CBI call to drop 50% education target

Ministers should remove their high-profile target for half of all young people to go into higher education, the CBI recommends on Monday.

The call by Britain's leading employers' organisation for the 50 per cent ambition to be set aside potentially greatly undermines its intellectual foundations. This is because the government's single biggest justification for the number has been that employers want as many graduates as possible to make the country's economy competitive against other "knowledge-based economies".

The CBI cites the high public debt as a justification for its call for the target to "be dropped for the time being". Currently the rate has stabilised at about 40 per cent. The bulk of funding for students comes directly or indirectly from government.

In a wide-ranging report on higher education imbued with a spirit of austerity at a time of tight Treasury finances, the CBI also argues for the first time that an increase in tuition fees payable by university students "appears inevitable".

Other economies include focusing maintenance grants, which cover students' living expenses, "on those most in need".

Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI, also offers a helping hand from business to universities, which have acknowledged that they are likely to face real-term cuts in funding in future years as the government acts to reduce public debt. He suggests, for example, that more companies "should help design and pay for courses for the benefit of the current and future workforce".

But "in return for this extra investment of time and money", universities should increase the proportion of undergraduate places in science and maths courses, whose graduates are highly valued by employers.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Lambert acknowledged that meant fewer courses in some other subjects, but said it was up to universities rather than the CBI to set out which those should be.

Mr Lambert also said he had no view on how high tuition fees - currently capped at £3,225 a year - should rise.

David Lammy, universities minister, called earlier this month for Britain's universities to find more money from the private sector.

The CBI head's comments could be seen as a demand for greater business power over universities in return for this.

The 50 per cent target for higher education was a brainchild of Labour's 2001 election manifesto.

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