Skills Mismatch or Skills Mishmash? Problem Representation in England’s Lifelong Loan Entitlement Policy

Michael Salmon

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Abstract

The valorization of skills in English higher education policy-making is a long-standing refrain, informing both rhetoric and investment from government and shaping university behaviour. Critiques of the ‘skills agenda’ are equally established, on grounds of its contested evidence base, manner of implementation and even its very definition. This paper draws on Bacchi’s ‘What is the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) approach (Bacchi, in: Bletsas, Beasley (eds) Engaging with Carol Bacchi: strategic interventions and exchanges, The University of Adelaide Press, Adelaide, 2021a; Bacchi and Goodwin in Poststructural policy analysis: a guide to practice, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2016) to examine how the UK Department for Education’s nascent Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE) policy represents, and therefore in Bacchi’s sense produces, problems in the English tertiary education system. Through its WPR analysis of a significant contemporary shift in the English funding system, this paper demonstrates how the LLE policy replicates but also extends certain key features of the skills agenda and the dominant presuppositions of current English higher education policy-making.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)494-511
Number of pages18
JournalHigher Education Policy
Volume37
Early online date24 May 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Sept 2024

Keywords

  • Critical policy analysis
  • Lifelong loan entitlement
  • Skills agenda
  • WPR

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education
  • Sociology and Political Science

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