Besides the economic benefits of higher education at both the individual and the aggregate level, graduates and higher education institutions have wider impacts on society. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills commissioned researchers from LSE Enterprise and LSE’s Department of Social Policy to review literature on ‘Things we know and don’t know about the wider benefits of higher education’.
The researchers found that while those who enter higher education differ from those who don’t in many ways, making it difficult to separate input and process factors, there is nonetheless considerable evidence that higher education makes a difference, both to the lives of those who participate in it and to society at large.
In summary, what is known is that higher education makes considerable social, cultural and economic impact but what is not known sufficiently is how it makes this impact, on whom it makes its impact, when it makes its impact and the different forms which impact takes from an increasingly diverse higher education system. There is a need to know these things in order that a large higher education system can be managed in ways that will promote all of its functions and achieve the greatest benefits for the rest of society.
