Examination of Witness (Questions 440-459)
WEDNESDAY 5 MARCH 2003
SIR HOWARD
NEWBY
440. That is quite concerning, it is not?
(Sir Howard Newby) It is, yes.
441. What is the future then for medical schools?
Is it what the minister has told us, that there will be money
for emerging research? I am not quite clear how that is going
to happen but I will come onto that in a minute. What is the future
for medical research if so many of the institutions are not up
to the grade?
(Sir Howard Newby) One of the reasons why that pattern
of performance is apparent is because medical schools have three
responsibilities and not two, which the rest of the sector has.
They have not only teaching and research but they also have clinical
practice. It is very important that, within the medical schools,
those three interlock. To remind the Committee, we do hand out
the money as a block grant to institutions, we do not earmark
money for particular departments or particular activities, and
it is for institutions locally to manage their affairs in such
a way as they see fit on the basis of the resources they receive.
It is difficult because we fund research, as you well know, in
relation to performance. We make no exceptions for poor performance
for any particular subject other than those—and we will
come back to this—where there is a case because they are
newly emerging and they need to be developed in order to place
themselves on an equal footing with better established subjects,
and of course that is not the case with medicine.
442. Is the RAE the best assessment of quality
research?
(Sir Howard Newby) I think that the RAE, in terms
of its assessment quality, has widespread legitimacy within the
sector. We are, as you know, reviewing the research assessment
exercise and we all know that there are weaknesses with it. I
have said publically many times that the only thing I rule out
is no change and whether, for example, the exercise gives sufficient
weight to inter-disciplinary research and whether it gives sufficient
weight to, if I can put it this way, non-academic forms of research
output are questions at which we are seriously looking.
443. You, as the Chief Executive of HEFCE, have
said publically that the RAE is not necessarily the best assessment
of quality of research being carried out at institutions and we
have the review that is going on but, before that is completed,
ministers decide to swipe money from Level 4 institutions and
give it to 5* or which are effectively, I guess, the new 6*. Is
this the right way to carry on?
(Sir Howard Newby) This comes back to two issues.
One is, can we find sufficient resources to sustain genuine world
class excellence in research in this country across a range of
subject areas which are quite vital to the future economic development
of the UK? In that regard, we have not only our traditional competitors
in North America and continental Europe but we have the emerging
countries in South East Asia in particular in certain key technology
areas and it is very vitally important that we fund truly world
class excellence on a truly sustainable basis. That is the first
point. Those resources have to come from somewhere and I am a
believer that you start off with funding the most excellent research
and work your way down until the money runs out and, in this case,
it ran out towards the tail end of the grade 4s.
444. Do you think that there is a legitimate
grievance for institutions, including the medical schools, and
40% of the medical schools are Level 4, in terms of finding an
appropriate assessment whereby quality can be properly measured?
What we have seen is effectively the Government saying, "Never
mind that, what we want is a further concentration" and I
am aware that you advocate that as well, but some of the institutions
receive quite a piddling amount, do they not?
(Sir Howard Newby) Yes.
445. Out of that piddling amount, some very
necessary research goes on. So, how are we going to have the young
emerging researchers about whom the Government talk if there is
not going to be any money?
(Sir Howard Newby) Again, let me repeat. I think there
is a logic to, as I say, starting with the most excellent research,
making sure that is properly funded and working our way down.
So, we have started with the 5*. We have moved onto the 5s and
I remind the Committee that we are now fully funding the 5s on
a 2001 basis. Then we come to the Level 4s. Are we going to say
that we are going to switch money out of truly world class excellent
research into research which is less than truly world class excellent?
I really think that is not a good way to go. The quantum of research
money available is really a matter for Government to determine
and I do mean Government, I do not just mean DfES. I would like
to fully fund the Level 4s and I would also like to have money
left over from that to do rather more in the areas that Mr Shaw
is describing, that is to bring on newly emerging areas of work
and to bring on new researchers. However, when we look at higher
education as a whole, we cannot possibly sustain world class research
in the 90 universities in England let alone the colleges of higher
education elsewhere. It is simply again not practical to think
in those terms. What we have to do instead is to encourage institutions
to identify their real strengths and focus on them and, if necessary,
to encourage more collaboration between institutions in order
that collectively they are delivering on these agendas even if
individually they may be focusing on particular areas.
446. Eighteen million pounds has been allocated
for three As and three Bs in seven areas: nursing, allied health
professions, social work, art and design, communication, culture
and media studies, dance, drama and performing arts and sports
related studies. How did you arrive at those areas?
(Sir Howard Newby) In two respects. One is that these
are what I would describe as areas which are new arrivals, if
I can put it that way, in higher education, if one thinks of nursing
and allied health professions which have only come in during the
last five years or so. We identified them on the basis of a number
of indicators: the number of staff teaching in those areas with
PhDs, the number of PhD students per FT staff member and research
income per FT staff member. They are all extremely low. Why seven
rather than five or ten? We just simply had to draw a line somewhere.
447. No education research?
(Sir Howard Newby) No because actually education is
neither newly arrived in higher education nor actually is it not
being placed on an equal footing. The purpose of funding these
subjects is not to compensate for poor quality research and education
in this country on the whole has a problem with the quality of
the research, not with the amount of it.
448. You said that there is a problem with the
quality of educational research in this country.
(Sir Howard Newby) It is not as good as it might be
and I speak as a former Chairman of the Economic and Social Research
Council.
449. So, it has all gone then, has it? So we
are not going to do it?
(Sir Howard Newby) No, no, no. Actually, there are
quite substantial resources available for education research in
the normal way, it is simply that, on the indicators I mentioned,
there is a large quantity of researchers, staff and graduate students
engaged in education research. We do have concerns about the overall
quality. This capability funding is not there to compensate for
that. I have already had discussions with the Teacher Training
Agency, which we would like to take further with the Department
for Education and Skills about how together the three of us might
address this problem and that is the way I would like to do it.
450. But there are going to be some real practical
difficulties, are there not? You have said that you wanted to
fund Level 4s. For example, we understand that library and information
management has had the removal of Level 4 in about half the institutions
and Tessa Blackstone, the Minister, is concerned about the performance
and the capability of professions in that area. On the one hand
we have a shortage of librarian professionals and the research
that obviously is necessary to carry out within that area, but
the institutions carrying out that research is having their funding
cut again ahead of any agreed assessment formula.
(Sir Howard Newby) I think that surely, as the nature
of research funding is based upon performance, if you do not perform,
then you do not get the funding.
451. But you have said that the current system
is not satisfactory and we have a review taking place.
(Sir Howard Newby) Yes, but it is not satisfactory
across the board. There are areas where I think we can improve
an already good system that has performed well and delivered a
much higher quality of research management in this country than
almost any other country in the world and we need to build on
that. Ironically, as we have done this review, the sector as a
whole has said that, on balance, they like things more or less
as they are. So, there is not a wide-spread crisis in the sector
about the judgments that are being made through the RAE. There
is always a request for more money and that is really a Government
decision.
Mr Jackson
452. One of the advantages of a dual support
system is that it is possible to make some sort of comparative
and check on performance on these two different methods of funding
research at universities, one of which is bottom up where you
have proposals coming from groups and individuals which are then
judged on a case-by-case basis and peer reviewed by their colleagues
as to their worthwhileness and value—that is the Research
Council route—and the other of which is top down through
your Council with quinquennial, I think it is, reviews in the
performance of departments which then get affected in block grants
which are not differentiated and go to universities. So, it is
very remote from the actual decision about the quality of research
type of operation that you perform. The top down method of research
funding and the dual support system which is your part gives 74%
of the research money you allocate going to the top 25 institutions
whereas the bottom up, I think more truly quality-orientated system,
Research Council system gives 84% of its money to those 25 institutions,
which suggests to me that there may be some problem about whether
your mechanism is efficiently discriminating in terms of determining
where research funding should go in terms of supporting quality.
(Sir Howard Newby) I think I come back to Mr Shaw's
comment. Part of the purpose of the money we put in is to fund,
in a broad sense, research capability. It is to enable academic
staff to get to the starting gate in terms of being competitive
for Research Council grants. I would actually be rather worried
if those figures were the other way around. There has to be a
certain amount of casting bread on the waters element in the funding
which we provide to institutions. So, as I say, those figures
do not surprise me, but I would be more worried if they were the
other way round.
453. This casting bread on the waters method
is a good one and I think that, broadly speaking, I would accept
it but would you accept that there might be a risk of putting
too much bread on the waters?
(Sir Howard Newby) Indeed, yes. It is always a very
fine judgment to be made and it is a judgement. There is no algorithm
we can use to establish this in any objective way. There is a
very fine judgment to make between which elements of the dual
support system should at any point in time be increased or decreased
in relation to the other and, even within our part of the dual
support system, what sums of money we should be allocating for
broadly speaking capability funding as opposed to rewarding excellence.
I think it is important to remind the Committee, if we look at
international comparisons, that our so-called QR, quality related,
research funding, that is the money that comes out of the research
assessment exercise, is broadly equivalent to the endowment income,
in proportional terms, of the major American research universities.
That QR income is the functional equivalent in this country of
the endowments that go into the major American research institutions.
In proportional terms, it is almost exactly the same.
454. I do not want to dwell too much on research
because there are other things to cover but is it not true that
the kind of reaction that many institutions have had to the White
Paper has been that you are going to end up with an even greater
concentration of research in four to six institutions which is
going to send a message throughout the other 90 really that they
are not in the same league in a more profound way than they have
felt that up to now? Up to now, there is almost the thought that,
okay, there are divisions and you could climb a division and some
universities could improve their position quite dramatically over
a period of years. Is there not a message, if the implications
in the White Paper come through, that this much greater . . .
? Some of us would think that even 75% going to 25% is pretty
much concentration. It may be defensible, but is it not true that
the White Paper is going to go for this even more specialised
concentration in four to six institutions?
(Sir Howard Newby) I would query the figure of four
to six. I think that the concentration of research funding in
this country will be rather wider than just four to six institutions,
but I do agree that it will be more concentrated. I am just quibbling
over the actual figure. So, we have to then think in terms of
not looking at this in terms so much of individual institutions
but how institutions can come together to create that research
collaborative critical mass and we also, I have to say—and
this is something that we may move onto in a moment—need
to re-balance what I will call the vocation of higher education
to re-emphasise the importance of teaching and learning and to
move away from the view that, if you are not researching, you
are somehow a second-class citizen in higher education. I think
that is a terrible way to approach a modern higher education system.
Chairman
455. Is there not a view—and there must
be a view because we live in a status driven society—that
if you take all research out of an institution and you are just
a teaching institution, the feeling and the kind of psychological
effect on staff will be that they are in an inferior league?
(Sir Howard Newby) Chairman, there are two points
there. The first is that it is not part of our intention to stop
institutions doing research. We could not if we tried and we do
not want to do that. To remind the Committee, when the new universities
had polytechnic status, they were not funded for research except
for a very small amount at the very end and yet they did a lot
of research and a lot of very good research and of course a lot
of it was funded by other funders and it is important to keep
that going. The second point that I would make is—and I
think I may have said this to the Committee before—that
the English—and I do mean the English—do have a genius
for turning diversity into hierarchy and I am not sure what we
can do about that, to be quite honest. It is very regrettable
that we cannot celebrate diversity rather than constantly turning
it into hierarchy.
456. Is there not a message that also comes
out of the White Paper that what is right for what I would call
big science is different than what you get in terms of . . . I
can understand that you need big institutions, big concentrations,
a lot of capital spend and all the rest for what I call big science,
but that is not the same in humanities, in social science and
in many other disciplines and indeed in some of the new ones that
you are promoting. It is different and yet it seems to me that
you are taking a big science model, or the Government are taking
a big science model and are saying, "Here, this applies to
all research, so all concentration will be in a few institutions."
(Sir Howard Newby) It is clear that the best argument
for concentration of research is indeed to obtain scale economy.
So, not every university can have an atom smasher and indeed not
every country can have an atom smasher, so the trick, in terms
of research management, is that you put those big-scale equipment
in—
Mr Jackson
457. In my constituency?
(Sir Howard Newby) . . . in one place and then the
trick, in managerial terms, is to ensure that the absolutely outstanding
science is performed on that stage. In my old university at Southampton,
we had the oceanography centre precisely developed on that model.
However, I would say that, as we go on and as the demands we make
on the research community and our research students continue to
grow, I am convinced that there are important synergistic effects
from having larger concentrations because we must get away from
the notion, for example, of isolated graduate students and post-docs
working on their own, very isolated from their peers, in ones
and twos in small departments which really cannot sustain them.
That is where collaboration will come in again. I have heard for
the last 15 years since I first went to the ESRC a string of complaints
from graduate students feeling that they are not being properly
supervised, that they are not being trained on proper equipment
or with proper facilities in proper libraries and that they are
feeling very isolated indeed. Indeed, someone related to a member
of this Committee once said to me that her supervision consisted
of two warm glasses of sherry a term! We must put a stop to that
and that will envisage a degree of further concentration. However,
the basic point you make is true. Of course, the arguments in
terms of concentration in arts and humanities subjects are much
less than in big science, although I have to say that arts and
humanities are gradually moving in that direction as well.
458. I want to pick up that very penetrating
phrase of yours about the English turning diversity into hierarchy
and put to you that I think it is actually a very, very penetrating
remark but that one of the dangers of course is that those who
wish to fight hierarchy—and probably we all do in the English
context—often choose to do so by eliminating diversity.
(Sir Howard Newby) I would agree with you and I repeat
that I think we need to re-invent the vocation of higher education
and re-balance the teaching vocation with the research vocation.
Ms Munn
459. This relates to some of the issues you
were talking about at the start in terms of funding. Given what
the Government said about the expectation that the expansion will
come through foundation degrees, are you planning that institutional
funding levels from 2004 onwards will be based on the assumption
that there will be no increase in the number of students enrolled
on the traditional three year honours-type degree?
(Sir Howard Newby) Only a very, very modest increase.
We see the bulk of the very few additional student places we have
going into foundation degrees and the bulk of those will probably
be in FE colleges.
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