Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


33. Memorandum submitted by Staffordshire University

  Thank you for your invitation to provide our views on the White Paper, which we are pleased to accept. Our comments and observations relate principally to the implications for Staffordshire University alone and not for the sector as a whole.

  We broadly welcome the vision set out in the White Paper and the recognition of the significant funding challenges facing the higher education sector. The commitments to fair and widened access, coherent and valued vocational pathways, enhanced status of teaching, support for flexible modes of study and to knowledge transfer activity are all supportive of our own particular mission.

  We question the broad generalisation that the connection between an institution's research and teaching activities is indirect. To be at the forefront of teaching excellence or knowledge transfer innovation, we strongly believe that we need practitioners who are at that the cutting edge of their field. This leadership and dynamism can only be achieved through applied scholarship and research. We will therefore be continuing our research activity and hope recognition for this does not get lost in the continuing overemphasis on research selectivity and associated large financial rewards.

  We welcome the key proposals in Chapter 3 (Higher Education and business) and look forward to a permanent third stream of funding. Whilst the focus on technology transfer underpins much of our activity, it remains unclear how our commitment and contributions to social, cultural and community development will be supported.

  The focus upon teaching and learning as "central to the purpose of higher education" is welcomed. However, in view of our earlier comments on research, we hope that it will not lead to an unhelpful stratification of the HE system either by default or design. Funding allocations have shown that there is still not a sufficiently radical rebalancing of funding to give teaching excellence equal parity with research excellence. It is recognised that the promotion of best practice through a national Academy for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching, the development of Centres of Excellence, the National Teaching Fellowship scheme and pay reward systems for teaching excellence is an attempt to address this issue. Whilst we are well placed to engage in these initiatives, we firmly believe that their envisaged impact on parity of esteem should be monitored closely and evaluated.

  We support the Government's continuing commitment to fair and widened access and can contribute significantly to the development of Foundation Degrees through our nationally recognised FE Consortium—SURF (Staffordshire University Regional Federation). Flexibility of delivery is also one of our key strategic objectives and we look forward to the detail on how this might be supported. The proposal to establish a new national body to act as a focus for the co-ordination of Foundation Degree developments is of particular interest to us and one where we could offer particular expertise.

  Reservations about increased tuition fees remain and we will need to be convinced not only that non-traditional students are not disadvantaged but also that the sector gains additional new monies through any new funding arrangements.

  Finally, we note the proposed introduction of an Access Regulator, question its value and ask for reassurance that the bureaucracy and costs involved in this and the many other ring fenced initiatives outlined in the White Paper will be kept to an absolute minimum. They should not become an unproductive drain on already meagre resources.

  We look forward to receiving the results of this consultation exercise.

March 2003


 
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