The University System is Broken: Here's How to Fix It | IEA Podcast

Higher education is in crisis, and Peter Ainsworth, Author of the new IEA Publication 'Shares in Students', has a radical solution. In this podcast, he explains how universities are financially struggling, with graduates earning less and carrying massive debt. His proposal? Tie university funding directly to student employment outcomes.

Ainsworth argues that the current system incentivises student recruitment, not student success. By redirecting loan repayments back to universities based on graduate earnings, institutions would be motivated to provide education that genuinely improves career prospects. He suggests removing bureaucratic regulations and allowing universities more flexibility in pricing.

Drawing inspiration from medieval apprenticeship models, Ainsworth believes these reforms could transform the UK's higher education sector. With potential changes in the US system and declining international student numbers, he sees an opportunity for Britain to become the world's leading university destination by aligning educational and economic interests.

[mattLake]

this guy is right, incentive structure has to be tight to the outcome

[robertmacaulay]

It sounds a very good idea. One question: how do you deal with the repayment of loans by those who emigrate?

[lebowski_dude]

Why not just make everyone pay back their student loans, regardless of income? It would make young people far less eager to do mickey-mouse degrees at rubbish universities.

[wiggylwogglywoo]

I don’t think this addresses the issue of Government being involved in education when it shouldn’t.

If students feel as though they weren’t getting value, they wouldn’t go to University. The issue is that Government involvement has basically made it consequence free to go.

The job market is terrible, too many Universities have popped up letting students in with mediocre grades and the loans system means that students feel as though it doesn’t matter if they don’t pay it back because the taxpayer will cover it.

Why not study Liberal Dance at Cambridge Ring Road University? I can drink, have fun, don’t even need to get high grades to get in and I will not pay at the end.

Just privatise the loans, remove the price cap and make the value judgement important again. No private lender will pay you for a shoddy degree at a poor University, and other students will have to seriously consider the cost-benefit of studying. Of course this will also have to coincide with labour market reform to make the alternative career paths available, which is why this will probably never happen.

[syedadeelhussain]

It's different for foreign students competing for jobs when they go back home or anywhere else for that matter to earn a living and/or start a career.
They normally try to get into the top five renowned educational institutions such as the UOL Lead colleges such as the LSE, LBS, and Imperial.
Apart from these three, the other two are of course Oxford and Cambridge, which are the best.
Other universities no matter how superb they are in terms of RAE rankings or any other QAA grading system, do not give the international student the immediate recognition they want in the world job market.
Also, British institutions must try to understand the shifts in academic service standards, the quality of deliverables demanded by the students, and trends taking place around the world.

If International students do not benefit from Skill Set development, knowledge transference or specialized tutoring and mentoring, then they won't come to the UK!
Most of the English-speaking nations apart from the UK have world-class educational institutions, which makes it very tough to attract global student capital.
Also, continental European universities and some Asian Universities are damn good, which gives English-speaking nations a run for their money.

[jeremyderrick]

I'm not convinced by the idea and I dispute the hairdresser analogy. Universities only receive full fees if the student completes the course and they do have legal obligations to deliver a programme as described. But the heart of the argument- that a degree is specifically and only a bridge to employment- is not generally the case at the moment. The hairdresser analogy would be better if, once they have been paid, the customer demands that the haircut enables them to get a girlfriend. The hairdresser may well regard that as being beyond his control- he just cuts hair. Even for vocational degrees, universities can't control employment markets. The discussion also omits other economic activity engaged in by universities, notably postgraduate teaching and research. Students are attracted to research-intensive universities because they contain the best minds but the current funding system for research is broken. Universities do need reform, but this is not the way to do it.

[TobiasStarling]

Fundamentally we have broken higher education though financialisation. Higher education is supposed to stimulate thinking and the development of novel ideas not to provide skills for jobs or even things with industrial usage. However the development of novel tech can then be repurposed by industry. Im sorry uncapping elite uni fees is disastrous and is simply a way to entrench privilege. As someone with a phd in stem from an elite uni, i simply wouldn't have done it if it was uncapped. Wed just have a load of rich idiots running everything even more than it already is.