How to reform an education system - answers unveiled

The efforts and thinking behind 17 years of education reform have been distilled into one book: We preview Financing Higher Education, a selection of writing from 1987 from two eminent London School of Economics' writers.

For 17 years, Nicholas Barr, Professor of Public Economics, and Iain Crawford, head of LSE public relations, worked together to reform the finance of UK higher education - from the late 1980s, with Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, to the passage of the 2004 Higher Education Act, championed by Tony Blair and Education Secretary Charles Clarke and based largely on Professor Barr and the late Mr Crawford's work. The book commemorates a remarkable partnership between an academic economist and a media savvy political pro, who shared a passion to improve higher education and widen access.
		Competition next month: In next month's edition (April) of Subtext, we will be giving away a copy of Financing Higher Education: Answers from the UK. Keep an eye out for it.

This partnership ended only when Mr Crawford died recently after a long illness.

Financing Higher Education includes academic writing and newspaper articles, and provides a three-pronged reform strategy for any country which can collect income tax, and hence collect loan repayments:

• Deferred variable fees, which promote quality by bringing more resources into higher education and, by increasing competition, improving the efficiency with which those resources are used. Variable fees are also fairer than other approaches.
• A good student loan scheme, which has income-contingent repayments and offers loans large enough to cover all fees and realistic living costs. Higher education is free at the point of use (students get it free - it is the graduate who makes repayments). Thus students are no longer poor, nor forced to rely on parental contributions or expensive credit card debt and overdrafts.
• Active measures to promote access. The book stresses repeatedly that, though grants are important, the real barriers to access come long before university. Measures to address the problem include money (e.g. Education Maintenance Allowances, but also information (e.g. action to demystify higher education and to raise aspirations).

Professor Barr argues that reform is important because "higher education matters".

"In today's world it is an essential element in national economic performance. And it has a major bearing on a person's life chances. Thus the model takes as its starting point the imperative of access for all who have the ability and desire.

"It frees resources, allows competition between universities and - centrally - harnesses rather than wastes the talent of the people. Many policies require painful choices between efficiency and social justice. This one enhances both."

NZ experience informs UK debate

Tuition fees and student loans are now part of the education environment in England but there are concerns the government is doing nothing to explain their benefits, and the information vacuum is being filled with cries of protest from student representatives.

Professor Barr told the Guardian last month that the British government should learn from the New Zealand experience.

"Reform doesn't end when the law is passed," said Professor Barr, who pointed to the example of New Zealand, which introduced fees in 1992 in a big bang.

"Inadequate attention was paid to politics: having implemented the reforms, the government stopped campaigning for them; nor did the government do enough to explain to students and parents the considerable advantages of income-contingent repayments. As a result, when nominal student debt rose over the years, worried middle-class parents created political pressures."

Resources

More information on Financing Higher Education: Answers from the UK (Routledge, 2005).

The Guardian article with Professor Barr discussing the New Zealand experience.

There is a wide range of information and resources on funding tertiary education at the Education Forum website. Visit http://www.educationforum.org.nz/ and click on the 'Tertiary' link in the dark-blue toolbar near the top of the home page.