15th October 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The Higher Education Funding Council has produced research which suggests that some areas of England have much lower entry rates to university than others. The council has warned that there are higher education ‘cold spots’ in England which could severely impact growth rates and local economies. The key areas affected are South West England, East Anglia, the North East and the boarder of England and Wales, where far fewer people enter higher education. Hefce said that universities play a key role in creating a skilled workforce which can help bolster local economies.
Their research suggests that a principle problem is the availability of university places in these areas. Students have to travel far further to get to universities than students who live in university hot spots such as London, where students have many universities and courses available on their doorstep. In addition to lack of local universities, there are also ‘subject deserts’, where in some parts of the country, students would have to move far away from their home towns to enrol on the courses they would like. Students who are not able to live at home incur a much greater debt, which is a further barrier to uptake of courses in non-local cities. Hefce pointed to the link between lower graduate numbers and higher unemployment, and called for the number of undergraduate places to be increased. They also called for new universities to be established in areas where there is a lack of higher education institutions.
The report has attracted criticisms from universities, who have said there is a lack of understanding about the factors which affect uptake of higher education courses. Professor Vignoles of the department for education in Cambridge University said that whether someone lives near a university is not a principle factor as to whether they would enter higher education. She said that distance was more likely to affect the types of courses and opportunities available to students. The impact on local economies was also questioned, with Professor Wolf of Public Sector Management at Kings College commenting that producing higher numbers of graduates would not necessarily strengthen local economies in the short or long term. Universities warned that building more new universities would not be an effective use for public money.