Tories 'were wrong' over students

Mr Johnson said previous policy was 'un-Tory'

Tories seemed "hostile to students" by proposing to cap university intakes before the last election, Shadow Higher Education Minister Boris Johnson says.

Mr Johnson said he "certainly" did not back the government's "target" of getting towards 50% of young people being in higher education by 2010.

But planning to limit numbers had made Tories seem "crabby", he added.

Higher education made the UK money and was "about civilisation", he told the Politeia think tank in London.

'Saloon-bar analysis'

Before the last election, the Conservative Party called for UK student numbers to be capped at about their level at the time - around 43% of young people.

Mr Johnson said: "In the words of every saloon-bar analysis of higher education of the last 10 years, what we need is fewer graduates, and more plumbers. It is not a new thought."

He added: "It is high time that we Conservatives mounted a thoroughgoing defence of higher education, its students and teachers, and the benefits it can bring."

I certainly don't believe in some mad plan to try to compel a certain proportion of people to stick to vocational courses Boris Johnson Shadow Higher Education Minister

Mr Johnson said that using central government to cap independent universities' student numbers was a "very un-Tory" policy.

He added: "When we complain that too many people have or aspire to have a university degree, we might as well complain that too many people now belong to the middle class."

Mr Johnson said: "I certainly don't believe in some government target of 50% university admissions, but that is because I don't believe in targets or quotas or indeed in many of the other positively harmful instruments that are currently used to control universities.

"But by the same token, I certainly don't believe in some mad plan to try to compel a certain proportion of people to stick to vocational courses and thereby reduce university numbers."

In his speech Mr Johnson evoked the Thomas Hardy novel Jude the Obscure, in which the eponymous hero is denied a place at university because of his impoverished background.

He said: "It's no use saying to people 'It's all right sonny, you can be a stonemason, or you can pack my bags at the supermarket checkout while I go off and be a lawyer.'

"Even if we thought it right that we should tell people to stick to being stonemasons, there is the practical objection: how do you physically stop people enrolling for Mickey Mouse courses without crass invasions of academic freedom?

"You can't. And then there is a moral objection."

To raise greater funds there was a "need to think more creatively" about using tax breaks, alumni donations and endowments to fund universities, Mr Johnson said.