Model C
higher education applicants during the years of the projected peak, which would in effect mean a break (if only temporary) with the Robbins principle. How serious the risk would be depends on which of the three forward projections already referred to most nearly reflects what would happen to student numbers if they were subject to no new constraints. Thus, on the basis of the "low variant" projection, to freeze the system at the 1981 level of 560,000 students would not involve reduced opportunities; but such a freeze would involve a significant loss of opportunity on the basis of the "central projection", and of course a still larger loss of opportunity on the basis of the "high variant" projection. (This is only another way of saying that if participation does not rise appreciably above the levels obtaining since 1970, the 1981 planning figure represents all the provision which the higher education system will need for the foreseeable future.)
15. Some people might be disposed to argue in favour of explicitly abandoning the Robbins principle on the following grounds. Higher education confers social and economic benefits, both personally on the individual student and more widely on the community at large. But as the higher education system expands, graduates are increasingly having to turn for employment to jobs previously filled by people without higher education qualifications. This has contributed to suggestions from some quarters that higher education provision may have come implicitly to place too great an emphasis on meeting students' personal wishes and too little on the economic needs of society as a whole; and some sections of opinion complain from time to time that higher education provision is inadequately informed by manpower planning. Recent publicity about increases in the time taken by new graduates to find suitable employment has tended to highlight concerns of this kind. On the other hand, past experience with manpower planning does not suggest that it can offer any very precise guide to higher education provision (except in those limited areas where the Government is, in effect, the sole employer of those with particular kinds of qualification). Moreover, at a time when we know that demographic change will mean a decline in the numbers of young people available for employment, it might seem perverse and shortsighted to hold down deliberately the proportion of those young people having access to higher education and its qualifications.
16. A third possible "resource" approach would be to adopt a policy of catering fully for projected student numbers (even if in the event they rose above the "low variant" projection) but to do so more economically, in terms of both recurrent costs and long-term resource commitments. To some extent it may be possible to look to developments in educational technology to reduce unit costs without detracting from the quality of provision. It seems unlikely that these would secure the required measure of economy: in the past they have tended to improve the quality without reducing the cost. Beyond this there are various expedients which could be considered.
17. One step which should be feasible would be to avoid long-term resource commitments while maintaining so far as possible current standards of provision. This might mean, for example, renting rather than building to meet short-term accommodation requirements; and appointing temporary staff both for teaching and other purposes to tide the system over for the few years of the projected peak in numbers. To the extent that this could be achieved, it might make it easier to shed both staff and buildings as student numbers fell at the end of the 1980s.
18. Further study would be required to establish how much scope there would be for makeshift arrangements such as these. Already the further education sector is having increasing difficulty in finding temporary rented
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