By Graeme Paton. The head of Universities UK urges the Government to abandon "damaging" proposals to scrap hundreds of millions of pounds from the higher education budget.  Planned cuts to university funding will be “very damaging” to the future of the higher education system in England, a leading vice-chancellor has warned. The Government should “step back” from making further reductions to budgets amid fears the move will damage universities’ global standing, it was claimed. Read more...

By Hans van Mourik Broekman. Social mobility is hampered by a failure to prepare young people for pathways other than university, says Hans van Mourik Broekman.  Dr Anthony Seldon is an impressive and irrepressible headmaster. His contributions to the debate about social mobility in the UK and its relationship to the divide between independent and state schools have been extensive and are always thought provoking.
His vision of education is enriched by his broad scholarship and his experiences in both the state and independent sector. If every head in the country were as public spirited and energetic as Dr Seldon, our country’s lacklustre educational performance would be greatly improved. Read more...

By Josie Gurney-Read. Novelist Evelyn Waugh once asked whether university education was a sound investment; eighty years later and Eleanor Doughty asks the same. In the Daily Mail on 21 June 1930, novelist Evelyn Waugh asked the question ‘Was Oxford Worth While?’ The author left Hertford College in the summer of 1924 without a degree, and shortly before the article’s conception, had published his second novel Vile Bodies.
"Is the money spent on university education a sound capital investment?" he ponders, echoing my sentiments. Ask an employer and the immediate answer is probably yes. Who in their right mind would go through it all otherwise?
Though universities have extended, and education’s net is fit to burst, the same questions crop up eighty-four years later. "Is there a corresponding increase in the graduate’s earning capacity?" Waugh asks, of having gone to university.According to David Willetts, there is. He is adamant that university is "still one of the best routes to a good job and rewarding career". Read more...

By Josie Gurney-Read. Research suggests that the gap in gender pay expectations among graduates has increased by 44 per cent since 2003.  Research out this week has revealed that, on average, female graduates expect to be paid less than their male counterparts when starting a career, leading to concerns that women are "undervaluing themselves".
The study also revealed that this gap in pay expectations has widened by 44 per cent in the decade from 2003 to 2013. Read more...