New white paper on the English higher education system

Cable, V. and Willets, D. (2011) Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System London: Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

This paper sets out the British government’s plans for higher education, including allowing students to obtain government-funded loans for new for-profit institutions, reducing existing quotas allowing elite universities to accept more students with high entrance grades, and ‘rewards’ for institutions that  set tuition fees below $7,500. The policies apply only to England; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own systems.

I need more time to read the document in full. However, it is interesting to note that the ministry of Universities and Science in England is a branch of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, and that naming a document that sets out a policy based on students paying annual tuition fees of $14,000 a year as ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ smacks somewhat of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984’. Surely it should have been called ‘Students as the Wallet of the System’.