Does Higher Education need a Reformation?

Whatever you may think of Peter Thiel, he’s smart. I don’t just mean business smart but intellectually. PayPal entrepreneur, first investor in Facebook, predictor of the financial crisis and so on… impressive CV. Sure he’s an extreme libertarian, with some extreme views, but we need people who pop our conventional bubbles. So, when I heard him utter the following in an interview, it hung around in my head, until I was compelled to expand on it… Here’s the phrase, ‘Higher Education is like the Catholic Church on the eve of the Reformation’. That’s a damn interesting observation. I've written about Illich, who drew parallels between schools and the church in Deschooling Society but Thiel captures both a diagnosis and treatment in this one phrase. He’s talking Reformation.

Costs

What Thiel went on to explain, was that like the Catholic Church, HE had turned into a global, institutionalised phenomenon that demanded increasingly large sums of money from people, for an experience that is much the same year after year. The cost of indulgences as well as the transfer of productive wealth into the non-productive church, was a major catalyst for the Reformation. People were literally becoming indebted to the level of indenture to the church. This was impoverishing the populace while enriching the institutions. $1.6 trillion of student debt in the US. and similar problems arising in Europe? Even the rich, were handing over huge sums, not to charity but to the Church. This is reminiscent of hedge-fund manager Paulson, who recently wrote a cheque for over $400 million to Harvard. This is buying personal prestige (used to be salvation), not in any way moral progress.

Promises

The insidious side of the Catholic Church was the threat, that if you didn’t pay up, you were damned. This same powerful idea has been nurtured by University-educated politicians and HE lobbyists. If you don’t get a Degree, you’re damned as a failure. They perpetuate the myth, that if you don’t go to University, you’ll go to some sort of economic hell, never being admitted to the heaven that is gainful employment.

Monastic campuses

Like the enormous building projects by the Catholic Church, Universities are spending untold sums of money on monumental buildings. The occupancy rate of their existing property is already ridiculously low, as it was and is with churches, yet the capital budgets keep on rising. It would be more accurate to say, that like the Catholic Church, campuses have become huge, self-sufficient, monastic communities, almost towns within cities. Board and lodging has become a significant revenue stream for many institutions. In some cities they almost overwhelm everything else. With University Rankings they also have their Cathedrals; Ivy League in the US, Oxbridge in the UK.

Teaching as preaching

The dominant pedagogy is still the lecture, basically a sermon to a compliant audience. There’s a lectern, a lecture, designed for the one-way transmission of knowledge, surely as far from contemporary needs as one can imagine. Stuck with a Medieval pedagogy, founded, through necessity in an age when there were no books, the dominance of the lecture lives on as a shameful, religious, pedagogic fossil. Even worse is not recording lectures. Imagine a journalist not publishing their pieces in print or a novelist not putting their work into print? Denying students access to that lecture for revision, note taking, reflection, rewinding (especially if students are being taught in their second language) and so on, is pedagogically bankrupt.

Crisis of relevance

We seem to have reached a position where HE has drifted in terms of relevance, whether it is the degrees offered, the way they are taught or the exaggerated promises. It seems to have lost its way a little, just like the Church in the 16th century. Rather than serve our needs it often seems to be serving its own needs. With falling enrolments, suspicion about the worthiness of a degree when everyone has one and the high cost, is leading to arguments that question its relevance.

Scriptoria

Higher Education's increasing distance from practical skills, unless they involve high salaries (medicine, vets, engineering, law, architecture…) has turned them into seminaries, with the academic priesthood writing ever more obscure manuscripts for smaller and smaller audiences. The scriptoria and libraries are being flooded by manuscripts, most of which are read only by the authors and reviewers. It has become increasingly scholastic, moving in decreasing circles of relevance. The ballooning world of third rate Journals, which are rarely read, and full of low-level research has happened as the incentives have been around publication (no matter where) rather than teaching and learning.

Undue political influence

We have politicians who almost universally went to University, leaders who largely went to just two Universities and many Ministers who did one particular course at Oxford, PPE, a medieval hangover (replacement for Classics). Maybe the idea of a trained Priesthood for politics isn’t too far-fetched. Beyond this David Goodhart in his book The Road to Somewhere identifies an emerged 'graduate class' that now dominates politics and the professions imposting their views on others. Brexit indicated that many had had enough of this views. 

Academic dominance

Like the scholastic age (the Dark Ages) this has also led to the decimation, in some economies, of vocational education, which they are desperately trying to revive. As HE sucks the life out of vocational learning, we find ourselves in Europe with HE heavy economies struggling, while the German, Austrian and Swiss economies thrive. Hold on – isn’t that where the Reformation hit originated and spread from? Luther, Calvin, Knox… There are serious questions being asked about so much time and money being spent on abstract, academic pursuits at the expense of other needs in society, such as those who do not go to college, healthcare, social care and so on.

Calendar

Off for Christmas? Off for Easter? The University calendar is punctuated by holidays, largely determined by religious and agricultural concerns. The Michaelmas terms starts on the feast day of St Michael, the start of the academic year. This adherence to a rigid timetable with only one entrance date per year makes the system primitive and inflexible. It meant that workload for faculty and students couldn't be spread more reasonable across the sort of timetable that the rest of society had adopted.

Anti-technology

The Catholic Church was none too pleased when the printing revolution produced Bibles in local languages and thinkers who questioned their authority. They found themselves losing control of knowledge; its censorship, means of creation, production and distribution. That’s because the Reformation was, in part, amplified and accelerated by a technology revolution – printing. Similarly, the resistance to the use of technology in teaching and learning has led to little more than recording lectures and resources on a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). They were ill-prepared for Covid, rushing to replicated lectures on Zoom and struggling with the more sophisticated forms of online learning that have been around for decades, including online assessment.

Conclusion

The Church, which taught in Latin, kept their power by excluding people from reading in their own languages, suddenly found that people were not only reading scripture in their own languages but also writing and challenging the orthodoxy. The Enlightenment came fast on its heels. Now we have a technological revolution that is no less Copernican, the internet, which democratises, decentralises and disintermediates the learning game. I expect this revolution to have a similar effect on HE, driving access to knowledge and learning through a new means of creation, production and distribution. Rather than accepting increasing costs, we should demand lower costs, better access, and a future where education is not seen as built on elitism and scarcity but on scale and abundance. One beneficial effect and almost immediate effect of the reformation was a push for universal education and access. That stuck. This, in our modern age, is what we need in tertiary education. What I’m arguing for is not the extinction of HE but a Reformation. The Reformation did not destroy Christianity and its ethos. It was strengthened by shedding its obsession with money, indulgences, outdated processes, hierarchy, priesthoods and elitism. In fact, the Reformation led to the rapid expansion of our Universities and a change in their character, awy from religious centres towards more secular, intellectual environments. We need something similar today - a rethink about their purpose, processes, pedagogy and payment.

Devlearn – Leaving Las Vegas

Never been to DevLearn but what the hell, we took the opportunity to head out early to Vegas, hire a car and set off on a 2000 mile road trip across Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Two weeks later we arrived back in Vegas, with a car coated in bumper bugs and sublime images seared into our heads.

I’m a fan of the SW US but not a fan of Vegas. You can walk from the Pyramid of Luxor (even though the pyramids are hundreds of miles away in Cairo), through Caesar’s Palace (where a statue of Caesar stands among a legion of slot machines), shop in the Appian Way Shops, then into a tacky, medieval England to gamble among the knights at Excalibur, on to Renaissance Venice (where a gondola waits to paddle you through canals in a desert state that is suffering a drought). You may even pop into Paris on the way home. It purports to mimic European culture but it mocks it. Vegas is as tacky as a piece of used flypaper. 

Anyway – I was in the MGM Grand for a conference, really a small city full of slot machines (Vegas is not really a high-roller, gambling city - it's mostly slots) and a few Chinese folk who were at the card tables when I went to breakfast, after all-nighters. Our room was at the end of a corridor so long, we couldn't see the end. I'm OK with hedonism but this was ugly.

Rootsy

So, what of the conference? Overall DevLearn is much more rootsy than say, the overly self-promotional Masie Show, down in Florida. It’s practitioners, who work in real organisations do real work for real people. So you get some great, grounded sessions, packed full of tips about how to do things better. On the other hand, some of the bigger thinking can get a little lost. That’s OK. We have a surfeit of big thinking at conferences, often from people who have never really built, run or led anything. I’m tired of hearing about ‘Leadership’ from people who have never ‘led’ anything, other than a course on ‘Leadership’. It was refreshing to be among some realists.

The good stuff….

First reflection: I had a great three days at this meeting. I met (for the first time) some people I’ve long admired – Clark Quinn, Alison Rossett, Will Thalheimer, Mark Britz, Cammy Bean and so on.  It was good to have some in-depth conversations with people who have a track record and some depth in their experience and insights.

Then there were the excellent sessions where I gleaned lots of practical advice from expert practitioners. To take just one example, I learnt tons in the session on running Webinars. In one sense there was an abundance of good sessions, so many that it was difficult to choose.

As usual, most of the interesting stuff took place off-piste.  I gave three sessions, all of which I found easy to deliver, as they were packed with enthusiastic and informed participants, so I'd like to thank the DevLearn folks for allowing me to speak. The early morning ‘Buzz’ sessions were debates, with no PPT slides – these I loved and the one I ran on AI was full of lively and knowledgeable folk who made time fly.

Futurists are so last year....

But let me come back to the ‘big ideas’ issue. One expects keynotes to provide some new, insightful thinking. Sorry, I didn’t feel or get it. A guy called David Pogue did a second-rate Jim Carey act. His ‘look at these wacky things on the internet’ shtick is becoming a predictable routine. Kids can play the recorder on their iPhone! No they don’t. Only a 50 year old who bills himself as a ‘futurist’ thinks that kids take this stuff seriously. To be fair, I didn’t know about the DickFit, a ring that tracks your sex life. That was the only thing I learnt from that session. I’ve begun to tire of ‘futurists’ – they all seem to be relics from the past.

Not one to give up, I attended the next keynote, an enthusiastic guy called Adam Savage. I had never heard of him, but he’s a TV presenter in the US and hosts a show called Mythbusters. In over an hour the only thing he said that was remotely interesting (unwittingly), was a quote from Wolfgang Pauli, who used the phrase "not even wrong" to describe an argument that claims to be significant but is, in fact, banal. I say ‘unwittingly, as this guy tried to claim that art and science were really the same thing, as both were really (and here comes his big insight) – storytelling. The problem is that the hapless Adam knew nothing about science or art. It was trite, both reductionist and banal. That's bad.

My own view is that these conferences need outsiders who can talk knowledgeably about learning and not just about observing their kids or delivering a thinly disguised autobiography. I want some real relevance.

Hat’s off to the DevLearn team…

But that was only two things out of many. What makes this conference unique is that it’s run by enthusiasts who are also experts. They do it on a shoestring and do it damn well. Sure I had a few beefs, like the keynotes and the boorish E-learning Brothers, who hollered their way in orange tee-shirts through all three days, as if they were on a stag party, making it impossible for people to hear the speakers on the side stages. On the other hand, I enjoyed talking to the developers, who were pushing the limits on adaptive learning, the woman who works in compliance who explained to me, patiently, how the compliance training she had to deliver was an illusory evil that deliberately ignored the very idea of ethical behaviour, compliant only to the idea that these things are a regulatory nuisance and don’t really matter. I enjoyed seeing some good British people out there selling their wares – Ben Betts, the Totara guys, the Learning Pool crew (who wowed their audience with their open source authoring tool ADAPT), the lovely Laura Overton. Lisa Minogue-White, Colin Welch from Brightwave and Julian Stodd, who gave us a running online commentary on the dodgy bars of Vegas. In the end, it’s all about the people.

Leaving Vegas

On reflection, I'd recommend this show for folk who want to learn about making this stuff. It's easy to point to weaknesses but I'd change tack on the keynotes, appeal to a more international audience, have a big debate around some key issue and make sure that the stages in the exhibition area were more functional. One last note - I’m writing this on a Virgin Atlantic 747. Foiled by their labyrinthine online check-in process. I tweeted my frustration and within 30 secs got a Tweet in reply confirming my seat allocation. It made me glad that I’m in the tech business. It’s so damn weird and unpredictable.

10 uncomfortable truths about the con that is University rankings

Six Universities have been hauled up by the Advertising Standards Authority but it could have been them all. Almost all Universities claim to be above the lowly business of commerce but still willingly contribute to the petty hit parades in the University league table season. It demeans the sector. They search for whatever scraps they can find by selecting data from one ranking table or another. They love to claim they are above the competitive, capitalist, corporate game but they are by far the worst when it comes to the dog-eat-dog, institutional competition that are the rankings. Worst of all, for the people that pay, whether its taxpayers, parents, national or international students, the University Rankings are largely a con.

1. Bait and switch

The sector loves to take the high moral ground on keeping managerialism out of education, then use the slimiest form of managerial marketing, ranking tables, to promote their wares. Aimed firmly at parents and students, they bait and switch. The hook is baited with data on research and facilities, then the message switched to make it look like the teaching experience you’ll pay for, when in fact, the rankings are about measures that have little to do with teaching. That is a classic 'bait and switch' con.

2. Teaching ignored

They may SAY they take teaching into account but they don’t. They often claim to have ‘measures’ on teaching, but actually draw their data from proxies, such as staff qualifications and research activity and use nothing but indirect measures to measure teaching. The Times rankings are a case in point. They claim that their ranking scores include teaching. In fact, only 30% is based on teaching but they use NO direct metrics. The proxies include student/staff ratios (which is skewed by how much research is done) and, even more absurdly, the ratio of PhDs to BAs. It is therefore, a self-fulfilling table, where the elite Universities are bound to rise to the top. There is little direct measurement of face-to face time, lecture attendance or student satisfaction. In some cases it’s laughable, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out, with Faculty salary, levels of degree in Faculty and proportion of faculty who are full time, being taken as proxies for quality of teaching. It’s like having a Premier League table based on the performance of the backroom staff and not the real games and players.

3. False precision

Up one place in the rankings – yippee! Down two places – time to worry. Yet the idea that these rankings are in any way precise is silly. They’re a mish-mash of misleading data, under vague (even misleading) categories and often watered with a heavy dose of opinion (expert panels drawn from top Universities). In any case, they’re always changing the criteria for ranking, so year-on-year comparisons are useless. This shows itself in the huge disparities between the different ranking systems. The LSE is 3^rd in The Sunday Times rankings but 328th in the US News and World Report Rankings, 71st in the QS Rankings and 34th in the THE Rankings). Other universities like Manchester and KCL do badly in British rankings but well in international tables. This gives ample room for cherry picking but is poof enough that the way the rankings are calculated is seriously flawed. If the rankings were research they'd be rejected by even the lowliest of Journals.

4. Apples and oranges

They don’t compare like with like. In Edinburgh, where I come from, we have four Universities; Napier, Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh and Queen Margaret. You couldn’t get four more diverse institutions in terms of what they teach and their history. In 2012 Edinburgh were in top five for research but came stone-cold last in the teaching survey. That same year, Heriot Watt came top in Scotland and 4^th in UK on Student experience but way, way down in the rankings. In that same year, more than a third of the Russell Group Universities found themselves in the bottom 40 of 125 institutions (2012) on teaching. These comparisons are truly odious.

5. Skews spending

What is sad, even morally wrong, is they they really do influence strategy and spending. Ranking status is often stated explicitly in their goals. In effect, as teaching doesn’t really get measured, except through false proxies, it leads to spending on everything but good teaching – physical facilities, research and so on. This direct causal effect on behaviour also leads to overspending, as it’s a runaway train, where everyone tries to outdo everyone else. There is no incentive to save money and become more efficient, only to spend more. Weirdly, there’s rarely any accounting for students costs in calculating the rankings. Shouldn’t a University that costs a lot less get ranked higher than one that does not? It would appear that prejudice trumps economics. This is a topsy-turvy world, where being more expensive is an intrinsic good.

6. Gaming the system

It’s not just spending that’s skewed by rankings, they also skew behaviour and priorities. Universities are far from being free from the rat race, they just have some very smart rats. In practice, this means that they are good at gaming the system. What are the criteria and weightings for ranking? OK, those are this year’s targets. More facilities, let’s get them built.

7. Self-fulfilling prophecy

The more you spend, the higher your ranking. So the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The separation, in terms of research grants between the handful at the top and the rest is huge. Naturally, this leads to a separation of the so-called cream from the so-called milk. In that sense it’s a deterministic system, where the top remain at the top and the rest scrabble around for the scraps.

8. Agendas

What’s more, the different tables often have uncomfortable relationships with newspapers. And let’s not imagine that, given the nature of newspaper ownership in this country, they don’t have agendas. The Complete University Guide has had relationships with The Telegraph, Times and Independent. They keep falling out. The Sunday Times has its Good University Guide. The Guardian has yet another. These tables sell newspapers to middle class parents, that’s the real driver.

9. Old boys club

Reputation scores feature in lots of the rankings. You go out and ask people what they think; academics, publishers, employers etc. Of course, given that most of the people asked are from the highly ranked Universities, there’s an obvious  skew in the data. That's shameful, qualitative nonsense.

10. Status anxiety

What is their real effect on parents and students? Nothing but an irrational race. They induce ridiculous amounts of status anxiety. Parents and kids are being encouraged to play a game which is already gamed and get stressed over data that encourages distasteful behaviour.

Conclusion

I haven’t even begun to tackle the issue of cheating, being economical with the truth or fiddling around with the submissions. There are examples of straight up cheating, and as there’s no real quality control, it’s likely to be far more common than reported. In truth, no one really knows what the ideal criteria for ranking should be, as it’s a set of competing ideological choices – accessibility, teaching, research, graduation rates? And with what weightings? That’s why the different rankings have these huge disparities. We need, like Reed University in the US, to refuse to hand in the assessments. If the game is being gamed, don’t play the game.

10 x 10 lists on common mistakes in online learning

To ten tips in top ten topics in online learning:

10 ways to make badass INTROs in online learning 

10 bloody good reasons for using much-maligned TEXT in online learning 

10 essential online learning WRITING TIPS in online learning 

10 stupid mistakes in design of MULTIPLE CHOICE questions

10 essential points on use of (recall not recognition) OPEN RESPONSE questions

10 rules on how to create great GRAPHICS in online learning ‪

10 sound pieces of advice on use of AUDIO in onlinelearning 

10 ways based on research to use VIDEO in online learning

10 ideas on use of much maligned TALKING HEAD videos in online learning

10 unusual ways to make SPACED PRACTICE happen in online learning 

This started with a simple observation that I'm seeing, over and over again, the same mistakes being make on screen, with online learning. I hope you find them useful.

10 Corbyn education policies that actually make good sense

I’m no Corbyn fan but his BIG idea in education (NES) is way beyond the pale, insipid Tristram Hunt policies that typified the last Labour leadership's educational policy. I was highly critical of Hunt's approach. Actually, it wasn’t a policy at all. They decided to keep the issue off the political canvas, as they largely agreed with the Conservatives. No difference, don’t mention it. Thankfully the hapless Hunt has resigned. But what does our Jeremy really promise in education? He outlined his ideas here but I've speculated a little, based on past pronouncements and alliances.

1. National Education Service

In his acceptance speech he thanked the "Socialist Education Association". Their ideas have informed his policy. It was they who want to  ‘develop a single, broad and inclusive framework for the curriculum from early years to adult education’. The emphasis on a universal (comprehensive) system, with equality of opportunity at its heart, is exactly what this organisation recommends.
So what is the National Education Service? Corbyn equates it with the National Health Service - free at the point of delivery. So far, so good. This is a fine idea. The world of learning is like the separate horizontal layers of an old, stale cake. Pre-school, primary, secondary, sixth form, FE, HE, adult learning. Yet individual learners go on a vertical journey and have to smash through each of these horizontal layers in turn, often failing, getting disillusioned and the net result is a system where nobody’s happy – learners, teachers or parents. We need to see learning as a lifelong experience, like health.
It may also align education with health in another fashion, with a focus on evidence-based teaching and learning. We have long compared education with medicine, showing that one has advanced while the other has remained largely static in terms of both delivery and outcomes. Here's an opportunity to take the research and professionalisation agenda seriously. The problem he faces is that teachers want professionalisation but then go all woozy when it comes to professional standards and a research and evidence-based approach to teaching and learning. You want to be like the NHS, then make the whole thing student-centred, in the same way that health is patient-centred.
The NES needs to be fleshed out. How will it be funded, run and organised? He has to reconcile his belief that Local Authorities should build and run schools v a NES. You can do what is currently done with the NHS - directly funded by Government, lots of control, appoint a CEO, free at point of delivery but with professional bodies, such as NICE, recommending and publishing guidelines (Ben Goldacre has written smartly about the need for a NICE model in education). A second model is the BBC-type model, where you set up a separate Trust, at arms-length from Government. This is unlikely as control is what they want and probably need, to get things done. A third model is a highly devolved model back to Local Authorities but this is dangerous as many could be hostile. Unfortunately, that's the chosen model, bringing all free schools and academies under local authority or Mayoral control.
But remember also, that it is not possible to have a ‘National’ Education Service. What he means is an 'English' Education Service. Scotland, Wales and NI, long disgusted by the political shenanigans in England, have long gone. Nevertheless there may be room for more alignment, as this is the model they sort of have elsewhere.

2. More vocational

It also unifies the funding. I’m in favour of unifying educational funding as it oils the wheels for more rational decisions, especially the balance between academic and vocational. HE has had its own way for too long. It’s bloated and over-funded. We need to rebalance HE with a stronger approach to vocational. Curiously, Corbyn is more aligned with the Conservatives and their 3 million apprenticeship promise at the last election. But his view of apprenticeships is not one of being employer-led. It would be accredited by FE (that's weird) and employers. This is a bit fuzzy but there is a clear need for a properly defined and funded apprenticeship system, which to be fair, the Conservatives have structured through a levy. It has cross-party appeal.  The good news is that he really does value ‘skills’ and wants to stop the deep erosion of FE and the adult skills budgets. It's anti-Blairite and it's right. One sad footnote - he wants to pay the minimum wage to apprentices - this is not necessary. To create a viable system we neeed to recognise that overloading it with costs is unwise.

3. Scrapping University fees

He wants to scrap fees but also reintroduce grants. This is par for the socialist course but it has consequences, not least the subsidising of the rich by the poor. The majority of young people do NOT go to University and there's growing evidence that the Blair policy didn't work as it crushed alternatives to the expensive HE path. Yet this is the only Corbyn policy that gets any attention in education, as the middle class have sharper elbows - that's a distorted shame.

4. Online education?

He’s a fan of the Open University, saw it as a socialist triumph, and talks about it fondly and explicitly as a great Labour achievement. Good on him. I agree, and hope that he will expand on this online approach to education. Tom Watson's a digitally sophisticated politician and really does get this stuff.

5. Get rid of charitable status for private schools?

Keiza Dugdale, Corbyn’s emissary in Scotland, has hung her hat on this policy in education and I’m sure Corbyn agrees and will attempt to do this south of the border. This is long overdue. The Conservatives and, unfortunately, the hapless Tristram Hunt, was in thrall to this elitist system. It's unlikely they will call for its abolition but we do have to see them as the businesses they are and recognise that they are a major force in creating inequality.
6. Scrap Grammar Schools and 11+
He want to scrap all Grammar Schools and the 11+. Indeed, this was romoured to be the cause of his divorce. This has long been a stupid anomaly in England and causes no end of chest beating in the Conservative Party. David Willets, one of the smartest people in the Conservative government, was sidelined and eventually sacked, just because he held this belief, so it is not a mad, loony-left policy but a mainstream belief. Good policy, let's get it done.
7. Fewer tests
Fewer tests! Thanks God. This taps into the widespread view among teachers and parents that this has got out of control. However, the hard-left have a habit of sticking with centralised state-control in education , so don't hold your breath. The SNP, north of the border have just introduced another raft of testing.
8. No league tables for schools
Yipee. Again this taps into the zeitgeist about education being a right, not a competitive market. We don;t have league tables for hospitals, nether should we for schools. Education is far too important to turn into a competitive sports spectacle.

9. Single examination boards?

My guess is that he’d also unify examination boards, A Gove idea but a good one nevertheless. It’s what they have in Scotland and makes a NES that much easier to implement. the current boards can barely handle the quality control necessary for an efficient system and every year we have unanswerable or stupid question items. Schools also cherry-pick (on what basis I wonder?).

10. Corporation tax

On costs he wants to add 2% to corporation tax. This is reasonable, and matches the ‘levy’ the Conservatives want to load on to employers for apprenticeships. In many ways this is easier to implement and redistributes profits into training. The problem here is that this raises only £3 billion. This nowhere near covers what Corbyn is proposing. So, as usual, the policies are not costed.
Ministers
One worry I have is that, in education, Corbyn has a pretty dismal personal record. He was pampered through fee-paying prep and boarding schools but only got two E grades at A-level. (You get an E for turning up.). He then dropped out of his University course for disagreeing with his tutors. Wow. 
Also, Lucy Powell, appointed Shadow Education post, is an apparatchik politician - school, Oxford, party HQ, assistant jobs, MP. Far from stellar, she's a bit of a Labour clone. On the upside Angela Eagle, who should have this portfolio, is a formidable and capable politician. BIS has always been badly run with lacklustre civil servants. It needs a shake-up.

Conclusion

At least it’s a bold idea, roughly in line with what many want. But to pull this off you have to centralise funding agencies (a good idea) and save costs. Yet, the idea also brings in its wake the usual quango-building. Corbyn is unlikely to go for a merger approach, so we’ll likely end up with a profusion of bodies with a large administrative centre. That’s worrying. Bureaucracy may be its downfall. One last point. Why is almost everyone in education ignoring these policies, other than student fees? Is the teaching profession sweeping actual policies and reforms under hte carpet with a focus on the one polocy that affects their kids - University fees? A conundrum.