Quintin McKellar, regulatory lead for University Alliance and vice-chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire, has written a blog for Times Higher Education on the future major review of funding across tertiary education.
“In the white paper, the government promised to “establish a technical education system that rivals the best in the world, to stand alongside our world-class higher education system”. This implies that technical and academic education are separate pathways. It does not reflect the real world.
The boundaries between colleges and universities have been blurring for some time: the majority of degrees taught by universities are vocational – just think of nursing, teaching, engineering, architecture, graphic design – while nearly 250 colleges offer higher education.”
Reviews, Prof McKellar writes, must not create barriers between the FE and HE and trade one off against the other, but ensure that both are adequately funded and that opportunities exist to move smoothly from one to the other.
