The EPC’s Johnny Rich explores the Lifelong Learning Entitlement – a fundamental shift to the way higher education in England is funded that promises a bold new offer to students and aims to address the country’s skills needs. But will it bring changes we want to see?
This week, I was kindly invited by IMechE to take part in a webinar about the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) which will be the funding model for courses starting in English higher education from 2027. The following is a summary of my weighing up of the pros and cons of LLE from the perspective of Engineering HE.
The positives
There are three monumental pros that make the whole endeavour worthwhile:
First, we need to fill engineering jobs, but there’s simply not a large enough pipeline of young people to fill the skills shortages through the traditional graduate routes. We need workers who are willing to switch across into engineering later in life.
Second, engineering is a profession that is innovating at such a speed you can graduate one year and find your skills are showing their age the next. LLE provides an opportunity to get into the workplace and keep topping up your currency.
And third, the traditional A level route into a four-year engineering degree has relied on high prior attainment which narrows the pipeline in two ways. First, simply not that many people have got top grades in pathway subjects and, arguably, those top grades shouldn’t always be needed if you still have the potential to succeed. Second, attainment closely correlates with socioeconomic advantage which means engineering has disappointing record on access.
LLE offers greater flexibility. So in theory, that generates wider demand and more diverse entry routes will emerge.
The problem with all three of these pros is that they assume a level of demand for flexible, modular, stackable qualifications. Not only has that demand not been proven to exist, the evidence of two short-course trials – both woefully undersubscribed – suggests it doesn’t.
Yet.
Perhaps it’s like the voice in Kevin Costner’s head in Field of Dreams telling him, ‘If you build it, they will come’.
The negatives
To balance the pros, I have five cons which all relate to the difficulty of building it.
First, modularising engineering is challenging. Courses are generally integrated, incremental and iterative and breaking them down into bite-size portable chunks will, at the very least require a deep redesign of curricula, but possibly also a redesign of engineering teaching itself.
Second, accreditation and academic standards. If courses are delivered in smaller chunks, it will be much harder to ensure that AHEP requirements are met cumulatively over several courses, possibly taught at different institutions and, potentially, over a lifetime.
Third, we have no agreed mechanism for recognising credit transfer. Are 60 credits of study at University A really equivalent to 60 at University B? Even if they are, is University B really happy to say so publicly and potentially undermine everything its marketing department is trying to say about its uniquely valuable learning experience?
Fourth, this is an admin nightmare. It’s hard enough tracking the diverse students we’ve already got, but throw in a model where significant numbers are joining and leaving, you may be left with 30-credit courses where half the time is spent on induction and admin, and only half is actually studying engineering. That’s tough from the students’ point of view, but for unis, it’s even worse.
Fifth, financial viability. Engineering courses for UK students lose universities money. Lots of it. But the one thing the financial system has got going for it is that a student enrolled on a degree course gives some security of funding for the next 3 to 4 years. Take that out of the picture and it becomes risky enough that some unis just won’t bother with engineering.
I could also mention a sixth con around the difficulties of delivering an equal experience for the students, particularly the ‘wider access’ students the LLE is supposed to attract.
On balance
Ultimately, the lifelong learning entitlement is a great idea in theory and it should, in my opinion, absolutely sit alongside more traditional models. However, in practice, in the very near future, the whole funding model in England is going to be shaped around a system hardly anyone wants and even fewer actually use.
I say few people will want it with some confidence, not just based on those trials, but on some pretty obvious thinking about the proposition to a potential student.
The LLE is an entitlement to get into large piles of debt to study a course that employers don’t want you to do enough for them to be willing to contribute to the cost themselves. Then, when you’ve completed that course and are competing with full graduates for jobs, if you do get a job, your loan repayments per month will be the same as a graduate with a full degree. Sure, you might pay yours off sooner, but not if you’re going to need to keep topping up your studies.
With just a few months before the LLE is launched, precious few universities are embracing the supposed flood of eager new learners and preparing themselves to do anything significantly different, particularly not engineering departments where the challenges described above are writ large.
The ‘Build it, they will come’ voice is being answered with ‘If they come, we’ll look at building it’.
I’m counting down to the major review of LLE within 3 years of its introduction when all the good intentions have had a chance to hit the cold reality of demand, supply and putting it into practice.
Johnny Rich is Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council and sits on the expert advisory board of the Lifelong Education Institute.
