David Willetts: older people should return to higher education

The universities minister encouraged workers at the end of their careers to study again as educational patterns change

Older people should consider going to university in order to continue working beyond the official retirement age, the minister for higher education has said.

David Willetts encouraged workers at the end of their careers to see higher education as an option. "There is certainly a pressure for continuing to get retrained and upskilled. Higher education has an economic benefit in that if you stay up to date with knowledge and skills, you are more employable," he told reporters as he travelled with the prime minister, David Cameron, in India.

"Education is such a good thing – it is not reserved for younger people. There will be people of all ages who will want to study. There is great value in lifelong learning."

Student loans were restricted to people under 54, but the government permits prospective students of any age to take out loans for fees. Loans to cover living costs are restricted to the under-60s.

"There was a lot of criticism about the ageism of all this. The regime now is, there is no age limit on fee loans," Willetts told the Daily Telegraph. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, only 1,940 undergraduates starting courses last year were older than 60, out of a total of 552,240 students in Britain. Some 6,455 were aged between 50 and 60.

Tuition fees are a maximum of £9,000 per year in England and students start repayments when they have a salary of £21,000. Most pensioners have an income of less than £16,000, so would never have to repay their loans.

Today, 10 million people in the UK are over 65 years old. The latest projections are for 5½ million more elderly people in 20 years' time, and the number could reach 19 million by 2050.

Within this total, the number of very old people is set to grow even faster. There are currently 3 million people aged more than 80, and this figure is projected to almost double by 2030 and reach 8 million by 2050. The government estimates that the fastest-growing age group in the next decades will be people over 100.

As the number of elderly people grows, so does the pension deficit; British pension schemes are estimated to have a total deficit of £312bn.

Last year the House of Lords heard evidence of the effect of an ageing population on public policy. Simon Ross, the chief executive of Population Matters, told the Lords: "We should expect and enable people to work later in life than in the past. Employers and the government should consider what changes to employment practices are required to enable people to work longer.

"This may include changes to work premises and equipment, encouraging people to work from home, and being more flexible with regard to sick leave."

"Given the pensions shortfall, a flexible labour market should enable the 'fit old' to work as many or few days per week as they feel necessary to top up their own pensions, notably providing a workforce to care for the 'unfit older'."

Willetts said educational patterns were changing. "There is evidence that the idea that you first study and then stop isn't what the world is like any more," he said. "If they can benefit from it, they should have that opportunity. If people need it in order to keep up to date with changes in their jobs, that is an opportunity they are going to take."

Contributor

Conal Urquhart

The GuardianTramp

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