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Want a job at Cambridge?

by GR Evans

Cambridge has arcane and complex rules and policies for jobs in the university and its colleges; despite their idiosyncracy some of them may have lessons for other institutions. GR Evans is an expert guide to the rules, the policies, national employment law and the many debates through which the Cambridge rules and policies have evolved. If you ever wondered how Cambridge works, read this.

Academic jobs with an element of security are increasingly hard to get. Fixed-term contracts have long been the norm for research-only contracts, which are usually dependent on short-term funding from a external grant. For some decades the norm for ‘academic’ posts had settled at ‘teaching and research’, with appointments to last until retirement age. However, the Equality Act of 2010, making it discriminatory to enforce retirement by age, has helped to discourage contracts promising ‘permanence’. Teaching-only posts have become more common. The Office for Students now grants degree-awarding powers to new providers of higher education but so far these have almost all been confined to powers to award ‘taught degrees’.

These trends have encouraged the use of fixed-term and casual employment of academics by many HE providers. The University and College Union has launched an Anti-Casualisation Pledge. The University of Cambridge is not one of the worst offenders in this respect, though, like other higher education providers it may make use of the device of linking the continuation of an appointment to the continuation of external, usually grant, funding. In a  case in May 2008 it was held that the University of Aberdeen had been in breach of the Fixed Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 where that had been relied on, but there seems to have been no subsequent litigation helping to establish a precedent.

Under the Higher Education and Research Act (2017) institutions may set their own ‘criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied’ (s. 2(5)(d) and s.2 (8) (b) ii.). The clause appears again later (s. 36 (1) (b)) in HERA in connection with the duty of the Office for Students to ‘protect academic freedom’ in ‘performing its access and participation functions’. 

Yet the legislation does not define ‘academic staff’ and the applicant for an academic job in Cambridge must negotiate a complex system. Titles, status, hierarchy and contracts all have their history and the University’s constitution plays a decisive part. Its governing body is made up of now more than 7,000 members of its Regent House, which must make any legislative change to its employment practice and procedure by approving a published proposal in the form of a Grace, under Statute A,III,1-2. There is some mismatch between the requirements which may be written into employment contracts and those of the Statutes and Ordinances, particularly with reference to obligations to teach. It remains the case that a new University Officer enters into Office simply by signing a book kept by the Registrary for the purpose:

Unless it is otherwise provided by Statute or Ordinance, every officer shall be admitted to their office as soon as may be after the commencement of tenure by subscribing, in a book kept at the Registry, a declaration that the officer will well and faithfully discharge all the duties of the office, and by entering in the book the date of entering upon the office. (Special Ordinance C (ii) 4)

A major reorganisation of Senior Academic Promotions and the creation of Career Pathways have left their mark. Cambridge  still offers ‘Teaching and Research’ posts but more recently it has added ‘Teaching and Scholarship’ posts with the emphasis on teaching and their own Pathway. It is seeking to create a Research Career Pathway too. The University conducts itself very transparently and both the University’s Statutes and Ordinances and its organ of historical record, the University Reporter, are online and easy to search by anyone eager to get an academic job in at Cambridge and needing to understand its advertised vacancies.

The University formerly had University Lecturers and Senior Lecturers, Readers and Professors. These titles have changed with the University’s adoption of a ‘grading’ system (Higher Education Role Analysis and Statute C, XIII). Lectureships  and Senior Lectureships have become Assistant and Associate Professorships (Grades 9 and 10), former Readerships are  Professorships (Grade 11) (by Special Ordinance, C, vii under Statute C,IX,3, Part C ) and the full Professorships are Professorships (Grade 12) (Special Ordinance, C, vii under Statute C,IX,3).  

These academic posts are ‘University Offices’ as well as employments. Such Offices may be academic-related but those successful in being appointed to a University Teaching Office (UTOs), the most desirable of its academic posts, are entitled to a sabbatical Term after each six Terms. Statute C, I, 4 requires UTOs:

 to devote themselves to the advancement of knowledge in their subject, to give instruction therein to students, to undertake from time to time such examining of students as may be required by the Board, Syndicate, or other body which is chiefly concerned with their duties, and to promote the interests of the University as a place of education, religion, learning, and research.

They must also examine for degrees and such ‘other qualifications of the University as the University may from time to time determine’. Special Ordinance C (ix) 5 requires them to give at least thirty lectures a year, or other teaching agreed as equivalent.

UTOs must belong to a Faculty or Department but they may choose to be members of more than one. This normally does not apply to those appointed to a ‘curatorial’ Office which include a teaching requirement, for example in one of the University’s museums. A recent exception allowed such an appointee in the Fitzwilliam Museum to enjoy sabbatical leave (Reporter, 31 July, 2024).

Cambridge was slow to provide its UTOs with written contracts, with many of its UTOs appointed without one and some indignation expressed about the content when they were first introduced at the beginning of this century, especially when they proved to contain intellectual property restrictions (Reporter, 31 March 2004).

University Officers are protected constitutionally by Cambridge’s Statute C which expressly guards their academic freedom and requires ‘justice and fairness’ in their treatment. A Schedule to Statute C preserves specifically for ‘academic’ staff many of the protections in the Model Statute which was framed by the Commissioners appointed as the Education Reform Act 1988 required.

The disadvantage is that academic Officers remain subject to Cambridge’s Employer-Justified Retirement Age, although as a result of the 2011 Repeal of Retirement Age Amendment to the Equality Act of 2010 other employees of the University no longer have a ‘retirement age’. Special Ordinance C (ii) 12 requires University Officers to ‘vacate their offices not later than the end of the academic year in which they attain the age of sixty-seven years’.

A Report on this requirement was published on 15 May 2024, recommending that academic-related officers should no longer be subject to the EJRA and the age of retirement should be raised to 69. The recommendations of the Report were put to a vote by ballot of the Regent House in July, with an amendment adding ‘abolition’ of the EJRA to the options. Abolition of the EJRA was rejected but the other changes were approved bringing the forced retirement age to 69 for those to whom it still applied (Reporter, 24 July, 2024). This has had the effect of shrinking still further the category of University employees subject to forced retirement.

College posts

A post in a Cambridge College may also look attractive. The University and the individual Colleges are all employers in their own right. Although in Oxford an academic is commonly employed conjointly by the University and a College, in Cambridge a University post and a College post are quite separate and some UTOs choose not to accept a College Fellowship. The choice is theirs.

Cambridge, like Oxford, has chosen not to expand its undergraduate intake because its Colleges do not have room to accommodate more, though in principle a College may choose to add to its own academic staff. The Colleges set their own rules for the employment of College Lecturers under their individual Statutes. The main task of a College Lecturer is to give supervisions to undergraduates, in the form of personal small-group teaching, though a College employee may have an ‘affiliation’ to a Department or Faculty and give occasional lectures.  There has recently been some controversy over the role of Supervisors, who may include graduate students as well as College and University lecturers, mostly concerning the rate of hourly pay available.

Colleges tend to be eager to add a University Teaching Officer to their Fellowship: a  UTO’s salary is covered by the University and the College will need to add only a small supplement. So desirable are UTOs that a UTO Scheme is published ‘to enable all Colleges to operate effectively in the educational field by ensuring a reasonable distribution of University Teaching Officers amongst them’. This explains that ‘A UTO Fellow should be regarded as a permanent educational resource for a College and not simply as a provider of undergraduate supervisions’.

Senior Academic Promotions 

The  use of the unqualified title of ‘Professor’ remains protected, and named Professorships are rarely advertised. These are ‘established’, continuing to exist when vacated, and filled by a Board of Electors appointed for the purpose. Other full Professorships are ‘personal’, granted by promotion from an existing academic University post, so to obtain one it is necessary first to gain a less senior post. Personal Professorships are created for a ‘single tenure’ and disappear when the holder resigns or retires (now superseded under Statute C,XV). The creation of such a Professorship requires the approval of  a Grace (Statute A, III,3ff).  It is possible for a ballot to be called before the approval of such a Grace, but highly unlikely.

However, during the 1990s unestablished academic posts of University Lecturer  and Senior Lecturer had begun to be created, with some unestablished posts described as ‘at the level of Professor or Reader’, though a General Board circular of 19 June 1998 limited these to five year appointments.[1] In 1996 the General Board published a Notice on ‘Titles of unestablished appointments at the level of Reader’ (Reporter, 5655, 1995-6 p512), with a further Notice in 1999 on the ‘Procedure for appointments to unestablished posts at the level of Professor or Reader’ (Reporter, 5773, 1998-9 p587).

By now controversy was afoot on the operation of the Senior Academic Promotions Procedure.  Statute D, XIV [now Special Ordinance C(vii)] stated that:

 ‘No Professorship shall be established in the University except by Grace of the Regent House after publication of a Report of the General Board’.

For those successful in gaining a personal Professorship by Promotion a Grace is published and duly approved in the normal way.

From the late 1990s there was controversy in Cambridge about ‘Senior Academic Promotions’ (Reporter, 17 November, 1999). UTOs often expressed disappointment and indignation when they failed to gain Professorships by promotion. In 1995 a General Board Notice was published establishing a procedure for making appointments to  unestablished posts ‘at Professorial level’ (Reporter, 5609, 1994-5 p381). This was felt to be needed to cover certain special cases arising where the candidate had a claim to recognition as a Research Professor through a potentially qualifying relationship with such a body as the Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust or the Medical Research Council. In each such instance the candidate was to be assessed  for a Cambridge Professorship by a committee appointed for the purpose.  

A representation was made to the Vice-Chancellor under Statute K, 5 [now Statute A,IX,1], that the General Board’s practice of making appointments to unestablished Research Professorships was in contravention of the University’s Statutes. A legal opinion was sought, which confirmed that the practice was ultra vires (Reporter, 21 March, 2001). The General Board then published the Reports with Graces necessary to create the established posts for these appointees, but on a fixed-term basis. It remains the case that a:

 competent authority may authorize the establishment of an office for a fixed term provided that there is objective justification for such authorization and shall decide what constitutes objective justification. (Statutes and Ordinances. p.673)

There were reforms, but also continuing concerns about ‘career-structures’, as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor reported in a Discussion in November 2018, suggesting that the proposed Academic Career Pathway scheme might ‘make a decisive difference in tackling some of the main areas of concern’ and ‘also serve as a platform from which to review academic titles more generally’ (Reporter, 5 June 2018). A Report proposing the introduction of Career Pathways was published in May 2019 (Reporter 15 May 2019), duly Discussed and approved, setting out the changes of title. This was Discussed on 9  June. There was acknowledgement of:

growing dissatisfaction with the existing titles and concerns about comparability with the titles adopted by the University’s peer group nationally and globally which could hinder recruitment and/or retention of academic staff and handicap our academics in competing for research funding. (Reporter, 17 June 2019)

Oxford underwent a similar review of the requirements for its own promotions to Professorships.

Career Pathways

Cambridge is now adding other ‘Pathways’ to its longstanding ‘teaching and research’ requirement for the holder of a University Teaching Office.  A Research Career Pathway is still at a planning stage but there is already a Teaching and Scholarship Pathway. On the Teaching and Research Pathway an Officer may aspire to progress from an Assistant Professorship (Grade 9), to an Associate Professorship (Grade  9 or 10), a Professorship (Grade 11) and a (personal) Professorship (Grade 12). Clinical Academic posts have their own criteria and rewards including  Clinical Professorships.

Cambridge has held back from introducing ‘Teaching-only’ offices, preferring the introduction of a Teaching and Scholarship Pathway, with the intention to ‘establish a dedicated career path for the development of staff in teaching‑focused roles’ (Reporter, 24 March, 2021). Nevertheless its introduction prompted concerns about the meaning of ‘scholarship’ in distinction from ‘Research’.  Was it to mean having read the latest books and articles rather than having written them (Reporter, 28 April 2021)? The resulting route on this Pathway involves promotions to Offices with ‘Teaching’ in their titles: Assistant and Associate Teaching Professor (Grades 9 and 10), Teaching Professor (Grade 11 and 12) and Senior Teaching Associate (Grade 8).  

Getting a job at Cambridge has its complexities, then, which may usefully be kept in mind by the would-be applicant.

SRHE member GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.

[1] I am grateful to William Astle for this reference.


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Doing the dirty work of academia? Ancillary staff in higher education

by Marie-Pierre Moreau and Lucie Wheeler

Cleaning, catering and security staff fulfil an important function in maintaining and enhancing the social and material environment of higher education (HE). Yet this group has attracted limited considerations from researchers and policy-makers alike. Two notable exceptions, both in the US context, are Peter Magolda’s (2016) ethnography of cleaners on two university campuses, The Lives of Campus Custodians, and Verónica Caridad Rabelo and Ramaswami Mahalingam’s (2019) article, reporting on a mixed-method study of cleaners conducted in a single institution. Both pieces are concerned with cleaners’ perspectives, and both also comment on the invisibility of cleaners, which, they contend, goes at times hand in hand with their misrecognition.

A 2022 SRHE research award enabled us to conduct what is, to our knowledge, the first UK-wide study of HE-based ‘ancillary staff’ (a term we use to refer to cleaning, security and catering staff while acknowledging that this category is broader). Working in the evening on campus, I (Marie-Pierre) observed how cleaners would enter the building after most academics and professionals had gone home and worked diligently. I was struck by the contrast between the significance of their work and its relative absence from research and policy discourses. This absence is possibly even more surprising once one considers that ‘elementary occupations’ (under which catering, security and cleaning staff fall) represent 12% of the UK HE non-academic workforce (Wolf and Jenkins, 2020) – a percentage which does not take into account those on outsourced contracts who often experience high levels of precarity.

Against this background, our study sought to explore the experiences of ancillary staff working in UK universities and their contribution to the higher education sector. Of particular interest to the research team were the potential injustices faced by this group, Underpinned by a theoretical framework drawing on Nancy Fraser’s (1997) and Kathleen Lynch’s (2010) multi-level theories of social justice, we explored the economic (distributive), cultural (recognitional), political (representational) and affective in/justices experienced by this group.

The fieldwork for this project involved a search of the literature on ancillary staff in HE and other sectors and some observations of the working environment of ancillary staff. It also involved an online survey of UK HE institutions followed by Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. The original survey generated 24 replies in total, while 110 institutions responded to the FoI request. Finally, we conducted 20 interviews with ancillary staff, recruited through a diversity of routes and with a diversity of backgrounds and roles.

A first set of findings from the project relates to how organisational, administrative and scholarly processes work in ways which render this group invisible. On campus, they are rarely seen or heard, although this also varies based on the nature of their role. Cleaners appear particularly prone to invisibility. Many start their shift once academic and professional staff have left the premises. When ancillary staff have a dedicated workspace, it is often hidden from view. They are also often absent from staff directories, university websites and policy documents. Likewise, their exact numbers are often unknown, including, as we found out, to some universities. This invisibility is further compounded by the fact that, among ancillary staff, many are employed by private corporations. Finally, as noted above, this group is strikingly absent from the research literature, with very few exceptions.

Another set of findings relates to how ancillary staff experience the economic, cultural, political and affective in/justices theorised by Fraser and Lynch. In terms of economic or distributive justice, it is well known that cleaning, catering and security roles tend to attract low salaries compared with other categories of staff in the sector. Our study also highlights, inter alia, a lack of opportunities for career development. Interviewees employed in-house and those in catering and security roles were found to be more likely to be satisfied with their pay and working conditions. It was not unusual for outsourced staff in particular to go to work despite being ill due to being eligible for statutory sick pay only.

In terms of what Fraser refers to as cultural justice, some participants felt valued, while others shared feelings of misrecognition. Such feelings were found to be linked to economic justice. Porters, for example, reflected on how they enjoyed similar working conditions (eg paid leave) to other members of staff and were self-aware of the significance of their work in enabling their college or university to operate. They felt valued in ways many cleaning and outsourced staff did not. In comparison, one of the outsourced security staff we talked to explained how he felt like ‘a number’ to the contractor in charge of his placement, arguing that those employed in-house are ‘looked after’ better. While some participants felt respected by other staff and students, some, often cleaners, felt that some staff and students showed contempt for them. One commented on how ‘they [staff] sort of turn their noses up at people like us’ and on how they ‘look at you as if you’re a bit of muck on their shoe’.

In relation to political justice, the study generated two main findings. First, membership of unions and other professional organisations was rare. Many participants lacked awareness of unions (‘I’ve never heard of a union for the cleaning industry’, stated one). Others held negative views of unions. One participant explained how ‘I would never be a member of a union’, due to having seen them ‘use and abuse’ their power, while also stating, somewhat paradoxically, that they are ‘absolutely useless’. Second, also linked to political justice, the ancillary staff we talked to appeared to have limited input in decision-making at institutional level. Instead, they felt they had to comply with oft changing policies. One shared how they were told: ‘You don’t make decisions, you only follow process’.

Last, the research points to several injustices related to care relationships and what Lynch calls affective equality. In particular, the research shows that ancillary work can be, but is not always, compatible with caring responsibilities. For some, the ability to combine paid and care work had been a key factor in choosing their current job. One of the cleaning supervisors we spoke to, for example, explained how his early start enabled him to be back home in time to take his children to school. For some, their position had been made attractive by predictable working times (for example, one staff in a catering role would work from 7.30 to 3.30pm and then spend time with family). While security staff were overall more satisfied with other aspects of their work, this was different when it came to being able to combine paid work with caring responsibilities, with comments that ‘Security is not good hours, it’s too long’ or that ‘nights are hard’, and some describing their work-life balance as ‘pretty much non-existent’. In some cases, low salary meant that staff did not have any alternative but to work extra hours, which in turn led to limited work-life balance (‘it’s work-sleep-work-sleep basically’). The highest levels of work-life balance were found among those in catering role employed by the students’ union (so outsourced but with very different contractual conditions compared with staff outsourced via a private firm, with the former benefiting from a work timetable built around their teaching timetable). Also related to affective justice, interviews all highly valued collegiality among staff. This was often mentioned spontaneously by interviewees, in contrast with the research we have conducted on other categories of staff in the HE sector, including as part of a previous SRHE award (Moreau and Robertson, 2017, 2019).

Based on the findings from this project, the research report makes a number of recommendations for institutions, national stakeholders and researchers.  We hope that findings from this pilot project will raise awareness of this group, of the injustices they face and of their contribution to the sector.  

References (additional to those hyperlinked)

Fraser, N (1997) ‘After the family wage: A post-industrial thought experiment’ in Fraser, N (ed) Justice interruptus: critical reflections on the ‘post-socialist’ conditions New York: Routledge

Magolda, P (2016) The lives of campus’ custodians: Insights into corporatization and civic disengagement in the academy Sterling, VA: Stylus

Marie-Pierre Moreau is Professor in Sociology of Education, Work and Inequalities and Director of the Centre for Education Research on Identities and Inequalities at Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom. She blogs here.

Lucie Wheeler is a Research Assistant in education. They are both based in the School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.


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Investigating the experiences of the many stakeholders of degree apprenticeships

by Andrea Laczik, Kat Emms, and Josh Patel

Degree Apprenticeships (DAs) have been ascendant in popularity and visibility since their launch in 2015. They are of particular interest to us at the Edge Foundation, where we’ve long championed novel approaches to the alignment of employer needs with provider offer and of the importance of access to high quality education experiences. In our recent event hosted with the SRHE’s HE Policy Network, we explored how DAs fit in the English higher education system, and reflected on their purpose.

DAs are offered across 17 industry sectors by employers ranging from SMEs to large national and international employers and are widely used in the public sector including in policing and the NHS. Studying on a DA programme is an opportunity to earn alongside learning at degree level and without paying tuition fees. About 100 higher education providers currently deliver this learning. The content of the curriculum is designed in partnership with employers, and employers fund DAs through an employer levy which employers can claim against to fund apprenticeship training. The number of DAs continue to grow, with participation up 8.2% to 46,800 in 2022/23.

While DAs were originally designed to address skills shortages and contribute to national economic growth, there has been some debate as to how effective DAs are as instruments to increase access and widen participation as claimed. It is also unclear how far the content of the curriculum should be determined by immediate employer needs versus the duty to prepare an effective and productive workforce for the future.

Our presenters provided productive and complementary perspectives on these questions from different stakeholders around DAs: employers, students, and mentors.

Employers and returns

Andrea Laczik and Kat Emms presented findings from Edge’s forthcoming research report on ‘Degree Apprenticeships in England’. This work based on interviews with nearly 100 stakeholders provides a broad sample of experiences of these groups which hitherto have often been considered in separation. Here we concentrated on employers’ motivations to engage with degree apprenticeships.

Employers favoured the sustainable employment and progression opportunities moulded closely to their needs that DAs facilitate. Some employers did see this as an opportunity for upwards mobility and diversification of the workplace. As one SME employer told us:

‘There are too many people in the IT industry that are like me. Okay, so we’re talking middle aged white guys… degree apprenticeships allow people who wouldn’t consider getting into this industry from a variety of backgrounds, creeds, colours. I want to increase the diversity in IT’.

Apprentices were also valued for their ability to apply theoretical learning to practical applications in work, for their developed communication and teamworking skills.

However, it was primarily large employers who had both greater resource and capacity to administer their levy funds and input into the design of DAs, meaning their DAs are often more closely aligned to their needs compared to SMEs. Many employers prioritised operations at the expense of workforce development and struggled with what was perceived as the loss of an apprentice for their off-the-job training for one day a week. The serendipity of the deployment of DAs in most sectors indicates a lack of clarity, dispersion, and embeddedness in employer thinking, behaviours, and strategising. There is a place for regional authorities to help administer levy transfer schemes, which may be underutilised currently.

Apprentices and belonging

Julie Pepper and Katherine Ashbullby, University of Exeter, explored how degree apprentices negotiate dual identities as both employees and students, and how this affects their relationship with the university. The degree apprentices they spoke to regarded themselves as employees first and foremost. This may be linked to the fact that they felt disconnected from a traditional university life and experience. However, many also regarded themselves as lifelong learners with distinct qualities including industry experience, connections and resilience. They discussed their ‘journey of transformation and change’ which they were able to fulfil through a DA. The weight of the dual identity nevertheless came with increased pressures.

The identities Julie and Katherine described bear considerable resemblance to that in existing research on part-time learners. And they illuminate some of differences between the highly structured programmes of employment-oriented identity formation in DA models and the more ‘open’ identity formation of UG courses. This is a productive difference. But it involves a trade-off – full time students have a disconnect with employers which mirrored DAs’ disconnect with socialisation opportunities in educational institutional communities.

Mentors and mentoring

Aimee France, Claire Staniland and Karen Stevens presented on their research, with Trudy Sevens from Sheffield Hallam University and with Josh Patel from Edge, on the role and identity of Work Based Mentors (WBMs) of degree apprentices in Allied Health Professions (AHP). DAs are increasingly important in NHS workforce planning. Defining the role of a WBM and identifying good practice is consequently valuable to ensure the success of DAs. As Aimee, Claire and Karen discussed, WBMs have a unique role distinct from an academic tutor or workplace assessor. Their role is both pastoral and acting as a bridge between the academic world and practice, particularly helping to identify opportunities to better integrate theory and practice. This is critical to providing recognition, perhaps accreditation, and effective training for WBMs. The formalisation of such roles might be welcomed, but only if important virtues of voluntarism, care, and reciprocity are maintained. The relevance of these findings outside AHP is likely to be high regarding other liminal mentorship roles.

Providers and social justice

Charlynne Pullen, also of Sheffield Hallam, turned to the perspective of providers, drawing on her research with Colin McCaig, and Kat Emms and Andrea Laczik from Edge. In the current uncertain higher education landscape, providers are motivated to strengthen and diversify their applied provision to draw on ‘untapped markets’ of student demand. Cultivating this market requires substantial efforts to stimulate interest from employers and potential students. How far these efforts do broaden entry and widen participation varied. With the growing awareness of DAs, concerns have arisen around so-called ‘middle-class capture’ of DA opportunities by candidates who likely would have attended HE regardless. DAs have high entry requirements, sometimes including assessment centres, and providers have limited means to influence recruitment which is ultimately the purview of employers. This meant that DAs currently display a contested role in enabling individual social mobility. Opportunities for school leavers seemed limited, though there is an arguable role for DAs in widening participation and entry to higher-level professions for adult learners. Social justice can potentially be achieved through DAs in two ways – either through social mobility of degree apprentices, and/or through widening participation in HE. DAs can offer social mobility for existing employees (as can any substantial on-job training) but will have no substantive role in widening participation to HE on current measurement methods which focus on young people, because DAs aimed at 18-year old school leavers do not attract the same level of diversity as existing undergraduate degrees offered by providers.

Conclusions

DAs represent one of the most exciting innovations in the way providers approach the design and delivery of degree level education in the UK. Together, this research indicates that while for employers and learners who can take advantage the benefits are substantial, there is work to do to improve their accessibility. DAs are still small scale. And, first and foremost, they are jobs. If employers do not have degree level vacancies, DAs cannot be offered. Until there are programmatic efforts to simulate job creation, distributing resources between employers, evidencing the impact of DAs more clearly, and identifying best practice in areas such as mentoring, would help strengthen the effectiveness of DAs.

Edge will be publishing three of the pieces of research on DAs featured in this blog in September and October 2024. To keep up to date with our research, sign up to our mailing list, or follow us on Twitter @ukEdge and LinkedIn.

The Edge Foundation is an independent, politically impartial foundation, inspiring the education system in order to help young people acquire the knowledge, skills & behaviours to flourish. Andrea Laczik is the Director of Research, Kat Emms is an Education and Policy Senior Researcher, and Josh Patel is a researcher.


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Debt and doubt: a graduate’s frustrations with the current higher education loans regime

by Josh Patel

And I am a weapon of massive consumption,
And it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.

When I was asked to speak about my experiences of graduate indebtedness at the recent SRHE event in June, I was initially enthusiastic. I was a member of the first cohort of school-leavers expected to take out the government loans to pay the then new £9000 university fees in 2012-13. I took a gap year, completed an undergraduate degree, and subsequently received funding for a Master’s and a PhD. I believe I am one of the first of this new generation of highly indebted graduates to have been afforded the time and space to develop expertise around and reflect on the HE system I was a part of. Few graduate voices on their indebtedness are heard in research or policy discourse. 

However, figuring out my contribution became frustrating. Firstly, any perspective I would bring would be unrepresentative. I am a mixed-race male from the home counties. I attended a Russell Group university, and had far too much fun in the sandbox of further academic study, sheltered from having to think seriously about entering the external labour market. Secondly, I had conducted no research myself on graduate experiences. I am also not an economist. I would be exposing my feelings about the current student finance regime (albeit informed by my related research) to the potentially sharp questioning of experts. This felt epistemically precarious. 

Graduate indebtedness

My frustrations around the legitimacy of my voice and my disenfranchisement from the conversation around indebtedness are part of a broader series of doubts and tensions. It’s hard to avoid a sense of resentment every time I check (mainly to satisfy a grim curiosity) my rapidly ballooning student debt total on the Student Loans Company website. I will likely be making payments that have a negligible impact on that total until 2047. It is Sisyphean. At the same time, I had heard for many years hear policymakers and academics like Nick Barr talk about the inherent fairness of income-contingent loans. Given that individuals receive a substantial return from their investment in higher education (HE), it is right that the balance of costs should be shared between students and the state. 

In Claire Callender and Steve Jones’ work on student experiences of indebtedness, the complaints of students and graduates are primarily centred around the slight delays of a few years to the privileges of an expected middle-class lifestyle, like buying a first house or having a family. Are these frustrations really valid, or are they just the mewlings of the demanding children of the late welfare state, now that democratic due diligence has found the public investment in our education was not providing an effective social return?

Thinking through these doubts was hard. Like the students in Claire’s and Steve’s research, I had internalised a certain logic. My failure to shed the shameful label of indebtedness lay in my regrettable choice to pursue history, my (apparently?) poor work ethic, and my subconscious suspicion of Big Four consultancy grad schemes. But I came to think about my frustrations with indebtedness through the work I’d done during my PhD. My frustration with the current loans regime is a frustration with ‘the whole way in which a society selects its priorities and orders itself’, to redeploy EP Thompson’s phrase from 1970. Our current politics has de-prioritised investments in the future, which undermines the realisation of a good society. Indebtedness serves as a sharp and recurring reminder of all of this.

The balance of freedoms

The axiom that those that benefit most from HE should bear proportionately more of the cost derives somewhat surprisingly from the 1960s. The story of post-war massification in the UK is a familiar one; participation in HE grew from less than 5% prior to 1939 to approaching 50% today. In 1962 a mandatory grant was introduced to pay for the education of ‘all those qualified by ability and attainment and who wished to do so’, in the words of the Robbins Report (1963). While this public-mindedness feels inevitable in the spirit of post-war optimism, at the time it was not uncontested. As one economist put it, in a system of grants, resources of the ‘poor and stupid’ in the general population who would not benefit from HE are used to fund the privileged lifestyles of the few ‘rich and intelligent’ who attended universities. While the Robbins Report advocated expansion based on grants, the chairman of the Robbins Report, Lionel Robbins (himself a neoliberal economist, as I have explored) thought the argument for loans and grants was delicately balanced.

Robbins considered the problem one of what he called the ‘balance of freedoms’. There was an important balance to strike between preserving freedoms in the present, and enabling future freedoms in the pursuit of social prosperity. For Robbins, prosperity was a consequence of the inherent tendency of individuals to pursue their own self-betterment in conditions of freedom. This included generating individual returns on the labour market and broader social returns. University education would increase young people’s productivity and ingenuity, while enhancing their understanding of their responsibilities to society.

Taxation (a substantial transgression of personal freedoms by the state) was only justified when it could be shown to enhance future freedoms. In the context of proportionately low attendance of HE in the UK in the post-war period, grants were a state investment in removing structural and psychosocial barriers to self-betterment in the population, particularly for women and others from underprivileged backgrounds. When a greater proportion of the population were empowered to pursue those opportunities, both individual and social prosperity would follow. 

As a greater proportion of the population attended HE habitually, the justification for increased taxation would fall. It would no longer be justified to take poor people’s money to pay for the continued elevation of the gifted. When this happened, it would be more just for the burden of HE cost to fall back to young people so they could make an informed decision about the relative costs and returns of them attending HE. 

The question of the balance of costs of HE was never as simple as stating that: because attending HE generates both a social return and a large individual return, students should be expected to take on some burden of the cost of their education.

As Robbins understood it, the question is: on the balance of how far future freedoms are enabled by the reduction of freedoms in the present, how far is it right that resources should be redistributed from the general population to fund HE? 

Three frustrations

Revisiting the question of the balance of freedoms in the twenty-first century leads you to a different place than in the twentieth century. The burden of the costs of education is now tipped towards graduates far in excess of a good faith balance of freedoms. It serves a regime which has played politics, fetishised austerity, and sought short-term returns above sustainability and long-term economic prosperity. Reflecting on my indebtedness, I identified three rough frustrations:

Short-termism

Because we live in a democratic society, the assessment of our collective capacity to engender future freedoms is, rightly, subject to accountability through our political system. But the downward pressure this exerts on public expenditure is not inevitable (as it is sometimes presented) but a consequence of political culture. Public and policy discourse seems to have completely lost sight of the capacity of collective action to advance future freedoms. Austerity has led to an underinvestment in social infrastructure, ducked the costs of maintenance, and eviscerated our national capacities. The burden of the costs of repairing this damage has been shifted to our future. There is limited research as to the economic and social consequences of this debt. Both Labour and the Conservatives’ commitments to avoiding raises in tax feels like a failure to have an honest conversation with the electorate about our national priorities in the face of serious national and international challenges. 

Poor redistributive justice

Recent London Economics modelling demonstrated that, for those taking new loans from August 2023, lower income female graduates will subsidise high-earning males’ education. Or, as James Purnell put it recently in publications for HEPI, ‘a nurse must now pay back more than a banker’. This is deeply unjust. It is completely antithetical to the progressive income tax regime we all abide by. It violently severs one route this generation can mutually support one another in our pursuit of human flourishing. And it is pointless. As Barr has argued, ‘The argument that tax cuts lead to growth is mistaken; lower taxes are not always better. Productive private investment needs to be complemented by productive public investment’. Job forecasts from other advanced economies expect more than 80% of the workforce will require some tertiary accreditation by 2050. Skills shortages even today are calculated to cost the UK economy up to £39 billion a year from 2024 through to 2027. Investment in education and training by employers and the state has deteriorated and productivity is stagnant. Redistribution is imperative. 

Deterioration of HE

The deterioration of the unit cost following from the political deadlock around loans makes HE an unappealing place to plan a career. The transition period at the end of the PhD consists of a ridiculous juggling act of multiple contracts for everything from research to teaching to administrative roles. Despite all the hard work, remuneration is comparatively poor. All the delays to adult life that indebtedness inflict are compounded. Even permanent academic roles do not seem particularly secure given the redundancies sweeping over the sector. Add on top of all that the expected workload, bullying managerial cultures, artificial ED&I strategies, it is a wonder HEIs are able to attract qualified and ambitious candidates at all. During my time as a PhD and Fellow, I was paid more per hour as head coach of the university swim team than I was to deliver seminars.[1] Why bother?

The next sixty years

Robbins was arguing for expansion just after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The wars of the first half of the twentieth century were raw, living memories. HE was implicated in this in a complicated way – the powerful knowledge of modern societies taught through HE had the potential to both to raise living standards to unparalleled heights but also enable mass atrocities. A proper education cultivated the wisdom in students to wield modern technologies with responsibility. 

Obviously freedom is diminished after a nuclear holocaust. But the existential crises I fear – everything from crises in teaching and healthcare, gender and social inequality, to the climate change and the resurgence of fascism across the world – if they are not tackled are also equally non-conducive to overall freedom. They require exponentially more of my generation and later generations to be part of the solution. Indebtedness is a constant reminder that our contribution to solving these problems is not worth collective support. 

Josh Patel is a Researcher at the Edge Foundation. There, he has contributed to research on Degree Apprenticeships, New HEIs, and T levels, and is currently leading research on student experiences of tertiary pathways between HE and FE. He was previously a Fellow at the University of Warwick and completed his PhD on the justifications for the massification of higher education in liberal thought. He is writing a monograph on this topic for SRHE’s Research into Higher Education book series with Routledge. Here, Josh writes in a personal capacity. The views contained within do not necessarily reflect the views of the Edge Foundation.

[1] I have to qualify this by stressing that participation in student-led communities was central in my and (as I saw as a coach, tutor, and researcher) others’ personal development. My point is that there is a social maldistribution of resources that permits this circumstance.