Educational Inequality and Financial Supports of Higher Education in UK
1 Introduction
Education inequality can be divided into three situation—socio-economic inequality, gender inequality and ethic inequality (Hanhum, Buchmann, 2005).
This essay is going to talk about educational inequality from the perspective of socio-economic inequality. First, it will analyze the problems and then give relevant solutions according to the causes. Last, it will make a conclusion that is educational equality can be received in terms of financial supports.
2 Situation
In UK, a growing number of students recently have been rejected by university because of their inability to meet the financial guarantee. The phenomenon reveals that higher education gives edge to the students from higher socio-economic classes, which means that HE funds has been distributed disproportionately (Blanden, Machin, 2004).However, for the students without sufficient financial supports, receiving higher education seems to be the only and reliable approach for them to improve their, even their family’s, financial condition. But that is not always the case. Some arguments go against this idea and note that university degree is not equal to a successful career, whereas as one kind of soft power of a nation, education is crucial for both individuals and nation.
3 Problems
The reasons for the phenomenon aforementioned can be divided into three parts as follows:
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3.1 Pay gap
The pay gap widens the chasm between the rich and the poor. A waiter may see his/her only creep up just by 0.1% and fail to cope with soaring goods, while an executive pay rises sharply, like a double-digit increase. This a strong contrast, but it is also what is happening nowadays. The wage inequality leads to various inequalities, which include educational inequality. Students with low-paid parents can not go to universities because of the high tuition fees. However, without a university degree, it will be more difficult for them to find a well-paid job and may fail to afford his/her future children to go to universities. Here comes a vicious spiral.
3.2 education spending cuts
For the contrast between the figure 1 (Blight,2011) and figure 2 (Rogers, Blight,2012) it is clear that education spending suffers a great drop from ￡58.3bn to ￡56.3bn. The axing of education spending in UK leads to a rising in tuition fees, which have made many students shrink back. Under of the pressure of economic recession, UK government has to cut its spending. Although it pledged to protect education budget from cuts, the financial burdens for the students going to college is still getting heavy. This makes it harder for lower socio-economic students to get access to universities.
Figure 1 UK Spending 2010-2011
Figure 2 UK Spending 2011-2012
3.3 Admission procedures
A student who fails to prove that they have liquid assets to cover all the fees required may be rejected by the university right away. For one thing, such insistence is quite unfair. For another, it results in losing a great amount of students with academic merit, which are projected benefits for universities.
4 Solutions
It is not easy to solve the problem of pay gap, for it is an issue obsessing most nations around the world. But it will be easier to increase financial supports from different ways, and it will be the key to resolve this problem of educational inequality. The solutions are as follows:
4.1 national financial supports system
Education is crucial for a nation, thus politicians are responsible to strive for reasonable national system of financial supports for finance-inability students. That means government ought to pay more attention on education even though economic recession makes everything goes harder. A national system of financial supports should be run by universities, while the government plays the role of supervisors to supervise if the universities have used the money improperly. Besides, the financial supports should be distributed proportionately.
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4.2 Public welfare
Students in America have easier access to education financial supports on-and-off campus, while students in UK have limited supports, for most universities in UK are public universities that are funded by government. It is easier to found more public welfare to support hard-working students than adjust the university system in UK. However, public welfares also need supervisors, like governments or other independent institutions, to oversee how they spend money, as well as strict criteria for how to pick up the qualified students who are worthy the supporting money.
4.3 Green channel
Many students are rejected at the very moment when they admit their financial inability, and that is unreasonable. So a green channel is necessary here. Green channel means universities give admissions for the students without asking them for financial guarantee in the first place, but the students are required to sign contracts with the schools to promise that they will repay the tuition fees in the near future by doing part-time jobs or getting scholarships. Once students fail to keep their promises, the schools have the right to ask public welfare or national financial supports system for compensation.
5 Evaluation
For the discussion above, educational inequality is mainly caused by efficiency of money. Thus getting sufficient financial supports will be the key to solve this problem. Even in that sense, the national financial supports system will not be a good choice. Because it is a tough task for government to build up the system, and, in the meantime, run it effectively. Otherwise, it will easily trigger corruption within the peopel who run it without effective surveillance measure.
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For public welfare, it can work on condition that it is operated properly. For one thing, there is a chasm between the wealthy and poor and the public welfare provide the rich with opportunities to help the poor so as to reduce social tensions. For another, public welfare can awaken people to the educational inequality. Once people get realize of the issue and appeal to educational equality, it can prompt politicians, who want to win the votes from people, to make efforts on it.
Green channel is not as effective as public welfare can be, but it can cope with some emergency and prevent schools from losing students with great academic merits. The demerit of this solution is that it may cause bad loans. That means the students can not repay the loan even when they graduate, and that will add much pressure on school’s finance.
6 Conclusion
Education, especially higher education, is crucial for individuals and nations. As one kind of soft power, education may not benefit economy at once, but in a long run, it will contribute to national prosperity. Also, education is the cornerstone of one nation, and it should not be ignored. However, with the expansion of educational opportunity, education seems to be more unequal than ever before (Haima, Shavit, 2013).
Even though, it is high time for the government paid more attention on education equality.
Reference
[1] Blanden J, Machin S. (2004).
Educational Inequality and the Expansion of
UK Higher Education.ScottishJournalof PoliticalEconomy:51,(2),230-249
[2] Blight G. (2011).Public spending by UK government department: an interactive guide [26 October]. The Guardian. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/oct/26/public-spending-uk-government-department
[3]Hanhum E, Buchmann C. (2005).Global Educational Expansion and Socio-Economic Development:An Assessment of Findings from the Social Sciences.World Development:33,(3),333-354
[4] Haima E B, Shavit Y.(2013).
Expansion and inequality of educational opportunity: A comparative study.Research in Social Stratification and Mobility: 31, 22-31
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[5] Rogers S, Blight G. (2012).
Public spending by UK government department 2011-12: an interactive guide [4 December]. The Guardian. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/dec/04/public-spending-uk-2011-12-interactive
