Memorandum 117
Submission from the Council for College
and University English
The Council for College and University English
notes with grave concern the proposal to remove funding for ELQs.
While at first glance this seems a reasonable and minor adjustment
to funding arrangements, which will prevent "perpetual students"
from gathering unproductive portfolios of multiple qualifications,
it is likely to have a major impact on a crucial sector of the
student community: mature students.
The paradigmatic case here is, not the wastrel
collecting degrees, but the mature candidate—frequently
a woman—who, having taken a bachelor's degree in their teens,
decides in their thirties, perhaps after a period of child-rearing
or unsatisfying employment, to make a step change to their careers
and to study for a qualification in a new field.
To close this pathway down, as this proposal
will surely do, hits at the heart of the lifelong learning agenda,
and runs contrary to all previous statements about the need for
Higher Education to reach out to non-standard, otherwise disadvantaged
groups. It will also have a disproportionate effect upon those
HE institutions that have most energetically taken on-board the
Lifelong Learning agenda. It seems, therefore, a thoroughly un-progressive
proposal in terms of its implications on grounds of gender, age,
class, and culture.
Given the above, we strongly encourage you to
think again about endorsing the proposal.
January 2008
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