“Post-18 (or tertiary) education in England is a story of both care and neglect, depending on whether students are amongst the 50 per cent of young people who participate in higher education or the rest.” 

That was the foreword to the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding in May 2019.

I’ve given up counting the number of times I have heard people say that “the Augar report is dead”. Before the current crisis, I often got fed up discussing it; the only thing many people seemed to be interested in was trying to prevent what they saw, narrowly, as the threat of reduced university tuition fees. Their narrow (and mostly self-interested) focus, ironically enough, epitomises all that the report itself set out as wrong with the tertiary education system we have in England.

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I must admit that there have been a few times since May 2019 when I’ve thought that the naysayers were going to triumph over the many far-reaching, radical and much-needed reforms that the report called for. I found myself more than once wondering if the snobbery that underpins our education system was going to win and if some commentators had even read the chapters on skills and further education in their haste to dismiss the whole report.

'It's a matter of fairness and equity'

The inclusion in the Conservative Party's December 2019 general election manifesto of reference to the report’s “thoughtful recommendations” gave me some hope that we might finally see some action on addressing the disparity between university and college investments. A sense that the 50 per cent who have been neglected might see a better future. As the Augar panel said in the report, it’s a matter of fairness and equity that needs to be addressed, and addressing it will bring considerable social and economic benefits. It was never about the institutions, always about the whole system.

Of course, at that time, the tale was of an impoverished college sector looking longingly at a well-resourced and confident university sector. How times have changed, with universities facing huge drops in income due mainly to fears about the collapse of overseas student recruitment, and the prospect of domestic students deferring their studies because of the pandemic. Colleges have been and will be hit hard by the pandemic as well, with similar percentage cuts in income this year and next academic year almost impossible to forecast.

So where does that leave us? We’ve seen universities pull out all the stops in their lobbying to be bailed out, and they can so easily depend on high-profile advocates in all walks of life. For colleges, we have to work that bit harder to be heard, partly because we don’t have the range of alumni in positions of power and influence. Our approach is much more based on highlighting how vital colleges are to the recovery we all want to see after this crisis – offering education, training and skills to young people and adults who will need more support than ever to progress into good jobs and to support a fair and successful economy.

Many will see this as a fight between colleges and universities, as if it is a zero-sum game with one winner and one loser. We shouldn’t let that happen; it would be so unfair on millions of people. What we can do is turn to the Augar report, which offers us a vision for a near-future in which both sets of institutions can thrive; and thrive in the interests of and on the backs of young people and adults getting an offer that better meets their diverse needs. Sadly, I think it is unlikely that universities and colleges will come together nationally to present a joined-up and holistic vision for the government to invest in. Unlikely because there are just too many years of competitive behaviour to overcome and because one side feels it has more to lose than the other.

The legacy of this crisis

So, it will require a bold and focused government to set out the vision. To grasp the nettle they know exists. In the interests of the people who elected them and in the interests of the country. I think they might just take it on. They might not waste this crisis. In fact, it might be the very stimulus to move quickly to design a reformed tertiary system that truly works for everyone – all ages, all stages, full time or part time, in all areas of education, across all parts of industry, for communities everywhere.

If that can happen, there will be lots of pain, lots of complaints, but we would have a tertiary system that is the envy of the world. And wouldn’t that be just the best legacy of a crisis that has brought and will continue to bring so much hurt and disruption? 

David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges. He tweets @AoCDavidH