Dearing is Dead – Blunkett is Born? The Future Funding of Higher Education

Abstract

The Dearing Report’s most substantial and rigorous piece of work on funding has been rendered irrelevant by the government’s decision to adopt a different approach which Dearing had not considered. Much time, effort and money could have been saved if the government had made its objectives clear before the Report was finalised rather than on the day it was published.Yet the Dearing chapters on funding are not wasted because they provide the case for a student contribution to tuition costs on the grounds of equity. These arguments are examined and supported in the paper. The Report is criticised for missing the opportunity to argue for credit‐based funding in relation to both the public and student contributions.The reasons for the government preferring its particular mix of means‐tested fee and loan instead of means‐tested maintenance grant are explained in terms of its political objectives. The effect of the government’s proposals is that no student or parent pays more now for higher education than under existing arrangements. The extra private costs are incurred by graduates in repaying their additional loans out of their future income.Finally, the misplaced emphasis on dealing with the full‐time student funding problem led the Committee to give insufficient attention to other students. The adoption of a genuine lifelong learning model of higher education might have generated more relevant proposals not only on funding but elsewhere.