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The Higher Education White Paper: The Good, the Bad, the Unspeakable – and the Next White Paper 1
Author(s) -
Barr Nicholas
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2012.00852.x
Subject(s) - taxpayer , white paper , loan , white (mutation) , higher education , government (linguistics) , the arts , quality (philosophy) , student loan , public administration , economics , political science , finance , public economics , accounting , sociology , public relations , economic growth , macroeconomics , law , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , philosophy , epistemology , gene
This article argues that reforms of higher education finance for undergraduates in England introduced by the Blair government in 2006 provided a progressive strategy for achieving the central objectives of higher education of quality (better), access (wider) and size (larger). Reforms in 2012 are a not a strategy but a collection of ad hoc arrangements. They include the good (a higher fees cap, a higher interest rate on student loans, better information and improved support for part‐time study), the bad (abolishing most taxpayer support for teaching in the arts and humanities and the social sciences, and raising excessively the threshold at which loan repayments start) and the unspeakable (abolishing Education Maintenance Allowances and AimHigher). The reforms are fiscally costly and hence perpetuate the central problem of capped student numbers, and will not stand the test of time. The concluding section outlines the next White Paper.