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WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2003 __________ Members present: Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair __________ BARONESS WARWICK OF UNDERCLIFFE, a Member of the House of Lords, Chief Executive, Universities UK, PROFESSOR RODERICK FLOUD, President, Universities UK and Vice-Chancellor, London Metropolitan University, DR GEOFFREY COPLAND, Vice-Chancellor, University of Westminister, and PROFESSOR ARTHUR LUCAS CBE, Principal, King's College, London, examined. Chairman
(Professor Floud) In terms of the actual numbers, I think it would be sensible if we provided you with the calculations that we have used in order to come to that conclusion, but I think it is not argued with by the funding council. Of course, if you add everything in, then we accept that there is a substantial increase but, once you start stripping out special initiatives and capital, then it comes down to a small increase in the funding for teaching, probably only a zero real terms increase. We find that very concerning because I think that one of the main aspects of our submission to the spending review and therefore to the discussions that led up to the White Paper was that the teaching function, both in terms of capital, for which there has been some relief, but principally in terms of recurrent funding, has simply not kept pace with the increasing number of students and that therefore there has been, as we all know, a very substantial decrease in the funding of students and this settlement, although better than previous settlements because there is, as far as we can tell, no efficiency gain at the moment, although there may be later on in the three years of the spending review settlement, is better than previously - and we should acknowledge that and welcome it - but we still do not believe that it is sufficient. Of course, the funding heralded in the White Paper coming from an increase in student fees is indeterminate in that nobody knows at the moment how many universities will wish to or be allowed to charge additional fees and, in any case, that does not come on-stream until 2006. So, for 2003 to 2006, we are very worried about the overall position on funding of teaching and particularly worried about the impact of that on our attempts. You will be seeing, I understand, the trade unions after this. I think we would all agree that we have made very good progress on modernising pay structures but that has to be paid for and I wonder if I could ask Dr Copland to say a little more about that aspect of it. (Dr Copland) There has been a considerable amount of work done with very good partnership between the trade unions and employers in terms of modernising pay structures, so we have got part-way through this but we are nowhere near the end of that process. The estimates that we have put into the spending review indicated that we needed additional funding in order to complete that modernisation process. That says nothing about baseline pay or any of that yet. So, we are faced with a situation that we are half-way through negotiations which have been going very well, but it is actually quite difficult to see with the baseline funding that we are looking at now how we are actually going to pay for the inevitable costs of the modernisation agenda, the collapsing of pay scales and the rounding up that always happens when you undertake that sort of process. So, we have a problem facing us. I hope that we are being pessimistic about it but I am not sure that we are. (Dr Copland) Pay across the board is not going to get substantially better. There is money in there for special initiatives and for rewarding excellent researchers and excellent teachers and of course we welcome that, but it has been acknowledged publically by Government as well as by the employers that the pay level generally across the sector is inadequate. We are having recruitment problems and retention problems of staff. We can address little bits of that through some of the little bits of specialist money, but it does not address the fundamental issue about pay for all staff. One of the weaknesses of the White Paper is that it only refers to pay for academic staff. Half of the employees in the sector are those people who actually make universities work as well as the teaching: all the support staff, all the technical staff and all the administration staff are not even mentioned in this. (Dr Copland) A very big question mark. (Professor Lucas) On the pay issue? (Professor Lucas) I agree very much with Geoffrey that it is a real problem in those three years we are talking about before new funds come on-stream and I think that those three years are quite critical in terms of the continuity of the modernisation process, of the pay structures and simplification of the scales. All of those will cost. I do not think it makes very much difference what part of the sector one is looking at in terms of the impact this is going to have. I think it is a real problem for every part of the sector. (Professor Floud) Chairman, I think you have drawn attention to one of the paragraphs in the opening statement, but I think we should reiterate that we began with the statement, "There's much that is positive in the White Paper. We're pleased that the Government has acknowledged the recurrent and investment needs of the sector and, in the outcome of the 2002 spending review, has taken the first steps towards closing the gap. £3.7 billion is a very substantial sum ..." particularly in the context of other demands on public expenditure and other aspects of the education budget. So, we are grateful for that but we also recognise - and the Government recognise in the White Paper - that much more is needed. (Professor Floud) We certainly are very pleased at some of the changes that have taken place in the student support mechanism and your Committee has itself drawn attention to the mess of the existing student support arrangements. The re-introduction of a maintenance grant, however small - and one accepts the Secretary of State's assurances that he would like it to become bigger - is very welcome and other changes in the student support and fee mechanisms, in particular the ending of the up front fee payment is also, I think, very welcome. We also welcome the increased funding for science and for science infrastructure which is about to be announced and that is a good thing and is needed. We are not trying to seem ungrateful because we recognise that the Government have done a very great deal, it is just that we are pointing out that, as they themselves have accepted, the backlog of under-investment in the universities for 20 years will necessarily, we accept, take some time to be made up. (Professor Floud) We could certainly make good use of £1.2 billion although, as we pointed out, it probably needs to be significantly more than that! I think a rather neglected feature of the White Paper which I think we also are content with is the shift of emphasis from young people as being considered appendages of their parents to being independent citizens with responsibility for paying their own way. That is of course how we have tended to treat students, even 18 year olds and certainly the older students, and the recognition and the switch therefore of emphasis from parents paying to students paying, albeit over a longer period, is one that I think we would feel is consistent with our view of the students we now have. (Professor Floud) As somebody who is still supporting a 31 year old at university, for special reasons because she was ill for some time, I think that is a general experience. Of course parents will continue to support their children as they do in all kinds of different ways. Nevertheless, we think it sensible that the focus should shift to education as an individual investment decision, if you like. Despite some of the criticism about the numbers, it is still true that it is a very good investment and therefore one would feel it encouraged and continued to encourage students to make. If parents do support, then that is a matter for them. If they do not support this way, they will probably support some other way. (Professor Lucas) May I just add to that. I think one of the concerns with the current system, the assumption that parents will pay, is that some students whose parents do not pay are under great difficulty. I think there is no expectation in this that no parent will ever support, but there are assumptions at the moment that they will and the children of those who do not really do suffer. I think the change to that assumption means that those children are not being put at a disadvantage compared to their peers. (Professor Floud) We do accept that the UK spends a large proportion of its funding on student support. That is an obvious factor on the basis of international comparisons and that will remain. That is a political decision. Paul Holmes (Professor Floud) This is a summary inevitably of a very complex set of calculations and what we would like to suggest is that we send you our calculations. Just in brief, our estimate of £9.94 billion was for the current spending review period; it did not actually close all the gap that we had identified because we put off some of our claim, if I can put it that way, to the next spending review period anyway. So, the money, welcome as it is, is only going part-way to identifying the gap. Of course, the Government accept and quote in the White Paper estimates for a need of £8 billion for university infrastructure for example, and then we have the pay issues that have already been referred to. I think what we would like to do, if we may, rather than trying to summarise a complex table is to give you the figures on which we based our calculations. (Professor Floud) Teaching I think really, and pay more generally. (Professor Lucas) Teaching is complicated because there is money there for teaching infrastructure support which addresses some of the problems in the previous capital support schemes which are not able to be used for anything to do with teaching at all. So, part of the infrastructure one on teaching is addressed on the capital side but I share Roderick's concern about the recurrent side on the support for teaching. As you know, the support income per student has gone down. I think that some of that in the early days was quite sensible in terms of efficiencies, but it has gone passed that now and the support that students get ... Teaching is not just in the classroom, it is support in the libraries, it is support elsewhere; opening hours for libraries and all those sorts of things are what count as teaching support. Many of us are not providing as much as we would like to be able to provide because of the recurrent gap against what our aims would be and, as Roderick has said and as Geoffrey has emphasised, there is little room to manoeuvre in that sort of area in the recurrent expenditure signalled at least over the next three years. (Professor Floud) If I could add one other point, it was of course your Committee that estimated that the access premium, the so-called postcode premium, needed to be very substantially increased. We estimated 35 per cent was needed. We are very pleased that it is going up from five to 20 per cent, but it would have been better if it had gone up to 35 per cent. (Professor Floud) I think we are as aware as you are that governments do not make promises of that kind, that each spending review period is treated separately and that the Government would and have not promised that it will not cut university funding in response to an increase in fees. So, we all know the other pressures that exist on government expenditure. The other factor of course is that although an increase to £3,000 is a substantial increase on the current fee of £1,100, our calculations, which again we can supply you with, suggest that even if all the universities charged the full £3,000 fee, the increased income coming to the universities would be only £1.8 billion. I say "only £1.8 billion" once one gets to these huge numbers, but it would not close the gap in the way we are talking about and of course we have no guarantee at the moment that all universities would indeed be allowed to charge the full £3,000. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) It is worth adding that one of the things that I think has been heartening in the White Paper is the recognition of the huge problem that universities face financially and that has been recognised across all parties and parliament. So that whilst I think it is absolutely right to say that there is no guarantee, at least I think there is a understanding across the whole of parliament that universities do face enormous problems and the White Paper itself recognises that government funding/public funding will continue to play a major part in the funding of universities into the future. We will obviously have to ensure that each of the political parties maintains their support for that argument. (Professor Floud) There will certainly be pressures for increased expenditure. We are already beginning to prepare our next spending review bid as no doubt every other public service are and we have already identified gaps which need to be filled in the period after 2006 in infrastructure and those will continue. So I think that, for the foreseeable future, there will continue to be substantial pressure from the universities and on behalf of the universities to raise the overall level of their income, yes. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) I think it is again worth adding that one of the issues that the White Paper raises and to which we are completely committed as institutions is ensuring fair access and we want to make sure that universities remain aware and Government remain aware of the implications of any change in student fee contributions in relation to fair access. Chairman (Professor Floud) Our prediction before 2006 is of a slight decrease. Before 2006, we estimate, but again we would like to give you the numbers so that you can look at them for yourselves and see what we have included and excluded, a slight decrease in funding per student up to 2006. (Professor Floud) There is greater funding for higher education. I think this is where the whole issue becomes so difficult to explain. We accept that there is very substantial increased funding/capital funding, but in terms of the amounts that go into providing the teaching, support and other facilities for students, we think that is not increasing substantially and may, as we say, be decreasing over the review period. That is excluding these very large sums - and we do not wish, as I say, to seem ungrateful - which do go some way - and we all accept that - to making up the severe declines which have been experienced in science and teaching infrastructure. (Professor Floud) I think that would be a grave long-term mistake. We remain committed and supportive of the 50 per cent or similar target. We believe that England, like Scotland, has the capacity and intellectual capacity and the talent among its people to justify that and that all the signs are that higher education remains both a very good private investment and a very good social investment. So, no, we do not want to roll back on the 50 per cent target. Indeed, I would support Margaret Hodge who at various points has said that she thinks that may be an unambitious target. Mr Jackson (Professor Floud) I do not know whether either of my colleagues feel capable of giving an account of the Californian system. (Dr Copland) The Californian system is highly structured. Essentially, you have the three layers: you have the University of California which is like the research-led university, you then have the state university system and then of course you have the state college system. The big difference - and it is flagged up in the White Paper - is that there is considerable private endowment that goes into those universities as well as public money and that is a baseline that we are starting at, at a very, very low baseline. (Professor Floud) Anecdotally from American colleagues, the state university systems in the United States are under very severe pressure and there has been recently very substantial escalation in the fees within the state systems in the United States because of the pressure on state budgets which, as you know, in the United States are required to be in balance. So, the concept which I think one sometimes sees in discussions of this kind that everything is marvellous in the United States and that all we need to do is to emulate it is certainly not shared by colleagues at the state universities in the United States who are in severe difficulty. Chairman (Professor Floud) It does not feel like that to me, no. (Professor Floud) Yes, that is a real situation and the other factor that one has to remember is that endowments are not free money in general. They are given for purposes. My university has very small endowment funding and it is mostly tied up with student support and alleviation of financial hardship for students which is a perfectly properly charitable purpose, but it is not a contribution to the running of the university. (Professor Lucas) Can I give a specific example which may help here. At King's, our total endowment pool is about £83 million, of which just under £1 million is available for general purposes. That is not income, that is the actual amount. All the rest is highly tied in the way in which it was given and cannot be used for any other purpose. Mr Chaytor (Professor Floud) I think the answer is that it is going to have to be funded by economies and putting off the refurbishment and improvement of the universities yet further. (Professor Floud) No, we are just not going to do the things that were identified as being needed to be done. (Professor Lucas) I think the point is a very important point and, as Mr Jackson said, most educations around the world are mixed economies and I think we are seeing in the White Paper the beginning of a clearer analysis and understanding of the mixed economy. The mixed economy is not just state money and student money. There are other sources. People have mentioned endowments but it takes a long time to build up that sort of a pool and I welcome the recognition of endowment and support of endowment in the White Paper, but it is not going to be a simple, easy and fast solution. In fact, if I can just comment on the endowment point, if I may, Chairman, at this stage because I think it is quite an important point, in terms of donors, the current pattern of the donors is either for a very specific building project or for student or other support - it is not for endowment but, in a sense, is semi-recurrent because if you put £1 million in, with rates of return, you are going to get £30,000 out of it which does not go very far. If you spread that £1 million over five years to be spent, you can support many more people with it. So, many donors are actually not interested in putting money into a long-term endowment fund because they do not see very much immediate impact for that money. I think that is also an important thing to remember when we are talking about endowment in the pure sense as a solution to problems. Institutions do earn money elsewhere but, even if you look at the best of the United States universities in terms of income from influential property, four or five per cent of their budget - it is not going to fill that total gap. I think what we all have to do is to look at this total mix of economy, look where it can come from and make sure that there is a recognition that there is a social benefit for funding universities in order that it does not go entirely into no state funding at all and that is the risk, but the real issue is that we need that money in to be able to provide the sort of experience and the sort of service and the sort of teaching that this country considers it deserves. What we are doing is delaying the service provision that we would like to make, keeping people staying in poorer buildings for longer than we would like them to stay in. (Professor Lucas) I think most of us would always say that the stake could be higher but we also know there are other public services as well and know there is a balance in any government budget between other public services. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) I think we recognised the difficulty that the Government faced in changing their approach on student support, so we understand why the changes in student support are planned only for 2006. I think the difficulty for us is the very gap that you have identified which continues the pressure on maintenance of buildings, the pressure, as we have said already, on staff pay and the pressure on staff themselves to continue to do and to continue to manage a contracting financial system. So, it is something that institutions have been doing for several years and you will appreciate that. It is disappointing that whilst the amount of money for science and science research and knowledge transfer has improved and that is very much welcomed, nonetheless the underpinning of the whole of the university sector, ie teaching, has not. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) We have supported the mixed economy approach and I think it is correct to say that we have already embraced the mixed economy approach through the amount of work we do linking the - (Professor Floud) I think we have to go back to the statement which we made last time we came and spoke to you which was that we see that as a political decision and it is clearly a highly political decision as we have seen over the last 18 months. There are different views within the university system, certainly within our members and within the boards of governors of our institutions, about what the balance should be. As Diana said, we accept that there is a balance and that it is for the Government to decide, essentially because these are very large sums of money, what the balance should be. (Professor Floud) Having just done my bit to reduce the number, I suppose a personal answer is that I can certainly see benefits from the kinds of mergers which created London Metropolitan University from the University of North London and London Guildhall. However, as I said to the Parliamentary Universities Group last night, I think it is difficult to draw general conclusions across the country from that particular experience. London is, as we all know, unusual and special and so on and the fact that you had two universities which were very similar to each other within five kilometres of each other made the merger I think not only easy but also certainly different from situations in other parts of the country where you have dissimilar universities possibly much further away from each other. So, I think it is a question of practicalities. The other factor is that I do not believe that, across the country as a whole, we are providing too many opportunities for students. I think that we need more university places and we need more university teachers and support staff to provide for them. So, I see no prospect immediately - and I know people have ambitions for e-learning and so on but most of those have been disappointed in the recent past - of significantly changing the technology so that we actually could do with fewer universities or fewer university teachers or fewer university departments. (Professor Floud) Certainly. I am sorry to keep going on about my own experience but it may be instructive in terms of the opportunities for structural change. The business plan of London Metropolitan University envisages, we think for good reasons, no economies of scale or number in academic provision. That is, we do not think we can economise on academic staff as a result of the merger. We believe that it is possible to economise to some extent on some of the support staff activities where there may be economies of scale, but we actually do not envisage any long-term reduction in the overall staffing of the university, which is of course 60 per cent expenditure, which is why I am concentrating on that, because we think that we need more staff to support students and teachers. In other words, we will not individually move people from the finance department of the university to student services. So, I think our view - and it is in the business plan which was supported by HEFCE in terms of providing restructuring funding - is that we do not see significant economies of scale in staffing as a result of the merger. There may be economies in buildings, but that is a different matter. Chairman: We have strayed a little from what we wanted to cover first, but I want to move now on to the expanding provision of higher education. Ms Munn (Dr Copland) I too was surprised by that statement, but I think we have to tease out what is actually meant by foundation degree. I think one of the issues that is not covered fully in the White Paper is the existing diversity of the sector and it was a quite interesting discussion this morning that, as with all the other commentaries, focused entirely on full-time students. There is of course a very thriving mixed economy provision for part-time students. What I think is not picked up adequately here is the fact that one can achieve widening participation, opening up of opportunities through a series of routes, and putting them all simply down the re-branded foundation degree may not actually meet the needs of the economy or the aspirations of the students. I think one thing that we need to be very careful of indeed is that we do not fall into the trap of assuming that expansion equals wider participation which is people coming from low socio-economic groups, therefore they should go and do foundation degrees and not have the opportunity to undertake the full honours degree, which is the route of our higher education system. I think there is a lot to be thought around that. One of the things which is an indication here which we do need to think through is how we might use more effectively credit accumulation transfer systems in order to build qualifications to bring people in, whether they are studying full time or part time, to enable them to have the opportunity to start higher education and then build a qualification through that. There have been systems which have been very successful at doing that across the university sector and that, I think, is the way you should achieve it. Some of those may well be foundation degrees but some of them may well not be. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) I wonder if I might add one point. I think there is an enormous amount of work to be done with employers. I think that the white paper is rather silent on this. It is the signals that employers give to potential students that will determine whether they think that the foundation degree route is a valuable route and, at the moment, I think the jury is out on that. We have certainly been working with employers and individual universities and FE colleges with whom we work design their courses in conjunction with employers, but I think that the signals are still quite faint in terms of the employment opportunities that they are then offered as a result. (Dr Copland) Again, I think Diana has used the words, "the jury is out". There are some very successful foundation degrees, there is no question about that. There are some others which have had a great deal of difficulty in getting off the ground. So, there is demand certainly for some sort of employer related sub-degree provision, but of course the concept of the foundation degree set out by the previous Secretary of State, David Blunkett, was that this should be seen as either a qualification in its own right or an opportunity then to go on to an honours degree route. My guess is that quite a lot of people who embarked on foundation degrees will be looking to move on to top that up to an honours degree either immediately or at a later stage. I do not think we know enough yet about the demand for foundation degrees. I do not think we are in a situation where students have, by and large, gone into honours degrees because they see that as more respectable and moved away from foundation degrees. It is very early. We are only two years into this experiment. (Dr Copland) I think we do need to be looking at more work-related and work-based degrees. I hope they do not get labelled with pejorative labels that have been used occasionally about work-based degrees and work-based courses. Different students and different parts of the economy will have different approaches to this and I think that laying down a single template is not necessarily going to answer the need that we have. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) But we are working with others including the Council for Industry and Higher Education to try to identify better what employers want, either from foundation degrees or indeed from honours degrees. There are often criticisms that we do not respond as institutions to the needs of employers and it is sometimes very difficult to find out precisely what those needs are, so we are putting a lot of effort into trying to work with both individual employers and at a regional level with small and medium enterprises to try and ensure that we are much more responsive to what they say they want from the new graduates. (Professor Floud) Certainly not just foundation degrees that are doing it. I think the vast majority of degrees in my university are, in one way or another, vocational and it is simply untrue that there are large numbers of degrees in British universities which are not work related in some sense. Chairman (Professor Floud) We had not heard that. I think that is alarming and I, frankly, do not see how it is consistent with the autonomy of university admissions decisions and I do not see how it is enforceable. (Professor Floud) I would be very happy to look at the transcript. Ms Munn (Professor Floud) That is very different. Chairman (Professor Floud) We have several meetings lined up in the next week or two with the Secretary of State and the minister and we will certainly take up that point with them. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) Is it not also worth making the point that surely what we should be looking at in relation to all these qualifications is the interests of the student and the graduate and then the interests of the employment they can go into? If, for example, a student chooses to take a foundation degree, perhaps having gone through a further education college, on the basis that they do not feel they are prepared to undertake an honours degree, experiences a foundation degree, realises their potential and chooses to go on to do something else, surely that is something we should applaud and not something we should prevent. (Dr Copland) Also, the White Paper made several references to the credit remuneration transfer system and how that should be developed. The statement that somebody could not proceed from one qualification to another is entirely inconsistent with that statement. Mr Pollard (Dr Copland) Certainly that was one of the objectives. If you look at the successful foundation degrees, some of them are very much technologically based skills areas. Some of the other very successful ones are things like up-skilling classroom assistants into full-blown teachers, which is also a shortage area. Again, it comes back to the point that Diana was making: it relates to what the employers actually want and, if they can articulate what their needs are, the higher education system will provide them. We have also had a very successful higher national diploma/higher national certificate level which has provided that route as well. I think students have responded to what they have seen the market to be and if the market has been for higher qualifications and higher level skills, then the students will qualify. Paul Holmes (Dr Copland) I think that foundation degrees actually provide a very good route for strengthening partnerships between HE and FE and I think we will see more of that happening. Certainly my own university is doing this and I think almost every other university in the country will be doing this. It is partly qualification delivered within the institution and partly with an FE college, the balance will change according to the nature of the individual arrangement. Chairman (Professor Floud) The White Paper certainly implies that. (Professor Floud) Yes because we think that partly because of the fact that the experience has been with the HNDs, a substantial number of people do indeed wish to transfer from them to honours degrees and closing off that route would actually be closing the door on a substantial amount of potential talent. (Professor Lucas) I would be very concerned if potential students were restricted in the choice of the activity and the goal that they are aiming for. A foundation degree is one of the smorgasbord of choice available to people to suit their particular needs. Sometimes it may be because of locality, sometimes it may be because of family commitments or as you said before, trying to get in to test out whether they are going to be able to cope with these sorts of things. To produce an artificial cap of, putting it in its most pejorative sense, quotas on various types of award I think would be detrimental to society. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) Can I just emphasise a point that I made earlier. I think so much of this depends on the signals to which students or potential students respond and if employers demonstrate and indicate through contacts both with FE colleges and ourselves that they want to see more of their potential employees coming through the foundation degree route, then I think we are very happy to respond to that. I think we are diffident about this because we know that, so far, there has not been that great upsurge and take-up of foundation degrees and therefore we see a cap as being a limit on student potential and missed opportunities. (Professor Lucas) I think it also may be salutary to talk about some of my experience in the 1070s in Trinity University in South Australia. There was a strong employer demand in the period of exploration geology, a booming industry. We, unwisely as it turned out, put on a course which was actually tailored purely to exploration geology. Four years later, there were no jobs in exploration geology and those people were not broadly enough based to take other things. I think there is a very important lesson to be learned in terms of the degree of specificity to a particular employer demand at a time. There is a general skill and general up-skilling that is tied so tightly to one potential career where may be of a short-term length or may be cyclical I think is dangerous. That implies as much to foundation degrees as it does to honours degrees. Chairman: Can we now move on to access to higher education. Jeff Ennis (Professor Floud) I think the universities are already doing an enormous amount to widen participation. All of us can point to initiatives of all kinds that have been taken in the past few years. (Professor Floud) Firstly, there are no such things as targets at the moment. There are averages/benchmarks which are not targets. If I can go back to the Chairman's reference to my book on quantitative methods for historians, one of the things I learned is that it is stupid to make a target out of an average and that is a mistake which has been made, I think, in a lot of media discussion and indeed governmental discussion on this particular topic. Of course, all universities should be making and are indeed making efforts to widen participation and it is true that, despite some statements to the contrary, we have quadrupled the proportion of people from lower socio-economic groups going to university over the past 20 years. It is still not nearly high enough. (Professor Floud) Yes. The percentage of people from socio-economic groups 3B, 4 and 5 going to university has quadrupled. That is not good enough because it is still way below the proportion from middle-classes and talent is distributed equally across all social classes, as we know, so we all agree that there is a great deal more to be done and we are very happy to work further with anybody, the schools, the colleges, the foundations and, if necessary, with the Access Regulator to spread best practice. However, I think we would be hostile to a bureaucratic system on the grounds that we cannot really see what its added value might be. If we can be convinced that it does have added value, then of course we will work happily with it. (Professor Lucas) I would like to add something to that. I think it is quite important that people do not blame secondary schools and I do not think there was any intent of putting blame on a secondary school in this, but it is a fact that it is about 55/56 per cent of those staying in secondary school at that age. So, if you are looking at a 50 per cent target and assuming a minimum qualification level still, to get that up high, you are going to have to get a higher retention in secondary schools. Universities play their part in that. Just taking the specific example of King's, we have a general access programme but also some highly targeted ones to access to the professions: one into medicine targeted with particular boroughs in the area where we operate where the is a low going on to university rate. One advantage of that is that we can get our medical students in particular to work as mentors in schools and there is continuity over a five year period because they have a long programme. Many of the students' aspirations are raised; they will not necessarily come to King's but it is helping them, encouraging them and giving them role models to stay on in secondary school to actually think about applying to higher education. We recognise that a great deal of the effort we put in is not going to produce students for us and I think that is quite an important point in all of this area. Certainly, in terms of the benchmarks, we have some oddities in our benchmarks. We meet our benchmarks in those social areas except in proportions coming from state schools. We meet them in the postcode one and we meet them in the family income ones but not in the state schools. We think we know why that is: it is because of a particular group of students who come in whose parents, wanting to get them into professions, put money into private education in the last couple of years. We work very hard at that and every institution that I know well works hard at it but do not necessarily expect to get the students themselves into their own institution. I think that when we are looking at any form of regulation or whatever else it is, to actually look at who goes into where rather than who is encouraged into higher education is a narrow view of that process. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) It is quite frustrating because we have produced two documents now giving examples of what universities are doing and every university has its own access strategy and there is no doubt that a huge amount right across the sector is now being done and it is not seen, as I think it is probably right to say it might have been seen in the past, as the approach of only certain kinds of institutions. That clearly is not the case any longer and, in answer to your specific question about why it is perceived that this might be a good idea, I think there is this lack of awareness of what is going on in universities. That means that we have to do a great deal more and happily we will do it through the Access Regulator but we will have to do a great deal more to demonstrate not just to ministers but to students themselves how open universities are and how willing they are to work with schools in order to encourage them to perceive that higher education is for them. (Professor Floud) We believe, as I said earlier, that it is a good start. It gives certainty in a way in which the current student support arrangements have not. Of course, we very much welcome the fact that the Government have said that it will apply to 30 per cent of students and I think we would like it to be increased, but it is a good start. Chairman (Professor Floud) I do not know the answer to that. I do know that 70 per cent of my students currently pay no fees, so I would expect that a substantial proportion of those will be eligible for that grant. Jeff Ennis (Professor Floud) On the general basis that, if you do not charge people, there is a higher demand for the service, yes, of course it would be a good thing. However, as we have said earlier, it is a political decision as to where the money is put. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) But is it not also, as I think we have seen and particularly reflecting on the amount of work that has already been done on access, rather more complicated than that because, even though we had a system where students paid no contributions to tuition fees until relatively recently, nonetheless we were still not very successful in attracting students from disadvantaged backgrounds to perceive that university was for them? I think it is more complicated than money. It is quite interesting, when you look at the Unite MORI survey which demonstrates that the perception of debt put off something like 70 per cent of potential students and those who were critical of debt as the key issue/key problem for them at university was something like 43/44 per cent. So, there is a big difference between those who are experiencing higher education and those who are perceiving what it might cost them. Jonathan Shaw (Professor Lucas) Benchmarks, not targets. (Professor Lucas) Do you mean monetary support? (Professor Lucas) I can tell you where the additional costs arise but I could not give you a number of pounds associated and we are talking here of averages because there are some people who come from an attracted postcode premium who do not make demand but, on average, there is clearly more demand placed on the support services. The support services that I am talking about are those typically outside the classroom. There is a lot of demand and help on the study schools provisions, on the provisions for career services during building planning programmes and there is some more work on the direct teaching side in terms of tutorial support. For example, in the access programme to medicine that I mentioned before, there is specifically funded and supported by the Pool of London Partnership additional tutorial support for those people who have had that different sort of experience, particularly in schools which have been very disrupted, lots of movement of teachers and so on. This is concentrated in the first year or so of their education to get them into that sort of mode of work. We spend some more money in terms of support for the targeted support for these groups of students in libraries in terms of helping them work with the library, getting them used to using the library because some of them come from schools that have had almost no real library provision. It has been a hand-out type rather than a use-the-library type. So, it is all those supports to teaching that actually adds a cost. (Professor Lucas) I think that the figure depends very much on the proportion of students in the cohort that that applies to. That is why I think it would be very difficult to give a figure in my own case. Chairman (Professor Lucas) Yes, there is. (Professor Floud) The current sum is five per cent above the current level of the FC grant for that student and that is to be increased, we understand, from next September to 20 per cent and we believe it should be 35 per cent. (Professor Floud) No, I do not think so. Chairman: People in the room behind you are nodding. I think it has been increased to 10 per cent. Jonathan Shaw (Professor Floud) Yes, we are seeing a substantial increase, just not a big enough increase. Jonathan Shaw: That is always the way! Chairman (Professor Floud) Everybody wants to answer that one! (Professor Lucas) There are three points. First, we do not just take A levels; there is a great deal of other information that we use as well. Secondly, not all students who come into the universities come in from a direct route out of A levels, so we actually are using quite sophisticated approaches to get that group, particularly those returning to education, particularly older students. The third point is that the important point about the SAT is that it is part of a battery; it is not by itself the only criterion that is used in the institution that I know that I used to be in. (Dr Copland) I was going to say more or less the same thing. The only thing I was going to add was that the Sutton Trust work on the SATS only looked at A levels, so it did not apply that to people who were coming to university with other qualifications. I think there does need to be some more work done there. Admissions staff look at a range of indicators: they look at previous experience which would largely be GCSEs; they will look at any work experience; they will look at what the student is doing as well as the A level scores. It is not as mechanistic as simply saying, so many A level points, therefore you are in and so many you are not. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) I think it is worth remembering the number of summer schools, the amount of mentoring, the schemes of linking university students, not necessarily only staff, with young people in schools. I think there is a huge amount going on. I think universities have been very energetic. (Professor Floud) It is not at all defensive. The primary route into full-time higher education, and Geoffrey is quite right to emphasise that there are lots of other forms, is the A levels and virtually everybody who gets two A levels gets into university. If you are talking about which university they go to, if you are talking about universities competing for students and students competing for places, of course you can shuffle those people around as much as you want but the position is that virtually everybody qualified to go to university at the moment gets a place at university. (Professor Floud) I think that the Sutton Trust - and I have great admiration for the work they are doing - mainly concentrates on the proportion of people from lower socio-economic groups going into a certain number of universities. That is an issue which of course we have to ensure and I believe that the research-led universities who are mainly the targets of this are making sure that they have completely fair access. I do not feel defensive about that because I think an enormous amount has been done to ensure that that is so. Jonathan Shaw (Professor Floud) We are concerned that it will lead to ossification. On the principle that it is a good thing to have as much competition as possible in order to stimulate research, inquiry and the creation of knowledge, it seems a mistake further to concentrate that activity in a smaller number of institutions which would run the danger of ossification. That is not a criticism of those institutions in any sense; it is just saying that you should let 1,000 flowers bloom, if I may use that metaphor. (Professor Lucas) I do not think there is any institution in the country that would not suffer in some way if that was done. One of the consequences will be an increase in instability and uncertainty. Institutions have been managing processes of change to ensure that there is continuity and steady progress rather than rapid response from one side to another. I think there are dangers of instability being created -- if not instability, at least uncertainty. I would like to pick up the point that Roderick has made about ossification. I think there is that risk even inside institutions that have a high rate of research, if we are not very careful. I am also concerned about some of the assumptions made in the White Paper not just associated with fours, fives and five stars but also this notion of critical masses, particularly in the humanities and some of the social sciences. If there is an arbitrary number associated with critical mass, I think it misjudges the nature of that research support. In London, for example, there are some very strong facilitatory structures inside the University of London which provide that focal point for the scholars and the humanities to come together. Taking money away from fours would be producing a real risk in some of the slightly unfashionable areas which are being maintained. By that, I mean across the country in some of the areas of whole organism biology rather than cell biology in quite an important way, in the way we look at fisheries, agriculture and all those sorts of things. There are those few areas there that score highly, partly because the research assessment exercise focuses on the more pure rather than the applied. If it is done in an arbitrary way, just by a rule somehow, we are going to run the risk of losing things that are being developed. I know the paper talks about emerging research areas and I think how one defines an emerging research area is going to be quite difficult. There is some high quality research but not that which is fashionable, not that which is being supported by immediate applicability to industry, although fisheries research is very important to the economies of many parts of this country. (Professor Lucas) This is the problem with this approach. This is why most of us in the system would support maybe not 1,000 flowers but a large number of flowers blooming. There is also the risk that that research which emerges associated with industry, if it is a particularly localised and regionalised industry, may not have that sort of facility available. (Dr Copland) The rule in fours would be very damaging to a whole raft of institutions who are developing good quality research, the people who had the existing system continued would have been producing the fives and five stars the next round. It is not people who just are not any good; they are people who are coming forward and developing very well. Research collaboration goes on already. There is a model which suggests that people do not collaborate. They do. If you remove the funding for a raft of scholars in an institution such as mine, a post-1992 university, and say, "You can go and do some research in what spare time you have in your neighbouring institution", I would not maintain those staff. (Dr Copland) How are we going to attract the next generation of intellectually exciting people into the profession if you have to say to them, "You can come and teach here but if you want to do any research you have to go down the road 50 miles"? I do not think that is a formula for success at all. There is the other part of this White Paper which talks about knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer comes on the back of research. It is not very helpful to say to institutions, "You have research which is national and some elements of international importance", which is what fours are, "but we are not going to fund those although we expect you to do knowledge transfer." (Professor Floud) It comes very high indeed. Not as high as the funding for teaching but probably next behind that. For another reason which I think has not been mentioned we have been thinking about the impact on research of the concentration, but we remain very concerned about the impact on teaching in further concentration of research. The view which is expressed in the White Paper that you can somehow divorce research from teaching and it is indeed a good thing to encourage people to do only research and not teaching is one which would be very generally disputed. The whole British and European university system and indeed the American system is based on the concept of university teachers as being based, involved in, research and to lose that would be a real danger. (Professor Floud) From the position of my university it would do serious damage to our work with students, in knowledge transfer to students, which is as important as knowledge transfer to other people. It would do serious damage to our work in knowledge transfer to small and medium sized enterprises in London and in general to our mission. (Professor Lucas) I support that. You ask what would institutions or the sector do. There is already a swell of some people saying, "We did our things according to the rules of the research assessment exercise". That research assessment exercise has shown an increase in quality, particularly in the five stars this time. It was not just an internal judgment; there were external assessors brought in from abroad to confirm those. The rules of the game are being changed in the very early part of the sequence. People's plans and investment decisions are being disrupted by that sort of process and I know that some institutions are considering judicial reviews. Whether they will do them or not I do not know. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) The question about the way in which public money having been invested is now or might be likely to be taken away is somewhat arbitrary because we have no idea. There has not been an announcement about the way in which the funding mechanism will work. We were of course immensely concerned at what the Minister said, but one also has to draw to the government's attention the conflict between that particular aim of concentrating resources in world class departments or subjects and the ability of universities to work in a very much more focused way with the commercial sector, with industry and indeed deliver for regional economies. We have to look at the interaction of some of these policies and try and unpack them. Remember, we were not party to any of the decisions that were taken that went into the White Paper. There was not any initial consultation about the way in which some of these decisions were made. I think it is very much a matter now for the sector to seek to influence both the Funding Council and government and indeed you, I hope. Mr Jackson (Professor Floud) Firstly, I think your premise is incorrect. There has been an increasing concentration in research funding and the translation of the polytechnics into universities has made no difference whatsoever to that. Also, I do not accept the views about a change of mission which you have suggested but, apart from that, I think the difficulty is that the system is not as you describe it. The system is one in which you have a dual support mechanism in which the basis of research funding is that the Funding Council provides the basic infrastructural support for research in universities and, on top of that, universities and individuals compete for research funding using that infrastructure. If you cut away the infrastructure and say that universities have nothing with which to support research except through research grants, you are cutting away half a dual support system and, in those circumstances, you fall on the floor. That is what will happen. Chairman (Professor Floud) None of that is correct. The view of Universities UK has been very clearly expressed. I agree with Diana that the extent of dialogue with the government, particularly in the early stages of the formation of this White Paper, was not as much as we had hoped for or wished for. Nevertheless, the Universities UK position has been consistently expressed throughout that. We did not believe that there should be further concentration of research funding. We have said that and said it very strongly to government. (Professor Floud) We are certainly unhappy with going any further towards concentration of research for the reasons which you have just given, but we think there is no evidence in any other country in the world that a further concentration of research funding would be productive. (Professor Floud) There are some rather simplified analogies being drawn from a certain number of research universities in the United States and from a relatively restricted number of what are conventionally called big science subjects. (Professor Floud) They may do. (Professor Floud) There are indications in the White Paper of concerns about management and governance of universities. (Professor Floud) We very much welcome Richard Lambert's inquiry because we want to work more closely with business and many of us already have very large numbers of business people involved in the governance of our institutions, so we look forward to demonstrating to Richard Lambert that that is so. We believe -- and perhaps you would say that we would say this -- that all the indications, National Audit Office reports, Treasury views etc., everything, suggest that the management of British universities has been extremely effective in coping with extremely difficult financial circumstances. We would refute any idea that there are significant deficiencies in the management and governance of the British university system. (Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe) I wonder if I could make just one final point and it picks up a point that Roderick was making about competitiveness in terms of research but it applies to one other element of the White Paper and that is the whole business of degree awarding powers. I link it with the commitment that we signed up to through the Bologna declaration and the way in which the higher education system in England -- there is not any indication that Scotland, for example, will necessarily follow this path -- may well find itself in a rather difficult position vis a vis the definition both of university and in terms of its ability to attract European students to our universities because of the changes that are proposed. We do not know the consequences. We are about to have a discussion with the Minister about the Bologna declaration, but we are concerned that we are about to step very clearly out of line with the way in which universities are perceived elsewhere, particularly in Europe. Chairman: Thank you very much for your attendance. Memoranda submitted by the AUT and NATFHE Examination of Witnesses MS SALLY HUNT, General Secretary, AUT, DR STEVE WHARTON, Chair, AUT Education and Development Committee, MR TOM WILSON, Head of Universities Department, NATFHE, and DR ELIZABETH ALLEN, National Official Higher Education, NATFHE, examined. Chairman (Mr Wilson) Could I make three points to begin with by way of a brief summary? The first has to be about pay and staffing. Many people have pointed to the extraordinary absence of any funding for an overall pay rise and that is certainly going to be a very large part of our discussions in campaigning about the White Paper. Allied to that is the extraordinary lack of any mention of non-academic staff, which other people have mentioned too. We would certainly like to take the opportunity to point that out as well. The second point is about teaching, where we very much welcome the apparent emphasis in the White Paper on the importance of teaching, but as other people have said this morning and elsewhere the fact that nothing like commensurate funding has been provided for that is extraordinary and, thirdly, on access, where again there is an apparent contradiction between the aims of the White Paper which are laudably to increase access and to carry on towards the 50 per cent target and certainly increase and widen the participation of people from the lower social classes; but again that is, we think, likely to be contradicted. We think expansion is likely to freeze because of the increase in fees and top up fees. (Ms Hunt) You will not be surprised to realise that we have similar concerns in terms of pay. We are particularly concerned at the very, very little mention this has within the proposals that have been put forward, simply because universities are their staff. That is what drives everything that is proposed within this paper. A lot of what we will be talking about in response to the government's proposals is in that light. Secondly, the research/teaching link. I think there is a lot of focus on other aspects but what that part of the White Paper does is express what a university is or is not and that is at the heart of the debate about where we are going in terms of the university system and what it is that we want. That is something that we would like to spend some time talking about. Equally, we would like to have a look at the overall idea of what it is that we want each and every university to be. Is the government looking for an across the board system? Are they looking for all sorts of different things within that and what are the mechanisms that they are putting in place in order to achieve those ends? In terms of representing members who work within those institutions, we have some questions in terms of centralisation in some senses through HEFCE and decentralisation on other aspects in terms of pay. There are a number of contradictions that we would like to have a look at, but we are quite happy to take any questions that you ask. (Ms Hunt) Alongside everybody else, we would welcome very much the recognition that there is a need, for example, to reintroduce maintenance grants; that there is a need to recognise that you have to support people if they are going to have a university experience and make sure that you remove barriers. That has been very welcome. The level is something that we would debate quite strongly but certainly that is something that we have been very positive about. It would be really churlish not to acknowledge that there has been a real increase. That is something that we have to be very positive about. We have to recognise that it is a recognition of the arguments that we have been putting forward for a very long time. Equally, I think we have to be very concerned about how that is going to be translated out because the amount of strings that are being attached to certain areas, the amount of proposals to direct the way that funding is put back into the system that do not address the fundamentals of underpayment, are ones that we are very concerned about. I really want to understand what the government wants to achieve with this because you cannot on the one hand have a Prime Minister who says, "Yes, there is a serious underpayment issue in terms of not just academic staff but all staff within universities," and at the same time have a Chancellor who is concerned about frittering away this extra funding. If you live on the same street, I am sure that you can have disagreements but it is helpful if you are in the same party that you do know what it is that you want. Again, we come back to this contradiction. The overall message is one that we are very positive about and we would want you to take that away from today. The underlying concerns we have are about how we are meant to deliver this. (Mr Wilson) We find it difficult to answer the question, frankly. It would be churlish and silly not to acknowledge the 19 per cent increase in funding. That is very welcome. The fact that it is almost all earmarked for various purposes and very largely directed towards capital and research funding is we think somewhat regrettable. The increase in fees is appalling and the notion of top-up fees is highly destructive. We cannot see anything in that remotely to welcome and we oppose that very strongly indeed, as will we think most academics. It is partially welcome, I suppose, that grants have been restored, but at such a derisorily low level that it makes it really hard to see that these are anything more than some kind of political token. We do not really welcome that because it is not any kind of meaningful grant. Jonathan Shaw (Dr Wharton) The idea in the White Paper that you can separate research and teaching is a very bad one. We all know that good teaching is informed by good research and that in many cases that research goes beyond simple scholarship. If I could give an example of my own institution, the University of Bath is now fourth in The Times Good University Guide. It has a very envious reputation for its research. In the early 1960s the University of Bath was Bristol's College of Science and Technology and it was the decision of the Robbins Report to turn it into a university and then to have a funding mechanism which enabled it to build over time. That was what enabled it to produce its current profile. The abolition of the binary divide in 1992 which was a very welcome thing also gave a larger research mission to some of the post-1992 institutions and they have had therefore, if you look at it in comparative terms, roughly a quarter of the time and certainly not the same amount of funding; yet, it appears now from a casual observation and reading of the White Paper the government is essentially saying, "We are going to recognise the diversity of institutions" -- in other words, we are not going to continue to fund those that have not yet had the opportunity to reach those particular levels and to an extent "condemn" them to becoming teaching only institutions. I believe that would be a retrograde step. It would be bad for the sector. It would be bad for career development because you would then find that colleagues wishing to undertake research would feel that they would not want to go to the university of X, which is regarded as a teaching only institution. They would much rather go to the university of Y, so you would not have diversity. You would not have the migration across the sector which currently exists. (Dr Wharton) Yes, a very negative effect on staff. (Dr Wharton) It might help them if they managed to get in but if they are trying to apply to an institution which has a very good research profile and the institution says, "They are from a university that is a teaching only institution. How on earth are they managing to do their research anyway?" ---- (Dr Wharton) It depends on where that is coming from and how it is funded. If you are in a teaching only institution, it is unlikely to be funded from within the funding stream of that particular institution. (Dr Wharton) Yes. I am sure members of the Committee will also be aware of an Institute of Education study undertaken in 2000 which found "a strong relationship between good research and good teaching". Being taught by active researchers was perceived as being important even in the third year of an undergraduate degree, not just at postgraduate level. Some research undertaken last year also indicates that students are very positive about the trickle down benefits of research and the way that it feeds into teaching. As you can see, there are two different points of view. Coming from an institution which regards the link between research and teaching as important, as do indeed colleagues in both the AUT and I am sure NATFHE, this idea that you can somehow separate them out and having a teaching only institution fundamentally has very bad consequences for higher education in the United Kingdom. (Dr Allen) I would agree with that. We also have to be clear about what we mean when we talk about the link between teaching and research. I do not think we would argue that you cannot teach effectively if you are not at that moment engaged in cutting edge research. An argument we would make very strongly is that HE teaching has to be delivered in a research active environment. There have to be people who are researching. Students have to have access to people who are engaged in research and research methods and staff themselves have to have an opportunity over a period in their career to engage in subject scholarship and research. To pick up this issue about the effect on recruitment, one of the major thrusts of our response to the White Paper is that we see it as increasing differentiation between institutions and that would be one effect of top-up fees that we will see. If you add to that greater selectivity in research and reduction in research funding from some institutions academic staff will have to make choices very early in their careers as to whether they want to engage in research or not. If they are not going to engage in research they will find it very difficult if they then work in an institution which is a "teaching only" institution, which is one of the potential effects of this, at a later stage in their career, to move into a research institution. We will see a further differentiation of institutions. I wanted also to pick up the point about selectivity in research funding. One of the frustrations in the White Paper on research is the way it anticipates the outcomes of the Roberts review of research which is going to report later in the year. NATFHE made its submission to that review, in which we argued very strongly that whatever the arguments for selectivity in what have been called the big science areas there has never been the same argument for selectivity across a whole range of other subjects and disciplines in higher education. You do not need to concentrate research funding to get good effects. In a sense, all our research funding is driven by the model of big science which is not helpful to all kinds of other research going on, particularly in the post-1992 institutions. Indeed, there is a throw away line in the White Paper at the end of one of the sections on research funding. It says, "Of course these points do not all apply to arts and the humanities the way they do to science and technology." There is a whole range of other subjects which do not fall into either category so I think there are real dangers there in the impact of emerging good national research that is going on in a whole range of subjects that is being neglected through this model. (Ms Hunt) It is an interesting point of view, linking that to access. If you look at it in terms of those universities where there is the concentration of research funding, they are potentially likely to be those which are likely to charge the full £3,000. What happens in terms of how students have access to research active institutions, research active particular areas of study? Is that going to be across the board or quite hierarchical? (Ms Hunt) Yes, they have said that. I am yet to be convinced. (Ms Hunt) Because what is going on at the moment is a movement from a system in which a lot of academics recognise there is the theoretical, level playing field and there are an awful lot of barriers already in the way of good research being developed right across the board. Those are arguments that have been teased out for a number of years between ourselves, the UK, for example, and others. Making it a system that is based purely on collaboration, rather than recognising that there is a real issue in terms of concentration of funding and under-funding seems to me to be ignoring the problem to a very great extent. I am not saying that it cannot happen but saying that that is the absolute solution is not necessarily true. Paul Holmes (Ms Hunt) We have always argued that there should be strong professional support to develop good teaching and good skills in order that you can do your job as an academic. We do not have any issue in terms of the emphasis being placed on this in the White Paper. We welcome it. It has been a real cause of concern for many of our members that that core area of their work has never had the recognition that it needs. We are very interested in the aspects whereby you are looking to increase the support that is there at university level. One of the issues we have had repeatedly is that we do not believe that younger academics, those at the beginning of their careers, have had the support at departmental, university wide level to make sure that the skill sets are there. It is a management issue and that is something that we would be looking to work very closely with universities on in order to develop those. Models such as Loughborough come to mind: excellent programmes to make sure that people have the skills that they need. Where we have a concern is that this should not become something that is another layer of bureaucracy. That is an area that we are rather worried about because what we believe we need to do is to make sure that we strengthen this at grass roots level to make sure that the skills are there across the board, not in absolute, concentrated areas but something that can be attainable and achievable by all. In that way, I think we will be able to develop some very good models. (Dr Wharton) I would like to correct the perhaps false impression given that there is no guidance and training given to university staff at the moment in how they go about their teaching. Every university in the UK has staff development programmes. Probationary lecturers are required as part of national agreements to undergo a three year training programme which involves specialised input, seminars, staff training, presence from practitioners. There is no "formal teaching qualification" but that does not mean that there is not any formal training that goes into precisely that and which also examines, for example, elements of pedagogy, the use of group work versus seminar work, versus how to prepare your lectures etc., interactive peer review of what goes on. Every university as part of its learning and teaching strategy has peer review of teaching so there are already mechanisms in place to observe teaching. Student feedback as it currently operates gives the opportunity for students to express themselves on clarity of lectures, clear explanation of aims and objectives and so on. (Dr Allen) In many institutions effectively it is. In the vast majority, if not all, of the post-1992 universities and higher education colleges the staff are required to undergo a programme which, in the vast majority of cases, currently is accredited by the Institute of Learning and Teaching. When they have completed that programme, they have an accredited qualification. We welcome the proposals in the White Paper to go further and to now look at creating a teaching quality academy, bringing together the ILT and the learning and teaching support network. We have some reservations about the proposals to include HESDA because we have concerns about what happens to staff development and support for people who are not engaged in teaching and learning support but, setting that aside, we are very interested in working with the various agencies and the proposal for a teaching quality academy. I know that part of that is to go further in terms of developing professional standards. One of the things that is important about the proposals is that they are building on the very positive experience of the subject centres. There are now 24 subject centres located in institutions around the country which recognise that most academics respond primarily in terms of their subject discipline. When they are thinking about their learning and teaching, they want to discuss teaching maths with other mathematicians. They want to discuss teaching sociology with other sociologists. The subject centre networks have really developed that area of work. Bringing them together with the Institute for Learning and Teaching and the development of accredited programmes for new staff and professional development for existing staff could be very positive. What is problematic is when you set that alongside some of the other proposals in the White Paper for rewarding and recognising teaching which have a very different past, which are about searching out the stars and giving money to centres of excellence rather than the research funding model in a way that I think is counter productive; as opposed to the peer communities that have been built up with a lot of Funding Council money as well over the last three years with the learning and teaching support networks, which I think are beginning to bear fruit. (Dr Wharton) It depends on your definition of "demanding". If it is having a knock on my door at 9.15 asking me if I have read the e-mail that was sent 15 minutes previously and demanding an instant answer, there has been an increase in that sort of thing. (Dr Wharton) I think it is a bit of that. There is a problem: the minute you begin to get people to pay for something they automatically believe that they have a right to criticise absolutely everything that is going on. It is a bit like going into a shoe shop, buying a pair of shoes and discovering subsequently that the heel has come off and going into a completely different shop and complaining about it. It is important that students have the opportunity to engage critically in the teaching and learning process. They have always done that. The introduction of a tuition fee did not necessarily change that spirit of enquiring dialogue which has always existed. What perhaps it did was to introduce a customer service mentality which is arguably alien to what higher education should be about which is about developing critical faculty and exploring new fields of knowledge. (Dr Allen) I do not think that the fee issue is the real driver in relation to learning and teaching. I think it has made students more critical and in many ways that might be a good thing but the real driver is the widened participation and access debate. If you radically intermix students that you are bringing into higher education then you have to think very critically about the way in which you teach and support them. In the days when you had a handful of independent, public school educated, white middle classes coming in with a degree of preparation for HE, you could teach them in a certain homogenous way. That is no longer the case. It is not just about a very few people coming in who need very particular support. The student body has changed in the vast majority of universities over the last ten or twenty years and people have to think in very different ways about how they teach and support their teaching. Added to that, you have changing technology and so on which will change the way you deliver that. Mr Jackson (Mr Wilson) That was a proposal put, that something like £500 for a scholarship could be separately identified and separately funded. In a way, it has some superficial attractions because currently it is the case that the research and scholarship times, the scholarship opportunities and time for personal development in a scholarship role, do not exist and do tend to get squeezed out. However, HEFCE would say that they ought to be included within teaching funding because it should be an integral part of teaching. If it is recognised as such and if it is properly funded as such, in a way it helps to reinforce the argument that teaching does include scholarship and research and the two are in that sense intermixed. That brings me on to the point you were making earlier about mission drift in the post-1992s. It does not come naturally to spring to the defence of the UUK for NATFHE but the kind of research which is being pursued by the post-1992s has not changed. The initial strengths of the polytechnic sector, which were very much about applied research, consultancy, short course development, working closely with industry and employers, have been very much pursued, expanded and improved enormously. The facts show there has been a tripling of the proportion of total research activity in the UK university sector done by the post-1992s and that is very much to their credit. At the same time, there has been a convergence and a further mixing of the kind of research the White Paper calls knowledge transfer. This is one of the many areas where what is getting in the way is a metaphor of research which is based on traditional, pure, big science research and most research is not like that these days. Ms Munn (Ms Hunt) I can relate to you the initial feedback from various vice-chancellors which can be characterised by one of them saying, "Why wouldn't I, on the basis that I want to put my institution alongside the best institutions." The initial reaction is that the best institution is the one that can charge the maximum fee. It is a lot more complex than that. Once there is some consideration of the options within that figure for them, some variation may come out. I do not think at the moment that any institution is looking at it in such a way that they can afford necessarily to charge less than that. It is being driven by the sense of underfunding and how are we going to make up the shortfall, very much the points that you were asking earlier in terms of is the funding that is going to be generated by this route going to be taken away by another. I think that is very much the driving force behind the initial reaction from a lot of institutions. In terms of whether they charge differential fees within institutions, what I can say very clearly from feedback from our members which has come in thick and fast in terms of us asking for it on the back of this paper, but also doing a much more structured membership survey, is that they are absolutely horrified by the idea that an internal market may well develop in terms of some departments, some courses, being able to charge certain amounts and some others. Their sense of that is that it will go to the heart of how a university works and it will do some very great damage. (Ms Hunt) The point about universities is that you do not have costs that are absolute to a course. A library serves, for example, a whole range of courses. The administration structure, the support structures, all of those things are ones that are across the board. What is concerning individuals who are coming back to us within the union is that what they are being asked to do is to say that my responsibility ends at the end of the corridor. They do not believe that that is something that is reasonable or something that they want to see themselves as in terms of the academic community, be it on a subject level or on a university wide level. It is simply not something that has the support of those who are being asked to deliver. Chairman (Ms Hunt) To a certain extent. The point that I am making is purely feeding back to you that which our members are saying in terms of their reaction to this. They do not perceive the way that they deliver higher education as something that should be absolutely driven by their single, core costs according to their subjects. They see that as something that would be very damaging to the way the university functions. (Dr Wharton) An important issue is that of collegiality which obtains in universities. For example, if you have a programme which brings in a lot of money, because of the principle of collegiality, you are perfectly willing to see cross-subsidy of those less popular courses. Without that, many departments of many universities and institutions of higher education in the UK would have closed. I do not think an internal market with differential fees is a good way of responding to or trying to control demand. On the question of competition that you raised between institutions, what you are going to get I fear -- and this is a purely personal point of view -- is a bandwagon effect. Once one institution charges high, the next one is going to. We have already seen in terms of A level grades required of universities that, if you want to ensure that you get the best students, you put up the A level grades. It is the putting up of the A level grades that encourages people to come in. I am sure that the same thing could very well happen with fees which would go completely against the whole concept of widening access, which surely the White Paper is seeking to do. (Mr Wilson) In any market, if there are not any independent indicators of quality, whether we like it or not, price is taken to be an indicator of quality. That being the case, not many institutions are going to wish to advertise that their courses are perceived to be or likely to be perceived to be second rate. For them, it is a very difficult calculation because there is not much information on which to base these judgments. The calculation that many might make is that were they to lower the price of their course they might attract fewer students. If you look at it from the students' point of view, if there is just a relatively small difference in the price of the course -- let us say, 2,500 as opposed to 3,000 -- the difference that makes to the overall debt at the end of their assumed three year programme is relatively small. For them, there is then a difficult judgment about whether that is worth it in terms of the perhaps lower employability factor, which would then last a lifetime. (Dr Allen) If we are trying to make judgments about the in principle effect of the introduction of top-up fees, I for one do not think we should do that on the basis of a figure of £3,000. Once this has been introduced and in this instance is in place, I do not believe that the figure will stay at £3,000. I do not suppose many other people do either. At the moment, if you talk about the difference between 1,100 and 3,000, it does not seem vast. It seems just about tenable that all institutions, based on the factors that you were talking about, might judge that they had best go for the full whack. Once we see that cap come off and once some institutions are charging quite significantly different levels of fees, which I think will happen if we let top-up fees come in, that is just not going to be feasible. There are already two categories of either institutions or departments within institutions: those that select their students and those that go out actively and recruit their students, albeit at the right standard of qualification and so on. Those that recruit are not going to be in the same position as those that select to charge high fees. I have no doubt we will see differentiation between institutions. Chairman (Dr Allen) There is a degree of truth in that and one answer is to say that what we do is entrench it even further. One thing where we do not have differentiation at the moment is at the point of student choice about which institution they attend in terms of what they have to pay when they go to that institution. One of our fears is that there may be bursaries for a few of the poorer students but there are not going to be bursaries for all those who are going to struggle financially. Poorer students will make decisions based on cost in the way that they do not have to do at the moment, particularly if top-up fees increase in the way that I foresee. Having made that decision, which will be based on cost and will also be based on the fact that they may have to go to the institution closest to them because there is not adequate maintenance support for them to travel away from home, the institution that they then go to on the basis that it is cheaper for them to go to it is also getting less money because it is not able to charge top-up fees. There is a double whammy. They have less choice but also the institution itself is receiving less money for teaching. At the moment, there has been an attempt to equalise the funding available for teaching. When institutions are charging top-up fees in a few years' time and getting significant amounts of money through that route, those institutions will have a lot more money to spend on their students. Poorer students with less choice will end up in institutions with less money to spend on them. (Mr Wilson) Traditional trade unionists have always cared about fairness and equity. The most militant trade union in the world has always had an equal passion for fairness and a decent sense of social justice and our two unions are no different in that respect. We care passionately about what is fair and decent for students. (Mr Wilson) I think that is a bit of an unfair reading of history. We have struggled, campaigned and fought very hard. It is very arguable that without our efforts academic pay would be even lower and even more unfair than it is. We have had to take pretty strong strike action on a number of occasions to make sure that vice-chancellors did not impose the awards they originally tried to. (Ms Hunt) You say that with such a nice smile on your face. Success can be judged by people joining and we are one of the fastest growing unions in this country so we could argue that point backwards and forwards. The key point here is that what we should do is represent our members' views. It might not be popular but the survey results that I have had back from our members show that well over 80 per cent of them -- i.e., 88 per cent -- would prefer general taxation to be the route that we did all of this work by because that is what they believe. It might not be something that is fashionable or that you believe is feasible but I think it is worth putting on record that those in the profession do believe that they need extra funding, very basically, for their declining levels of pay. They believe that that should be something that we should take society-wide responsibility for. Within that though they believe that it is right that they should take a view on how the funding debate is going. What they would say is, first off, they do not believe that up front fees would work. They welcome the change in that, therefore. They do not believe that it is reasonable to have differential fees because they believe that that will impact on their ability to make the choices and help people on the basis of their academic ability rather than their ability to pay. It is right and proper that those people in the profession should have that view. If they are being forced to make the choice therefore, they say it is through a graduate tax route that they would prefer. That is as clear as I can be. That is what a union should do. It should tell you what its members are saying to it and that is what our members have been saying to us very clearly over the last three or four weeks. (Ms Hunt) I take your point but I think it is worth me saying to you that that is what our members are saying to us. I do not think it is conservative. (Ms Hunt) I realise that. I think it is reasonable for members of the profession and society to take a view about where higher education ought to sit within the economy and the culture of this country. (Ms Hunt) How much clearer do you want me to be? Mr Jackson (Ms Hunt) The pie in the sky is what we then went on to tease out. I do not call it "pie in the sky"; I call it "other options" if you have not got the option being presented to you by those who are going to make the decision. What they are very clear about indeed is that they do not believe there should be variation in fees. They do not believe in the concept of top-up fees. Faced with those choices, it is an across the board graduate tax that they believe is the most reasonable way of taking this forward. That is not me reinventing the wheel; that is me telling you what our members think. Chairman (Ms Hunt) I cannot give you the exact figure. It is between 50 and 60 per cent. (Dr Wharton) On the comment you made about 50 per cent of your electorate or indeed many more perhaps do not go to university so why should they pay for it, universities make a tremendous contribution to the national economy which is recognised in the White Paper. It is through universities that doctors are trained, that lawyers are trained, that the professional engineers are trained who build the bridges, design the trains and so on. The entire economy as a whole benefits from the higher education sector in the United Kingdom. Therefore, it is surely only right and fitting that there should be a considerable contribution from the taxpayer towards that. (Dr Wharton) Indeed they do and some of your constituents who start those businesses may well do so in conjunction with universities through knowledge transfer and other things, so there is a dynamic interaction between the two. I do not believe, echoing the views of our members, that it is sensible to exclude the possibility of providing the income through general taxation, although there is a recognition as we have also said that if it must come in the form of some contribution it should come through a graduate tax rather than anything else. Mr Pollard: I work very closely with my local NATFHE branch and I think you have done a cracking job personally. He does not think so but I do. Chairman: My questioning does not imply that I have any view about the effectiveness of NATFHE. Mr Pollard (Mr Wilson) It will certainly help to make sure that they are properly funded when they arrive at universities. In response to a question which was asked in the earlier session, we reckon that the increase in total funding for that will be of the order of 25 million up to around about 50 or 60 million, which is a substantial increase in funding. If that is distributed as we expect, the great majority of it would go to the post-1992 universities that take the great majority of those kinds of students. That is very welcome and useful but it is very wrong to see that as some kind of incentive for those universities to go out and recruit such students. It does not work like that. It is there to pay for them when they arrive and even at 25 per cent, as your own Committee acknowledge, it will not meet the full cost. The way it works in terms of incentives is that most of the post-1992s and many pre-1992 universities make enormous efforts to recruit students from across a very wide range of social backgrounds because they are committed to that in principle and because that is a fair access policy. That is why they do it, not because they want the money. Can I go back to a related point about top-up fees again? The key thing about top-up fees is that they will at a stroke destroy the principle that a subject is funded at the same level of funding irrespective of where it is delivered. In other words, at the moment HEFCE's funding system says that a sociology undergraduate degree at Oxford is paid the same as a sociology undergraduate degree at the University of North London. Once you have top-up fees, that goes. What goes with that is the notion that the kind of students we are talking about here, access students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, have some sort of chance over time of a system in which they have an equal opportunity of equal funding. That is why our members are so passionately concerned about that. What also goes on the back of that is to reply to the points made earlier about funding. If we had to rely for pay increases on a system which was so heavily orientated towards the market, was so unstable, which depended on institutions having some kind of careful, internal markets between courses and between institutions, our view is that is not a sensible way to fund general pay increases anyway. It is not as if there is some sort of quixotic trade-off between altruism and self-interest here. It just does not work like that. All these issues are tied up together. To answer your point, yes, it will make a difference, but in terms of funding not incentives. (Dr Allen) I wanted to say a little more about the postcode premium. We are glad that it is going to be redefined. It is important that support for wider participation of students is not just seen as a welfare issue. It is about changing approaches to learning and teaching in general. It is also about having more staff. There is lots of evidence that the successful retention strategies, particularly in that critical first year for students, often involve a level of support and personal contact that a lot of universities are not able to provide at the moment. FE is very good at providing it and I think HE could learn quite a lot from FE in this regard. It would be nice to see some of the money that has been earmarked for performance related payments for teaching in other parts of the White Paper perhaps freed up for more creative spend in terms of staffing and learning and teaching support in relation to the access agenda, rather than being defined in the rather narrow way that it has. Chairman (Dr Allen) There is a real confusion between the value of foundation degrees and the widening of participation and changing the social mix. I think foundation degrees have the potential to be a valuable qualification and to meet some of the skills issues that people were talking about earlier. There is not any indication yet that there is great enthusiasm for them but there is a potential for them to do that, funded in the right way, with the right level of support for FE colleges who will be delivering a lot of foundation degrees. They could be a very valuable qualification. They are not the same thing as changing social mix in universities and getting more working class students into universities. I do not think you can engage in all the outreach work that is currently going on between universities, schools and colleges where you go in with children who are as young as those at primary school and try and convince them that higher education is for them and then say, "By the way, it is a foundation degree. That is what you are going to get." I know I am simplifying it, but that is the message from the White Paper and I think that is really disappointing. (Dr Allen) I would be staggered if that was the case. All the work that is going on in relation to wider participation is linked into creating through routes for progression, articulating different levels of qualification so that people can progress through. To create this new foundation degree and then say they want HNCs and HNDs to be part of the foundation degree to bump it up and so on and then put some sort of cap on it would seem to me to be counter to all the other work that is going on. (Dr Wharton) After all, what is the purpose of a foundation but to build upon so it can be an ideal stop up point if that is what the particular student requires but if they then want to add that to an honours degree that path has to be open to them. Mr Pollard (Mr Wilson) At the very least, the threshold for repayment should be the same as the thresholds for other kinds of means testing. We cannot see a justification for a distinction there. Certainly we cannot see a justification for it being as low as 10,000. That seems a cut off which is designed to remove 93 per cent of all households, but we think something like 98 per cent of all students, excluding mature students. If mature students are the justification for the apparent calculation of 30 per cent of students who will receive it, that is frankly disingenuous because they are being included because they have no other income. in this instance s not because of their own family background. The way the White Paper presents this it is quite clearly designed as a means of inducing students from very poor family backgrounds to come to university. They are at such a low level it is very hard to see why it would. The important principle that we would want to see applied is fairness between FE and HE. For that reason, at the very least, the EMAs which have been rolled out now to FE could be applied equally in a seamless transition to HE. That is by no means enough but it would at least be a start. Chairman: That was the recommendation of this Committee. Jeff Ennis (Ms Hunt) We have no idea. We strongly support the policy in terms of increasing access and making sure that the public moneys that are going into universities with that kind of policy behind it are ones that are being monitored and looked at. We have no issue in that because that is fair and reasonable. We question what it is that the access regulator is going to do other than increase the level of bureaucracy which goes against the better risk task force report. We are also very concerned, if we understand correctly, that this might not be in place until after the top-up fee regime is in. That leaves us very concerned because that is the tail wagging the dog somewhere along the line. I do not quite understand, if it is so central, why it is reasonable for it to come in that late in the day. I do not think that is a healthy way of looking at access and your means of assessing it, if you feel it is that important. It is something we would question very strongly. In terms of making sure that there is some kind of ability to know that universities across the board are genuinely doing the job of making sure that access is there regardless of your class and background, that is something that we would very much support. You have to look at it though in a very complex way. You cannot simply look at it in terms of saying outcome is X because that will not necessarily tell you about the outreach work that is going on in a particular school. It will not tell you about the differences between departments. It will not tell you all sorts of the detail that is going on. The jury is out on how it will be done. We will participate fully in trying to make it work though. (Dr Wharton) By the same token, universities are required as part of their widening participation strategies to demonstrate that they already have mechanisms in place. In some respects, this would seem to be another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy, almost, one might argue if one were cynical, as a sort of sop to, "This is a way that we are giving you money but we have to show that we are being sensible about it." Universities are already sensible about the way they deal with widening access and participation, as demonstrated through the strategies that they put forward through HEFCE. (Dr Wharton) That already happens to an extent. You have students who come over and, if they are European Union students, the fee they pay is only the up front fee that they would currently pay. (Dr Wharton) That could happen to any student in the United Kingdom. Sorry; was your initial question aimed at overseas students who come to the UK and then leave? (Dr Wharton) Overseas students already pay differently. (Dr Wharton) There is a confusion here. EU students who come in would pay a fee. (Dr Wharton) It may become more and more of a problem but the way in which the Erasmus Socrates scheme is funded is, I understand, currently under review anyway. That is one aspect of the thing which social inclusion slightly perhaps outwith the reach of the current discussions. Clearly, mechanisms will have to be invented in order to ensure that some form of repayment was made by the EU students coming to do that. (Ms Hunt) I do not think any of us are saying that we have detailed answers for you. What it was reasonable for us to tell you is what our members felt about this. I would like to believe it is not beyond the wit of my government to work through mechanisms that would address this. Paul Holmes (Dr Wharton) It is almost a question of the support mechanisms that various institutions have in place because the learning and teaching experience in a university is not just about the learning and teaching the students have; it is about the other support mechanisms; it is about library investment but it is also about providing support from outside the classroom for those non-traditional students. It is about ensuring that universities provide funding to put the mechanisms into place to keep people there and to ensure that their ability to perform academically is underpinned as much as it can be. (Mr Wilson) The figures are very misleading because a large proportion of the alleged drop-out are moving on to higher education somewhere else, not necessarily in that year, but if you look at the figures in any sort of detail you will see that is quite different from the drop-out rate of a standard, traditional university student who decides that university is not for them. Precisely because the populations who are attending the kind of post-1992s that she is talking about are so mobile and lead such necessarily mobile lives, that is a large reason for the apparent drop-out. The other reason is simply that the kinds of courses which have been laid on in the first year for many of these students are diagnostic in the sense that they are to see whether the students welcome HE. For many of them, the fact that they do it for a year or even less than a year, go away and decide it is not for them at that point and maybe come back many years later is not such a bad thing. It is not a waste of money in any sense at all. It is a perfectly valid, proper reason for a university course to exist. Chairman (Dr Allen) Speaking for NATFHE, we have been very up front about the fact that we think it is extremely important to improve and enhance learning and teaching, particularly in relation to this agenda. That is why we worked with the ILT as a critical friend and it is why we will work with the teaching quality academy, however it turns out, and why we work with the learning and teaching support network and so on, because we do think it is absolutely vital that you get the right levels of support and that you reflect on teaching and change the kind of teaching that you are offering to those students. We have an unashamed record in that sense and we are on board with that agenda. There is a staffing issue as well. You need more staff to deliver the quality of teaching and learning that we are talking about. There is also a real issue about students identifying the right course. Some of the research that has been done on drop-out has shown that the two key factors are finance -- whether people can afford to continue their students -- and whether the student is on the right course for them. That goes back to the debate we were having earlier about restricting student choice. It is vital that students can identify and make an informed choice about the course that is right for them and then afford to pursue it. Chairman: Thank you for your attendance. It has been a very good session. |