Denham: Universities must work with business to encourage mature students into Higher Education

13 September 2007

Today the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, John Denham called on universities to do more to promote more flexible modes of study.

Addressing University Vice-Chancellors at the Universities UK Conference in Leicester, Mr Denham urged them to ensure that courses were based around the need of mature students to balance work, family and leisure with study.

He told the conference that demographic change meant that universities were serving a different public - with students increasingly coming, not straight from school, but from the existing workforce.

Two important trends are coming together which will inevitably have consequences for universities,

he told his audience.

The first is that the rising tide of 18-year olds will begin to ebb - as UUK's own analysis this week shows. We estimate that population figures for 18 year olds in England will drop by just over 14% from 675,800 in 2006 to 579,300 in 2020.

Secondly, as a country we simply cannot afford to have a Higher Education sector that is focused only on school and college leavers. As the Leitch report made clear, 70% of the workforce in 2020 has already left school. Many of them need university level education.

Both trends will demand that you change your intake. We cannot meet the country's needs purely by educating the rising generation.

Mr Denham encouraged universities to combine with business to ensure that they offered education which would meet the needs of a newly aspirational workforce. He called on them to look at long term strategic relationships with business as well as one-off partnerships.

We need relationships that are appropriate, whether with large multinational businesses or small local firms,

he said.