King's College London

Jerry White is Principal and CEO of City College Norwich.

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Having spent 23 of my 30 years in education working in either a university or a further education college, I believe that I can bring a certain amount of experience and perspective to comment on the current position of English higher education and the relationships between the FE college sector and universities.

Our college in Norwich has delivered HE programmes since 1901 (back then through a partnership with University of London), some 62 years before our region got a university. Indeed, our formal name remains ‘Norwich City College of Further and Higher Education’, reflecting our long-held position as a provider of HE as well as FE. In my discussions with local business leaders and other stakeholders, I’m constantly reminded of that legacy as I encounter another former HE student of our college now leading a local enterprise or in a position of influence. And up and down the country, FE colleges will tell the same story, of long histories of delivering higher levels qualifications to local communities, seeing this as both a key part of their history and their mission and role today. Too often, I think we use the handle of ‘FE’ for colleges when in actuality we should use FE and HE colleges.

However, we are approaching a crossroads: we need to decide what we want from our post-16 tertiary education system. Do we want to see colleges and universities working as partners in delivering the educational opportunities and skills our society needs? Such a partnership model could create a supportive ‘educational ecosystem’ at a local and regional level where longstanding and respected institutions in both the college and university sectors are actively facilitated to work collaboratively together for the ‘greater good’.

Or are we prepared to simply allow market forces to let educational institutions ‘battle it out’ for supremacy, and are we prepared for the casualties? You may feel this is too stark an analysis but let me unpack some of my thinking that has led me to suggest this is a distinct possibility unless we change our current course.

In their excellent 2022 report Going Further and Higher, the Independent Commission on the College of the Further and Sheffield Hallam University (on behalf of the Civic University Network) noted that our current FE and HE systems of investment and management are disjointed and ‘within and between sectors, institutions can be pitted against each other, locked in unproductive competition, whether as a result of government policy or funding choices, or as a result of institutional cultures and behaviours.’

Post-pandemic, it can be argued that many of the drivers of this unproductive competition have increased. Universities are under increased financial pressure, driven by multiple sources including static (at best) levels of public investment, inflationary pressures and changes in international student recruitment. Colleges are also subject to many of the same inflationary pressures but are now also 15 years into austerity, a period that has led to substantial underinvestment from government and resulted in significant workforce issues as pay has been constrained by levels of public funding. When under such pressures, colleges’ and universities’ shared occupation of the Level 4+ educational space might not be a recipe for ‘playing nicely’ together, with institutional pressures potentially trumping collegiate cooperation.

More recently, parts of the HE sector have themselves been reflecting on their sense of ‘place’ and their civic roles. Such a movement could have been the logical place for a coherent consideration of the local educational landscape, a stimulus to bring institutions together to place cooperation and coherence above competition. However, a review of the published civic university agreements clearly demonstrates a very wide variety of institutional approaches that universities have taken to their local colleges. Some have the local college as a core signatory and partner in the civic university approach. In others, there are some warm words about ‘working with’ or perhaps (paternalistically) ‘supporting’ colleges. However, most striking is that in a number of the other civic university agreements local colleges are all but absent. This feels like a missed opportunity to me.

Furthermore, current mechanisms of regulation and national policy directions have to date done little to drive partnership working between colleges and their local universities, and in fact you could argue actively encourage a disjointed approach. For example, colleges have for decades widened participation into HE through the delivery of successful and well-respected Access to Higher Education programmes. Intensive one-year Level 3 programmes for adults, these programmes have supported generations of individuals to see HE as possible for them, despite their educational record in their younger years.

But for the past decade these programmes have been directly undermined by, and faced competition from, the massive growth of Year 0 programmes in the university sector. On the face of it, the two types of programmes have identical intentions, equipping individuals with the skills and knowledge to make a success of undergraduate study. Yet for much of the last decade the average Access to HE course was funded at the college at around £3,500 per student, while the Year 0 was funded at the £9,250 level. Despite the Augar review highlighting this inequity in 2019, only now is government policy starting to partially address it. For many colleges, access provision has been seriously damaged by this competition and may never recover, despite the wider policy objectives of ‘widening participation’.

I would go further to suggest that the fundamental driver of the WP agenda in England, the Access and Participation Plans (APPs), have also failed to recognise their impact as a driver of competition, not collaboration. Without any requirement that APPs consider the impact on other institutions’ provision locally or in any way lead to a co-ordinated local approach to WP work, WP students who previously would have stayed at their local college to progress to Level 4+ study, are now ‘target students’ for the local university.

I would welcome an analysis of the ‘displacement’ of students that has occurred from the college sector to universities, as a result of an uncoordinated institution-based approach to APP target-setting – as opposed to one that looks at what a region needs and asks the institutions that serve it to agree a coordinated and deliberate approach to WP.

So how could we challenge these drivers over the next decade to produce a more coherent, collaborative approach to the FE/HE system interface?

Changing this narrative will require leadership. It will require universities and colleges to overcome institutional interests to recognise that their ‘place’ needs them to function coherently, to open up pathways for progression, to jointly address the productivity challenges of local business and the economy and to change their places and the communities they serve, for the better. So, the first challenge is to empower, encourage and support institutional leaders into a productive dialogue that has tangible outcomes. These outcomes require codifying within institutional arrangements, so they can be long-lasting and ‘live beyond’ the individuals who have initially created the positive dialogue and the impetus for change, so they inherently change the DNA of our education ecosystem for the long term.

However, there is a risk inherent in any approach that is left to individuals and their personal commitment to system leadership, in that it may not happen. Institutional priorities may continue to overwhelm instincts to ‘do the right thing’, especially as investment in both sectors looks likely to continue to be inadequate. We must therefore provide structures that drive forward collaboration and demand a level of dialogue and partnership working.

In their recent report Opportunity England, the Association of Colleges makes the case for clearly defining the roles of colleges and universities, to support the goal of developing a coherent, place-based tertiary educational system that is effective, efficient and fair. Such collaboration should be a requirement, not left to chance and levers such as APP plans, or other regulatory measures could be employed to bring those unwilling to shed themselves of institutional self-interest to the table.

However we do it, I believe that the case to create a coordinated and coherent Level 4+ educational offer for every part of our country is compelling and is critical for helping our economy grow, providing life chances for those who may not have previously considered HE was ‘for them’. I also believe that it will enable our local educational ecosystems to grow to become mutually supportive and more sustainable while we face the inevitable challenges of the next decade.