Goodhart report puts polytechnics back on the agenda

Call to re-introduce technical institutions as unemployment expected to rise after coronavirus pandemic

A group of “applied universities” should be set up in the wake of the coronavirus crisis to correct the “policy failure” of scrapping polytechnic colleges in the 1990s, according to David Goodhart, influential author of The Road to Somewhere, which first presented the idea of citizens of nowhere.

In a paper published on 11 May, the right-leaning Policy Exchange think-tank said government support for universities during the pandemic should be leveraged to create a subset of “applied universities”, offering vocational courses such as nursing and IT. However, so-called “higher” vocational courses including medicine and engineering would not be on offer.