Degrees? All aboard

Ministers are pinning their hopes on two-year degrees to get 50 per cent of people into higher education. Lucy Hodges asks if the strategy is actually working

Jason Bale, 21, is confident that the new foundation degrees introduced by the Government will take off. He is a student on a two-year construction engineering degree at Kingston University in Surrey and is convinced that they are the future. "With this I can top up to a full degree," he says. "With this I can stay on and get a full honours qualification. The other good thing is that it's not continuous study. You spend time learning in the classroom but then you go out and practise what you have learnt."

But Jason is fortunate because he is working for an award-winning employer, Edmund Nuttall, a civil engineering company which is paying him while he is on the course. That is extremely unusual. British firms have a poor record when it comes to training their employees. Whether enough of them will embrace the new foundation degree and help the government to reach its target of 50 per cent going into higher education is debatable.

New figures from Universities & Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) show that the number of people applying for full-time foundation degrees has increased from 5,623 in 2003 to 9,696 for this coming autumn. By contrast, numbers applying for HND courses has dropped from 39,823 to 30,312. Experts think that some of the drop in HND and rise in foundation degree applications is accounted for by people who have moved from one to the other.

If one looks at the figures as a whole, they are bad news for sub-degree-level applications generally because they show a continuing decline in people opting for them. "On the face of it, this looks to be a very disappointing continuation of a trend we have been seeing for a number of years of a decline in demand for two-year sub-degree qualifications," says Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute. "It's encouraging that there are more foundation degree applicants than before but some will be as a result of the re-branding of HNDs into foundation degrees. This suggests it will be very difficult to achieve the growth in higher education sought by the government through an increase in sub-degree students."

Roger Brown, director of Southampton Institute, agrees. His college puts on a small number of foundation degrees and had to axe one in computing due to lack of demand. Foundation degrees will only work, he says, where you have one major employer who will guarantee suitable students. "The nature of the economy locally is much more important than government missives or funding regimes," he says. "Anyway I don't think there is a market for foundation degrees so long as there are honours places available."

The experience of new universities bears some of this out. The University of Teesside says it has successful part-time foundation degrees tied in with local chemical companies and the National Health Service. Full time degrees have not taken off.

The UCAS figures cover only full-time courses. According to the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) a total of 24,400 students - both full and part-time - are registered on foundation degrees this year compared to the 12,400 last year. That shows a doubling of take-up in the space of a year. Will ministers be able to reach their target of 50,000 students by 2005?

Last week there was a meeting of the task group set up to advise the Government on foundation degrees. While expressing some satisfaction at the figures, its members worried about how to reach the vast mass of private sector employers who have little interest in the new qualification. Big public sector employers like the NHS and the Ministry of Defence have embraced it with open arms. There is a wide range of new two-year degrees in health-related subjects, and the police and armed forces have also jumped on the bandwagon. But private sector involvement is weak. "There is still a lot of ignorance," says Richard Brown, of the Council for Industry and Higher Education. "But we support it because there is a big skills gap in the workface at NVQ level three and four (A-level and just above). There is a market need. We have to persuade employers to bring the ragbag of training programmes they have at the moment into a more coherent package."

The question of how to persuade British employers to take training seriously is a vexed one. According to Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Liverpool, it is the usual problem with vocational qualifications of all kinds. "It is the extent to which employers are prepared to come on board and develop them as real qualifications and pay people more," he says.

Some private sector foundation degrees have been a great success. The famous one is the degree in aircraft maintenance engineering, also at Kingston. Another successful degree in hospitality management has been established by Thames Valley University in concert with Radisson Edwardian, the hotel group. "Our chairman, Jasminder Singh, is very committed to people development," explains Kevin Ennis, its people development director. "Many who come to work here have not gone to university or have dropped out. They struggle with practical applications of what they learn. Then they reach a level were they are ready to move into supervisory posts and need some additional education and training to improve their performance."

Of the 30 Radisson who have gone through the degree, six have graduated and four have moved on to honours degrees. Like Jason Bale, they are all sponsored by their employer. The problem is that employers like Radisson and Edmund Nuttall are few and far between.

Edmund Nuttall sees its commitment to education and training as enlightened self-interest. The number of civil engineering graduates is declining therefore it needs to take action to keep the numbers up.

Despite scepticism in the higher education world, the new degree has an army of cheerleaders. One is Professor David Robertson, of Liverpool John Moores University, who is undertaking an evaluation of the new qualification for the DfES to be published in May. He says the foundation degree is sound. "You find that some can find a market and will prosper," he says. "Others will find a market in the medium term but not in the long-term. Universities and colleges are going to have be more responsive."

The other supporters are the students. Unlike Jason Bale, Verity Graham, 23, is having to fund herself through a two-year degree in business information technology at Sheffield Hallam University, but it does not seem to have affected her enthusiasm for it. "Because I had been out of education for five years, I thought I would do a foundation degree rather than an honours which might be too challenging," she says. "The course is varied and the tutors are brilliant. I am confident I will get a better job as a result."

l.hodges@independent.co.uk