Augar loan threshold lacks imagination says Cambridge academic

The founder of a new higher education alternative says universities need to look beyond ‘data on a certificate’ when assessing students’ potential.

Statements from the Student Loans Company Limited (Johnny Green/PA) (PA Archive)

A Cambridge academic has criticised Government plans to stop pupils without a Grade 4 GCSE pass in maths and English from securing student loans, arguing that universities need to be “more imaginative” when assessing students’ potential.

Michael Hrebeniak, director of studies in English at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, said that the Government’s Augar review of higher education funding in England, published on Thursday, is “proscribed by expressly financial prerogatives” and that “its mental universe is money”.

“Now, students certainly need to have some way of proving that they can engage with complex ideas and materials, but surely we can be more imaginative than merely verifying intelligence and potential against the data on a certificate,” he told the PA news agency.

Dr Hrebeniak is the founder of the New School of the Anthropocene (NSOTA) at the October Gallery in Bloomsbury, London, a year-long programme described as a “radical and affordable experiment” in higher education.

We have to move beyond standardising human beings. Education is not a factory and nor is it a business

Michael Hrebeniak

The school aims “to free students from the tyranny of debt by keeping tuition fees as low as possible”.

It is named after the geological era where human impact on the planet takes effect, and students will research and study a wide range of disciplines, encompassing film-making, philosophy, dance and hands-on conservation work such as water reclamation in Iraq or reforestation in Puerto Rico.

Studies will include an “approximation of the Cambridge supervision system” running alongside weekly seminars. Students will complete an individual research project during the course.

The first cohort will begin their studies in September 2022 for a “test lab” year, with plans to expand the programme to a three-year cycle after this.

NSOTA’s launch has been marked by a symposium pairing leading cultural figures in video dialogues, such as Marina Warner and Rowan Williams or Alan Yentob and Michael Mansfield.

Dr Hrebeniak aims to recruit students who have not benefited from higher education previously, and the programme will operate on a “pay-what-you-can-afford” model with full fees of £900 for the course.

Frank Roddam, the director of Quadrophenia and creator of Masterchef, has contributed to the programme’s funding.

Dr Hrebeniak said that students currently faced “this really quite disgraceful culture of debt”.

“I’m very keen that we recover the pleasure in education, rather than it being a means to an end, so a university experience is just a means of enhancing your individual market placement,” he said.

He added that the programme wanted to recruit students from a wide range of backgrounds and ages.

“18-year olds would be wonderful, but also, 75-year olds would also be great… a multiplicity will be lovely,” he said.

Dr Hrebeniak said he had left school with few qualifications but was “able to reinvent myself” through studying at night school, working to repair photocopiers and answer phones during the day in “menial office jobs”.

Cambridge University where Michael Hrebeniak is director of studies in English at Wolfson College (Joe Giddens/PA) (PA Archive)

He said had been able to study an A level for £15 and later entered King’s College London as a mature student aged 22.

“I just went literally for the intellectual necessity of it, and the pleasure of it. And I had no plans about what I wanted to do, what I really wanted to do was work in a jazz record shop.”

“The thing is, if you’re not in debt, you’re autonomous to a degree… I’m kind of horrified that people in my position now looking back 30 years, they wouldn’t have those freedoms and those opportunities that I was very grateful for.”

“I’m furious that that space has been taken away.”

“The main thing we want to address is the prohibitively expensive cost of higher education, and the purposive and systematic dismantling of adult education in this country, of the arts, over the last two decades or so.”

“I do think it’s disgusting that the threshold to adulthood is marked by a debt of £50-£60,000. I think that is a shame and an infamy, especially when you extend that to nursing courses. What kind of culture does that to people who want to serve others?”

Asked about whether students would need assurance about their employment opportunities after studying a non-accredited degree, Dr Hrebeniak said that Google and the Law Society were no longer insisting on degrees for recruits, and that “things are changing because of grade inflation, the ubiquity of the graduate”.

The activities involved will include reforestation, work on soil permaculture, as well as learning to plaster walls and masonry in the October Gallery’s space.

“At some point in your life, you’re going to need to know…how masonry works, how things are held together and how you apply materials to a surface,” he said.

“So it’s truly transdisciplinary in that respect,” he added.

“We need to reinvent our way of living and working together, or else we are literally finished…this is a condition of emergency,” he said.

“We are facing the end of life on earth, for God’s sake.”

“We have to move beyond standardising human beings. Education is not a factory and nor is it a business, in spite of its crude commodification by successive right-wing regimes.”

“I would ask for other ways of demonstrating ability that draw upon a candidate’s unique experience. I’m more interested in what people wish to become, rather than the next boilerplate exercise that they intend to overcome.”