On the 4th November, the new Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, announced that the £9,250 per year headline university tuition fee will rise to £9,535 for standard full-time courses (also announced was a cut in the headline fees for foundation years, but that has excited much less comment). The fees changes come with conditions, Phillipson announced. Universities will be expected to work to address local and national economic needs in a direct way, with the new body Skills England expected to play a role.
Much of the rhetoric sounds familiar, but the creation of Skills England in particular does seem to add some heft to the infrastructure that is required to make it work. Skills England already has a great deal of analysis and data on occupational shortage and future demand, and we can expect universities to be encouraged to investigate and act on this kind of content. Much of the analysis provided, though, is new, may be revised in time as the bodies involved get more adept at this kind of work, and is not always easy to interpret and analyse. It is perhaps symptomatic of the challenges ahead that the very name ‘Skills England’ is open to interpretation – we do not have one fixed definition of ‘skills’ and the word can be used in multiple different ways. When we have a ‘skills shortage’, are we talking about the country not having enough surveyors (it doesn’t)? Or enough people with high level data skills (it doesn’t)? Or good team workers and problem-solvers (it doesn’t)?
This might seem, to an extent, like splitting hairs, but for the providers charged with actually addressing those needs it is a vital question, because different kinds of skills needs require different solutions.
One crucial set of questions is about local labour market supply and demand. How do you understand what the labour market your institution operates in needs in terms of occupational mix, and skills demand? Does your course mix address them? Are there occupations you don’t currently supply, but could? And what does that mean for the way you support students with employability?
These are some of the questions institutions ask when examining provision, and the indications are that the Government will be looking at how those questions are answered in future. Here at Jisc, we have a lot of experience in examining local labour market supply and demand, some of which we make public on our Prospects Luminate site for labour market information. But we also work with institutions to examine these and related issues – to help you help your students, and the areas you operate in (and let’s be honest, to help those all-important employability metrics as well).
You can drop us a line if you’re interested in exploring how we can help you to help your staff and students with our labour market insight, whether it be consultancy, talks and lectures or just a walkthrough of where to find useful information. We’re ready to help you.