Attack on 'bog-standard' degrees

Students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland celebrated the best-ever set of A-level results yesterday amid a cacophony of complaints from rightwing educationalists that too many people are being allowed to go to university.

The A-level pass rate is up for the nineteenth year running - 89.8% achieved an A-E grade. Some 221,109 students across the UK have confirmed places at higher education institutions, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service said, 30,000 more than at the same time last year.

Another 121,529 are awaiting decisions from university admissions officers, while 78,732 have not met the terms of their conditional offers or applied late.

But with places on 42,000 courses still available through university clearing - around 15% more than last year - Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, weighed in with an assault on the "bog-standard university".

Last year 10,000 university places went unfilled. Another 6,000 will be funded by the government this year in its effort to increase the number of 18-30-year-olds with some experience of higher education to 50% by 2010.

The number of A-levels taken this year is down by 23,000, although the exam boards say this figure may change, leading to claims that it will be easier than ever to win a place at university.

"Why do we bother with the wretched examination [A-levels] at all?," Mr Woodhead said.
"Universities are now so desperate to pack student bums on to vacant academic seats that examination grades have become an embarrassing irrelevance.

"The time of the bog-standard university has it seems, come. We pretend that the ex-polytechnic and Oxford compete on a level playing field, when everyone knows that the gap between them widens every year."

Professor Carol Fitzgibbon of Durham University said: "Universities cannot cope with everybody getting As."

James Tooley, a professor at Newcastle, pointed to an Institute of Employment Studies survey in 1996 which showed that many graduates thought their jobs did not require a degree, and 60% thought they were under-employed.

He said: "It actually has a negative effect on people. The expansion of higher education has not led to their horizons expanding."

But the vice-chancellors body, Universities UK, offered evidence from the International Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showing that the gap in earnings between graduates and non-graduates is greater in Britain than in other industrialised countries.

Roderick Floud, vice-chancellor of London Guildhall University and president of Universities UK, accused Mr Woodhead of "perpetuating an elitist view of higher education which is way out of date".

Professor Floud said: "I certainly don't see any sign that standards are slipping either at A-level or in terms of university entry. Universities provide places in anticipation of student demand and that gives a great deal of student choice. That is a good thing but it does mean that places are sometimes left unfilled. The number of places left unfilled is a tiny proportion of the total number of students."

A spokeswoman for the Department forEducation and Skills said: "As we raise attainment at 16 and 18 more young people have what it takes to study at a higher level. Widening participation does not mean lowering standards."

For the second year running, a student from Westminster public school in London topped a list of A-level successes. Frederick van der Wyck, 18, took seven A grades in Dutch, German, history, mechanics, physics, pure maths and statistics, and will read maths at St John's College, Oxford.

He just pipped a state school pupil, Jennifer Peachey, 18, of Colchester County High School for Girls, who got As in art and design, biology, chemistry, English literature, Japanese and general studies.