Examination of Witnesses (Questions 660-679)
MONDAY 17 MARCH 2003
SIR RICHARD
SYKES AND
PROFESSOR RICK
TRAINOR
660. Professor Trainor, is there unanimity on
that one?
(Professor Trainor) Roughly speaking, yes. One of
the most encouraging aspects of the White Paper is the recognition
by Government of how important universities are to the future
of the country—economically, socially and culturally—and
how the various demands being put on the university system require
more resources to be put into it, and not least, as Sir Richard
says, in terms of academic pay.
661. Can I move on from that to perhaps what
is more contentious, and I will stay with you, Professor Trainor,
to ask whether you welcomed equally the flexibility, potentially,
for charging at universities?
(Professor Trainor) I have mixed feelings, I think,
because, as the Government has made the decision that the additional
money is going to be raised through contributions from the students
and their families, as well as from the more general public purse,
I am very pleased that this flexibility has been given to all
universities, not, as was suggested at one stage, to only a few,
because the resource gap has affected all universities, albeit
in different ways. The negative side of my feeling relates to
a worry about how the new contribution system will affect the
willingness of students from socially-disadvantaged backgrounds
to come forward. It helps, of course, that the Government has
opted for a payment in arrears, rather than a payment in advance,
of the additional fee. But there is a big gamble involved there,
I think, given the research which shows the extent to which there
is real debt aversion in some of the more disadvantaged social
groups; and I think we are holding our collective breaths, maybe,
for 2006, to see how that will work out.
662. Sir Richard, can I come back to you and
ask whether you think £3,000 was a sensible cap on the diversity
of fee?
(Sir Richard Sykes) No, I do not think it is a sensible
cap, because what it does is encourage everybody to charge £3,000.
And I think what we should have tried to do here is create a market,
because we have a market, not an exact one, but I think if we
had put the top level at £5,000 then I think there are institutions
who may have charged nothing, there are institutions that may
have charged one, two, or five, but I think, with three, it is
so close to what we do today that most universities will just
go to £3,000. So I think it does not actually achieve what
we want. And you have to put it in perspective; it will not really
come into effect, seriously, until 2010, and then we know that
basically it is capped at that until perhaps 2012. So it is not
really helping the universities dramatically.
663. I think other colleagues probably are keen
to come in on this, unless, Professor Trainor, you wanted to comment
on that?
(Professor Trainor) I think Sir Richard has an important
point there, that it is not a massive sum of money[2]
and, in effect, it is fixed, allowing for what we anticipate to
be a small amount of inflation, for quite a number of years ahead.
And I think it is an open question, given all the other variables
concerned—sort of changes in public expenditure levels,
and so on—whether that will be enough to make up the funding
gap in the period from, say, 2006 to 2010.
Chairman
664. Sir Richard, it is attributed to you that
in the summer you put fear in the heart of every good, decent,
Daily Mail reader, by suggesting that you might have to
charge an economic rate of £15,000 a year. I do not know
if you contested that you ever said that, I think, once, in private
conversation, you did; but is that the true economic rate for
the cost of running universities?
(Sir Richard Sykes) No, no. What we said was, and
we were totally misinterpreted, what does it cost; we know this
from the Treasury review, of course, it costs £10,500 to
educate a student at Imperial, because they are lab-based courses,
everything is science and technology and medicine, so the average
cost is £10,500. Today, we do not receive that, of course,
even from the Government, and, the student contribution, we are
about £2,500 short. But if we want to maintain the quality
of that course, that is what we have got to do; and so we take
the money from somewhere, as you know, and you would probably
take the money from somewhere else as well. Even with the £3,000,
we still would not be up to the £10,500. The point is, today
we charge students who come from outside the European Union £15,000
for some of our courses; so the two things got confused. One,
the cost is £10,500, that is the cost, today, and some people
pay for some courses, because they are much more expensive than
others, £15,000. And our view was that if you really wanted
to run a scheme where people who could not afford, financially,
to go to university, we would set up bursaries and pay for not
only their courses but for their maintenance. And, therefore,
if you were going to do that, because we know today 60% of people
coming to Imperial do not actually pay the full £1,100, so
we know what percentage we would expect to have to pay some sort
of bursary to, if you had a scheme that charged, so those who
could afford it would have to pay £15,000 a year, those who
could not afford it, at the bottom end of the scale, would be
getting not only course but maintenance. So that was one model
that we proposed where some people would not have had to contribute
at all.
665. So you would have agreed with HEFCE that
you would have liked a higher limit, not just £3,000, in
2006. What limit would you have put on it?
(Sir Richard Sykes) I think, in this climate, I would
have a £5,000 limit on it, I think that would have been fair,
because I think you have to put a limit on it, otherwise the whole
thing gets out of control, but, if we take everything that is
given in the White Paper, a £5,000 limit for this period
that we are talking about, I think, would have been more sensible.
666. You have got a reputation of a bit of worshipping
at the altar of the free market, Sir Richard; why not just say
what it costs?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Because we are not ready for it.
I think that is a transition, and you must not move these things
too quickly. When the Dearing Report came out, in 1997, I think
if we had done what we have done now in 1997 we would have been
in a transitional stage where now we could have gone to maybe
£5,000 or £6,000; so if we had started at three then
now we would be at five or six, so, in five years, we could start
to release it more. But, in my opinion, it would not be a smart
move to go from the situation we are in today just to open it
up, a free-for-all, because that would be a very strange market.
(Professor Trainor) I agree with that.
667. Would you be happy with £5,000 now?
(Professor Trainor) If we have to pick a figure, I
think £3,000 looks like being too constraining. I think perhaps
there is a fundamental problem with picking a figure three years
ahead.
668. But you think that every institution is
going to go for the £3,000 then?
(Professor Trainor) I think it is too early to say,
Chairman, I think it seems much more likely now than it did when
these things were being debated a year or two ago, partly because
people see it as quite a modest amount, and that it is three years
down the road.
Chairman: Moving on now to look at expansion
in higher education, and David Chaytor.
Mr Chaytor
669. Can I ask you both to say where you think
the expansion in your own institutions will come from? The Government
has set its target of 50% of young people, we know that, it has
talked about foundation degrees being the main route of expansion,
but I think it would be interesting if you could tell us about
your own views of expansion?
(Sir Richard Sykes) I think, in my institution, there
will not be any expansion, because we do not have any capacity
to expand, basically; no, nothing will change significantly. But
then that is a pretty unique environment, in the sense that we
are constrained by space and constrained in the courses that we
give and the nature of those courses. So, I suspect, not very
significantly.
670. What about overseas students, you have
talked about a lucrative overseas market; that is not in itself
sufficiently lucrative to finance the purchase of space that you
would need to extend?
(Sir Richard Sykes) If you look at the Treasury, again,
the transparency review, running with Treasury numbers, actually
we still do not make money on overseas students, we get a lot
more money than we do for home students, but still we make a loss
on overseas students. So you would have to charge a lot more money
if you wanted to do that.
671. So the only way to expansion is merger?
(Sir Richard Sykes) Yes; you may say that.
672. In spite of what happened over UCL, do
you think that there is scope for further mergers within London?
(Sir Richard Sykes) I think there is scope for further
merger, I think there is scope for much more collaboration; however,
it is not the nature of the sector to merge or collaborate unless
pressures really are put on the system. So I think it is going
to be quite difficult, even though there are hints in the White
Paper that this will be encouraged and developed and there may
be money set aside to help this, I think it is going to be quite
difficult.
673. And in terms of just your general views
of the sector as a whole, leaving aside Imperial, what is your
view of the wisdom of the 50% target and the use of foundation
degrees?
(Sir Richard Sykes) I suspect that 50% was a number
plucked out of the air quite some time ago, and then it became
very clear that if you really wanted to send 50% of that cohort
to universities the cost was going to be absolutely horrendous;
and, in fact, maybe, the people are not there. So I think there
has been a lot of back-tracking on this 50%. I think now we are
coming back down to say, well, a lot of these people will be foundation
degrees, and, of course, if you look in the White Paper, we have
now got a way for the NHS universities to get established pretty
quickly, because you can become a university without offering
higher degrees and doing research. So I suspect it will be quite
easy to get to that number of 50% by manipulation. So, yes, it
is not going to be by the traditional route of going to university,
it is going to be foundation degree courses, and I just worry,
and I think the question came up earlier, that employers will
look at these foundation degrees and say, "What is that;
we're used to HNCs, we're used to HNDs, we know the value of these,
but what is the value of a two-year degree, a two-year foundation?"
And I think we just need to get some clarification there, how
these will be seen and valued by employers, I think that is going
to be critically important.
674. Professor Trainor, from the Greenwich point
of view, how do you see your expansion?
(Professor Trainor) Like Sir Richard, I think that
there are some difficulties with foundation degrees. A key issue,
as he says, is the way in which employers regard them, and, of
course, with foundation degrees, they need not just to accept
the products but actually to be in at the outset in the programme,
and there needs to be some education of employers in that regard,
I suppose. Foundation degrees will be part of our expansion, in
collaboration with the network of partner colleges (further education
colleges) that we have. I think that it would be odd, however,
if all of our expansion were to occur solely through foundation
degrees; it does not seem to me logical that the new students
coming into the sector who are not in higher education at all
should have their choices narrowed in that way. So I would see
foundation degrees as one part of expansion but by no means the
whole. But I think that this link between higher education and
further education institutions is probably key to the expansion
occurring more generally, and I support the expansion. And perhaps
this is based partly on my prejudices I have carried with me from
my country of origin, but I think that if there has ever been
an overeducated society it has not been discovered yet, and I
think the UK has profited a great deal from the broadening of
higher and further education in the last 15 or 20 years. As far
as mergers are concerned—I think probably I have quite a
different perspective on this than Sir Richard, although I think
our views overlap, in that I agree with him that there is a great
deal of untapped potential in the system for greater collaboration
that is well short of merger. Where I disagree with him, I think,
is, that I think there is already quite a lot of momentum behind
the tendency to these collaborations, so, for example, we are
engaging with the University of Kent, and hopefully with other
higher education institutions, around our existing Medway campus;
also we are part of six higher education institutions in London,
south of the river, anticipating, on the basis of a research project,
a major collaboration on widening participation. I feel that one
of the things that research project has thrown up is the extent
to which the orientation of the people not yet in higher education
is overwhelmingly local, not just in their educational experience
but also in employment terms, socially, etc. And I feel that the
existing higher education institutions have a lot to contribute,
in collaboration with each other[3]and
that quite a lot would be lost, and certainly a lot of time and
expense consumed, in mergers. Sometimes, I am sure, mergers make
sense, but I see them, in no sense as a panacea for the system.
675. Your vision is of infinite potential expansion
of student numbers then?
(Professor Trainor) For my own institution?
676. Yes, and generally for the system?
(Professor Trainor) Infinity is a long way, is it
not?
677. But you would not stop at 50%?
(Professor Trainor) I think 50% is an ambitious target,
for the moment. I would not say that that is as far as the system
should ever go, but getting, in England, from 43 to 50%—where
I was for 20 years in Scotland they are already at 50%, so 50%
is not an unobtainable figure—but getting securely from
43 to 50%, being sure that the retention in terms of graduation
rates remains at what is, in international terms, quite a high
level, I think that will be enough of a bite to chew off at once.
And perhaps five or 10 years down the line we could contemplate
whether we wanted to go another stage beyond that.
678. In terms of the balance between home students
and overseas students, do you have an aggressive policy in recruiting
overseas students, and do you think there comes a point at which
an institution can be distorted by putting more emphasis on overseas
students than UK students?
(Professor Trainor) I would not call our policy aggressive,
it is active, and we have increased our absolute number and our
proportion of overseas students significantly. Conceivably, I
guess, you could end up with an institution, or a set of institutions,
with too many overseas students, but the institution in the UK
system with the highest percentage of overseas students, LSE,
is a great success, academically, so I think there is not yet
proof that many overseas students are bad for an institution.
Most UK institutions are a long way short of that. And I think
these overseas students are bringing us not just money (and, as
Sir Richard says, perhaps, in strict accounting terms, that is
not a good reason to want them anyway) I think what they are contributing
is a huge amount of social and academic enrichment to the large
majority of UK students in the system.
Chairman
679. Are the EU students a drain on Imperial,
Sir Richard, only in the sense that you said there are not fine
research institutions in Germany and France and other European
countries, and so that means they would be more attracted to places
like Imperial, and they would pay the same fees as home students?
(Sir Richard Sykes) That is exactly right, but the
largest number of EU students we have come from Greece, and then
after that it would be France, Germany, but they are not huge
numbers. It is interesting, I guess, for all sorts of reasons,
the maintenance, the costs of just living away from your own country
play an important role in that, unless you get some sort of scholarship.
2 Note by witness: In teams of extra resources
for universities by 2010 or 2012; it may, of course, be a very
large amount for a prospective student from a poor family. Back
3
Note by witness: For example, in attempting to use their
existing local links to encourage people from their localities
to aspire to higher education. Back
|
