Examination of Witnesses (Questions 55
- 79)
MONDAY 10 APRIL 2000
MR ANDREW
PAKES, MR
SCOTT RICE
AND MS
LINDSEY FIDLER
Chairman
55. Can I, on behalf of the Committee, welcome
Andrew Pakes, Lindsey Fidler and Scott Rice, and to say that we
very much appreciate you coming to give evidence to the Committee.
As you will know, we are on quite a short timetable, so we are
going to fire quite a lot of questions at you and we would be
very grateful for brief-ish responses. Also, bearing that in mind
do not be too concerned that we are focusing this session on student
finance, in the main inquiry we will come back on to the broader
issues. Do not feel that you are missing out on some aspects of
higher education because the main inquiry, where the meetings
are held on Wednesday, will come back to many of these issues.
Do not feel worried about that. If we can go straight into the
discussion. The Committee decided to insert these three special
sittings on a Monday because we thought the implications of the
Cubie Report and the Scottish Executive's decisions in light of
Cubie were very important for the rest of the UK and gave us an
opportunity to benefit from the work of Mr Cubie and also to assess
what has happened in Scotland and how it impacts on the rest of
the UK. We wanted to use that as a lever to get us into a discussion
on higher education student finance. That is the context. If I
can go straight into a question if you do not mind. Although it
is a formal Committee meeting do feel that you are at least amongst
friends and this is relatively informal. Do come in as and when,
all three of you. Can I ask you, do you think there is enough
money being devoted to higher education? If you do not think there
is enough money being put into higher education what would you,
the National Union of Students, do about that?
(Mr Pakes) Can I thank you for inviting
us first. As a student who is just leaving it is a bit like going
to a job interview, so I am sure it is a transferrable skill I
shall learn from. All of the work and research alongside the campaigning
NUS has done suggests that there is not enough money in the system.
We have undertaken a number of anecdotal case studies as well
as research through our hardship surveys. However, we are quite
keen to look at the work that the Cubie Inquiry itself pointed
to and where Cubie indicated the amount of money that students
needed, we thought that was a good starting point. Too often we
have felt that the student financial support system has either
been tinkered with or been designed to meet short-term policy
aims rather than starting with a blank piece of paper which says
"how much money do students need?" Within that there
is the recognition by students that they no longer expect the
Government to pay every single penny of their living costs, however
they do expect the Government to make a decent contribution. Secondly,
with the expansion of higher education there is a need to understand
that different types of study and different groups of students
on different courses, or different modes of study, have different
needs themselves. So you can contrast the needs of nursing students,
who currently receive a bursary from the NHS, where we advocate
they should receive a salary because the long hours of both study
and practical work they do in hospitals means they cannot take
up part-time work to fill the shortfall, they have a different
need from arguably a social science student who can undertake
one day's work a week to supplement some of their income.
56. Do you think that the lack of money in higher
education is affecting the quality of the education that your
students and their members are receiving?
(Mr Pakes) The surveys we have done, and I think we
included a copy of our student hardship survey alongside our evidence,
show that with almost one in two higher education students now
working during term time, not just in the long vacation but during
term time as well, that does have a detrimental impact on their
studies. If you consider that many of those students work in the
service sector, so in hotels, pubs and clubs, where it is long
hours late into the night then I think it is no surprise that
students will not be turning up to some of their lectures first
thing in the morning or unable to take part in terms of completing
course work or other activities.
57. Can I put it in the broader context then.
Do you think that the quality of the education that you are being
provided with is suffering from the limitation of the higher education
budget?
(Mr Pakes) Yes. I think that in terms of the delivery
of teaching, the increasing burden that has been placed upon lecturers
and teaching staff where they are having to meet larger class
sizes or undertake teaching to wider numbers of students without
the financial investment there is problematic. I think you find
some of the savings at the edges where there are now increasing
hidden course costs to students, where there are creeping costs
coming in whether it is charges for graduation ceremonies, whether
it is bringing in additional costs where course hand-outs are
no longer provided to students and they have to source them themselves
and pay for their own photocopying of those resources, or whether
it is increasing charges for field trips or materials if you are
an art student. All of those costs are impacting on the overall
quality of their education.
Helen Jones
58. You said quite rightly that perhaps we should
start from looking at the costs of the higher education to the
students and I wonder if you can tell the Committee what assessment
you have done of the actual costs of being a student today and
how that varies between different kinds of students? We are particularly
interested in the relative costs for full-time as opposed to part-time
students or mature students as opposed to school leavers.
(Mr Pakes) In terms of the general work, that is one
of the most often asked questions to the NUS by the press and
the media "how much does it cost to be a student? Aren't
they all spending it on beer and enjoying themselves". I
will talk to you about the average student, the average costs
we think students have and the shortfall there and then Lindsey
will talk about mature students and other parts of the student
population. We looked at putting together costs for students on
38 weeks, discounting the long vacation period within that. If
you look at the average costs, including rent, fuel, clothing,
travel and a little bit of money for leisure but not an extravagant
amount within that, outside of London we think that comes to just
under £5,000. £4,856 is the figure we give out as the
average to the media. If you look at the loan outside London for
that corresponding 38 weeks of the year's worth of loan that comes
to £2,656. So we think there is a shortfall outside London
of just over £2,000 per year for a student. Inside London
that is magnified by the costs of transport and living, the other
elements. I would also argue if you to go cities such as Cambridge
and Edinburgh there are increasing costs associated with studying
in those cities which are not completely alien to the costs associated
with studying in London itself as well as those pressures are
put on students. The work we have done is around looking at costs
for mature students—traditionally it is 18 to 24—and
we found that mature students tend to need at least another £1,000
on top of their package to live on. That is a very moderate estimate
really. We found in our hardship survey, interestingly, that from
31 to 40 the costs increase again by about £3,000. That rise
is probably due to the financial commitments involved at that
stage of an average person's life, due to family commitments as
well as mortgage commitments. We found that there needs to be
more attention paid to personal circumstances as well as age when
it comes to student support. Interestingly when it came down to
ethnicity we did not find any major variations in income or expenditure.
That is looking at our particular survey, perhaps that is something
that we have to look at further.
59. Two things arise from what you said, the
first is that a lot of the costs for student support in our system
is clearly directed towards living costs rather than educational
costs. What would your view be of a radical departure where we
said, "Yes it is possible to fund educational costs but it
is not the duty of the State to fund the living costs." I
am putting that to you as a theory. Secondly, when you talk about
the special needs of mature students, what would be your view
of the re-direction of student support so that more money was
directed towards mature students rather than school leavers?
(Mr Pakes) In the first question I would have to throw
a question back and say, "What do you define as education
costs?" We are very clear as a national body that we fully
support the Government's intention to move into a mass system
of higher education. We believe that unless you fund the living
costs of those groups of students or people who have not been
in higher education before, then you cannot have a mass system
of higher education because those people need to have the resources
to be able to participate fully with that academic life. I would
be interested to see how you differentiate between education costs
and living costs.
60. We fund a lot of students in our system
living away from home, what if we said, "We are not funding
that"?
(Mr Rice) I think you have to look at the fact that
not every university does the same courses. In my case I study
in Central London, originate from Newcastle, reading dentistry.
Obviously there is a dentist school in Newcastle but necessarily
for other courses you have to move in order to read the course
you want and also to get the area of specialisation you want.
Certainly it would be very difficult for all students to stay
in their home town and find and get the level of education that
they want in that home town without having to move. Then you expand
on to, is that the education cost or the living cost? London is
exceptionally expensive. I would not necessarily come here again
if it was not for the fact that there is help with living costs.
(Ms Fidler) In terms of the Widening Participation
Agenda those students should be encouraged to enter higher education
because even if they were living at home there would still be
living costs, arguably, attached to their study. That needs to
found from somewhere, whether it is from the student support benefit
system or from them working.
Dr Harris
61. In the evidence you gave us the document
we read was written before the Scottish Executive response. We
would be interested to see your written response to that. If I
can ask you now, what do you think of the package that has been
proposed and is to be implemented in Scotland? Do you think it
is better than the current system in the rest of the United Kingdom?
(Mr Pakes) Undoubtedly we see what the Scottish Executive
has done overall as a step forward from what we have currently
in England and Wales, on the basis that there is the re-introduction
of some non-repayable state support for certain groups of students
and it fits our principle that that money should be targeted to
those people most in need, namely in this case mature students
and students from lower income backgrounds. However, the great
disappointment of students across the United Kingdom has been
the almost savage attack on Cubie's original plans for a graduate
endowment scheme.
62. Compared to the current system in the rest
of the United Kingdom how is the Executive's proposal rated?
(Mr Pakes) I think you do have to split it into two
halves, the first half being the re-introduction of state maintenance,
which is good, and the abolition of up-front fees, which is a
major step forward for education in Scotland. However, what they
have done to the graduate endowment scheme by reducing it to £10,000,
a figure which, yes, corresponds with the current repayment kicking
in for the student loan companies, still seems quite arbitrary
and is a quite a regressive step.
63. Is that worse than the current system in
the United Kingdom? We heard evidence last week from both Cubie
and the Scottish Executive that that was a controversial area,
that £10,000 threshold, and no-one would be worse off in
terms of their debt than now. I want to enquire of you, although
it is a disappointment to you is it worse than the current system
in the rest of the country?
(Mr Pakes) I think the best answer I can give you
is potentially because we do not know how it will fully work out.
There is the potential pitfall where you have a graduate earning
£10,000, starting to repay some of their loan, then at £10,000
other things kicking in as well. How does that all fit together?
Charlotte Atkins
64. You suggest that tuition fees are the largest
obstacle that full-time and graduate students face, what evidence
do you have for that?
(Ms Fidler) I think the latest figures on application
and participation from non-traditional students has shown a significant
change since September 1998. For example, there has been an 11
per cent decline in degree applications from mature students—I
am using Newcastle's figures here—a 6 per cent decline from
applicants from unskilled, manual family backgrounds. Obviously
one can argue this could be a progressive decline attached to
either the population trends or is the market saturated? There
certainly has been a change since the introduction of tuition
fees.
65. You are talking about a drop of 6 per cent
among unskilled students but they do not pay tuition fees.
(Ms Fidler) That is the case. The problem is with
perception. The issue is around the perception of what needs to
be paid. There has been a problem about getting the system across
to potential students as well.
66. What about the situation in further education?
A large percentage of students pay tuition fees there, have the
NUS opposed tuition fees in further education which, after all,
does tend to recruit the more disadvantaged student? What has
your campaign been on that issue?
(Mr Pakes) Our campaign has been against all fees
in further and higher education. In the last 18 months we have
made a big shift in our policy to recognise that to meet the aims
of widening access and lifelong learning then we do need to target
our resources and further education needs to be the top of those
lists of resources that the Government needs to direct its money
at.
67. How long have tuition fees been charged
in further education?
(Mr Pakes) Probably thirty years at least.
68. When did you start opposing them?
(Mr Pakes) Vigorously within the last two to three
years.
69. Until it became an issue for higher education
it was not an issue for the NUS.
(Mr Pakes) No, and I that comes down to the fact that
the NUS has suffered in the same way that much of the education
sector has suffered in that the voice of FE has been very quiet
within that. In the last few years we have begun to address that
problem, culminating within the last 18 months where we have started
to radically shift our policy. We have welcomed the Education
Maintenance Allowance and say that needs to be vastly expanded.
We have supported the Government where we believe it has got its
policies right in terms of putting money back into the pockets
of students in further education. I think it is not the role of
NUS alone. People call it the cinderella sector, I think there
does need to be a drive to push the ideas of further education
further up the agenda. What I am not arguing is that higher education
is more deserving than further education.
70. How many of your members come from further
education?
(Mr Pakes) About 66 per cent, about two-thirds.
71. About 66 per cent of your members come from
further education?
(Mr Pakes) Yes.
72. And it has only been over the last two or
three years that you have campaigned against tuition fees in further
education, despite the fact that the majority, nearly two-thirds,
of your members come from further education?
(Mr Pakes) Yes, and I can give you some very clear
reasons for that.
73. Please do.
(Mr Pakes) That is because when it comes to attending
our conferences, attending our meetings which set those priorities,
in the past we have had students who have been told if they attend
those events they will suffer within their courses, they are not
allowed the time off. We have had cases where students have been
told it would conflict with the New Deal regulations if they attend
the conference and we have had to nationally intervene.
Charlotte Atkins: How long have we had New Deal
for?
Chairman: One more bite at this.
Charlotte Atkins
74. You are talking about New Deal. We are talking
about tuition fees going back in FE for 30 years.
(Ms Fidler) The focus of the FE support campaign has
been to get statutory support for further education students as
being the first step to a support package for FE students, as
it were. That has been the focus of the campaign before that.
(Mr Pakes) We agree with your point, there has been
a massive under-representation by NUS as well as elsewhere on
further education. We are not dwelling on the past, we are saying
that we need to look, as Scotland has done, at creating a new
system which actually meets the needs of further education as
well as higher education and taking that position forward, accepting
that there has been a gap and a failure in the past amongst many
of the actors who advocate values around post-16 education.
Chairman: This is why the Cubie Report is so
valuable, it highlighted the nature of this whole debate. Gordon?
Mr Marsden
75. I want to ask you in a moment some questions
about how we actually lever more money into the system but, before
we do that, can I just come back on the mature student issue.
I am puzzled by those figures and the automatic attribution of
tuition fees. I taught as an Open University tutor for nearly
20 years and Open University students, who represent a very significant
section of this, have always paid tuition fees. Are there other
factors that might explain this six per cent drop other than just
fears about tuition fees among mature students?
(Ms Fidler) There are a number. There is a perception
that taking on the debt, the whole package of debt related to
higher education is a big risk for mature students, as it were.
Obviously there is no guarantee of a well paid job at the end
of studying. Also, for those who are moving from benefits into
higher education, again they have seen that as the risk of transferring
from a grant basis on to a loans basis.
76. But it is not just a simple equation of
tuition fees equals drop-out or falling enrolment?
(Ms Fidler) The whole package has become a barrier
to entering higher education.
77. Okay, fair enough. Let us move on, if we
may, to the ways in which the NUS believes that tuition fees are
not necessary and the Government should look to extra funding.
In your submission to the Committee you have argued for an approach
which involves a contribution from the state, business and higher
education graduates as part of a partnership approach. Can you
outline specifically in what ways you would recommend the Government
raises additional funds from businesses to provide extra funds
for HE?
(Mr Pakes) We would like to see a greater business
contribution full stop within higher education. We do not believe
that it is the job of NUS to come up with an alternative economic
strategy for the Government but we believe it is our role to point
out indicators of where that money should come from.
78. Is that a way of saying that you have not
thought about the detail?
(Mr Pakes) It is a way of saying at the moment students
look around them and see who currently funds the burden of education.
We think that putting that money on to students—we are saying
that students themselves should bear that burden—the Government
does contribute quite rightly but business itself does not make
that contribution at the moment.
79. I think that is a fair point and those of
us who went to the United States and saw what business did for
universities there would accept that point but is it not also
incumbent upon you as a campaigning organisation if you are attempting
to win this argument with Government, and for that matter with
business, to have some specific ideas as to how they might contribute?
For example, would you be in favour of some form of levy on businesses
for HE? I am not suggesting that you would, I am just throwing
it out to get some specifics going.
(Mr Pakes) We did some rough modelling which said
that to implement the Cubie Inquiry's recommendations in England
and Wales as well, if you take a very rough basis that about ten
per cent of the UK's higher education students are in Scotland,
would cost about £558 million to bring that to the UK as
a whole. We think that could be done in a number of ways. You
are right to say we have not sat down and said how business should
pay for that exactly.
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