The Westminster government should reduce the number of people going to university in England and ¡°divert¡± the money into apprenticeships, according to a member of the New Conservatives group, the faction taking an increasingly vocal stance on restricting higher education.

Lia Nici, Conservative MP for Greater Grimsby, who co-authored a recent report for the group of ¡°Red Wall¡± Tory MPs calling for entry restrictions to reduce the numbers at university, made the comments at a fringe meeting at the party¡¯s conference in Manchester.

Ms Nici said that in Grimsby¡¯s fish-processing sector, previously reliant on ¡°cheap migrant labour¡±, Brexit had ¡°woken up those employers to realise they have got to upgrade the way they do things¡± via robotics and automation, which would increase demand for apprenticeships.

But, said the former lecturer in media production at further and higher education college the Grimsby Institute, ¡°successive governments¡± had prioritised entry to university.

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¡°The reason that university entrance has grown so much¡± was that ¡°firstly New Labour had a real crisis in front of it¡± in facing high youth unemployment and had been ¡°very clever and said 50 per cent will now go to university¡±, Ms Nici told the event, hosted by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.

University was ¡°easy to get into¡± via an accessible loans system, whereas ¡°if you¡¯re an employer and you want to engage an apprentice it¡¯s incredibly difficult¡±, she continued.

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On apprenticeships, ¡°the key really is, can government afford to do it, while we are putting hundreds of billions of pounds into people going to university?¡± she asked.

Given that university ¡°does not guarantee you a high wage, does not guarantee you a job¡­what we need to do is start to have a look seriously at what we¡¯re funding¡±, Ms Nici continued.

¡°We¡¯ve got to actually start to look realistically at do we need that amount of people going into academic degrees¡± and ¡°divert that money [from university] into people getting apprenticeships¡±, she added.

Meanwhile, another fringe event on degree apprenticeships, hosted by the Policy Exchange thinktank, heard from education secretary Gillian Keegan, who described herself as ¡°the only degree apprentice in the House of Commons¡±.

Ms Keegan said that, since being the apprenticeships and skills minister, she had been on a mission to ¡°change every middle-class mind in the country¡± on apprenticeships.

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Hence, she had wanted to ¡°take apprenticeships to where they [the middle classes] are¡±, with the government creating apprenticeship routes to being a ¡°medical doctor, a lawyer and an accountant, because they are the professions people aspire to¡±.

Apprentices gaining level 4 or 5 qualifications can ¡°out-earn most graduates five years later, becoming an expert in cybersecurity¡­or a robotics engineer¡±, Ms Keegan said.

But asked whether she would want to see 50 per cent of higher education students on degree apprenticeships, the education secretary said: ¡°I won¡¯t be setting a target.¡±

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The Labour government¡¯s target for 50 per cent of young people to gain higher education qualifications had been ¡°arbitrary¡±, had ¡°created some really bad practice¡± and had ¡°helped the system but hasn¡¯t really helped people¡±, she continued. ¡°What I really want to see is universities, FE colleges and employers working really closely together.¡±

David Goodhart, head of demography, immigration and integration at Policy Exchange, who chaired the panel and has argued for the return of polytechnics, asked ¡°are we, 40 years later, through the degree apprenticeship, recreating the polytechnic?¡±

Malcolm Press, the Manchester Metropolitan University vice-chancellor who also appeared on the panel, said: ¡°The difference is that universities do research. My university was ranked 38th for research in the last Research Excellence Framework.¡±

MMU¡¯s 2,500 degree apprentices, such as those in cybersecurity, ¡°benefit from the research infrastructure that universities like mine have¡­No, we shouldn¡¯t go back [to polytechnics],¡± he said.

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john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com