THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF MANPOWER FORECASTING IN BRITAIN*
| Author | Kevin McCormick |
| Published date | 01 November 1977 |
| Date | 01 November 1977 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1977.tb01143.x |
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
Vol.
XV
No.
3
THE POLITICAL CONTEXT
OF
MANPOWER FORECASTING IN
BRITAIN*
KEVIN
MCCORMICKt
I.
THE
POLITICAL ATTRACTIVENESS
OF
MANPOWER
FORECASTING
The existence
of
an educational system badly out of tune with the needs of industry
has been a frequent assertion in many of the recent diagnoses
of
the ills
of
the British
economy.'
Tertiary education has been castigated for an inadequate flow of ideas and man-
power, and universities have been singled out for the most severe criticism. In all these
debates it
is
accepted as axiomatic that national economic growth is dependent on an
adequate supply
of
highly qualified manpower to industry. In moving from diagnosis to
policy recommendations, however, the nature of that dependency becomes obscured in
confusions about necessary and sufficient conditions. For reasons of political ex-
pediency the burdens of adjustment are placed
on
the educational system in policy
recommendations and, despite disclaimers to the contrary, these policy recom-
mendations give the impression that it is sufficient to change the educational system to
stimulate industrial regeneration2
The diagnosis
of
the problem, and effective policy reforms, imply both conceptual
tools for analysis and an administrative apparatus to undertake policy. Manpower
forecasting has been advocated frequently as the most likely source for these tech-
niques. In a recent series
of
speeches Lord Crowther Hunt, then Minister of State for
Higher Education, announced that the Government was reviewing the prospects for
greater attention to manpower needs in planning educational provi~ion.~
In characterising and criticising the present system
of
educational planning as passive,
the Minister advocated a more interventionist approach in the provision of information
to direct the decisions of school-leavers, students, local authorities, polytechnics, the
universities and the U.G.L:
It simply will not do
to
allow universities and polytechnics
to
produce whatever people they
fancy
or
to relate the number and kind of places they provide to the applicants that come
forward. Such a passive approach ignores the policy variables which are in fact at the disposal of
the Government.
One
of the important jobs
of
a Minister with responsibilities for higher
education is to have the information which will enable him
to
take a positive view of the nation's
needs in further and higher education-and not sit back and leave it all
to
the so-called natural
forces of supply and demand.4
Inevitably this declaration
of
likely policy changes met with opposition from uni-
versities, who interpreted it as an interference with traditions
of
academic freedom.
More significantly, the opponents were able to draw on some extremely cogent criti-
cisms of the methodology
of
manpower forecasting, particularly by economists, and
were able to rekindle recent memories of disillusionment with manpower forecasting.
On the grounds
of
both intellectual dubiety and demonstrated experience a formidable
opposition to manpower forecasting as a basis for educational planning has been
mounted.
To
counter these criticisms it has been argued that the methodology
of
manpower forecasting is being developed and that manpower forecasting would be
applied in a significantly different manner than in past exercises. Nevertheless, advo-
cates
of
manpower forecasting face a difficult exercise in persuasion. Therefore, this
paper offers a critique
of
developments in manpower forecasting and an examination of
*
I
am indebted to Professor Mark Blaug, Austen Albu, and
E.
G.
Whybrew for comment son an
earlier draft of this paper.
t
Lecturer in Sociology, School
of
Social Sciences, University
of
Sussex.
403
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