Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 540-559)

WEDNESDAY 5 MARCH 2003

PROFESSOR DAVID EASTWOOD AND DR PETER KNIGHT

Jeff Ennis

  540. The expansion into foundation degrees, how do you see that panning out? Will it be the vehicle for FE or will it be the vehicle for HE or what?
  (Professor Eastwood) I think if foundation degrees are going to succeed, the White Paper positions them correctly, that is to say, at the interface for FE and HE. I think quite a lot more work needs to be done. I think it is probably unfortunate that the White Paper's emphasis on growing foundation degrees is translated into a virtual cessation of growth at a traditional undergraduate level because I am not yet persuaded that the student demand is there on that kind of scale. I also think that the foundation degrees do not just interface with what traditionally has been done in HE, but they also interface with 14 to 19 qualifications. Wearing another hat, I am about to join Mike Tomlinson's group to look at that and I think it is only actually when that group has completed its work and the Government has responded to whatever recommendations come out of that group that we will be able to look at the landscape in terms of the ways in which students might reasonably think about progression through it. So I think part of my worry about foundation degrees is to some extent they are hanging out there at the moment in advance of some of the other transformations of the qualification framework that we need. Nevertheless, I think that the HE sector's response to the foundation degree proposals has been broadly enthusiastic. Institutions like mine are looking afresh at the kind of partnerships we will need, and are in discussions with LSC as well as potential partner institutions. If I can just flag this, because I do look after the University of East Anglia, I think the whole question of progression in rural areas and ambition in rural areas is something the White Paper does not address and it is something yet we do not have a very good handle on.

  541. I just wonder if Peter has any thoughts on this different from David's.
  (Dr Knight) I think foundation degrees are doomed to succeed. I have got reservations about the sort of producer culture that says that this is what people want when there is not a lot of evidential base to support that. Foundation degrees, I suspect, will succeed best at the moment in niche markets where you identify a particular industry or particular activity and are able to recruit and retain in that area. Higher national diplomas, higher national certificates are well understood by students, well understood by employers and are well understood by both the universities that do them and the further education colleges, so rebadging them may not add a great deal of value. The other thing I have got to say is that in the last five years, we have been through at least three policy changes in terms of the relationships between universities and FE colleges, so part of my job description at the moment, I think, is to isolate and insulate our further education college partners from whatever the latest change in government policy is because that can be quite disruptive as degrees take three years to get through, foundation degrees two years, so the planning timescale for a lot of higher education provision is longer than the lifetime of a particular aspect of government policy.

  542. In response to an earlier question in terms of developing the foundation degree strategy within each HE establishment, Sir Howard said that he felt there was a greater need to engage employers more in the development of that programme. Could you articulate a best practice model, in your opinion, which would actually achieve what I think is a very important goal of engaging the employers more?
  (Dr Knight) The difficulty in engaging employers is that the employers are not necessarily a coherent group and they do not necessarily know or agree what they want. The easiest employers to engage are large, monolithic employers like in the car industry or aerospace—

  543. But that is how it has always been done in the past?
  (Dr Knight) Yes, and I must admit that at the moment I am looking for easy wins in terms of foundation degrees. When we have gained a bit of experience, it may be possible to move on. We have got a foundation degree in classroom assistance, which is working well at the moment. The employer is of course the local education authority, large, monolithic, easy to negotiate with and you can have the dialogue, but actually the employers are the schools and that is much harder not least because they are a little short of time to have that engagement.

  544. Do you think it is easier for further education establishments to engage with local employers than HE establishments?
  (Dr Knight) Actually, yes. The further education colleges have their roots more into the locality and if I look at the colleges that I know well in Birmingham, they have a better record of a more diverse recruitment of students than UCE has and they have better records in terms of contact with local employers because UCE operates over a wider canvas, so is the further education sector in some ways better placed than the university sector if engagement with employers is the criterion? Yes.

  545. So effectively you are sort of backing the need for greater collaboration between FE and HE so that you can actually tap into that expertise more in terms of developing foundation degrees?
  (Dr Knight) I would like to see, from the students' perspective, a seamless route between further education and higher education and at the moment that seamless route is at times difficult to introduce.
  (Professor Eastwood) I would just like to make two comments. Different parts of the country are configured differently. My university is the second largest business in the county and that actually may well mean that one of the areas we need to look at in terms of foundation degree provision in terms of is some of our own staff, but I think in terms of—

Chairman

  546. Your region is one of the worst performing in terms of students going on to higher education.
  (Professor Eastwood) It is not as good as it ought to be.

  547. Evidence to this Committee from a consortium from your region suggested it was the worst in the UK.
  (Professor Eastwood) You may well find that changes over time.

  Mr Jackson: You may be allowed to charge fees!

Chairman

  548. But the Secretary of State has not named you.
  (Professor Eastwood) I sit in his constituency with great pleasure. Actually that does go back to my point earlier about what happens in rural areas and that is emphatically actually not a post-18 issue. We outperform all of our benchmarks actually as a university in terms of inclusion, reach and so forth, so I think that is a locational question. The other point I wanted to make, which actually does bear on where universities sit, is that the great majority of employers within Norfolk are SMEs, often more `S' than `M', and getting them, one, to find time to partner is difficult and, two, getting them on the kind of timescale Peter was talking about to articulate what their needs are, for example, is difficult. Often theirs are the needs for the day after tomorrow, and whether it is FE or HE we are not necessarily the best providers of that kind of skill training, nor do I think we should give young people or indeed life-long learners who come into education skills which have obsolescence built into them, so the key will be establishing the kind of dialogue, particularly with SMEs, which enables us in the case of foundation degrees to deliver something that of course will give short-term value and employability, but also will give something of long-term worth to the students who go through them.

Ms Munn

  549. I would just like to come back to this issue that David Eastwood raised in his response on this topic, which is about an assumption, which worried me, about the cessation of the growth in these so-called traditional degrees. Given that that seems to be what is intended, is that what is going to happen?
  (Professor Eastwood) I think it is interesting you raise this question because we are recasting our corporate plan and of course we have to plan in an environment where we are told that there will not be additional student numbers for traditional undergraduate degrees and, nevertheless, we are positioning our institution on the assumption that policy will not fully be carried through. I think moving in a sort of whole-hogging way towards foundation degrees at the moment is premature. It runs ahead of the market and I think for many students foundation degrees may be an end in themselves, but for many others they will be a stepping stone and we need to have the pathways to progression in place.

  550. So the Government cannot stop an expansion in three-year degrees?
  (Professor Eastwood) It can because it will not fund them and we will not get the funded places.

  551. I suppose my concern about this issue was that if we are expanding education and at the same time we are looking at access, the implication is that those students who currently are not going into universities from lower socio-economic backgrounds are going to go into foundation degrees and that just seemed wrong to me.
  (Professor Eastwood) What the White Paper says is quite interesting. Whether we think it carries through is another question, but what the White Paper in essence says is that we freeze participation on traditional undergraduate degrees at the 43% we have achieved. The 50% target is still there and that will be achieved through foundation degrees and through HE/FE partnerships. However, elsewhere in the White Paper, it says that all institutions should widen access, so then the social mix, going back to the discussion you had with Sir Howard earlier, in all institutions will be adjusted, so if all of that is achieved, then the effect will be that some of the kind of students who are currently doing undergraduate degrees will have to register for foundation degrees, not having undergraduate degrees available to them, particularly if you factor in what is happening demographically over the next six years.

  552. Well, that is precisely the question I asked to Margaret Hodge when she was before the Committee. I am not sure I got a very clear answer on that. If that is what is going to happen, is there evidence that some of the students who are currently going into the three-year degrees will be better off and would get more from, and want even to go into, a foundation route, given that perhaps there are not that many foundation degrees currently available and if there were more available, they may see them as more attractive?
  (Professor Eastwood) The evidence from my institution is that, as Howard was saying, we have very high rates of graduation, so the people, the students who are coming in to do traditional undergraduate degrees are benefiting from them, and they are leaving the institution with good and marketable qualifications. Our principal partner college, and FE institution, through which we have been trying to drive forward on foundation degrees, has struggled to recruit on foundation degrees, so at the moment I think the issue is that we need further to enhance the quality and appeal of foundation degrees and, secondly, we need, as I was saying earlier, to work on a broad front which, I would argue, goes right back to 14-plus education and the benefits of the policy, if there are benefits, will be experienced seven or eight years downstream, not by 2005 or 2006.

  553. So given then that there is going to be an availability of bursaries for foundation degrees, will that be a sufficient incentive perhaps, given that tuition fees are going to be going up, for more people to switch or for new people to choose foundation degrees?
  (Professor Eastwood) I would say that the combination of the likely discounting in price on foundation degrees and the availability of bursaries will do something to kick-start demand.
  (Dr Knight) I may put my foot in it here, in which case I shall attempt to retract it. Most universities are close to capacity. In other words, the discretionary space we have got in our buildings and our facilities is limited. When you are looking at your corporate plan, if the Government says, "No increase in full-time undergraduates", then, by and large, you accept that. If you have got business opportunities elsewhere, which could include the recruitment of international students, could include full-cost courses, or could include CPD professional development working with industry and commerce, that might overall contribute better to the financial stability of the university. You have the foundation degree and you have the educational aspirations and you have the mission and the ethical values of the institution and all the time your corporate-planning is a balance between what you need in order to keep the business going and what you want to achieve in terms of ideals and values. The ideals and values not least in terms of how much the university is going to get for the foundation degree is at the moment not only unclear, but unknown, so my suspicion is that as we review our plans and we look to position ourselves in 2006, every university will be asking itself the question, and either they may believe in this initiative or they may not, or it may be a good thing for widening access, but, "If we look at the income and expenditure, what is the balance to the university and what is the balance to the student?" I suspect caution is going to be the approach for the next year or so until things become clearer because there are other business activities elsewhere which we can pursue with greater certainty.

Mr Jackson

  554. I am a bit worried about whether we are not seeing another application of Newby's rule, that in Britain diversity equals hierarchy and hierarchy is bad, therefore, diversity is bad. Is there not potentially a conflict in the devising of a foundation degree as a complete educational experience in itself and, on the other hand, as conceived as being a preparation for feeding into, as all our witnesses have been saying is highly desirable, an honours degree, i.e., adding up to a five-year undergraduate course? Is there not some tension between these two and is there not actually something to be said for trying to conceive of these foundation degrees as being a complete entity in themselves?
  (Professor Eastwood) I am not sure it would be two plus three. In fact I am convinced it will not be two plus three, so the issue is whether it is two plus one or two plus two. On the question of whether or not there is an inherent tension here, I do not see that the tension is any greater than the tension in devising an undergraduate programme, which for some students will be an end in itself and for other students will be a pathway to a higher degree and to doctoral study. That is to say, I think we have been there before and I think we were capable of constructing curricula which serve more than one purpose.

  Chairman: I want to move on to access to higher education.

Mr Chaytor

  555. Before we go on to access, can I come back to the point that was made right at the start about the prescriptive nature of the White Paper and ask both of you really just to tell us in a bit more detail about the funding base of each of your institutions. I think in terms of UCE, Dr Knight, you mentioned the figure of 33% from HEFCE, but that is not the total amount of public funding to UCE, so what is the balance between your foreign earnings, your fee income, your research income and your HEFCE core income?
  (Dr Knight) Total turnover at UCE is about £105 million. The HEFCE grant, subject to whatever Howard is saying, is about £33 million. Our next largest income stream is contracts with the Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence for the training of nursing and paramedical staff and that comes down to about £22 million. Now, whilst that is public funding, that is done on a contractual basis with a legally binding contract which takes forever to negotiate, but everybody is grown up and it is signed and sealed by lawyers and effectively we are a private supplier to a public body, and I can live quite well with that. There is about £3 million from the teacher training agency, which is effectively the same as HEFCE. After that, international students are quite modest at £5-6 million, full-cost student activity probably comparably, and the remainder is a glorious hotch-potch of European funding, ERDF, assistance from Advantage West Midlands, contracts from individual companies, 20 teaching company schemes which are working with small and medium-sized enterprises, so it is a hugely diverse income base that you have to manage.

  556. But over 80% of that is from public funds?
  (Dr Knight) Ultimately, yes, as the economy is.

  557. And in terms of East Anglia?
  (Professor Eastwood) The big difference in terms of the comparison with UCE, is that, depending on how well my colleagues perform, but somewhere around £26-27 million will be research income from research councils and from other research bodies. There will be roughly £32 million next year from HEFCE with a turnover of £120 million next year. I think it is quite important to underscore the point that Peter has just made, that our relationship with HEFCE, which, in my terms, is roughly about a quarter of the total turnover of the institution, is quite different from the relationship I have with other parts of the public sector. You are absolutely right, that if you take us in the round, we remain predominantly a publicly-funded institution, but actually all my non-QR research income is through competitive bids by my research activity staff and my relationship with both the NHS and the TTA is a contractual one where we deliver contracts which we may or may not deliver at a loss. We also do lots of things on a pro bono basis of course. That means that the way in which we manage the interface with public funding is quite varied across the piece, right down to the way in which we structure the institution, and I am embarking on a restructuring of the UEA which, in part, will have to reflect the fact that 25% of my activity is health-related, so it relates to WDC and other health funders and contracts, but also in a rather peculiar way to HEFCE as well. I think it would be wrong to conclude from simply aggregating the numbers that other than the hotel side of the business and the overseas side of the business, everything else is broadly public funded and that it is all the same because it is not, it is very different.

  558. Accepting our different relationships with different sources of public funding, it is the issue of prescription in terms of the contracts with the Department of Health that UCE need. The nature of the contract is that it is prescriptive. The point I am trying to raise is whether it is entirely logical if so much of your income is publicly funded that there will be different forms of prescription that go along with that, whether it is contracts which are individually negotiated or whether it is the core allocation from HEFCE.
  (Dr Knight) Of course one interesting thing is that the White Paper does not affect the work that we do with the Department of Health.

  559. But it is a different form of prescription.
  (Dr Knight) Yes, and it is more prescriptive in terms of the provision of general higher education, particularly at an undergraduate level, than it has ever been in the past, so it is more prescriptive.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2003
Prepared 10 July 2003