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My fifth issue concerns teaching and research. Given finite taxpayers’ resources available for research, it is inevitable that in order to retain our international position, we have to focus research selectively on the universities most suitable for this purpose. This means that several universities must either concentrate mainly on teaching or, if they are well established in their region and community, look to local industry and neighbouring universities for joint research projects. This is already happening and should be encouraged.
Sixthly, the funding system for students will of course be reviewed within the next two years, and we need to learn lessons from the student fees cap of £3,145. The most glaring challenge is the probable increase in demand for part-time education and a dip in the number of 18 year-olds in the next 10 years. The system of support for part-timers is not sufficient to encourage this expansion and is made even worse by the Government’s decision to redistribute funds away from those studying for equivalent or lower qualifications, known as ELQ.
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Seventhly, we must acknowledge the importance of employers’ influence on the recruitment of graduates. It is perfectly reasonable for them to argue that, in addition to an academic qualification, they need skills such as interpersonal communication, problem-solving and teamwork. I am also struck by the healthy fact that for many employers, the all-round ability of a graduate is important, for we are often too obsessed by academic qualifications at the expense of developing the character. Nevertheless, universities should no more be agents of employers than of Governments, and employers should remember this.
My eighth point is that the integration in the early 1990s of the former polytechnics into universities raises two issues. Universities are now so varied that there cannot be just one benchmark to judge their collective performance. We are entitled to look for excellence in all our universities, not against one standard but against the particular mission and objective of that university. We need universities of international repute to set the pace, but in a system providing a wide diversity of education, each university needs to perform outstandingly. Equally, the combination of well over 100 universities brings into play the contrast between academic and vocational education. In post-war years, we have been adversely affected by prejudice against the latter. Now is a chance to have a bonfire of our prejudices and to acknowledge parity of esteem between vocational and academic courses. As Confucius once said, in education there should be no class distinction.
Lastly, it is worth noting where we stand internationally. We seem to lie somewhere between the European continent, with its centralised, state-oriented universities with high dropout levels, and the United States, with some very high-quality independent universities and many state universities, which are also well endowed with private funds. The educational system and the culture there is of course different, but there are lessons for us to learn.
Noble Lords will no doubt suggest many adjustments to priorities in higher education. I conclude by making only one recommendation about the Government’s strategy. As a former Minister for the Arts, I was convinced that for the arts to flourish organisations needed to be as independent as possible of government. The job of a minister is to set the framework and climate for the arts but to remain at arm’s length from institutions. Exactly the same must apply to universities. Their very nature means that in order for them to flourish they must secure as much autonomy as possible from government. Again it is the Government’s job to provide the overall framework in which universities can succeed but otherwise to keep them at arm’s length.
I want to see from the Government and the opposition parties a commitment to a strategy to secure the greater autonomy of universities. Governments must provide the framework, including acceptable systems of governance and accountability, but we should also recognise that universities have been independent for centuries, though often influenced by the church, state or industrial philanthropists. They are technically independent in that they are charitable bodies, but in practice many describe them as nationalised in that
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There are two ways in which we could develop that autonomy. First, universities must be given every encouragement to diversify their sources of funding. At present they are dependent on taxpayers’ support, student fees and private donations for scholarships, building and research. The Government’s three-year scheme to provide £200 million for matching funding from private sources, which could yield £600 million, starting this summer is a good beginning. In the long term, however, we need a much more ambitious policy to help universities achieve endowment funds. To give some perspective, only eight British universities have endowments worth £100 million or more compared to 207 United States state and private universities. Stable and consistent taxpayers’ support must of course help to underpin the finances of universities. We have to acknowledge that public expenditure in the United Kingdom on higher education as a percentage of GDP is below the OECD average.
The principle of student fees is now established and the cap will have to be raised to ensure that there are adequate resources to maintain quality. Of course the fact that students will be paying a higher proportion of fees means that they become more effective partners with their universities in working to achieve their ambitions. The loan system must remain progressive to encourage participation by the lower socio-economic groups. We must maintain and enhance the British tradition of an admissions policy based on students’ merit, whatever the parents’ level of income. Many universities here are already pursuing a positive policy on bursaries. We must also remember that 10 per cent of our students are from countries outside the EU. They make an important financial contribution and create good links for Britain. We must continue to compete worldwide by ensuring that we look after them properly and maintain the quality of our universities.
Secondly, autonomy can also be undermined by government regulation and intervention. The performance of universities is undoubtedly affected by their measure of freedom from administrative and funding control. American universities, freer of such control, are generally thought to be of higher quality than those of the European continent, where there is much central direction. We need to review relentlessly the level of regulation for higher education. The original University Grants Committee could be regarded as a model.
There is a growing recognition that more autonomy for universities, in both funding and management, will lead to improved quality of university education. I hope that the Government and all opposition parties will give a firm commitment to this strategy. I beg to move for Papers.
11.55 am
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I declare an interest as being in employment with the Universities of Sunderland and York, and as a council member at
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First and foremost, universities are places of learning, research and pushing barriers of knowledge. At a time of globalisation and our need for ever higher levels of skills, their role in those areas is crucial. The debate about how we finance research in universities and our international competitiveness will take place during the next few months.
I shall address two other purposes of education, not because they are higher than research and teaching but because they sometimes do not receive the extent of debate that they probably deserve. They are the universities’ responsibilities for, or functions of, civic renewal, and individual opportunity and social change. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that they perform those functions not as agents of the state but as vital institutions in the country in which we live.
I welcome the emphasis which the Government have given to these areas in recent years, in particular the challenge to create new universities in some of our towns and cities in the next five to six years. Any Government who seriously regard regeneration and community cohesion as one of their objectives would let us all down if they did not develop the role of universities in that area of national life. When one thinks that for every 100 university jobs, 89 more are created in the location of the university; that £1.45 billion is spent off campus; and that 42,000 student volunteers work in the voluntary sector, one concludes that one does not know how any town or city can survive in the 21st century without access to a university.
I also welcome the Government’s work in widening participation. It is right that we ask how we get more students, both part- and full-time and of all ages and backgrounds, into university. We are nowhere near that yet, and I know that we need more ideas and greater success. However, I sometimes worry that we devote a lot of time to talking about how to get students there and too little time talking about how to keep them there. As we move to a more diverse higher education sector, we welcome its diversity without thinking through its implications and meaning. In terms of access, it means that as we get people from different backgrounds into universities, universities will have to change the way in which they teach and support them. I know from schools that many students going straight from school to university, and many adults going from no learning to university, get there only because the nature of teaching styles and pedagogy, and the extent of the support that they have received at school, have been transformed during the past 10 to 15 years. Too often, they get to university and find a university system that has not adjusted to those changes in teaching style and support that have taken place at school. As long as that is not end-on and as long as those changes are not made, we will continue to see in some universities a fall-out rate that we should fear and do something about. The kind of support that students now receive in schools to get them to university is matched only in Oxford and Cambridge Universities,
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In calling for a more diverse system of university and giving more institutions the title of university, we risk not having an infrastructure that recognises that diversity. I have in mind two areas: finance and recognition. I am not arguing that money should be shifted from research to access or civic regeneration—I would not do that—but that, as long as extra government money goes mainly to those universities that are research intensive, some universities will be forced to compete in that game. If they are good at regenerating communities and in civic renewal, and if they are good at widening access, they need a recognition system and accountability mechanism that gives them resources for doing that. We had that when we had the old polytechnics. I sometimes worry that in creating diversity we might not have an infrastructure that would reflect it. However, I very much welcome the Government’s initiatives on the whole, and just ask the Minister to reflect on those comments when she responds.
Noon
Lord Patten of Barnes: My Lords, I declare a serial interest as chancellor of two universities; namely, Newcastle and Oxford. I welcome my fellow colonial oppressor in initiating this debate. The number of noble Lords who wish to take part suggests that we should talk about higher education more frequently. The quality of the knowledge and experience of those taking part suggests that the Government should listen hard to this debate.
I follow directly two points made by the noble Lord, Lord Luce, at the outset of this debate. I want to speak about funding and access. We have, by common consent, some of the best universities in the world. The general argument is that we have the second-best higher education system in the world. I worry that those achievements are threatened by what the noble Lord referred to: the proportion of GDP that we spend on higher education in this country, which is below the OECD average. Astonishingly, the American public sector spends a higher proportion of GDP on higher education than we do. We know that higher education is the main source of research in this country. Given that, we recognise that there are only three ways of funding higher education. The taxpayer can do it through public spending; it can be done through benefactions and philanthropy; or it can be done by the student paying more money towards his or her education in tuition fees.
Sad as it may be, I do not believe that higher education will achieve a higher priority in public spending arguments over the next few years. The Government cannot duck the consequences of this fact. I do not see that happening with this Government, and I would be surprised if it happens after the election when, I hope, there will be a Government of a different political party. In those circumstances, we have to look hard at the question of tuition fees. It is not, as the noble Lord said, a question of universities opting for independence; they are already independent. It is a question of facing
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Secondly, the noble Lord said that when he went to university, 4 per cent of his age group went into higher education. When I went a few years later, the figure was 6 per cent. Since then, as the noble Lord indicated, it has increased just over sevenfold. While that has happened, there is no indication that there has been much of an impact on the universities’ role in social inclusion. Even today, young people from the most advantaged 20 per cent of the country are five or six times more likely to go to university than young people from the 20 per cent of most disadvantaged areas. That should matter to all of us. It matters because of the impact of a university education on a lifetime’s earnings, remuneration, and so on. It also matters because of the widening and deepening of opportunity that a university education should—and, I hope, usually does—ensure.
Universities are well aware of this issue of widening participation. They do not need to be harried by anybody, not least Governments, into facing up to some of these questions. The universities that I know best are very active in this field. Newcastle has a Partners Programme, although, perversely, the fact that it allows slightly lower admission grades for young people who have been through summer schools as part of the Partners Programme, counts against it in league tables for the medical school and elsewhere, which is crazy. Oxford University spends £1.8 million, and rising, on trying to improve access and encouraging people from more disadvantaged backgrounds to opt for it.
The one thing which it seems to me we must not do is dilute the standards that our higher education institutions set. The best answer to broadening access is to do more about the disparity of education or achievement in our secondary schools. Universities can make a contribution to this, but I do not believe that they would do anyone a favour if they decided that they should lower their own standards to help make up for some of the problems in secondary education. I hope that the Government recognise that, while of course insisting that it is important for all of us to try to encourage as broad an access as possible to higher education.
12.06 pm
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on initiating the debate and I thank him. I should like to see higher education keep up its quality but become more equitable and fully tap into the talents of bright young people from lower income families. It is not only important for them as individuals but for the economy. This requires three things: aspiration; information; and support, mainly but not exclusively, financial, which needs to be focused on young people who are still at school. I shall not say anything about tuition fees as I think that many others will, but as they rise and young people
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Many young people do not want to have to borrow even more money for their maintenance and living expenses during the three or four years that they spend at university. Many of them work while they are studying. The problem with that is that many of them spend far too long working, which affects their studies. For example, music students have to spend many hours practising their instruments and find it difficult to take a job while they are studying, although they may occasionally do the odd gig to help their bank balance.
The Government offer maintenance grants based on family income and the Access to Learning Fund supports students with particular financial needs. The Government have also charged the Office for Fair Access with the task of promoting and safeguarding fair access to higher education for under-represented groups, especially in the light of the introduction of variable tuition fees. OFFA says that by 2009 around £300 million a year will be paid in bursaries for low income students. However, it is widely accepted that the funding distributed by universities and the Government is not enough and that although student loans are available at slightly below commercial rates, many potential students are reluctant to take on a burden of debt that can add up to tens of thousands of pounds by the time they graduate.
I investigated what a student would have to do to get the information he or she needs about the support that is available. It turned out to be a complex job. Looking at the websites of the various universities, I found out what Oxford is doing in this regard, which the noble Lord, Lord Patten, mentioned, and that Cambridge is offering similar bursaries and scholarships. Importantly, both those universities work with teachers as teachers give students the aspiration to attend the best universities. They have open days and invite teachers on to their campuses. We have heard about the Liverpool scheme and Imperial College offers bursaries under the study support bursary. There is a City & Guilds scholarship for engineering students and the R W Barnes Education Fund for engineering, physics and maths.
There are many similar subject-specific grants and bursaries. Many things are being done, but an awful lot of universities are under-spending their access fund money by, on average, about 19 per cent. I should like to know why that is. Are people not applying? I have come to the conclusion that students lack information because it takes so much time to find it out.
The National Audit Office has urged the Government to set up a,
Can the Minister say what plans the Government have to do that? It is no good having all these initiatives if students do not know about them.
Before I finish, I should like to say one further thing about further education. Many further education colleges, apart from providing courses leading to degrees, provide the courses that give the students the qualifications to
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Baroness Thornton: My Lords, I hope noble Lords do not mind me interrupting momentarily. I should like to inform them that when the number 4 appears on the monitor, you are in your fifth minute; when 5 appears, you need to sit down. We have now lost about two-and-a-half minutes on this debate so I should be very grateful if noble Lords could keep to that. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, was almost exactly on time.
12.11pm
Lord Dearing: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on securing this debate and on the quality of his contribution. When looking to the future, it is logical to reflect on the purpose of universities.
The committee I chaired 10 years ago had some thoughts on purposes which have recently been endorsed by the Higher Education Funding Council. I will not weary you with them, since they are obviously immaculate. Among those purposes was responding to the needs of the economy as well as society at national, regional and local level. In those areas, two recent reports are particularly important.
The first is that of the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, entitled “The Race to the Top” which examines how higher education can move from its past, when we were brilliant at fundamental research but rotten at translating the benefits of that into products and services. He was able to report that we are now comparable with many American universities and that we have turned the corner. We must continue to encourage and support universities because it is fundamental to our own future that we develop the fruits of knowledge and research. I should like to see in that development increasing partnership between complementary institutions, including FE colleges and overseas universities.
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