Examination of witness (Questions 700
- 719)
TUESDAY 4 JULY 2000
MR TONY
HIGGINS
Chairman
700. Tony, I do not think anyone on this Committee
would disagree with you that we believe the universities in this
country across the piece are excellent universities, what we are
inquiring into is whether people with the same kind of talent
have a free choice to go to which ones they want to. Is it not
surprising perhaps that those people with the greatest advantages
in terms of private education and money spent on private education
all do seem to want to go to a cluster of universities? It would
be naive of us to pretend that was not the situation.
(Mr Higgins) I think that is correct. I think there
is parental pressure for that to be so. I think it would be the
wrong decision for them necessarily to take.
Mr St Aubyn
701. Can I just have one follow up to my question.
When these students who make it to university leave they will
almost all be applying for a job somewhere and they will find
in the job market that it is the rough and the smooth: you have
a good interview, you get a great job, you do not have such a
good interview, someone else gets it and you think you deserved
it. There is a certain element of good luck or fortune in the
whole process by which your career progresses. Do you think we
can or should try totally to exclude that element of luck in the
process by which people choose which university they go to?
(Mr Higgins) Life is never fair, Nick. There is bound
to be good luck. There is bound to be ill luck. I think there
may be some people who went to a university that they felt was
second best and they found they had a fantastic time there and
they have been extremely lucky. They thought they were being unlucky
because they only managed to get this place in clearing at the
very last minute.
702. We could get too hung up on this issue.
The important thing is just as you get the job in the area that
you wanted when you leave university, you get on to the type of
course you are seeking at university when you leave school?
(Mr Higgins) I think so. I agree with Barry, we have
got superb universities right across the piece in the country,
colleges of higher education, colleges of further education teaching
degrees, but there will be some who will say "my God, I have
got to go to one of the top universities". How are the top
universities calculated? They are calculated from some kind of
league table which doubtless editors of the national press decide
they are going to construct, they decide to put a particular value
on entry scores. They can only calculate 60 per cent of the entrants
because only 60 per cent go with A levels and nothing else is
scored. Or they decide to put a value on the research assessment
exercise or the stocking of the library or the teaching quality
or the cost of living in the region, whatever it may be. A league
table is produced, someone is at the top, someone is at the bottom
and they stay there for the year. Our view is that we should prepare
electronic details using all the data that is available, all the
PIs that are available, and then individuals, parents or applicants
or teachers, decide that they will feed into that information
all the variables that they are interested in. If they are not
interested in the research quality of the university, cut it out.
If they are desperate that their young person or they must get
a job at the end of it, look at a university that has an outstanding
record of getting people employed. If you want to do media studies,
a perfectly good degree, you want to be guaranteed a job at the
end of it because the university has got a better reputation,
which university is going to come out at the top, probably somewhere
like Bournemouth. That then becomes the top university so far
as you are concerned.
Chairman
703. Tony, most of us went to elite universities
around this table. Our job as a Select Committee is to represent
the concerns and voices of those people out there who want to
know why for a very long time it has not been entirely clear how
you get into many of these universities and ask the awkward questions.
It is all very well, and I hear some very passionate arguments
in this place about how ridiculous it is to rate universities
one above the other, I have to say many of them have been to Eton
and Oxford who make those passionate claims. I have to balance
as the Chairman of this Committee what people perceive to be the
case out there. This is rather an elite institution here in this
Committee in terms of education. A lot of people out there do
not see it quite the way that those of us do, particularly you,
Tony, who have all the knowledge. We are fascinated to learn today
of all this tremendous information, that universities that have
been failing to get people from a wider socio-economic background
can absolutely target those deficiencies if they want to in a
myriad of ways: picking people up at 14, direct mailing them if
they wanted to, there is a whole range of ways in which they could
do it. Is that right?
(Mr Higgins) I think direct mailing is a slight problem
at the moment. It could be direct mailing if we could get the
whole database set up at 16. They can certainly do it through
targeting where we know that people are not coming from, areas
that are not delivering students and not delivering outcomes.
Dr Harris
704. I just want to clear up something you said
earlier about this problem with colleges allegedly discriminating
against people who may have put Oxford or Cambridge, say, on their
application form. Is that fear known in the state sector and,
if so, could that be a reason why people may be being deterred
from putting Oxford or Cambridge down because the regular universities
might take against them as they see it?
(Mr Higgins) It is known in the school sector. It
was the state sector that first drew it to our attention. You
are right, it is a fear expressed. I have to tell you it is not
wholesale discrimination but there are examples of it and, as
always, there is no smoke without fire. There are fears expressed
sometimes by people in the state sector "should we put down
Oxford or Cambridge because we might be discriminated against?"
705. Not by Oxford and Cambridge?
(Mr Higgins) But by the institutions. That will not
happen in two years' time.
706. I want to ask you about the role of data
in looking at whether the question of student financial support
might be a factor. We have heard from the focus group work done
in Anglia that getting money from jobs now is one factor, that
fear of debt might be another. Is there emerging evidence, even
if it is small, from the rates of applications to Scottish universities
by Scottish students that suggests there is a widening out of
the application process because of what is perceived and generally
recognised to be a more generous approach, particularly to students
from poor backgrounds who are now eligible for maintenance grants
again?
(Mr Higgins) The only evidence we have that would
enable any answer to that to be given is that there was an increase
in the number of applications from Scottish students to Scottish
universities between 15 December, our first closing date, and
the end of March which just happened to coincide with the publication
of the Cubie Report and the decision of the Scottish Executive
now not to charge tuition fees up front. It is still a bit too
early to say. We will see what happens over the rest of the year
and perhaps what happens next year as well.
707. I think you are probably right, it may
well be too early to say clearly. Do you think it would be a good
idea if people are concerned about this matter to wait and examine
that because it is a useful comparator and a good control group
to clarify how much of a factor that is?
(Mr Higgins) It will be an interesting comparator.
Despite the views that were expressed by everybody when not only
tuition fees were introduced but, maybe more importantly, maintenance
grants were abolished, there is no evidence to suggest a fall
in the demand for higher education, even though there is a fall
in demand among mature applicants. That was beginning to happen
anyway and I have a suspicion that the mature market has been
saturated over the years. It is a bit like the dog not barking
in the night, what you do not know is whether there might have
been an increase in applicants which actually has not happened
because of financial constraints. At the moment there is no clear
evidence to put the two together. It will be interesting to see
what happens in the Scottish dimension. It may well get complicated
over the next two or three years because there are signs that
Scottish universities will begin to market to English students
who are doing AS levels and who could be admitted to a Scottish
university for a four year course on the basis of performance
at AS level. There is some evidence to suggest that once the Advanced
Higher is introduced into Scotland, and there is this magic word
"Advanced" in front of it, there may well be students
from Scotland applying to come to universities in England and
Wales who with the Advanced Higher will be going for a three course
because they would be on the job market a year earlier than they
would be if they stayed at a University in Scotland.
Chairman
708. That is very interesting. Is there any
tracking of university applications from students, particularly
mature students, in relation to whether the economy is in a boom
phase or a less successful phase?
(Mr Higgins) We are not economists and we have not
done that. The one thing we have noticed, and we have not come
at this in a scientific way, is that when the economy booms there
is a fall in applicants for teacher training.
709. This is what the Eastern Region were telling
us.
(Mr Higgins) And vice versa.
710. There was a fall in the Eastern Region
because people were going straight into jobs. Just two last things.
We know we have taken a lot of your time, and we are grateful
for that. In terms of UCAS how much pressure is being added to
applications for places in universities generally by the new arrangements
in terms of access from other European Union States. When I visited
Oxford recently I understood that they had 600 German students
alone at Oxford. What are the numbers that we are talking about
here? Do they all apply through UCAS?
(Mr Higgins) They all apply through UCAS. I have not
got the numbers at my fingertips. The numbers applying from the
European Community are falling slightly. In particular they are
falling from the Republic of Ireland but they are falling from
elsewhere. The numbers applying from the rest of the world, from
overseas international students, are increasing now quite significantly,
particularly from China and some of those economies of South East
Asia which looked as though they were in trouble a few years ago.
711. A very last point. You were talking about
your new tariff system. Is there any flaw in it? You said A levels
and GNVQs scored in this tariff but pupils who do well at GCSE
do A levels and those who do less well go on to do GNVQs. That
is generally the case, is it not?
(Mr Higgins) No.
712. Is that not true?
(Mr Higgins) Why should it be?
713. I would have thought generally that is
the case, is it not?
(Mr Higgins) I do not think so.
714. If the stats do not add up in that direction
I am delighted to hear it.
(Mr Higgins) I think some people choose the GNVQ because
they want to do a 16-18 qualification in leisure and tourism,
or whatever, because they want to go into leisure management or
tourist management, something like that.
715. Tony, that is to the side of the point
I was trying to make. I stand corrected if my assumption is wrong
but in your tariff should you not bind in GCSE scores?
(Mr Higgins) That is a very good question. I think
we are at some stage going to have to grapple with that. There
is already some suggestion that because the tariff includes a
score for key skills, and because certain GCSE subjects can be
used as a proxy for key skills, that, therefore, we are already
effectively giving a points tariff to GCSEs. There was an article
in the national press about a fortnight ago which rather took
me by surprise because formally we are not doing it.
Charlotte Atkins
716. Can you predict on the basis of GCSE better
than A level what the result of the degree will be?
(Mr Higgins) There was research years ago showing
that O levels were a better predictor of degree performance than
A levels. I do not think any work has been done on the GCSE as
a predictor.
717. Effectively that is what many universities
choose as their criteria.
(Mr Higgins) When you apply it is the only formal
evidence that is available of a publicly assessed examination.
Now in the future, as of two years' time, the majority of whom
applying will have done AS levels or the first half of vocational
A levels and their scores will be down on the application form,
then we will see whether they do turn out to be a predictor of
degree performance and, indeed, a predictor of A level performance.
Chairman
718. You have all those stats, the relationship
between GCSEs, A levels and degree results?
(Mr Higgins) No, we do not.
719. Which bits do you not have?
(Mr Higgins) We do not hold the degree results. In
computing terms we do not actually have the GCSE data on our database,
on our file. If, in fact, we were able to get this whole business
we were talking about half an hour ago, the graduation certificate,
the student record and the student file, then we would have.
Chairman: Tony, you have been very patient with
us. We have enjoyed the session and we have learned a lot. Some
of us, certainly the Chairman, will be coming to Cheltenham in
the near future. Thank you.
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