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Business Secretary addresses CBI conference on the future shape of higher education

Today, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson will call on business to play a greater part in shaping the education system of the future as it responds to the changing needs of new industries and new jobs.

Speaking at a CBI conference ahead of the publication of both the Higher Education Framework and the Government’s Skills Strategy he will argue that a system that is more targeted on delivering the specific and general skills that employers needed also came with a new responsibility for business to support it financially and strategically through greater collaboration with universities and colleges.

Lord Mandelson will say: “Over the last decade or so our expectations of the HE system in delivering economic impact have risen sharply – and rightly. Universities have responded to that willingly and actively. But it is a partnership, in which business has to be central. After students themselves, employers are the key clients of the higher skills system… Business has to get better at communicating its needs, so that the system can respond and our universities are not left to make educated guesses about what business wants. Business can and should also contribute more financially for a system that will be more vocational and more targeted on generating economic impact than ever before. But that relationship should clearly be collaborative and mutually beneficial and preferably long term. It is not something for nothing. It's greater business engagement and support in return for a system better equipped to produce the right skills at the right time”

Calling the huge expansion in UK apprenticeships “one of the great achievements of this government”, Lord Mandelson will also argue that the time has come to see higher and further education in Britain as a closely integrated single agenda: “For me, HE and FE are two systems, joined by one goal. There was a time – well within most of our lifetimes – when... universities provided elite education and a training in the mores of professional life and apprenticeships were for craftspeople – or rather craftsmen – who would go on to spend their lives in a particular trade. It was a division based on social prejudice as much as economic reality, and if it isn’t yet dead, it needs to be. Modern craftspeople…are the technicians, designers and engineers who are the foundation of the UK’s advanced manufacturing sector …Obviously universities and the further education system do not do the same job. But they have the same essential role which is building human capacity and higher skills”.

Lord Mandelson will defend the government’s target of 50% participation in Higher Education but say that the target “should never alone be the proxy for whether Britain has the high level skills needed to compete in a globalised world. We are right to insist on continuing to widen access to university education and we are right to invest heavily in making our university system and the research it does the best in the world. But we also need to see the alternative routes to higher skills provided by apprenticeships and further education as no less valuable".

He will say that the new skill strategy will set out ways of ensuring “more apprenticeships at higher levels to help address shortages in areas like skilled technicians”.

Notes to Editors

1. A full copy of both Lord Mandelson’s speech can be found at www.bis.gov.uk or on request by calling the BIS Press Office on 020 7215 5982.

2. Our university sector is world class. Government spending on higher education is over 25 per cent higher in real terms than in 1997. Next year alone the overall budget has increased by just over four per cent to over £7.5 billion. This means funding for research can rise by around eight per cent and teaching by two and half per cent.

Department for Business, Innovation & Skills

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is building a dynamic and competitive UK economy by: creating the conditions for business success; promoting innovation, enterprise and science; and giving everyone the skills and opportunities to succeed. To achieve this it will foster world-class universities and promote an open global economy. BIS - Investing in our future.

Contacts:

BIS Press Office
NDS.BIS@coi.gsi.gov.uk

Emma Griffiths
Phone: 020 7215 5982
Emma.Griffiths@bis.gsi.gov.uk