Abstract
Before the effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic, there had been continued debate about the future of Higher Education (HE) in the UK. It is now accepted that the effect of the pandemic will have a long-lasting effect on HE in the UK and elsewhere. This paper addresses the changes that are currently taking place, based on a strategy that aims to develop a future knowledge-based economy, following the UK governments 2019 landmark review of HE. It explores the underlying parallels between the current situation and certain historical events that catalysed the development of a new approach to HE in the past, which is very relevant today. In this context, the paper discusses why major changes in UK HE provision is now required as a response to the fact that although the cost of education is rising, employers are reporting that graduates are increasingly unprepared for the workplace. In this respect, the paper addresses a model for HE that focuses on `earn-as-you-learn’ apprenticeships and work-place-based learning. The key to this is the emphasis that the UK government is now placing on funding new `Technological Colleges’, in which students are trained by experts from the industry on a contractual basis, rather than by university academics with tenured positions.
Highlights
Over the past few decades, the university sector has undergone a number of radical changes in which the search for an institutional competitive advantage has required new strategies to be considered [1]
Given the economic conditions that prevail, and, in regard to the response of universities to COVID-19 [2], while the cost of Higher Education (HE) is rising, employers are reporting that graduates are increasingly unprepared for the workplace [3]
In the UK, while the cost of education is rising, employers are continually noticing that graduates are increasingly unprepared for the workplace compared to their German counterparts and are further burdened with debt
Summary
Over the past few decades, the university sector has undergone a number of radical changes in which the search for an institutional competitive advantage has required new strategies to be considered [1]. The aim of this work is not to provide a narrative that is, in effect, a list of problems and solutions couched in the present (coupled with various forms of statistical information) but to ‘paint’ the issues of HE on a broad societal ‘canvas’ within a historical context The purpose of this is to portray the similarities that exist between the present and the past, how education is related to the flux that exists between the two and the influx of new ideas that is predicated on the effects of multiculturalism. (ii) Certain nation states who see fit to educate their children properly and are experiencing considerable economic growth may find the material even more threatening than UK university staff This is because they have come to understand that it is their interests that the UK carries on just the way that it is. It is this point that is significantly more important than that given in point (i) above
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