The Changing Landscape of Higher Education – challenges and opportunities for youth and community work education

As a relatively new ‘profession’ and one which lies outside the protection afforded to the statutory services and bursary-funded qualifications (like social work and teaching), the profession of youth and community work has come under sustained attack during this period of austerity. Services throughout the country have been decimated and with them the traditions which underpinned the education and training of future generations of youth and community work graduates. There is now a shortage of qualified supervisors, mentors for new workers, or support for volunteers to become workers in training with progression to part time employment-based routes to graduate qualifications and apprenticeships. Yet this paper does not seek to lament their passing, or discuss the political and social challenges which face the most disadvantaged in society and for whom support from professional youth and community workers has never been more needed. Instead it is about how one profession, working in partnership with employers and the Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Body (PSRB), have, despite a number of institutional hurdles, sought to change these threats to opportunities in developing a partnership model with the potential to offer a sustainable approach to restore part-time routes to graduate qualifications, and in doing so, support and develop the capacity within the youth and community work sector. The paper will outline some of the challenges and threats to professional youth and community work education, within the Higher Education Institutions, including: • changes to higher education funding, student finance and ‘responding’ to the league tables, • the ‘marketplace’ of higher education, student numbers, DLHE, NSS and KIS data. And, given the impact of austerity on service delivery, the challenges faced by youth and community work educators, and the inter-related issues that have a direct impact on recruitment and sustainability. This will include: • capacity issues within the sector and a lack of qualified and experience supervisors; • the impact of becoming a graduate profession in 2010, and • changes to student finance for part-time study In September 2014, Leeds Beckett University was awarded the national pilot to develop a part-time, work-based sustainable route to qualification, in partnership with the National Youth Agency (our PSRB). The partnership enables students to access part-time student finance to pay for their studies and the University pays the National Youth Agency a fee for each student recruited and retained, and for their support in finding high quality placements and well equipped training venues.