| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): In arguing for the preservation of the elitism of Oxbridge, I understood the hon. Gentleman to say that we should improve access by developing an egalitarian state school system. Is he advocating the abolition of the public school system?
Dr. Harris: I am asking that we improve standards in the state sector--a policy that I believe the Government to be committed to. We have supported moving the subsidy previously used for assisted places to the state sector. That will allow higher quality from the state sector. The current lack of applications from good state sector candidates, for reasons that I have already mentioned, is the biggest problem in our attempts to ensure a better ratio of state to private and overseas students.
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough): Does my hon. Friend agree that that is the crux of the issue? Unless targets for admissions from the state sector are set for Oxford and Cambridge, it is unlikely that anything will change. Does he agree that part of the package to justify the extra £35 million must be positive steps on that and agreed targets to redress the balance?
Dr. Harris: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. That is why the universities welcome the Government's initiative in seeking the review. Many proposals have been put forward to expand further the work done on access from the state sector to those two universities.
Mr. Robert Jackson: That is all well and good, but will the hon. Gentleman remind the House that a substantial proportion of A-levels go to pupils from independent schools? As long as Oxford and Cambridge are seeking to attract the brightest and ablest students,
which must be part of their mission, it is inevitable that they will choose from the pool of people with A-levels. Regrettably, the performance of the state sector is such that a high proportion of A-levels go to children from independent schools.
Dr. Harris: I am afraid that I must disagree. There are clever people in all sectors of education, but we do not get a sufficient number of applications from the state sector. A-level results are not necessarily the best way of judging whether people are bright.
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge): Would the hon. Gentleman agree that Oxbridge merely accepts the students who are best prepared, not necessarily the brightest students; and that that is why so many of them are from the public school sector?
Dr. Harris: Yes, but recent changes in Oxbridge admission procedures have attempted to tackle that. Certainly Oxford--and I think Cambridge too--interviews far more people for each place than does any other university, so as to ensure that what appears on paper, perhaps reflecting good preparation, does not disguise people's ability or rule out those with great potential from the state sector. Often ability will emerge better in an interview--but more remains to be done.
Removing college fees will inevitably damage access, either because colleges will have to reintroduce charges to the student that are no longer made up for by LEAs, or because colleges will have to put up room and board costs, or because they will have to admit a greater number of paying--and hence wealthier--overseas students. The universities do not want to start charging students fees which the Government currently pay, but that is the next alternative open to them as independent institutions.
If the Government want to prevent the Oxbridge colleges from taking this step under the duress of the removal of the fee money by the DFEE, that will involve complex and time-consuming hybrid legislation. As the Bishop of Oxford said in another place, it would be sad if, as a result of Government legislation, Oxford and Cambridge became a club for the relatively well-off, with all that that would imply for future jobs and careers and the accentuation of a worse kind of elitism.
Of course Oxbridge has always charged college fees. Until 1962, scholarship students there had their fees paid by the state, but all others paid the extra money. But then legislation passed on the costs to the LEAs for all UK undergraduates. The LEAs were then able to recoup the costs from the Treasury. If the Government remove funding for the college fee system, the colleges will have to find students who can afford to pay the fees themselves, and that in turn will further damage access. Indeed, the effect would be the very opposite of what the proposal is intended to achieve.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome):
Does my hon. Friend share my great concern that, if the Government persist with their wrong-headed decision to introduce tuition fees, not only will such fees increase across the board in time but differentials will open up between various places of learning? In the end, Oxbridge
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
Order. May I remind the House yet again that this is a very short debate? A number of those who have intervened are also, I believe, seeking to catch my eye later; they should bear in mind that their interventions take time away from their own speeches.
Dr. Harris:
There is certainly great concern that up-front fees--or up-front debts--may deter people from higher education and from taking less well remunerated jobs in the public sector. The Government are grappling with such difficulties, but I will not dwell on the subject today. Suffice it to say that we all deprecate additional up-front fees, even with means testing administered by colleges, as the worst of all worlds.
Critics of Oxbridge call for modernisation. There is a great deal of room for improvement in the crucial area of access; but people must realise that removing the college fee would achieve the opposite of what they want. If colleges cannot charge their students for the fee, the first ones to go bankrupt or to go private will be the newer, poorer colleges, many of which are women's colleges--the only remaining state women's colleges in Britain. Surely the continuation of such arrangements would be in line with the spirit of Dearing, which requires the fostering of diversity.
The women's colleges and the more recently founded colleges do not possess land or inherited wealth, and have far smaller endowments and fewer assets. A good example would be Somerville college in Oxford, where the college fee money provides one third of the college's total income. It is spent entirely on academic stipends.
Removing some or all of the fee will have serious consequences for jobs and the local economies of both cities, with redundancies and associated costs in academic, administration and ancillary posts. Such action would contribute to the brain drain. Talented British academics would leave for postings overseas, especially in the USA. The loss of the fee would also undermine the general economic health of the two cities. Oxford University employs 10,500 people, of whom 3,000 are college non-academic staff. That is to say nothing of those employed by the companies and institutions that flock to these cities to be close to the universities.
Colleges maintain their historic buildings and collections without heritage grants. The Bodleian library has just had its application for a restoration project rejected by those who make the decisions on lottery awards. This investment by the universities in heritage feeds into the lucrative year-round tourist trade, which also generates jobs. In this sense Oxford and Cambridge are industrial cities whose main industry is education, based in and around the universities. Damaging those universities would threaten the economic well-being of a large part of the population.
The Liberal Democrats will support Government moves to provide high-quality mass education and to support our existing centres of excellence, with open admission procedures based on merit and talent. I hope that some of my arguments this morning, especially those about the need to improve broad access, have demonstrated
the place held by Oxford and Cambridge in this vision. I further hope that Members who enjoyed and benefited from an Oxbridge education after leaving state schools, as I did, will not adopt a drawbridge mentality. We must be keen to maximise opportunity for those who come after us; we must retain the college fee coupled with a requirement to improve access and to show value for money.
I close with a statement by Lord Winston, who said that he joined the Labour party because he believed in a fair society, but, he said, a fair society does not mean that people are equal in every respect. We are talking about truly outstanding institutions which are models of university education not merely in this country but throughout the world. Academic institutions throughout Britain are extremely fragile. We might damage something which in turn could damage our national economy.
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge):
I thank the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) for raising this issue and congratulate him on gaining the time in which to do so.
I am proud to represent a university that has contributed so much success to academic endeavour and excellence. Most of us are proud to live in a country that can still achieve world firsts--a country renowned for its contributions to science and technology as well as the arts and humanities. We should celebrate our nation's success: it increases our self-confidence and self-esteem, and it leads us to greater achievements in the future.
One thinks of some of the people who studied at Cambridge--Isaac Newton, Watson and Crick, Rutherford and J. J. Thompson. They all achieved their remarkable success at Cambridge university. Cambridge has also shaped the arts and humanities by giving us people such as F. R. Leavis, Rupert Brooke, Ted Hughes, Maynard Keynes, Wittgenstein, Joan Robinson and Ian McKellen.
The briefing prepared by Cambridge for Members of Parliament stated that Cambridge had won 68 Nobel prizes, but since that briefing was prepared Cambridge has won another one for molecular biology. That is surely a record to be proud of.
Oxbridge's contribution to our economy is difficult to assess, although needless to say it is pervasive. Among its better known graduates are the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, many Members of Parliament, including me, captains of industry, senior civil servants, professional people, actors, journalists and many others--all of them sport a Cambridge or Oxford MA after their names.
The contribution to the local economy is much easier to measure. About 30,000 people are employed in 1,000 technology-based firms in and around Cambridge, in my constituency and that of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley). Most of those companies say that the university is one of the main reasons for locating in the area or that it is the basis for their existence.
A wide range of expertise is represented, from telecommunications, in firms such as Ionicaand Cambridge Cable; biotechnology, in firms such as Amgen, Cantab Pharmaceuticals and Peptide Therapeutics; information services, in firms such as Analysis and UUnet; computer hardware and software, in firms such as Olivetti and Xemplar, and now Microsoft, and industrial consultancy, in firms such as Cambridge Consultants and Scientific Generics. Those firms are known not just nationally but internationally as excellent in their fields.
Those companies also generate huge revenues for the Exchequer. One argument that I have heard made is that the college fee should be increased because the payback on the investment is so enormous that it justifies the initial investment. I hope that my hon. Friends will agree that we should do nothing that will damage the excellence of those institutions and the national benefits which accrue from them.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |