Higher education, further education and the English experiment

Higher Education Quarterly, 0951–5224 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2009.00443.x Volume 63, No. 4, October 2009, pp 322–342

Higher Education, Further Education and the English Experiment hequ_443

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Gareth Parry, University of Sheffield, [email protected]

Abstract England has a two-sector system of higher education and further education. Shaped by legislation in 1988 and 1992, the architecture of this system was intended to concentrate each type of education in separate institutions and separate sectors. In recognition of these different missions, each territory came under different funding and regulatory regimes, with little or no movement of institutions anticipated between sectors.These arrangements continue, although Government policy is now to support and expand higher education in further education colleges. This policy turnaround is part of a larger strategy or experiment to change the future pattern of demand for, and supply of, undergraduate education. However, the college contribution to this new higher education is neither co-ordinated nor protected. Rather, further education colleges compete as well as collaborate with institutions in the higher education sector, under conditions of complexity, uncertainty and dependency.

Introduction A division between higher education and further education has been a long-standing feature of post-compulsory education in England. At various times, these terms described systems or sectors of education, the types of institution that occupied these territories, the courses and qualifications supported by these organisations and the students and staff that populated them. Nor were they mutually exclusive categories. For more than 60 years, higher education outside the universities and the colleges of education has been provided, first, in a system of advanced and non-advanced further education, and then in a sector of further education. Throughout this period, most establishments of further education offered courses of higher education as a majority or © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4, 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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more usually as a minority of their activity. When the bulk of teaching was at or above undergraduate levels, these same establishments were designated institutions of higher education. Confusion about these descriptions and arrangements has not lessened with the passage of time. For international scholars and domestic commentators alike, comprehending the world of further education and its relationship to higher education has been a regular source of difficulty, if not mystery. For reasons to be explored in this article, the task has proved no more straightforward since the introduction of a single framework for higher education in the early 1990s. Up to this point, university and non-university higher education were organised along binary lines and, up to the late 1980s, the polytechnics and colleges on the non-university side of higher education were part of a larger further education system. Following abolition of the binary line, a new two-sector system of higher education and further education was expected to end the overlap between these two segments and enforce a division of labour by type of institution and by level of qualification. The separate structures introduced to achieve these objectives are still in place, although a larger learning and skills sector replaced the further education sector at the turn of the new century. However, Government policy is now to support and expand higher education in the further education sector. This reversal of policy is one element in a major strategy – styled here ‘the English experiment’ – to change the pattern of future demand for, and supply of, undergraduate education and higherlevel training. In this way, the involvement of further education colleges in higher education has been reinstated and rediscovered, albeit largely in the absence of a policy memory among politicians and officials that would recognise continuities as well as differences in this history. Central to their reinvented mission in undergraduate education is a focus on short-cycle, sub-bachelor and strongly vocational programmes which will, it is anticipated, enable further education colleges to meet the needs of the changing economy and make higher education available, attractive and accessible to a wider population, including working-class students. In earlier times, provision to achieve equivalent goals was subject to planning, funding and co-ordination through local and central Government. Now, further education colleges compete as well as collaborate with institutions in the higher education sector, within an unstable and uncertain environment of increasing complexity. In this article, a critical account and analysis is given of the modern architecture of higher education and further education, its antecedents, its impact on institutions that combine both types of activity and its © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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implications for increasing and widening participation in undergraduate education. In so doing, it will address a number of empirical, theoretical and policy questions concerning the place of further education colleges in an expanded and extended post-binary system of higher education. Unlike other countries in Western Europe where binary systems have proved popular and durable (Kyvik, 2004), England and the other home countries of the United Kingdom replaced their binary structures with unified arrangements. Here, as in the example of Australia, questions arise about the persistence of previous patterns in postbinary hierarchies and the reappearance and reproduction of sectors in otherwise fluid and fuzzy environments for mass higher education (Scott, 1995). Depending on the criteria applied, this has seen further education colleges positioned either outside the recognised range of providers of higher education in England or, if included, at the lower end of its rank order. With the most research-intensive universities located at the upper end of the system, there is a steep gradient between these institutions, the large number of other universities and higher education establishments in the middle of this extended hierarchy, and those teaching-only further education institutions that offer courses of higher education. Drawing on the findings of a study of ‘Universal Access and Dual Regimes of Further and Higher Education’ (the FurtherHigher Project) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the principal argument of the article is that the structures put in place by legislation in 1988 and 1992 have impeded the development and growth of higher education in further education settings. Indeed, such arrangements were designed to deter such activity. Along with other features of the policy landscape, they now make it more difficult for Governments to advance their widening participation and higher-level skills agendas. On the other hand, the boundary between the two sectors is permissive and permeable, with partnerships between further education colleges and higher education establishments assuming a variety of forms. As a consequence, new combinations of higher and further education institutions have appeared alongside well-established providers. The evidence for this argument is based on the analysis of more than 400 policy documents, together with 14 face-to-face interviews with past and present senior officials in Government and the sector bodies. The preliminary and overall findings of the FurtherHigher Project, including its design and methodology, are reported in a set of related publications (Bathmaker et al., 2008; Parry et al., 2008; David et al., 2009). This article is a short version of a source document (Parry, 2008) prepared for © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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the authors of the international and contextual articles assembled in this special issue of Higher Education Quarterly.

The college contribution In contrast to research on the collegiate and transfer functions of community colleges in North America and elsewhere (Brint and Karabel, 1989; Dougherty, 2001), the higher education role of further education colleges has attracted only occasional attention from scholars and researchers. Indeed, it was often left to transatlantic observers to probe the division between further and higher education in the English system (Trow, 1987, 1989). If they figured at all in international studies, it was often in the context (or shadow) of the polytechnics, the flagship institutions of higher education in the former further education system (Pratt, 1997; Shavit et al., 2007). In the post-binary era, the college contribution has been noticed more, not least in country comparisons that highlight the curious and complicated character of the example of England (Duke, 2005; Gallacher and Osborne, 2005; Moodie, 2008; Garrod and Macfarlane, 2009). At the same time, the division of higher and further education has attracted the interest of education theorists and philosophers (Barnett, 1990; Young, 2006; White, 2009) and, at various junctures, the scrutiny of policy analysts (Piatt and Robinson, 2001; Corney and Fletcher, 2007). At issue among the former is the status – administrative or epistemological – of this boundary. For the latter, it is the merit of aligning, merging or replacing the bodies that oversee each sector. Some of these themes are highlighted in debates and disagreements about how much and what kind of higher education should be offered by further education colleges, or whether such institutions should be involved in higher-level work at all.They feature too in worries about the quality and comparability of the student experience in college settings. Most of all, they accompany a general sense of unease and ambivalence about offering lower-status qualifications to lower-income students in lower-ranked institutions. Whether as higher education in further education colleges or further education in higher education establishments, the nature and extent of these zones is poorly enumerated. This has much to do with the divided and disconnected collection of administrative data, itself a consequence of the two-sector system introduced after 1992. It reflected as well the small volume, wide variety and marginal position of much of this © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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provision. In some cases, its description as higher education is unclear and disputed. Nevertheless, most sources report around 180,000 students currently studying for higher education and higher-level qualifications in colleges of further education. These account for around one in nine or one in 10 of the domestic undergraduate population in England. A smaller number of further education students – some 115,000 – are enrolled in institutions of higher education and represent a tiny fraction of the population of students studying at the further education levels. Beneath the ladder of higher education qualifications, these are the levels or areas of lower tertiary and upper secondary education that further education colleges provide for young people and adults in a locality or region. In the case of upper secondary education for 16 to 18 year-olds – now increasingly viewed as the core work of most colleges – this role is also undertaken by secondary schools that provide a ‘sixth form’ beyond the compulsory phase (after the age of 16). Secondary schools and further education colleges are the main environments where young people prepare for higher education, with the colleges supplying nearly 40 per cent of entrants to full-time undergraduate education. Outside the 90 or more sixth form colleges that focus on full-time academic (A-level) qualifications for school leavers, nearly all the other 270 or so general further education colleges provide a range of academic, vocational and basic education, both part-time and full-time, and typically cater for students of all ages and from diverse backgrounds. In respect of higher education, the qualifying function performed by these general colleges, and by another 30 specialist establishments, is more prominent and extensive than the providing function, often markedly so. This is less the situation among the 50 colleges that have sizeable amounts of higher-level work. Most of the remaining colleges have small pockets of higher education. Like most of the nearly three million students enrolled in further education colleges, those taking higher-level courses in these settings study mainly part-time. The majority of these courses lead to qualifications below the bachelor degree but some colleges have provision at all the undergraduate levels, usually in a defined subject or occupational area, and a few have postgraduate programmes. Since further education colleges do not award their own qualifications, their certificates, diplomas and degrees are validated and awarded by individual universities or by national examination bodies, and sometimes by both. In addition, there are courses that lead to a range of qualifications awarded or recognised by professional bodies. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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The higher education sector is smaller, both in the number of member institutions (around 130) and in the size of the student population (just over 2 million). Here full-time students are in the majority and, unlike in the colleges, the main qualifications are at the bachelor and postgraduate levels. Even so, there is still a significant amount of sub-bachelor provision, much of it provided by the new (post-1992) universities. Furthermore, this segment is larger than that taught in the learning and skills sector, with colleges unable therefore to lay claim to a discrete or specific part of higher education and, as in Scotland, make it their own (Gallacher, 2002; Parry, 2006). Further education colleges and higher education institutions are publicly funded for teaching and, in the case of universities and other higher education establishments, for research and knowledge transfer as well. Colleges and universities that combine further and higher education are funded by separate sector bodies and the quality of each is monitored and assessed by different agencies. In the English system, there is no agreed terminology – official or otherwise – to describe this category of dual providers, although ‘mixed economy’ has been used to distinguish further education colleges with medium-to-large amounts of higher education. In the higher education sector, a handful of universities have merged with a further education college but only one has termed itself a ‘dual-sector’ institution (Garrod, 2005). The distributed legacy The structure of this two-sector system and the criteria for allocating institutions into one sector or the other were laid down by acts of parliament in 1988 and 1992. Prior to these reforms, education beyond the compulsory years was mostly provided by two sets of institutions: establishments of further education under the control of local Government; and autonomous universities, which were funded by central Government. The establishments owned and maintained by the local authorities provided courses of advanced further education (as local authority higher education was then called) and programmes of non-advanced further education (at levels below higher education). These courses and their providing institutions constituted a national system of further education that was locally administered. Although non-advanced work was by far the largest component of the further education system, its advanced provision was widely distributed and never the monopoly of a few institutions. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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What was termed the local authority or maintained and, latterly, the public sector of higher education included a large number of establishments that taught both advanced and non-advanced further education. It was distinctive as well in offering higher education at levels below the bachelor degree, much of which was vocationally oriented.The qualifications at these higher levels were validated and awarded by external bodies. At this time, these institutions were funded essentially only for teaching. When the Robbins committee (1961–1963) conducted its Inquiry into higher education, the universities accounted for the majority of full-time students but the large numbers of part-time (day and evening) students on advanced courses in the further education system made it the larger part of higher education by headcount. As a result of the binary policy announced in 1966 – supported by all Governments up to 1992 – the non-university share of full-time higher education also increased, assisted by the rationalisation of teacher education colleges in the 1970s. This pattern of expansion changed the shape of advanced further education, with part-time students no longer in a majority and sub-bachelor provision eclipsed by the rise of bachelor degrees. The engine for this growth was the polytechnics. Formed from existing technical and other colleges in the late 1960s and early 1970s, these new institutions were expected to shed their non-advanced work and develop as large and comprehensive institutions offering full-time and part-time higher education at all levels. Nevertheless, they were still intended to be ‘mixed communities’, catering for school leavers as well as those already in employment, and having close and direct links with industry, business and the professions. A key objective of the polytechnic plan was to concentrate full-time courses in a limited number of strong centres. This was needed to ‘achieve and maintain high standards’ and to provide ‘the right setting for an active community of staff and students’. It will be possible to meet these rapidly expanding needs and at the same time provide properly for the no less important needs of students at other levels only if a greater concentration of full-time higher education can be secured. The effect of distributing it widely as at present is that many departments and colleges are too small to sustain high academic standards and to provide a satisfactory corporate life. This also involves an uneconomical use of resources – not least of teachers qualified to undertake the higher levels of work. A considerable measure of concentration is therefore essential. (DES, 1966, p. 5)

Full-time higher education would continue at other colleges only where there were special local circumstances. Only exceptionally would © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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colleges not already engaged in full-time or part-time advanced courses be permitted to engage in higher-level work. Furthermore, the regional advisory councils that co-ordinated further education provision were asked to examine the scope for further concentration of particular fields of study at selected colleges. By the end of the 1970s, the 29 polytechnics enrolled 175,000 students: just over half of the 333,000 students on higher education courses in the non-university sector. The remainder were dispersed across 37 direct grant colleges and, significantly, among 330 local authority establishments. At 200 of the latter, less than 10 per cent of the students were undertaking advanced courses, compared to over 90 per cent at the polytechnics and 60 per cent at colleges with initial teacher education. This left 150 further education colleges devoted entirely to the provision of non-advanced courses (DES, 1981). Nearly a decade later, on the eve of partition of the non-university sector and ahead of the rapid expansion to mass levels of participation, a dispersed pattern of higher education remained. In addition to the polytechnics, another 308 establishments were responsible for just under half the total student population in the non-university sector. Not for the first time, central Government expressed its frustration with the organisation and management of the maintained sector, demanding more progress in rationalising scattered provision and concentrating effort on strong institutions and departments. The total provision required is not necessarily as well developed across colleges as it could be. There is a need for a substantial geographical spread in the interests of access, especially for part-time courses, and there are often educational and economic advantages in the association in a single college of degree and sub-degree work. But there is also evidence that degree work is so much better done where there is a fair concentration of it, that this consideration should prevail over the claims of easy access. (DES, 1985, p. 37)

The assumptive architecture Although a central organisation – the National Advisory Body for Local Authority Higher Education (NAB) – had been established in 1982 to secure a co-ordinated approach to academic policy and resource allocation in the local authority sector, the same Government that created this machinery and placed it on a permanent footing in 1985 then swiftly abandoned all such arrangements. At one stroke, and at the height of hostilities between Labour-controlled metropolitan authorities and a Conservative national Government, the local Government involvement in higher education was ended. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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The Education Reform Act of 1988 removed the polytechnics and colleges of higher education from the control of the local authorities and transferred them to their own polytechnics and colleges sector. Responsibility for the planning and funding of the new sector passed to a central body, the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC). In a parallel move, the University Grants Committee was replaced by the Universities Funding Council. At the same time, the further education colleges that remained with local Government saw greater financial powers delegated to their governing bodies and the local authority majority on these bodies was ended. This three-sector structure for post-school education was the culmination of efforts by central Government over two decades to control the costs and the spread of advanced further education. Even though some higher education would continue in the further education sector, the local authority interest in this provision was regarded as ‘residual’. In this way, ‘the “seamless robe” ideal of progression in the public sector was rejected’ and, henceforth, ‘further education was clearly defined as excluding higher education’ (Pratt, 2000, p. 23). Local authority membership of the NAB had ensured that issues of access and the link between advanced and non-advanced further education were not ignored. The struggle between local and central Government for control of the non-university sector reached back much earlier and had been played out in previous attempts to devise an improved system of management and co-ordination in the maintained sector (DES, 1978). Given the advance of the polytechnics, this was accompanied by growing demands from these institutions to be treated differently and separately, free of the detailed controls of individual local authorities. For all these reasons, the Thatcher Government declared the existing national planning arrangements ‘unsatisfactory’. A more effective lead from the centre was necessary to manage the impact of demographic decline, to provide in new ways for the wider range of students that would enter higher education and to meet the changing needs of industry and commerce in the 1990s. To give scope for better management and permit greater responsiveness to economic needs, as well as to reflect their national role, all institutions of ‘substantial size’ and ‘engaged predominantly in higher education’ were to be re-established as independent corporations in the new sector (DES, 1987). The establishments eligible for corporate status were those with more than 350 full-time equivalent students on advanced courses comprising at least 55 per cent of the total enrolment and those with at least 2,500 full-time equivalent students on advanced programmes. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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As a result, 84 higher education institutions were brought into the polytechnics and colleges sector, including the direct grant colleges and some of the smaller but mainly higher education establishments, which were given the choice of transferring into the new arrangements. All these establishments, together with courses of higher education still provided in the further education sector, were funded by the PCFC, except for the part-time Higher National Certificate (HNC) and an assortment of higher-level professional qualifications. Unlike PCFC programmes, these ‘non-prescribed’ courses came under no central planning agency and the funds for them were made available to local authorities through the rate support grant. Although much reduced by the 1988 Act, the local authority part of higher education was ‘substantial and diverse’ (DES, 1989). Its 120,000 students studied mainly part-time and most were enrolled on short-cycle courses. These met a specific (often local) need, frequently for unusual subject areas and for which there was consistent demand. At least 92 colleges had PCFC-funded courses, including the 2-year full-time Higher National Diploma (HND). About 300 had some other higher education provision, mostly funded through the local authorities. In supporting this variety and reach of provision, the colleges continued to play an important part in ‘widening opportunities for students’. The decisions taken at this time were to exercise an important influence on the future pattern and direction of higher education. Yet there was no overall plan or rationale for a system differentiated along these lines, especially for a further education sector now shorn of its senior institutions. Rather, the new divisions and territories produced by this legislation owed more to specific and immediate concerns, such as what to do about the polytechnics and how to increase the efficiency of individual institutions and the system as a whole. In the absence of a larger argument and vision for the 1988 settlement, it fell mainly to individuals to recover or remake a mission for a further education sector, one ‘no longer burdened with the negative language of non-advanced further education’ (Stubbs, 1988). In the event, the new architecture lasted just five years. The Further and Higher Education Act of 1992 abolished the binary line and a unified sector of higher education became the funding responsibility of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The same act of parliament removed the further education colleges from local authority control and, like the polytechnics in 1988, transferred them to a new further education sector with its own funding body, the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC). © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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These changes were introduced during the peak years of expansion in higher education and the newly incorporated further education colleges were expected to emulate the gains in increased student numbers and increased efficiency demonstrated by the polytechnics and attributed to the freedom given to them in 1989. If this was the main justification for reform of the further education sector, that for binary abolition rested on ‘breaking down the increasingly artificial and unhelpful barriers’ between the universities and the polytechnics and colleges of higher education (DES, 1991; DES, Department of Employment and Welsh Office, 1991). Beyond this, there was once again no overarching argument for a two-sector system or for relationships between their parallel bodies and constituent institutions. Neither was there anything to compare with the policy debates triggered by the binary and polytechnic proposals in the 1960s. The arrangements put in place in 1988 and 1992 assumed nevertheless that higher education and further education stood for different levels of learning and, for this main reason, should be provided by separate types of organisation. This was the assumptive base for each reform and, without serious challenge then or since, it has become part of the taken-for-granted world of further and higher education. With some adjustments on the way, this is how the division between higher education and further education has remained. After eight years under the FEFC, the Learning and Skills Act of 2000 brought together further education colleges, sixth forms in schools, Government-funded training and workplace development, and adult and community learning in a new and extended sector of post-16 education. A single organisation – the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) – took responsibility for the strategic development, planning, funding and quality assurance of post-16 learning ‘excluding higher education’. As in 1988 and 1992, the 2000 Act provided for the separation of higher education institutions from providers in another – more plural and much expanded – sector of post-compulsory education. Unlike its predecessors, the White Paper proposing this legislation volunteered a short explanation for such a division and a case for its continuation. This is for two reasons. First, uniquely, higher education’s contribution is international and national as well as regional and local. Although universities should be responsive to the needs of local employers and business, both to meet skills requirements and in the application of research, they also operate on a wider stage and require a different approach to funding. Second, one of the main aims in creating the new Council is to bring order to an area which is overly complex, and where there are critical issues to address about © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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coherence and the quality of provision. Including higher education would undermine this by complicating significantly the Council’s remit and making that remit so broad as to be difficult to manage. (DfEE, 1999, p. 42)

The policy experiment Although it was the polytechnics, followed by the universities, that led the spectacular growth after 1988, some of this higher education expansion was taken by the colleges. As a result of the largely unplanned and unregulated growth occasioned by Government-orchestrated competition for funded places, the number of higher education students enrolled in the further education sector increased by nearly one-fifth from 120,000 in 1989 to 146,000 in 1993 (Parry, 2003). The real rate of growth was somewhat greater since many colleges also taught undergraduate programmes on behalf of the fastest growing polytechnics. Under franchise arrangements, the teaching of selected programmes was subcontracted to one or more further education colleges. Not only did this bring higher education to some colleges for the first time, it widened the range of their subjects and qualifications as well. Just before the Major Government brought this expansion to a halt in 1994, it was estimated that over 30,000 students were taught on franchised or collaborative programmes (HEFCE, 1995). If these numbers are added to those enrolled by the colleges themselves, then something like one in eight of all undergraduate students in England were located in establishments of further education for some or all of their teaching. This was not quite the marginal or residual activity that the 1988 and 1992 reforms expected to see reduce or disappear from the further education sector. Even so, all such assumptions were to be fundamentally changed by the policies of successive Labour Governments after 1997. The newlyelected Blair administration accepted the recommendations of the Dearing Inquiry into higher education (1996–1997) for renewed growth and for a private (student) contribution to the costs of full-time undergraduate education. While the introduction of tuition fees excited most attention and controversy, the Dearing committee put forward a more surprising set of proposals addressed to future demand and keyed to the higher education role of further education colleges.Variously interpreted but broadly accepted by ministers, these recommendations paved the way for a succession of policies, some of them radical, aimed at breaking the traditional pattern of demand for English undergraduate education, in large part by reforming its supply. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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In contrast to the path taken to mass higher education, led by popular demand for the bachelor degree taught at institutions of higher education, the focus of the next phase of expansion would be on ‘other’ levels of undergraduate education and the delivery of short-cycle work-focused qualifications in a variety of modes, styles and settings. At the beginning of this experiment, further education colleges were singled out for a leading role in renewed growth and widening participation. A decade on, the situation of these institutions is ambiguous and uncertain. In the intervening years, the argument for college-based higher education has lost ground, especially if it suggested a more independent, discrete or protected position for further education institutions. A stand-alone mission and a managed path of development for colleges were endorsed by the Dearing Inquiry in its recommendations on expansion over the next 20 years. Expecting a large part of future demand to be expressed at the sub-bachelor levels, the committee proposed that priority in growth in ‘sub-degree’ provision should be accorded to further education institutions. To develop their ‘special mission’ in higher education, it was recommended that colleges be funded directly by the HEFCE, that franchising be curbed and regulated and that no extension into bachelor and postgraduate-level qualifications be permitted. In our view, this extra discipline to the level of higher education qualifications offered by further and higher education institutions will offer each sector distinctive opportunities and best meet growing individual, local and national needs. (NCIHE, 1997, p. 260)

The sectoral and institutional division of labour envisaged by the inquiry drew on the example of Scotland where, in contrast to England, nearly all sub-bachelor higher education was provided by the further education colleges. Not to be taken from Scotland was the funding of this activity by a non-higher education body and at a level lower than that for undergraduate education in the higher education sector. In England, the funding of all prescribed higher education was the responsibility of the HEFCE, irrespective of its location. After 1999, this included the HNC. Nevertheless, this still left some higher-level programmes in the non-prescribed category and funded less generously by the FEFC and its successor, the LSC. With little immediate evidence of improved demand for the HND and HNC, especially in the college sector, the Blair Government intervened decisively to secure the scale and shape of growth it had in mind for the post-Dearing era. In addition to an ambitious participation target of 50 © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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per cent of 18 to 30 year-olds in higher education by the year 2010, it launched a new 2-year work-focused qualification – the foundation degree – to provide for the bulk of the growth needed to meet this goal. Not only was this the first new major qualification in English higher education since the introduction of the diploma of higher education in the 1970s; it was the first time that a sub-bachelor qualification carried the title of ‘degree’. Together, the 50 per cent target and the foundation degree marked a second and powerful elaboration of a policy project that had begun with the Dearing proposals for colleges. However, by the time these later measures had been put in place all trace of a discrete or dedicated mission for colleges had gone. Now it was indirect funding relationships and a shared role with universities that defined the college contribution to undergraduate education. We believe that structured partnerships between colleges and universities – franchise or consortium arrangements with colleges funded through partner HEIs [higher education institutions] – will be the primary vehicles to meet these aims and will best deliver the best benefits for learners. (DfES, 2003, p. 62)

Such partnerships, it was claimed, vouchsafed the quality of collegebased higher education. Their ‘significant role’ in meeting local and regional skills needs was expected to continue and to grow, alongside the universities that taught their own short-cycle undergraduate qualifications. Only exceptionally would further education colleges be funded directly for additional student numbers in higher education. In the most recent evolution of this policy enterprise, as part of a wider skills strategy, the 50 per cent target was replaced by a commitment to increase the proportion of working-age adults with higher education qualifications to 36 per cent by 2014 (DIUS, 2007). Following the early success of foundation degrees in recruiting to planned numbers, priority in future public funding was now to be given to new-style employer-led and skills-centred higher education. Given their vocational traditions and closeness to business, colleges were considered well placed to take advantage of co-funding with employers and other examples of public–private provision (DIUS, 2008).

The strategic deficit Ten years into the English experiment, the number of students receiving their higher education in further education colleges was much the same © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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as it was at the time of the Dearing Inquiry.With growth elsewhere in the system, their share of higher education might well have fallen. In examining this matter, the HEFCE acknowledged the lack of consistent and coherent policy development in this area, yet declared itself puzzled by this static picture. We do not know why this is and we are currently analysing the data. It may be the result of market forces, but it may be due to some of the organisational and administrative complexities of funding, partnerships, and capital allocations. (HEFCE, 2006, p. 7)

Colleges, it noted, were already a ‘distinctive part’ of the higher education system. While it was ‘dangerous to over-generalise about a diverse system’, higher education students in further education colleges were ‘more likely to be over 25, more likely to study part-time, and more likely to come from areas with low rates of participation’ than students in higher education institutions. They were also ‘more likely to be studying foundation degrees and sub-degree programmes such as HNCs and HNDs’ (HEFCE, 2006, p. 9). However: HE [higher education] in FECs [further education colleges] operates at a funding and administrative boundary, which has meant that neither HEFCE nor the LSC have taken the strategic overview of the provision that is now warranted. (HEFCE, 2006, p. 11)

That level of strategic leadership and co-ordination, from central Government or among and between its agencies, had been largely absent. This was not because the difficulties posed by legislative and administrative arrangements were unrecognised. All the same, it was not until their push for indirect funding to support the expansion of foundation degrees that ministers were prompted to confront these ‘barriers’ and take forward ways of ‘reducing’ them. As part of making it easier to form sensible partnerships across the further education/higher education boundary, Government will remove unnecessary bureaucracy where provision crosses sectors and will provide equity for both providers and learners. We believe that there are unnecessary difficulties for collaboration between higher education and further education presented by the need to respond to the two different funding council regimes in relation to planning, funding, and data collection, as well as the difficulties of juggling the requirements of the two quality assurance and inspection arrangements. (DfES, 2003, p. 63)

Rather than expect a Government department to lead on these questions, the two funding councils were asked to come together to address and resolve them jointly. The chief vehicle for this collaboration was the © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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‘joint progression strategy’, a three-way channel of communication between the HEFCE, the LSC and the relevant Government department. One of the main outcomes of this co-operation was the launch of ‘lifelong learning networks’. Operating across a city, area, region or subject, these were networks of higher and (mostly) further education providers that were funded to bring greater clarity, coherence and certainty to progression opportunities with vocational students. As for previous partnership schemes, lifelong learning networks required no changes to the policy, funding and quality regimes of each sector. Given its formal responsibility for higher education, the development and implementation of such initiatives fell mainly to the HEFCE. The publication by the LSC of a higher education strategy (LSC, 2006) – the first of its kind from this side of the system – also emerged out of this process.The strategy was intended to establish the LSC as ‘an active and influential partner across the HE landscape’ and highlighted its ‘unique position’ with regard to ‘the delivery of HE in further education’ as well as the preparation and progression of students. That such a strategy did not feature under the FEFC or until triggered by the ‘higher skills agenda’ of the Brown Government was a reminder of how sector separation was respected. The reluctance or refusal of central Government itself to create a cross-sector machinery was a tribute to the strength of sector interests and identities as much as to the pursuit of a market-based approach to higher and further education. Moreover, at the same time that Government sought closer working between the two sectors, their funding bodies and quality agencies have diverged in their priorities and methodologies. The abolition of the FEFC not only removed colleges from their own sector, but the LSC shifted from a planning function to the funding of a ‘demand-led system’ (Coffield et al., 2008). After a turbulent career, the LSC will be dismantled in 2010 and replaced by two new agencies: one for the funding of 16–19 education through local authorities; and the other – the Skills Funding Agency – to target funds at adult skills and training (DCSF and DIUS, 2008). For its part, the HEFCE has contended with the introduction of fixed and variable tuition fees, the achievement of the original 50 per cent target and the implementation of a controversial strategy on widening participation. With more distance between itself and Government, and with a different relationship to its (autonomous) institutions, the HEFCE has survived. When the decision was taken to abolish the LSC, the opportunity to rethink and restructure the tertiary architecture was not taken. In what © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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was more a political than a review process, the option of a single body for higher education and adult skills did emerge, only to be rejected in favour of another two-sector solution. In the meantime, it was for colleges, not others, to take a more strategic approach to their higher education. As a result of its internal review, the HEFCE required all further education colleges to submit (by 2010) a strategy document explaining the rationale for their involvement in higher education.This was to cover all their prescribed higher education (funded directly or indirectly by the HEFCE) and was expected ‘to take account’ of non-prescribed higher education (funded by the LSC or through a higher education institution). Echoing earlier efforts to reduce small and isolated pockets of higher education, the Funding Council expected this measure to encourage some colleges to withdraw from their higher-level work. Left largely untouched were the complexities and uncertainties of managing one or more of these types of funding, although the review proposed that indirectly funded provision should have a minimum period (three years) of security for its funding and student numbers, so that colleges have ‘more opportunity for long-term strategic investment’. Nevertheless, rather than seek to specify or regulate the proportion of funding retained by higher education institutions in indirect funding (franchise) relationships with colleges, it was for individual universities to determine the ‘top-slice’ charged for their services. Only in relation to quality assurance was there an attempt to simplify arrangements and reduce the burden on colleges. Unlike the focus of the strategy requirement, a new integrated method of quality review would encompass all forms of higher education, irrespective of its sources of funding. Nor was the recent decision to allow further education colleges to apply for the power to award the foundation degree likely, on its own, to enhance the profile and standing of college-based higher education. Only a small number of the ‘mature’ and largest providers were expected to gain these powers, at least in the first instance. If and when they do, they will almost certainly deepen the differentiation of higher education within the learning and skills sector, a territory already fragmented. Discussion In summary, the asymmetries inscribed in the structure of sectors, in the remits of sector organisations and in the relationships between their constituent institutions have served, in part, to delay the achievement of a more open, diverse and distributed system. For colleges, their current © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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conditions of existence were unlikely to allow for a staged approach to build quality, ownership, coherence and sustainability in their higher education mission. If policy development was uneven and contradictory in this area, that for further education in higher education institutions was practically non-existent, except for guidance relating to mergers and acquisitions (LSC, 2007). As always intended, sectors have delimited the purposes and ambitions of institutions, and contained and controlled their movement. Not only have transfers been rare, they have always been in one direction: from the world of further education to the higher education sector. In the English manner, this is viewed as an elevation or promotion. A reverse movement – unimagined in the legislation – would be considered a demotion and a sign of failure. If they hold, these conclusions have a special significance for contemporary policies on expansion, differentiation and widening participation. On the one hand, general further education colleges reach a broader range of students by age (than schools) and by social background (than most universities). In service of equity, demography, geography and the economy, they are well placed to lead the democratisation of access and participation in higher education, especially among the workforce. On the other hand, as organisations pressed by Governments to develop a distinctive mission and specialisation in vocational education and skills formation (DfES, 2006), the colleges are potentially implicated in processes that steer working-class and non-traditional students into lower-status settings for higher education. Despite a long history of higher education in the further education sector, present-day colleges have still to be regarded as normal and necessary locations for undergraduate education. As providers of a limited range of higher level programmes, the institutional choices and economic returns available to these students are different from those who occupy other parts of higher education, although the wider social benefits of participation might be considerable (Schuller et al., 2004). Since average private rates of return to sub-bachelor qualifications are closer to A levels than to honours degrees ( Jenkins et al., 2007), the opportunity for college students to secure progression to the higher levels of education and training is a policy imperative, as long as ‘employability’ is not compromised. Like those completing Higher National Diplomas, just over half of the students registered at a higher education institution and completing a foundation degree move immediately to study an honours degree (HEFCE, 2008). Some of these are franchise students taught in colleges, so a similar rate of progression is to be © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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expected for those registered at a further education institution. For students taught in college settings, this might involve moving to a partner university or, if available, a ‘top-up’ degree in the further education institution. Although ‘smooth progression’ to the final year of a bachelor degree is built into the design of foundation degrees, the specificity of the work-focused curriculum, together with the weakness of credit transfer arrangements across the system, has meant that students are limited in their access to other courses and institutions. That said, the foundation degree is just one of the many types of higher education offered by further education colleges. Operating in niche and competitive markets, their assorted courses perform a variety of functions and appeal to a number of audiences. With no signature qualification owned by or reserved for their own sector, or the security of their own funding ahead of a severe economic downturn, most colleges were unstable, fragile and marginal settings for higher-level work. They were also environments in which gains in democratisation and tendencies to diversion were both in evidence and where, for the reasons suggested, the impact of these processes was always likely to be attenuated. Acknowledgements The research for this article was supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) within its Teaching and Learning Research Programme (RES-139-25-0245). The funding for this and six other projects on widening participation in higher education was made available to the ESRC by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The award and management of this grant is gratefully acknowledged. References Barnett, R. (1990) The Idea of Higher Education. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press. Bathmaker, A.-M., Brooks, G., Parry, G. and Smith, D. (2008) Dual-Sector Further and Higher Education: Policies, Organisations and Students in Transition. Research Papers in Education, 23 (2), pp. 125–137. Brint, S. and Karabel, J. (1989) The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coffield, F., Edward, S., Finlay, I., Hodgson, A., Spours, K. and Steer, R. (2008) Improving Learning, Skills and Inclusion: The Impact of Policy on Post-compulsory Education. Abingdon: Routledge. Corney, M. and Fletcher, M. (2007) Adult Skills and Higher Education: Separation or Union? Reading: CfBT Education Trust. © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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