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Financial Times Article: ‘To build a shared society, focus on technical skills education’
https://www.ft.com/content/8f4d27f4-d80a-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e
This article by Miranda Green from the Financial Times website states in the introductory paragraph that “nearly half of all young people are now enrolling in university, compared with one in five in 1990”. The last statistic here is correctly quoted as the overall participation rate in higher education, according to the Historical Education Statistics archives of the House of Commons Library, was 19.3% in 1990. However, the first statistic they claim is misleading. They say that “nearly half of all young people are now enrolling in university”. However, according to the Office for National Statistics data from which they derived this statistic, what is now at 48% is the Higher Education Initial Participation Rate (HEIPR). This is an estimate of the likelihood of a young person participating in Higher Education by age 30 based on current participation rates. First, as it is only an estimate of the likelihood of participation rates, this does not mean that half of young people are enrolling at university. It just means that half of them are predicted too. Therefore, this statistic is misleading, particularly in this sentence when compared to the true data from 1990. Furthermore, the article uses the term ‘young people’ even though the data includes those up to the age of 30. To most people a 30-year-old would not necessarily be seen as a ‘young person’, and as such this term is misleading. This is especially because later in the article it is argued that the government “must focus on providing better prospects for 18-year-olds who do not study for a degree”. This implies that it is only 18-year-olds the article is talking about when the data they use actually covers everyone from the age of 17-30. Therefore, arguing that the needs of “the other 50%” of young people “not destined for university” are not being met due to poor alternatives to university, is an untrue statement to make based on this data.