Return to education bodes well for our long-term future

Today's employment figures suggest that one of the reasons unemployment has fallen is because people are choosing to become students.

Nationally, there was a 98,000 increase (to 2.31 million, a record) in the number of students in the quarter to January. It is hard to think of a more optimistic by-product of a recession.

Much has been made about the muted rate of increase in unemployment since the downturn began. The willingness of employees to be flexible about working hours, coupled with virtually no private- sector strikes, suggests Britain has come a long way since the Seventies.

But a rapid growth in the number of students implies people are using the recession to re-train and prepare themselves for the new jobs that lie ahead.

In London, this is particularly good news.

The capital has a massive higher and further education sector: the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle is one of the world's leading concentrations of university teaching and research, rivalled only by places such as Boston.

If people are using the recession to move into training, they will be more adaptable in future. Comparative studies of world cities often focus on the scale and quality of the workforce as a component in what makes a city attractive to inward investors. Overseas students, who are heavily present in London, create big export earnings.

Universities and colleges are vastly more adaptable than their ivory-tower image suggests.

They create new courses to meet the demands of a changing job market. There is still a powerful science base which will be important if the country now has to shift its economic output towards high value-added manufacturing industries.

Equally, new courses are available to meet the needs of emerging service industries.
If the recession has the longer-term effect of increasing the propensity of people to become students, in mid-career as well as on leaving school, it may produce a long-term benefit. And education is now one of London's most important industries.

Tony Travers is director of LSE London