Johnson: King’s Speech degrees line a ‘culture wars dog whistle’

A former universities minister has criticised the Westminster government for singling out “poor-quality degrees” in the King’s Speech as a “dog whistle to the culture warriors”.

Laying out the government’s legislative agenda for the coming parliament, the King’s Speech said “proposals will be implemented to reduce the number of young people studying poor-quality university degrees” in England.

Concerns have been raised that the high-profile reference, read out by the monarch, could deter international students from coming to the UK.

Speaking at an event at King’s College London, Lord Johnson, who was universities minister between 2015 and 2018 and again in 2019, said: “This is a continuation of language that we’ve been hearing for quite some time so in that sense it’s not very new – it’s a continuation of a dog whistle to the culture warriors.

“That’s the basic intent, but in terms of actual policy it’s harder to see where the government is going to take this in terms of devising policy that can withstand challenge.

“I think the government is obviously doing damage to the sector by these sort of broadsides against it and it’s not serving the interests of the sector as a whole.”

Lord Johnson said the English regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), had processes to assess quality already through the Teaching Excellence Framework and its B3 quality metrics.

Ministers have said they intend to cap the number of students on so-called “rip-off” degrees that fall short on these metrics – covering student continuation and completion and graduate employment – but have parked proposals to to introduce a minimum entry requirement for students to be eligible for Student Loans Company funding, which many in the sector had warned would require complex exemptions to avoid penalising groups such as mature students.

Lord Johnson said it was right that, where there were quality problems, the regulator “does pile on in” and addressed them to uphold the reputation of the sector.

However, at a time when the participation gap between the most advantaged and the least advantaged quintile of students was around 30 percentage points, Lord Johnson said, the sector should be wary of “a policy that would throw the engines of social mobility in higher education into reverse”.

“I hope very much that this line in the [King’s] speech isn’t softening us up for an attempt to reimpose number controls,” he said.

Also speaking at the event, hosted by the ResPublica thinktank, Steven McGuire, dean of the business school at Sussex University, said it was important that the sector had robust regulation and robust outcomes.

“We all want high-quality education – I think the UK has an outstanding reputation for that and it’s a credit to all the system,” he said.

Professor McGuire said he worried what the reference in the King’s Speech would do to the reputation of UK higher education, but he worried even more that it would create incentives for universities to cut access and participation schemes, and reduce their intake of non-traditional students or those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com