You are absolutely #fluent in #English if you can #understand these by #BritishEducation #yt

https://youtu.be/gLnltsd1Ngs

Awfull I dyed a lot insyder while watchin this dad jokes xD But I understood everything… I speakz enhlis 🤪

Even though I left England years ago, I try to keep up with what goes on there. I'm also interested in higher education.

So naturally Glen O'Hara's proposal for expanding higher education in Britain caught my attention.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/27/the-big-idea-how-can-englands-universities-survive

He proposes establishing institutes of higher learning that could provide higher education in every town in the country.

These institutes would not, however, simply replicate the structures and activities of existing universities but would instead "offer courses that break down the barriers between the arts and sciences, technology and the humanities, maths and theatre... Students of all ages could walk on to campus and take part in activities put on by all the different providers involved, in all disciplines: art and design across a walkway from chemistry labs, recording studios sharing new, tree-lined piazzas with engineering workshops."

It's an appealing vision, but it does prompt questions.

In the first place, how could one convince an incoming Labour government wedded to fiscal conservatism of the necessity of the initial spending that such an expansion would require? The article itself suggests one strategy – point out the value of higher education to the British economy. Unfortunately, I see two problems with this approach. A Labour government operating under tight public spending constraints might well decide that the limited resources available might better be allocated to early childhood education or a more narrowly conceived vocational programmes. As one responds to that kind of objection, the second problem looms into view; the advocate for higher education gets caught on the treadmill of attempting to justify its expansion or even existence in largely instrumental terms.

The historian O’Hara is of course aware that the value of higher education includes but is by no means limited to its contribution to GDP: he stresses the intrinsic value of higher education both to the individuals who undertake it and to the larger community. This kind of advocacy is what really engages my passions, and, I suspect, those of O’Hara too. Yet we should not let these passions blind us to the difficulty of answering a question related but not identical to the one I posed in the preceding paragraph: how could one convince an incoming Labour government of the importance of the noneconomic value of higher education? Although I am sure that many in Labour share this passion for education as a good in itself, I suspect this enthusiasm is not universal. Some heirs of Blair will still be wedded to the economistic wonkery of endogenous growth theory. Other Labourites might also less than wholly enthusiastic, be they scarred by the memory of BoJo flaunting his classical education or daunted by the prospect of constituents quoting Daily Mail stories of the YOUR TAXES PAY FOR WOKE BARBIE COURSES variety.

Nor are Labour ministers the only ones who will need convincing that the higher education institutes of the future need to be more than job training schools; prospective students might also be hesitant about walking across the tree lined plaza from the chemistry lab to the recording studio. These students will be operating under their own budget constraints -- how much money they are willing or able to spend or borrow on course fees, and how much time they are prepared to devote to matters that might seem to yield little material reward. In the USA, students will sit through general education classes in history, literature or philosophy because they have to before they can take classes in their majors of business, nursing, or whatever; I am not sure that such a model is transferable to Britain. So the larger question of how to convince government, students, and the public at large of the value of a humanistic education remains unanswered.

I don’t have a simple answer to that question, but I do have some thoughts about how that question might best be debated. Since it’s gone midnight here and this post is already long, I’ll leave those thoughts to another time.

@gsoh31 #GlenOHara #HigherEducation #BritishPolitics #BritishEducation