A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 16th June 1993.

Government policy to expand numbers in higher education from about one in seven in 1982 to one in three by 2000, seems to be driven more by sensitivity to international league tables, than by a rational design for either the needs of our economy, or the real needs of our young people (letter, June 10th).

The policy, now implemented, of allowing every polytechnic and some other colleges to call themselves universities, with the all-important right to validate and award their own degrees, flies in the face of the government’s own professed concerns about quality and standards. We now have a situation in which the A-level entry standards to the all important bench mark science and engineering degree courses in the expanded university sector, range from around 6 points (a D and E at A-level) to 22 and above for the top ten or so universities.

Even without the expansion in numbers, there has to be grave concern about the reduction in standards achieved at A-level over the last five years by those who undoubtedly can potentially cope with the demands of an honours degree course. Thus the Joint Matriculation board reported that “the 1988 Applied Mathematics paper was easier than 1987’s”, “1989’s was about the same as 1988’s”, but registered an exceptional drop from 53 to 46 in the mean mark. The vital but difficult subject of calculus was further reduced in 1989. Nonetheless the qualifying marks for each grade in the pure and applied mathematics papers in 1989 were lowered by comparison with 1988 and the number of A-grades increased from 17 to 20 per cent of the candidates.

In essence the work of the schools is being passed by the teachers into the universities. In the short-term the only way of meeting international degree standards is for the universities to lay on, as is now happening, a series of remedial courses in mathematics, the sciences, and English or, as at Oxbridge and elsewhere, to extend degree courses to four years with all the cost implications. However, we should lay out a plan now to restore, over a five-year period, A-level standards to their pre 1987 (i.e. pre GCSE) level by introducing an O-level type option to the GCSE for those at 13 or 14 who display genuine aptitude for it.