliance — an anti-capitalist alliance - with the working class. Only on such a basis can the question of a total reorganisation of education be posed.
James Clynes/Noel Briggs