Whilst a political storm swirls around us at breathtaking speed it is worth taking a step back to have another look at the implications of the One Wales Government’s policies on higher education and its impact on students.
This morning’s Independent cites figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency which show that of the school-leavers who started university in 2006-2007, 7.4 per cent dropped out after their first year of study, up from 7.1 per cent in the previous year.
They say that ‘In general, universities that recruited the most students from low-income families had the highest drop-out rates. The percentage of younger people entering higher education from low-income families in 2007-08 was 29.5 per cent, down from 29.8 per cent the previous year. Again, the figure was the lowest for three years.
There was a crumb of comfort for ministers in the fact that participation from disadvantaged neighbourhoods rose from 9.6 per cent to 9.9 per cent. Taking the two trends together would suggest that while there are more students coming from disadvantaged areas, they tend to be from families earning higher incomes.’
Meanwhile the Western Mail reports that Welsh universities recorded similar or higher proportions of students from the most under-represented groups compared to the UK as a whole:
A total of 93.6% of young full-time undergraduate entrants to Welsh universities in 2007/08 were from state schools or colleges, a similar proportion to last year and greater than the UK as a whole at 88.5%.
Eight out of Wales’ 11 higher education institutes had proportions significantly higher than the benchmark.
While 26.7% of full-time under- graduates were mature students, a similar proportion to the UK as a whole at 26.5%, 12.2% of such entrants had no previous higher education experience and were from so-called “low participation neighbourhoods”, compared to 11.5% for the UK as a whole.
The big difference between England and Wales of course is that we do not have top-up fees for Welsh students entering our universities. That is all set to change thanks to a brazen u-turn on the part of Plaid Cymru.
I suspect that what progress we have made in Wales will be reversed as poorer students here find that, as in England, they can no longer sustain the levels of debt required to put themselves through college.
Related posts:
