WEDNESDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2003

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Members present:

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair
Mr David Chaytor
Valerie Davey
Jeff Ennis
Paul Holmes
Mr Robert Jackson
Ms Meg Munn
Mr Kerry Pollard
Jonathan Shaw

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MS MANDY TELFORD, National President, MR CHRIS WEAVERS, Vice President Education, DR SOFIJA OPACIC, Higher Education Researcher, MS LINDSEY FIDLER, Finance Researcher, National Union of Students, examined.

Chairman

Can I welcome Mandy Telford, Chris Weavers, Sofija Opacic and Lindsey Fidler to our deliberations. Nice to see you here again, Mandy. You have become a very familiar face to us all, especially those who spent their time talking with you at various interviews. Your term of office expires in April?

(Ms Telford) It may or may not. We will have to wait and see what conference says.

You could run another year if you choose? Our very best wishes if you decide to take that course. Thank you very much for coming to see us. The subject matter is pretty clear. Thank you for your supplementary information that we received yesterday. Can I ask you if you would like to make a brief opening statement? Not all four of you but someone, perhaps.

(Ms Telford) I would like to thank the Committee for inviting us to give evidence in response to the White Paper. We are currently consulting with the student body, with all the student unions, across the United Kingdom on the proposals and would say that they reflect these views. So we have submitted a summary, which you have got, but I would like to highlight a few, key initial responses to the Paper. First of all, tuition fees. NUS does welcome the abolition of upfront tuition fees but we are concerned about the effect that differential and increased fees will have on access to higher education and the restriction of student choice. Maintenance support. We very much welcome the Government= s acknowledgement that to address debt aversion and alleviate financial hardship grants are needed and that loan levels need to be increased. However, we do have concerns that the proposals in the White Paper will address neither as the grant and the loan level are far too low. Access. We do support the Government= s 50 per cent target and we do welcome the increase in the widening participation allocation. The concept of an access regulator is something we like, but we are concerned about the link that this has to the varying fee powers, which we believe is contrary to access. Foundation degrees. We do welcome the expansion of the two-year work-focused foundation degrees, as we believe foundation degrees and other sub-degree qualifications can provide valuable vocational opportunities tailored to employer and student needs. However, we would like to see clear progression routes from foundation to degree and minimum standards to help employers understand the qualification and promote confidence within the student population that quality is being upheld. Institutional research funding. We are concerned about the proposed changes to institutional research funding and believe that it should be directed at innovative research, regardless of location, as innovative, world-class quality research occurs in a variety of settings beyond those deemed to be the best research institutions. Finally, the redress of student complaints. We welcome the idea of an independent adjudicator - something which the student movement has been campaigning for for a long time - with the proviso that the independence criteria is fully met.

Thank you very much for those introductory remarks. Can we start by saying you know certainly my position because you were at the same conference I was yesterday. Can we start by asking you what we asked the AUT and the NATFHE last week, regarding this diversity of funding. In the inquiries that this Committee has undertaken - and you know we have undertaken three major inquiries into higher education - we have looked reasonably sympathetically at the case for the diversity of funding. In one sense what the Committee would like to hear from you is do you take a similar view to the AUT and NATFHE in the sense of looking only at the taxpayer and Income Tax as the main funder of higher education? Are you as exclusive as they are in terms of where you see the funding for higher education coming from?

(Ms Telford) I think we do believe that if education is to be open and equal to all in society, then more money must come from the taxpayer and more money must come from the Government - new money - into the system. We are not suggesting that student loans are scrapped and we would also like to see more links with business. We think that business obviously benefits hugely from higher education and we would like to see some links with the business community also putting funding into the education system, but not putting money directly into courses or directly into institutions. We do believe it would have to be a central pot that is then distributed.

So you do have a view that students, really, should not pay anything themselves towards their higher education?

(Ms Telford) Yes, we do believe that debt is a barrier to education. It does put people off accessing education. It makes their lives horrendously difficult while they are at university. We have, obviously, examples of students dropping out of university because they cannot afford to live and students not even applying to university. So, yes, we do believe that students should be given money to go to university.

Should they make no contribution even though they have a great advantage over people who do not go to university?

(Ms Telford) They do get a great advantage, but the only way you can clarify that advantage is by their financial earnings. The Cubie Committee in Scotland said that the only way you can prove if you have benefited from higher education is through your graduate wage. At , 25,000, we believe, you have clearly benefited from your education. So we would like to see student loans being repaid at , 25,000 and we also believe that if you are lucky enough to go on and get a job where you earn a lot, and not everybody does - as a primary teacher, which is my degree, I will not earn an awful lot of money - then you will be paying more through the tax system, and we believe that is the fairer way.

Jeff Ennis

Just in response to what you have just said, Mandy, the Secretary of State would say that you get people who are on good wages anyway and they have not been through the university system. So if you just pay by the higher rate of taxation, it is probably not 50 per cent who are getting the higher wages because they have obviously not got degrees. The point I am making here is that that does not necessarily target the people who benefited from the system, does it?

(Ms Telford) No, but we do believe that the tax system is a fair way to get money back into publicly funded services. We do firmly believe that education, further and higher, benefits society as a whole. As a society, that is something we should welcome - the expansion of higher and further education.

So you are suggesting that people who have been to college or university would pay a higher rate of tax than people on the same amount of wage who have not been through the system? So they pay, say, another 2p in the pound?

(Ms Telford) I think it is the amount of money that you are earning which is important, and not actually how you got to earn that amount of money.

Even if you have not benefited from the system?

(Ms Telford) Yes.

The Secretary of State has said on a number of occasions recently that when a student reaches the age of 18 they have got the right to vote and they should be able to stand on their own two feet rather than rely on their parents for support. What do you think about that?

(Ms Telford) We do like the independence at 18 suggestion. There have been numerous problems with targeted support. When you are looking at tuition fees, however they are calculated, and targeted maintenance grants, we do like the idea of independence at 18.

(Ms Fidler) NUS= policy around that is really that NUS approves of putting a tuition fee contribution at the back end because, again, that does establish independence on the tuition fee element because it becomes a personal charge. Also, NUS would like to see the student loan being means-tested on the student= s own income, because again that is a personal debt, it is not a debt to the family. NUS would really like to see the whole of the student loan means-tested but means-tested on the student= s income in recognition that it is, indeed, a personal debt.

The Union is, obviously, against differential top-up fees, as are quite a few members of this Committee. If the Secretary of State is sincere about increasing access for students from poorer backgrounds, if he is going to persist with the differential fees, should he not consider wearing the role (?) of the , 3,000 for students from poorer backgrounds, rather than just a proportion of that?

(Ms Telford) First of all, we do think that differential fees are wrong and they will create a two-tier, elitist higher education system. However, Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State, was quoted recently in the press as contemplating waiving the fees for students from poorer backgrounds. Although we would not approve the , 3,000 fees a year we do think that is a step in the right direction. Again, a recognition from the Secretary of State that debt will put people off going to university.

Paul Holmes

Undergraduates often, as a result of being undergraduates and meeting people at university, meet another graduate and then marry. If you have got two graduates who both went to one of the universities that are going to charge , 3,000 fees in the future they would marry and they would have a combined student debt of , 42,000 or more. In places like Derbyshire or Yorkshire that is going to be over half the value of your mortgage, if not more. I know with house prices in London it would be a much smaller part but, as I say, in the northern half of England your student debt in that situation would be at least half the value of your mortgage, if not more. Do you see that as a problem for graduates, perhaps, going into public service - as you say, as a primary school teacher - who will be on lower salaries?

(Ms Telford) I think it is going to have a huge impact on what is going to happen to graduates. The Council of Mortgage Lenders have already said that they are going to be looking quite carefully at the debt that students are accruing whilst they are at university. As you say, , 42,000 as a combined debt for just a student loan, never mind any other debts that you might have, is huge. We are also concerned that it might actually encourage students to go back to their parents= house because they cannot afford to get a first foot on the property ladder or rent a house - all those things that you have to do when you graduate. With so much debt it is going to be very difficult. Again, if you are going back to where you grew up because you cannot afford to move on, are you actively pursuing the job that you want or are you just going back to your locality and finding any old job?

Talking last year to students from the University of London, they were saying that anecdotal evidence was just starting to emerge that the first graduates were now going off to the job market who had had the full effect of the existing loans for fees. They were saying there was starting to be a bit of anecdotal evidence of students already finding it difficult in terms of getting loans for cars, for flats when they start work, and so forth. Have you come across anything more concrete on that yet?

(Mr Fidler) We have talked to the Council of Mortgage Lenders about how, particularly, student loan debt will be treated in terms of applying for credit. They said they would expect it to have an impact on graduates= ability not only to get mortgages but, also, to get personal loans, to opt into pension schemes, etc. This is an early stage of the discussions we have had with them, but where the average age for taking on a mortgage at the moment is 34 they would probably expect that to be rising in the next decade because of the impact of graduate debt. So I think, in terms of the whole economic behaviour of graduates, it is likely to change in the next decade, so it is something we want to monitor, obviously. It is a huge concern.

Again, although it is early days yet because the first full impact of fees and loans is only just coming through on to the graduate market, is there any evidence of a deterrent effect on graduates going on to post-graduate work because of the difficulty of finance, with the debt they have already got?

(Ms Fidler) We understand that that is likely to happen and the growth in the post-graduate market, at the moment, seems to be in international students rather than in home students. That will be something, again, we would expect to continue, but it is something we need to monitor. With the lack of post-graduate government support as well, apart from the research councils, there is no incentive to do that. With any commercial loan being the option for funding it, again with the level of graduate debt, it is unlikely that graduates are going to be able to take that on.

Jonathan Shaw

I would like to ask you about the contradictions within the notion that you are independent once you are 18, because on the one hand your parents will be means-tested on whether you get the , 1,000 and, secondly, your parents will be means-tested as to whether you get the fees paid. The Secretary of State has suggested that he may pay off all the fees. When thinking about access, has the NUS given any consideration to supporting the position that rather than paying back-end fees when someone could come from a poor background but then earn a great deal of money, would it be better in order to encourage access, rather than paying off fees, to provide more upfront maintenance grants? , 1,000 is welcome but, obviously, the means-test is on around , 10,000 which is not much. I wonder if you have given consideration to that.

(Ms Telford) Although we do welcome the return of the maintenance grant and we do believe it is ridiculously small - , 1,000 will not go far in any part of the country for a full year - the fact that it is means-tested to get the full grant if your parents are earning under , 10,000, the Government has changed their mind about the number of students that are going to get it. Is it less than 10 per cent? Is that right?

(Ms Fidler) For dependent students it is likely to be less than 7 per cent.

(Ms Telford) We firmly believe that the Government has already realised that maintenance money is important by bringing back education maintenance allowances in further education up to the age of 21. The money that students get in further education is actually greater than the suggested amount of money that is going to be given to students in higher education. That contradicts so many different things - that you need less money in higher education with a clear funding system. We do think maintenance is important.

If you had a choice, though? You have got one pot of money and the Secretary of State is not getting any more from the Chancellor. Where would you put that money in terms of providing greater access? If that is the starting point, would it be back-end paying off fees, or would it be taking that money and increasing the maintenance allowance - increased from , 1,000 to whatever - and, also, raising the amount which you means-test in order to access that maintenance grant?

(Ms Telford) So that is a maintenance grant plus upfront tuition fees?

No, no. The Government has said they are going to pay off tuition fees, which ordinarily people would pay off back-end. Yes? After their degree.

(Ms Telford) Not always.

(Ms Fidler) Can we just clarify?

The Government has said the fees will be paid off after graduation. So that is a cost to the Exchequer. Would the Government be better in taking that money that they are going to use to pay off those fees post-ed and actually providing greater maintenance allowances in advance - when one considers access and the points that Mandy Telford has made about the small amount of grant and the means test?

(Ms Fidler) And, therefore, maintaining an upfront fee that was differentiated? Is that ----

No. Does anyone else understand what I am talking about? I will have one more stab at this and then shoot myself, I think.

Chairman: Jonathan is going to have one more stab. As they say on University Challenge A Please listen carefully@ .

Jonathan Shaw

It may well be me. It more than likely is. The Government are giving up to , 1,000 to students whose parents are earning less than , 10,000. Those are small amounts, which is the NUS= position. What the Government have said, also, is that they will pay the fees of poorer students after they have graduated. Would it be better for everyone to pay their fees and we take that money that the Government would spend on paying off those fees and give it front-end, so increasing the maintenance allowances and also raising the threshold against which the maintenance allowances are assessed? You have got one pot of money. Where would you put it?

(Ms Telford) I think what we would say, if we had one pot of money, is that we would revert back to the suggestions in both Scotland and Wales, on Cubie and Reece, which was, essentially, that the money is targeted to students from the poorer backgrounds and given as a grant upfront, then everybody pays regardless of their backgrounds back-ended once they are earning a certain amount of money.

Chairman

What is coming over is that - I know it is a very old expression - you want your cake and eat it too. I do not think this session is going to be televised but you would be coming over as pretty selfish and rather greedy as the NUS, would you not? You do not want to pay anything and you want everything. At the same time, when one looks at your evidence, you cannot make up your mind. Do you want to help poor students or do you want to help large numbers of students from quite affluent backgrounds? Is there no moral crusade in the NUS any more that you want to help poorer students? If you do, sometimes it is difficult because you have to penalise the ones who are better off to help the poorer ones.

(Ms Telford) I think there is a huge moral crusade in the National Union of Students. We are trying to ensure our members are not saddled with debt and not saddled with hardship. What this debate is about is the maintenance grant and it is about paying for fees.

So morally you only care about your members and not the poor people out there that do not get any higher education but have to pay the tax?

(Ms Telford) Of course we do.

It does not come out of your literature.

(Ms Telford) What we are debating at the moment is targeted maintenance grants and the paying for fees whether they be upfront, back-ended or top-up fees. The student loan, which we are not asking to be scrapped at all, is still there, is still going to be a personal debt to the student and is still a debt that they are going to have to take out to get ----

I would not think you would want to get rid of the loan, it is interest-free. Not many of my constituents get interest-free loans.

(Ms Telford) Almost.

Chairman: No, with inflation it is interest-free.

Valerie Davey

That is the issue I wanted to come on to. I was at the meeting at which Charles Clarke congratulated you for your very persuasive argument to keep the virtually interest-free maintenance. Yet do you have any idea what it costs the Government every year to subsidise the virtually interest-free loan?

(Ms Fidler) What is Nicholas Barnes= figure at the moment?

It is not Nicholas Barnes. It is something like , 800 million and it will go up under the new system to well over , 1 billion a year. That is the subsidy just for the loan, on which I know of students who are absolutely delighted because they are re-investing that money. Those are the ones who are able to re-invest the money and do very well. When the Bristol Chamber of Commerce, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, met me many years ago now, that was the element they were critical of, because they were saying A If I have to invest in a business I have to take out a bank loan.@ Why are you not investing in your future at - I would not argue for the going rate- at least the middle term at which the Government borrows, so that something is paid back on that loan?

(Mr Weavers) We would certainly recognise that there is a very small minority of students who do use the loan amount in that way. Certainly from personal experience it is a very small number. However, the way the system is run on the current levels of interest payable, which equates to approximately the rate of inflation, means that those people graduating and going to less well-paid backgrounds are not accumulating a much higher debt. The current system means very positively that the person who goes to become a teacher and pays off their loan over the period of 20, 30 or 40 years or maybe gets it written off at retirement does not actually pay off more over the course of their career than the very fortunate person who then goes to work in the City of London and is able to pay their loan off over a couple of years. Any system that introduced either a commercial rate of interest or any form of higher rate of interest would penalise the less well-paid, public sector worker on graduation to the benefit of the person who goes off to work in the City of London as a investment banker, or whatever else, which clearly is a very positive thing that we want to prevent from happening.

I understand that argument and I have heard it put very persuasively, indeed, by Margaret Hodge herself. However, the actual figure of about , 1 billion - are you really saying that is the way you want , 1 billion of higher education expenditure from this Government spent? Of all the priorities, that is where it should be spent?

(Ms Telford) Basically, the NUS does not support raising the interest rate on loans because it would mean that those who are the poorest graduates will pay the most for the rest of their lives. The richest graduates will pay it off quickly and the poorest will be paying it off forever and, therefore, accruing lots of interest. It will also prohibit take-up by certain groups. For example, Muslim students are not allowed to get themselves into debt and, therefore, will not be allowed to take out the Government student loan because it will have a commercial interest rate on it.

Valerie Davey: I take your point, but just recognise that it costs , 1 billion.

Chairman

So we cannot have any interest on student loans because of the minority of Muslim students who might be put off by this. Is that your defence?

(Ms Telford) No, and also because we would like to protect the poorest graduates in society because they will be the ones paying for it longer.

Mr Jackson

Do you think it is entirely rational to assume in your implicit economic model that if there is a substantial amount of student debt to be repaid from subsequent earnings there will be no change in the structure or distribution of those earnings?

(Ms Fidler) I am sorry. Can you repeat the question.

I think it is fairly straightforward. Do you think it is rational to assume that there will not be any change in the amount of money that graduates get paid when they have additional claims arising from their debt acquired as students?

(Ms Fidler) Employers will not increase wages as a result?

Including public sector employers.

(Ms Fidler) It is a problematic area because we are only hypothesising at the moment. We do not know.

There has been some experience with student loans for maintenance, and the arrangements that have been made, for example, to pay reductions in debt for people going into teaching.

(Ms Fidler) But it is unlikely that, for example, graduates going into the voluntary sector are going to be able to have their earnings increased by voluntary sector organisations because there simply is not the money in that sector to increase wages. It is very difficult to expect employers across the board to increase wages in lieu of graduate debt.

What proportion of students go into the voluntary sector?

(Ms Fidler) I cannot answer that. I do not have the figures for that.

Ms Munn

I just want to clarify two points. You are saying that you like the idea of independence and young people being treated as independent from their parents post-18, except when it comes to tuition fees when you do not want students from poorer backgrounds to pay tuition fees?

(Ms Telford) No, that is not what we are saying. We are saying that under the current situation students from poorer backgrounds do not have to pay tuition fees because their parents will be assessed but if the fees were back-ended then it would be the independence at 18 argument. We would also like to see the student loans being assessed on students= individual income rather than their parents= income.

So you would say that the Government is saying at the moment the poorest of students - and quite a lot of students - do not pay the , 1,100 fee, and you are saying they would have to pay that because they would be paying, back-ended, the whole of that amount or up to , 3,000 if it was a differential fee?

(Ms Telford) We would say that if there has to be a graduate contribution then it would have to be based on graduate wages. That is the important thing. It would have to be once you have financially benefited from your education. What we recommend is , 25,000. It does not matter where you have come from, it does not matter what your parents earn; what matters is what your graduate salary is.

So the whole of the , 3,000 would be paid back at some point?

(Ms Fidler) The Cubie model is recommended, for a set amount to be repaid by graduates after graduation.

For all of them?

(Ms Fidler) For all of them, but not differentiated.

Whatever the tuition fee, they would pay the whole of it, whereas the proposal from the Government is not they would not, at the moment?

(Ms Fidler) At the moment the Government is offering means-tested support for some of the possible fee.

We are assuming at the level it currently is, which is that 40 per cent do not pay any tuition fee, and that an additional percentage do not pay the full amount.

(Ms Telford) We would also like to see that money paid back being ring-fenced and put back into the student support system.

We are clear on that then. The next thing I wanted to ask about was the student loan debt. One of the things that we discussed when we did our previous inquiry was that one of the problems that students have is that the student loan is not sufficient to meet living costs. Therefore, a number of students get into credit card loan debt and use that for whatever things they need in order to live. Subsequently there is a habit, I understand, of banks and the like saying to graduates A You have got all these different loans; here= s your credit card loan, here= s your student loan, roll it all into one at one rate and pay it back@ , so they end up paying back more money at higher interest rates. Would you like an increased student loan in order to do that? If so, would you be prepared for there to be a slightly higher rate of interest on it in order to pay for that, rather than having the huge amount of credit card loan which a number of students end up with?

(Ms Telford) We would like the Government to recognise the real cost of living throughout the country. Especially in London and the South East, the amount students get is nowhere near what they need. We would like to see that made up of a mixture of student loans and grants and be paid back, again, after graduation, once they are earning sufficiently. We still would not support any increase on the interest rate of student loan simply because it would just hurt the poorest graduates the most.

So you want to increase Val= s billion and not pay any of that back?

(Mr Weavers) I believe there is an acceptance on the part of the Government at the moment that included within the paper was a provision for reassessing the level of loan support, and amongst the evidence they are going to look at to reassess that was the information collected by the NUS annually. I believe, from what was mentioned just now in terms of the , 1 billion figure, the , 1 billion figure is the projected amount under the new system rather than the current levels, so it would constitute that billion under the proposed new system. It is adding to the current level which is significantly below that at the moment.

I am not going to argue about the exact figures, but the point is that you want more money, which would help because it is at a lower rate of interest, but you do not recognise that in order to do that it might be necessary for there to be some interest rate on the student loan; the alternative possibly being staying as we are and students paying higher rates of interest for credit card debt.

(Ms Fidler) NUS say that if student loans were to be means-tested on the student= s own income and for the whole of that loan to be means-tested, then it may be that students would get more support through that loan, but it would not be a commercial debt it would be the student loan debt. We would like to see more student loan available to more students. We just do not accept that a higher interest rate is appropriate as a form of government support to support students in higher education, because of the reasons Mandy gave.

Chairman: Champagne corks are going to be popping all over suburbia.

Jonathan Shaw

Do you agree that debt by its nature is cyclical? Students accrue debt at different parts of the year than other parts. If so, do you think students should be given the opportunity to have their loans paid to them on a monthly basis rather than all upfront? If you take the notion that in our society we provide those people with the least income - ie Income Support - with their money on a weekly basis in order to assist people to manage their income, students obviously have a low income and, also, are those people who are likely to be the least experienced at handling their personal finances. Is that something you would welcome? I would not say that everyone has got to do it, but a choice.

(Mr Weavers) Not only is there a cyclical nature but, increasingly, it is easier on a monthly basis as institutions and other organisations that students have to make payments to become more flexible. For example hall fees, in many institutions, are now payable on a weekly or monthly basis to make it more manageable. We are certainly working with the student loan company at the moment to introduce a lot more flexibility into the loan system. Certainly that is on a rolling basis, as I understand it. They are looking for a greater degree of flexibility this year, whereby it will be able to be differentiated on an institutional basis but, in the long term I think there is an aspiration both on our parts and, indeed, on the student loan company to make it as flexible as possible so that individual students will be able to choose when and how they wanted their payments made. Certainly that would be a very positive step forward in the management of that money and, also, in allowing students to better manage their finances.

Whilst we accept the 18 principle, I think it would be popular amongst parents.

(Mr Weavers) Almost certainly it will be because there is always a minority of young people each year who have had no experience of managing - while on the grand scale of things not enormous amounts of money - more significant amounts of money than they have ever had to deal with in the past.

They blow the lot.

(Mr Weavers) Yes. Sometimes, in a stereo-typical way, in the first couple of weeks but, also, managing large sums of money over a period of 12 months is very difficult, having just left home. Anything that can be done to help that process would certainly be positive.

(Ms Fidler) We would also like to see more budget management sessions within the induction period and on-going within institutions. Anecdotally from our welfare services, there are a number of problems, not just around students blowing their money, as you put it, but also mature students or lone parents, for example, that are coming off weekly or fortnightly benefit and then trying to manage family finances through funding they get once every three months. I think we would all find it difficult to budget if we got our salaries every three months. So there are issues around ensuring that students are aware exactly how much money they have to budget on throughout their academic year, and how that income might fluctuate. Also, the on-going skills and support that students will need there. We feel there needs to be a core role, really, for budget management sessions at the beginning of each academic year.

So might an attractive package be for access, monthly payments or maybe a shorter period of time, and then the increase in support that we are going to come on to talk about in terms of the postcode premium and then, taking the payment of fees, post-end and putting those into maintenance grants? Those three things together but the same pot of money. Do you think that is a better package than they have got at the moment?

(Ms Fidler) We do accept back-end, post-end, payments and an increased maintenance grant, yes, along with increased resources to widen participation.

Mr Jackson

I want to ask what is, really, a philosophical question. Why do you think it is a good thing that 18-year-olds should be independent?

(Ms Telford) Essentially, in any other part of society - in many parts it is 16 - you are an adult, you can legally do everything and the majority of them are leaving home. It just makes sense at 18 for them to become adults.

Do you think it is good for them to be independent?

(Ms Telford) Yes.

Would you apply the analogy to the case of universities? Do you not think there is actually a case for universities to be independent of state funding?

(Ms Telford) I do not think I can apply 18-year-olds to universities at all. If universities were to become independent of state funding then we would just see the system that we have in America, where we know that Imperial wants to charge , 15,000, and it would not stop there.

You seem to assume there are some benefits, which seem to be moral benefits, for young people to be treated as independent adults. You do not think there is any analogy at all to institutions and whether institutions do not morally benefit from being more independent of the state. Do you think it is right that universities should be dependent on state funding and on the state as institutions? Do you think it is morally good for them?

(Mr Weavers) I think it is morally good for society. We have to recognise that as well as universities being self-serving organisations that have a benefit maybe to the business community, they also have a benefit to society in the forms of the income generation and societal development within certain regions; the benefit of the education of students to become professionals in a whole variety of careers including the public sector, and the benefits to the research that takes place in higher education for society. There is a very important role of the Government in directing the way those resources are applied there for society= s good. It is right and proper that there should be.

So you think universities should be treated as instrumental means to ends, whereas there is no analogy with people who should be treated as ends in themselves?

(Mr Weavers) The balance of finances in the university recognises that there is money from the Government at the moment, there are contributions directly from students and there are contributions from business and other organisations through the research activities, plus the substantial amounts of property that some universities own also generates a form of income, and endowments. There is a comfortable mix there, from the point of view of some universities. Moves to cut the link between government and the higher education sector, we believe, would substantially damage the role of higher education in society but would not necessarily benefit the other roles the higher education sector plays in this country

Mr Jackson: I will not pursue the point, but it does seem to me that something we ought to bear in mind in all these discussions is that universities grew up in the Western World as voluntary institutions, and that that has, I think, had a great deal to do with their success as institutions; the advancement of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge. It worries me that they should be regarded entirely as institutions designed to serve the purposes of students, the purposes of business, or whatever. There is a sense in which they should be regard as institutions which deserve to be treated as independent autonomous institutions.

Mr Chaytor

If we can move on to questions of access. You have supported the 50 per cent target, but in your submission you draw the distinction between increasing and widening access. Can you clarify what you mean by that?

(Ms Telford) I think it is important that access is widened to all in society. There is no point in increasing the numbers of students from 18 to 30 by 50 per cent if they come from the same social classes of those who have already, historically and traditionally, have gone to university. I think what the widening access agenda must do is, in a sense, widen it out to those who, at the moment, have not got the chance or have never even thought of going to university.

Should there be a target specifically for widening access?

(Ms Telford) Yes.

What kind of target should there be?

(Ms Telford) We understood the target to be 50 per cent to widen access.

But 50 per cent of what? At the moment the target is 50 per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds, which is increasing access. You are arguing there should be a widening access target. What could that be?

(Ms Telford) Fifty per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds going to university, we think, should be the widening access; it should not just be those students -----

At the moment it is 43/44 per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds. If the 50 per cent target was achieved without any change in the social composition of that student group there would have been no widening, there would have been only increasing.

(Ms Fidler) We have not put a figure on it, at the moment. The principle is to increase the percentage of lower income students who are in higher education.

Would there be a value in having a figure on that or not?

(Ms Telford) It would be difficult for us to come up with.

(Mr Weavers) The ideal situation would be a situation whereby the percentage of people in higher education mirrored those in society where those people, regardless of where they came from - whichever social class - had the academic ability to benefit from higher education. Which is something you cannot necessarily put a percentage to.

So the university student body should be representative of the social structure?

(Mr Weavers) Taking into account academic ability and the ability to benefit from higher education - which may skew that slightly.

If there was suddenly a billion extra pounds to spend, do you think that objective would be best achieved by using that billion to support interest-free loans or improve grants for university students or to invest it in primary and secondary schools or further education colleges?

(Ms Telford) I do not believe that the widening access agenda will be reached unless money is given to those students who are currently put off education because of the debt they have to get themselves into - the money they have to find to get themselves through education. We do recognise that money has to go into further education and the schools as well. Aspirations must be raised, which is why NUS has very successful partnerships with a progression programme ourselves. We have 70 centres across the country which train students to become mentors, to go out into schools in specific areas that do not send their students to university or college and to mentor them and encourage them to stay on in further and higher education. So all these things are important. I do believe that aspirations are there. I think it was the Sir Joseph Rowntree Foundation which said that aspirations were high (I do not have the figures off the top of my head but we can get them to you), but we do think the upfront money for students from those backgrounds is necessary.

At the moment, 90 per cent or thereabouts of students with 2 A levels actually go on to university. I am trying to get at what is the best use of any additional money. Is it to squeeze that figure of 90 per cent up to 100 per cent or is it to widen the pool of those who have 2 A levels in the first place - or equivalent?

(Mr Weavers) Certainly the emphasis on further education is going to be extremely important, whichever side of this debate you take. Whether it is about widening that pool of people - maybe you just do not take A Levels but also take the non-traditional courses through vocational qualifications and those returning to higher education from the workplace. Also, taking it from the other side, increasing amounts of these higher education courses are likely to be delivered in further education colleges, so whichever way you look at it the further education sector is going to be a priority in terms of funding this expansion.

What I am trying to get at is would the NUS ever, for a given amount of available money, argue that the best way of increasing access would be to invest that money in schools rather than further subsidise university students= maintenance costs?

(Mr Weavers) I think it is a balance of all those things because you need to make sure there is a gradual progression. By investing all the money into primary schools and succeeding at that level but then not being able to meet the demand further along the track will still not meet the end goal; there needs to be a balance in terms of the funding and where that is allocated, to make sure that the people that need to be encouraged are supported every single step of the way.

Can I ask you about the access regulator? You welcome the concept of the access regulator but then say that the regulator should have no influence over the levying of top-up fees. What is the point of the regulator if it cannot regulate?

(Ms Telford) We think the access regulator is a nice idea to monitor access. Some universities are doing a lot to widen access and encourage people from non-traditional backgrounds into university; other universities are not doing very much, if anything, at all. We do believe that differential fees are a barrier to access, so together they should not be connected. We would like to see an access regulator that is independent from the department, independent from the funding councils and has got nothing to do with the setting of student finance but is actually looking at what universities are doing - not just their plans but their outputs. How are they getting students from non-traditional backgrounds enter university, and are those students staying in university once they are in there?

What do you think about the issue of differential admissions policy, in the light of the recent tabloid report about Bristol University= s efforts to widen its social base?

(Ms Telford) I think universities should actually be quite brave in widening out their admissions policies and not just looking for an A and a B, or whatever it is at A Level that is required. I think they should be quite forward-thinking in looking at the other routes people have come - whether they have come from further education, whether they are returners into education or they have come from the workplace.

Chairman

Why should universities be quite brave and forward-thinking? You have not, as the NUS historically. We have got this appalling percentage of students coming from social class 4 and 5 in this country. The NUS have been around as a constant presence for a very long time, under both Conservative and Labour governments, and not only have you not made much of an effort, it seems to an outsider, but you also come here today and have got no concession to switch any money at all from your students from, mostly, very comfortably-off backgrounds to say really the money should be going to keep these poorer students into education, so they have a chance of higher education. Coming back to my theme, do you not think you look as though you are a rather selfish union?

(Ms Telford) I do not think we are selfish or greedy, just perfectly honest. I do not think we were saying all the money should go into higher education; all the money should not go into higher education. Money is important. Money has to go into primary schools and secondary schools and further education, and it is essential that for those students who may want to continue on to further or higher education their aspirations are raised. There are so many different initiatives ----

You will the end, but you will not will the means. The fact of the matter is that you are a classic trade union, you represent, mainly, young people from quite affluent backgrounds and you come here and say A But we are concerned about access and getting kids from working-class backgrounds in@ but you do not actually will the means, which means a transfer of money (like the very point David Chaytor is making). The , 1 billion subsidy that people get in interest-free loans - even on that you are not saying that that , 1 billion would be better spent, as this Committee recommended, on keeping kids into education between 14 and 18.

(Ms Telford) I think it is important to recognise that you raise student= s aspirations at 14 and then you put them in the higher education system, where, as you are suggesting, they are having to take out a student loan at commercial interest rates, and those are the students who are going to be penalised, they will be the poorest graduates, and they are going to be paying it off for ever. We are trying to work with the Department to ensure that there actually is a fair education system in society.

Mr Chaytor

If we come back to the question of admissions policies, you are supportive of Bristol and other universities which are trying to consider factors other than A level scores. My understanding is that the latest research shows that for any given A level points score, pupils from state schools obtain a higher class of degree than pupils from private schools. So again, would the logic of that be for the NUS to encourage universities to give preference to pupils from state schools where two candidates have exactly equivalent A level scores?

(Mr Weavers) It is relatively infrequently that that type of direct comparison would actually work. Our stance overall is that, as well as looking at results in the past, whether it be A levels, or sometimes universities look further back, perhaps at GCSEs or the other alternative qualifications, there is also some recognition of potential. This is something that has always been looked at by universities; there is nothing new in the concept. The interview processes that most of the universities go through during the recruitment period is there to look at the potential and what role the students would play in the university, how they were expected to perform on their course, and I do not think it is a great step of logic to take that further and look at a person= s previous educational experience and how that leads into a potential to succeed in higher education. Certainly that is the way I know that Bristol operates its admissions policies, and it is something we would like to see expanded further across the sector.

(Ms Telford) We do not support quotas. We want access to be on ability and, as Chris said, that ability does not necessarily have to be A level grades.

Chairman

So would you be in favour of introducing a broader range of criteria at 18? The Sutton Trust strongly recommend the SAT to supplement A levels.

(Mr Weavers) Not just at 18, but certainly for mature students as well, usually those that come in from the most diverse backgrounds and those that do not necessarily fit the traditional university admissions procedures. We would like to see universities looking at the potential of students to succeed in higher education regardless of their backgrounds.

Mr Pollard

Could I move slightly away from talking about money all the time and talk about concept. The students that we are trying to encourage to go on to university, these lower socio-economic groups, are not even staying on after 16. I believe that the loans and all that would stop even those who might go to university from going to university. What we have to do is excite a larger group from that group to go to university, never mind the money bit. They are not even interested in taking the first step and thinking about it. How do you excite those kids into thinking that going to university, going into higher education or further education, is a good thing, good for them and good for the country? You are closer to it, being much younger. How were you excited?

(Ms Telford) I think it is about opening up university education. Universities could do a lot with the communities and learn from further education colleges, which are part of the community. In some communities the university is this great, old, picturesque building, but nobody actually crosses the threshold unless they are one of those students. Many people in those communities think it just is not for them. Another positive thing that can be done is the maintenance schemes that we run at NUS, so you are actually sending students out, talking to people of relatively similar ages, people who come from similar backgrounds, to say, A I= ve done it. You can do it too.@ A lot of universities run summer schools and they are hugely popular. I come from Strathclyde University and was involved in one of their summer schools. They have students there from disadvantaged backgrounds around Glasgow to show them that university can be for them as well.

(Ms Fidler) Mentoring schemes are particularly powerful for certain pupils. For example, Afro-Caribbean males: there is a real need for more mentors for that group in particular, whose aspirations are usually not around going into higher education. We are currently doing research with 14 and 15 year olds around what they look at in terms of choosing a university, and what they think of the Government= s proposals. We are at a very early stage of the research but from the preliminary questionnaires, some of the results that are coming out are, for example, that pupils are interested in talking to university students about their future career and they are interested in talking to university students about the costs of study. Giving very practical advice to pupils at an early age to prepare them for what realistically a university education is about I think is a crucial role. We need more of those practical, mentoring schemes.

Chairman

I am conscious that Dr Opacic has not had a chance to say anything so far. Do you want to come in on this, Dr Opacic?

(Dr Opacic) On this particular topic? I think Lindsey has covered it quite effectively in terms of the mentoring role and the research that we have been doing.

Mr Pollard

You mentioned a few minutes ago Moslem students not being able to take up loans. That might have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, but certainly modern Moslem students do not have the same restrictions on them. Putting that to one side, how do we get the Bangladeshi, Afro-Caribbean boys to go into further and higher education? It is the lower socio-economic groups we are particularly failing to attract, and that is a big challenge, both for their communities and for us as a wider community. Dr Opacic, how would you deal with that?

(Dr Opacic) Research seems to be coming out at the moment - and I will pass that on to you - in terms of admissions. It relates to a point that was brought up earlier about universities and independents. What is coming through is that, unfortunately, there seems to be an element of bias and prejudice in the admissions process at universities. This is, I am sure everyone agrees, a worrying situation. From what we have said already, the other issue that seems to be coming through in terms of admissions is that at the most basic level, there is not an informational understanding out there amongst the various stakeholders, amongst pupils and perhaps the people who give advice at schools and DFE colleges in terms of the value of different qualifications. We are talking about levels and different accreditation schemes. There seems to be a lack of understanding. There seems to be an understanding of the gold standard, the A level, but not beyond that. This has had rather an impact on admissions as well. There are pupils out there who want to go to university but unfortunately there are barriers, both informational and in terms of cultural understanding, limiting a group of people who want this valuable experience. I hope that helps.

Immensely. One final point. With the groups I have been particularly talking about, do we need to target the parents as well as the potential students equally, or one more than the other? It seems to me we have to excite both to be able to get through those traditional barriers that are there. They are not real barriers but they are perceived barriers.

The reason I have not said anything is because we have not impinged upon my principle areas of expertise, but I will have a bash at this one. I will use a particular word that is probably not very favourable amongst certain sectors and that is A marketing.@ Within the public sector, some parts of the public sector are better at marketing than others. Within the higher education sector I think there is an element of poor marketing within certain areas to certain stakeholders, and if we could broaden out the amount of information that is available, at an earlier stage - and 14-15 seems to be a crucial stage for people to be making decisions as to whether they are going to go to university or not - that would be a valuable instrument.

(Mr Weavers) One of the big problems is the perceptions of university. In some parts of society there is almost the perception of Oxbridge 150 years ago, where everybody walks around in cowls and gowns. That is an extreme example, obviously, but some of the work that many universities are doing, which is exciting and is excellent in terms of some schools and in terms of the mentoring, but also the work that many universities are doing to integrate themselves into the local communities for groups of students that have been outlined, whether it be Bangladeshi women or Afro-Caribbean males, is helpful. They are more likely to go to a local university rather than travel a great distance. The more that universities can do to be seen to be a part of their local community rather than being a community apart, that will do an enormous amount to break down some of those barriers in terms of perception and aspiration.

Mr Jackson

I was very worried about something Dr Opacic said. I heard her to say that her research was showing that there was active discrimination by some universities in their choice of student. I am aware of allegations that some universities discriminate against students from independent schools, and that of course may be a matter that will be tested in the courts, because it would probably be inconsistent with our adhesion to the European Convention on Human Rights. I wonder if she could just tell us a bit more about this very serious allegation of active discrimination by universities.

(Dr Opacic) With due respect, I did not say it was my research; I said the research that seems to be coming out at the moment, and it is at a very preliminary stage, seems to be indicating that there seems to be a process happening, and I have to be very careful here. I am not accusing anyone of overt bias or prejudice; I am saying there is a system there, there is a barrier there that needs further understanding. Let us move away from the word A active@ because a lot of bias and prejudice is not actually conscious; it is subconscious. We will not get into that area. As I said, there is preliminary research coming out. There seems to be a barrier in terms of admissions amongst certain groups of people. More research has to be done in order to understand what the key factors are in this process.

You are suggesting that perhaps young students should make more of an effort to get themselves informed about the opportunities available to them for self-advancement.

(Dr Opacic) I am sorry. I did not think I said that. Perhaps you could re-phrase that.

There is an issue about where the responsibility for the situation you describe lies. You retreated from what I heard to be an assertion that there was active discrimination to the proposition that lots of young people are not well informed about the opportunities available to them at universities.

(Dr Opacic) I was making two separate points, and they have become blurred. I tried to make the point firstly that preliminary research seems to be indicating that there is an issue when it comes to admissions within higher education institutions that particular groups are suffering as a result of that. The second point I was trying to make is a side issue really, that there needs to be a very simple, practical and common-sense way of actually spreading information through marketing and information about what is actually out there and available. So it is an informational point.

Chairman: I remember the visit the Select Committee paid to Stamford, where we said to Stamford A Don= t you interview?@ and they said, A No. If we wanted more people like us we would interview them.@ That is why they have SATs and five other different criteria to judge students in the round.

Jeff Ennis

I would like to return to the subject of the role of the new access regulator. I wondered what the NUS thought. Do you have any views on whether the access regulator should become actively involved in the target setting for individual higher education institutions or should that be left to the individual institution to determine?

(Mr Weavers) Clearly, there are many universities that do an awful lot in terms of access. One that comes to mind would be the University of Staffordshire, which is doing fantastic work in developing the potential of young people around Stoke on Trent and Stafford. In some ways they could argue that they are well placed to do that type of work, whereas somewhere else, maybe Cambridge, would argue that they are less advantaged in their locality to actually do widening participation work. There is a possible argument that a A one size fits all@ , A you should be attaining this number of students from these backgrounds@ may not necessarily work. There does need to be a great degree of flexibility between institutions, and any access regulator will have to take that into account. Whether the access regulator centrally will set the targets bearing in mind these factors or whether they will be set by institutions and the access regulator will be responsible for measuring performance against promises, effectively, we are relatively open at the moment. We want to know a great deal more about the powers and the nature of that regulator before we can be more certain on that. Certainly if the access regulator has no power to enforce anything, presumably there will be very little point in them being able to set targets which are unenforceable.

My understanding of the role is that the access regulator will penalise financially institutions that do not comply with the widening access agenda, either by direct financial penalties or by not allowing them to charge a full differential top-up fee. But do you not think we should actually be looking at some institutions widening access without going through the financial penalties regime?

(Mr Weavers) Certainly. Unfortunately, due to one of the many flaws of the differential fees system, those institutions that are likely to be seeking the , 3,000 are those that do historically the least in terms of encouraging people from less well-off backgrounds and the groups we have outlined into higher education. It seems a great imbalance there in terms of the role of that , 3,000 and the differential fee system that it should be linked together with an access regulator in this way, which is why we do not see the two as being joined in any way.

Mr Jackson

I wanted to ask what your view is on the two-year foundation degree.

(Ms Telford) The NUS is supporting the two-year foundation degree but we would like to see clear progression from the foundation degree to Honours degree courses. We do not want foundation degrees being seen as a second-class option, a second option for people who perhaps just could not make it. We would like to see them have the same parity of esteem with other, more traditional routes perhaps into education, and we would also like to see a national standard for the foundation degrees across the country to ensure that all students are getting the same quality.

Do you think there is any evidence of demand for these degrees?

(Ms Telford) Foundation degrees will give an opportunity to those who are not accessing higher education through the traditional routes, who are from areas of social deprivation, and I think there is a demand for foundation degrees, to get students who would not leave school at 18 and go into a full-time degree for three or four years.

Chairman

You live in the real world, and you have probably been on most campuses in this country. Do you not think there will be a different kind of attitude to students who are merely on a two-year degree, especially if we take it from Margaret Hodge= s evidence to this Committee that the ability to use the foundation degree as a stepping stone to a full Honours degree will now be withdrawn?

(Ms Telford) We are very clear. We think that the foundation degree should be part of a stepping stone to a full Honours degree. We think the education community, the Department and the employers all need to work together to ensure that they are not seen as second-class students.

(Ms Fidler) HNDs and HNCs are a very popular route at the moment for non-traditional students and provide a really valuable role for encouraging participation into higher education. They are understood by employers and they have respect within the employment sector. We would like to see foundation degrees command that respect as well and offer that route into higher education. We would not see them as degrees of lesser quality, but providing a vocational route and a very important access route into higher education. With them being for a lesser time period as well, in terms of financing that degree, it is a preferable option for those who are perhaps more debt-averse and do not want to take on three to four years= worth of a student loan. So again, they provide that valuable element for those who might be bordering on whether or not to do a degree on the financial issues as well as on the academic issues.

Ms Munn

I am a bit worried about what you are saying here. One of my concerns when Charles Clarke made the announcement was that he said the gap between the 43 per cent currently going to university and 50 per cent would be mainly taken up by foundation degrees. That gave me the concern that the widening of participation would come by the expectation that people from non-traditional backgrounds, poorer backgrounds, would be the ones who went into foundation degrees. I think we have to do more to get people from poorer backgrounds into the traditional three-year degree, and what the foundation degree should be about is horses for courses, in the sense that they are looking at perhaps providing a way of studying around particular areas. Charles Clarke talked about the Health Service, Probation, Prison Service, etc, rather than what you seem to be talking about, which is A OK, we= re not doing very well on getting students from poorer background to do three years so two years will do.@

(Ms Telford) That is not what we said at all. We do think students from poorer backgrounds should be encouraged into the traditional three-year full-time degree courses on a university campus. What we are saying is, the foundation degrees, as a stepping stone to an Honours degree, gives an extra route into higher education to assist in widening access. We do not think it should be lumped for poorer students and students from the non-traditional backgrounds, but it is a route to widen access as long as it is a stepping stone to a degree qualification.

(Mr Weavers) Quite simply, we support it in terms of the fact that it is going to be another aspect of increasing the flexibility of higher education, in the same way as HNDs and HNCs were, in the same way as the variety of modes of study that you can undertake in terms of distance or e-learning, which makes higher education more accessible. We do not support it at all in the context of a means of delivering the 7 per cent; it is an extra degree of flexibility which is welcome, but it should not just be a way of achieving the 50 per cent target.

Jonathan Shaw

I want to ask you about research. You referred to it briefly in your paper that you submitted to the Committee. The Government wants to concentrate research further. We know that our research is concentrated more than any other country, I understand. The Government wants to see collaboration between institutions conducting research. What is your perspective on collaboration and the likelihood of the effectiveness of collaboration between universities on research? That is the future, according to the White Paper.

(Dr Opacic) I am going to talk very generally in terms of the future. Obviously, at the moment there are collaborations happening within institutions and that structure is there, but there will obviously have to be some form of cultural shift within institutions in order for this to be effective and efficient. So the management and the leadership side and the project management side will obviously be important facets for it to work effectively. But obviously, at a very general level, collaboration is to be welcomed in order to share knowledge within the region and nationally. We are particularly concerned that this collaboration should be encouraged through various gatekeepers like HEFCE for instance. It should be encouraged within areas perhaps that are socially and economically deprived, so there should be an element of targeting in order that the whole system is benefiting from this initiative.

So the NUS are happy to see the further concentration of research funding?

(Mr Weavers) We would like to see further collaboration, which I think is very different to concentration. It allows potentially individual researchers in a department which is not particularly research-strong in maybe one of the newer universities to be involved in active, high-quality research projects by being in collaboration with potentially somebody from one of the research-intensive institutions, and maybe, as is likely at the moment, somebody in America or Australia in terms of international collaboration. I do not think necessarily that collaboration means concentration. Certainly we would not support concentration. Firstly, we see there being an important link between research and teaching as it benefits students by having staff lecturing them that are actively engaged in the research process and on the cutting edge of their subject, but there also manifold benefits of having a research capacity in institutions.

Some of the new universities are, of course, at the cutting edge of research and have received various awards for that. You are aware that the Minister said to this Committee that she had hoped to implement a new policy prior to the next Research Assessment Exercise which comes to a conclusion in 2008, before that time effectively taking away money from institutions that have been assessed at a level 4. Are you aware of that? What is your assessment of that?

(Mr Weavers) Firstly, it is important to recognise, as you said yourself, that cutting edge research does not just take place in the research-intensive institutions, and there are individual members of staff in particular in every institution in the country undertaking research who are excellent in their field. Any moves to shrink back the number of institutions that can actually undertake research would be potentially negative, and any system whereby the RAE classification system were used runs the risk of not assessing potential; it would run the risk of assessing actuality but not where there is the ability for a project to go in the future.

Never mind projects in the future; what about projects now? Your members could be undertaking research and could have the money taken away from them. I have not heard very much from the NUS on this.

(Mr Weavers) It is something we are working on, particularly with the National Postgraduate Committee, which is the representative forum that we work with on postgraduate issues. Because it is not something that has been focussed on in great detail in the paper, and obviously the Minister outlined further the thoughts on that area in the Select Committee, it is something we are responding to at the moment. It is certainly a concern that for doctorate students this could very negatively impact on their work. We also have the concern that for potential doctorate students, where there maybe is not research capacity in their own institution, it will act as a discouraging factor, where somebody may consider going straight on from their undergraduate course into a postgraduate within their own institution, which is very common, if that postgraduate facility and that research facility is not available, it will act as a barrier if someone has to move away from the locality, particularly if they have a family, as many mature students do, and if international students had to move to the other end of the country to undertake research of a similar nature, it would simply not be an option for them.

Chairman: I am afraid we are running out of time. Can I thank the NUS for coming. Thank you very much for spending time and answering our questions so fully and frankly.

DR ROGER BROWN, Vice Chair, Standing Conference of Principals; Principal, Southampton Institute; MS PATRICIA AMBROSE, Executive Secretary, SCOP; and DR MICHAEL THROWER, Chair, Mixed Economy Group of Colleges; Principal, Northbrook College, Sussex, examined.

Chairman

Welcome to our proceedings. I wondered, Dr Brown, only because you are sitting in the centre, if you wanted to make a brief, opening contribution?

(Dr Brown) It will be very brief, Chairman. First of all, thank you very much for inviting us to give evidence. We are grateful for the opportunity. As you will appreciate, we represent the higher education colleges, which are part of the higher education sector, and offer about 10 per cent of the higher education; 10 per cent of higher education students are in SCOP colleges. We are for all practical purposes like the universities, in that our staff are engaged in teaching, research and scholarship. Our view overall is that the White Paper is a mixed bag, that it contains a number of distinct positives, but there are also quite a number of issues which could be positive or negative, depending upon how they are implemented, and you might want to ask us about some of those things in the course of your questioning.

Dr Thrower, what is the difference between you and the other gang?

(Dr Thrower) Our gang, Chairman, represents further education colleges. Further education colleges produce 12 per cent of the higher education in the country. There are 230 colleges in all, and of the 230 colleges, my group represents 23, and they between them produce over half the higher education in further education. So although there is a view or has been a view that perhaps higher education is spread thinly across those 230 colleges, the reverse is true. The top 40 providers actually produce nearly 80 per cent of the higher education in further education.

What is the overall percentage of HE that is conducted both your areas?

(Dr Brown) I suppose it would be 21 per cent.

So 21 per cent of HE actually does not take place in the conventional university system.

(Dr Brown) Correct.

We should get that on the record, because we often have different figures given to us on that. Can I then ask you this, Dr Brown: as I understand it, you have some misgivings about foundation degrees.

(Dr Brown) I think that would be a fair statement, Chairman. Basically, I believe that they are a solution looking for a problem. There is a longstanding problem, which is how you develop the advanced vocational qualifications, but I think our view would be that they are not the answer as a generic, across-the-piece qualification. They may be in certain niche areas. We can say a bit more about what the criteria for those niche areas are, but as they stand at the moment they are not, in my view, the means of achieving the expansion the Government wishes to see, and I could even see some detriments if they actually make it more difficult to attract students on to courses like Higher National Diplomas, for example. My institution is the second biggest provider of Higher National Diplomas in the country, and I am quite seriously concerned that employers could get rather confused signals by a plethora of competing qualifications with a new qualification that employers have not yet been led to understand, shall we say.

I saw your article in The Guardian regarding that, but is that a personal view or a view from SCOP?

(Dr Brown) It is largely a personal view. I think there are some successful foundation degrees in SCOP colleges, but I think the SCOP sector as a whole would say, whatever else you do, do not detract from existing qualifications that have attracted the support of employers. It takes a while to get British employers interested in work-based qualifications - or A work-focussed@ is the phrase that is now being used - and therefore we would want to proceed on parallel fronts, and there is a danger, as I say, that by having a new product that is not yet fully market tested, you could actually force some employers away from existing qualifications that do have their support.

Chairman: We are very grateful when people who are representing a group of organisations do speak freely and independently as well as being cautious and speaking only with the corporate voice. That is very welcome, Dr Brown and Dr Thrower. If you want to speak for your institution or personally, we would be very grateful.

Mr Chaytor

Can I just pursue the point about the foundation degrees? Why could HNDs not be assimilated into foundation degrees?

(Dr Brown) There are various reasons, but the fundamental reason is that foundation degrees are intended to be work-based; in other words, a part of the educational experience will be gained in work.

Someone doing an HNC is doing exactly that, surely.

(Dr Brown) No, not necessarily. It is not a requirement for an HNC or HND that there should be a work-based element. There very often is, but it is not a requirement. The other thing is, of course, the Higher National Diplomas are meant to be a national qualification, conforming to national standards, which are set down by QCA and implemented by the awarding body, Edexcel. Foundation degrees are not yet a national qualification, and I do not see how they ever can be, because they are meant to tailor to a particular niche market which is going to be very difficult to control in a national kind of way.

On the question of progression to Honours degrees, what do you think about the debate there? Ought they to be a stepping stone to an Honours degree, or ought they to be entirely a qualification in their own right?

(Dr Brown) You will never sell them unless thee is a progression route, and this is why I say why are they different from HNDs? Many institutions like mine have an articulation arrangement that students can go on from an HND to the third year or second year of an Honours degree course, depending on the student. So those articulation possibilities are there. The Government has swung right round. When foundation degrees were first launched, there was no question about people carrying on within higher education, then suddenly they became a higher education qualification. Now the Government seems to be swinging back and Mrs Hodge is saying, A No, you can= t go on from a foundation degree. It has to be a terminal qualification,@ where, if she is not careful, it will be a terminal qualification.

Can I switch to the question of teaching and learning? You are obviously happy with the idea that university status can be awarded on the basis of taught degrees alone, but in your opening remarks you mentioned that your staff were engaged in teaching, research and scholarship. Do you think there are implications for your staff engaged in research and scholarship with the emergence of taught degree awarding powers?

(Dr Brown) I think there are a lot of misconceptions here. First of all, you will not have teaching-only institutions. All higher education institutions have staff who are or should be engaged in research and scholarship. What no-one has yet pointed out is that the criteria for taught degree awarding powers now involves having staff engaged in research and scholarship. The idea that you are going to have literally teaching-only institutions does not stand up at all. Basically, all it will mean is that you will not want to get research degree awarding powers. Research degree awarding powers in a way has nothing to do with research and scholarship; it is simply a measure of the extent and maturity of the research and scholarship that takes place and is, I think, heavily skewed towards an inappropriate model of research anyway, which is reflected through the RAE and existing definitions of research. So there is no way that if we got taught degree awarding powers or a university title we would want our staff not to be engaged in research and scholarship.

As an example, could you give us an indication of the amount of externally funded research that your institution is currently engaged in?

(Dr Brown) My institution has about half a million of externally funded research, but, like most institutions, our research is actually paid for out of our teaching unit resource, out of the small amount of money we get from the RAE and out of the time of staff.

Chairman

How much money do you get?

(Dr Brown) We get , 33,000 from the RAE. Our teaching grant is , 30 million, something of that kind, so we put , 1 million of that, shall we say, into supporting staff research and research students.

Mr Chaytor

But if the proposals for restructuring of the RAE go ahead, you will not get your core allocation funding.

(Dr Brown) No, but the RAE is irrelevant; it is the world we have lost - or never had.

Do you see a problem of competition or of brain drain from taught degree only universities to research universities?

(Dr Brown) That happens now. I lose my best research students to Russell Group Universities. We are a nursery for the sector. They do not rate us as institutions but they are very happy to take our best research students.

In terms of quality of teaching, has SCOP or the Mixed Economy Group considered or done any research in terms of quality of teaching in respect of HE and FE colleges, HE in SCOP institutions and HE in the existing universities?

(Dr Brown) There is no reliable and secure measure of teaching quality. I can say that wearing various hats. There is an apparent correlation between success in the RAE and success in what used to be called Teaching Quality Assessment. I was talking about higher education, and Mike will have his views about his institutions. But it is simply correlation, and I believe it is the A three Rs@ - research, resources and rhetoric - that make the difference between the scores. Many SCOP colleges have very good TQA scores; some have good RAE scores. We are not a strong RAE institution. There are some SCOP institutions with 4s, one or two 5s and 3s, so there is worthwhile RAE type research done in the SCOP colleges, but the whole issue of the link between teaching and research is one of the myths that higher education has. The evidence for the belief in the link is much stronger than the evidence for the link. Good-quality research can improve your teaching; it can also damage it, and the evidence is quite finely balanced. What is important is that the research and scholarship that is done in higher education then actually feeds into the teaching. That is done particularly well in the American Liberal Arts Colleges and not particularly well in many of our universities.

(Dr Thrower) Can I comment on research? The position on research, certainly for the Mixed Economy Group of Colleges, is of course that we do not get any funding for research, so I think you have to differentiate between research and scholarly activity. It is quite right that to assume a person is teaching at a higher level, at degree level, without undertaking scholarly activity to underpin their teaching is nonsense. So of course they do that, but they do not engage in the research activities that perhaps the research universities would. We have found that that does not materially affect the quality of teaching. If you look at the quality of teaching in the Mixed Economy Group - and you cannot differentiate the quality of teaching from general quality resources and so forth - the quality is generally very good. The last scores that my own institution had when we had those kind of scores was 21 and 20 out of 24. So I do not think the issue of research is a very complicated one. You have to differentiate between the research activities undertaken by universities generally and the scholarly activity which should be part and parcel of professional development.

Do you see any argument at all for requiring that all teachers in further education colleges, in particular those teaching on degree courses, should have a professional qualification in teaching?

(Dr Thrower) Yes. They will have in my colleges, because we are required to do so.

(Dr Brown) And they will have in mine, because all new teachers, as a condition of their employment, have to do a postgraduate certificate.

Is that in your own institution or in all SCOP institutions?

(Dr Brown) In most SCOP institutions.

(Ms Ambrose) It is becoming a general trend within the colleges.

(Dr Brown) Of course, the problem is not the new staff; it is the existing staff.

Are you saying that existing staff are not required in the SCOP institutions to have a teaching qualification?

(Dr Brown) No, they are not. The fact is that in higher education - and again, FE may be different - the requirement that staff should actually have a teaching qualification in higher education is a relatively recent one. Having said that, of course, staff do have other qualifications. In my institution, they have professional body qualifications, for example. We have, of course, continuing professional development, so we have in-service training, but there is no programme for putting these people through compulsory re-certification courses. If the Government were serious about teaching excellence, that is the sort of thing which might attract some support, but it is mainly on new teachers that the effort is focussed.

(Ms Ambrose) The Portfolio Group of the Institute for Learning and Teaching, which is for experienced teachers, has seen a big surge in applications going through the process, so that is something obviously that can be built upon.

On the Institute= s work, do you think that is starting to have an impact?

(Dr Brown) It is beginning to have an impact, but it is a big job.

Mr Jackson

I just wanted to underline the refreshing and healthy scepticism that is being expressed about this famous compulsory link between teaching and research, and particularly the remarks about the value of American Liberal Arts Colleges and the relevance of that model. I would just ask whether you do not think that one way of dealing with this problem of research potential in institutions like those you represent is the more extensive use of Research Council grant funding, and in that context particularly the creation of a Humanities Research Council?

(Dr Brown) I am sorry to say that I do not. I find that the research councils, if you look at their pattern of grant giving, it has been almost parallel to the QR funding that the universities have had. If you want to encourage these kinds of research and scholarship, you have to have dedicated funds for the purpose or some very strong initiative to achieve that. It is possible that the Arts and Humanities area will benefit, and our colleges would benefit, as your question implies, relatively disproportionately from that, but I have been involved with these things since 1991 and every year or so some scheme comes forward which is going to benefit certain areas of the curriculum or certain institutions, and it always seems to be the same institutions who get most of the money, and I am afraid that is true with the research councils. If the HEFCE funding were all transferred to the research councils, as was proposed, you may remember, in a White Paper not all that long ago, I do not think you would see any radically different distribution of funds.

Yes, but the suggestion is that you have people in your institutions who are doing research which is comparable in quality with those in research universities. If that is the case, they ought to be able to get access to research council funding. There is a separate question about whether they are in fact getting access and what the explanation for that is, but the point I am making is that there is available to the people working in your institutions funding through the research councils, and that has been extended by the creation of a new Arts and Humanities Research Council.

(Dr Thrower) I would hope that that would be extended to our group of colleges as well, because it is clearly a nonsense. Again, in my own institution we have 24 Honours degree programmes and 36 Higher National Diplomas. To teach on those courses and not have the same level of access, but be required to reach the same level of quality, seems to me to be a nonsense.

Are you telling me that your people are disbarred from applying?

(Dr Thrower) Yes.

Mr Jackson: I think that is something we should take note of.

Jonathan Shaw

Is it not the case that the last Teaching Assessment Round - I have forgotten what the term is - showed that across the board the highest scores were in the institutions that had the highest concentration of research?

(Dr Brown) Generally, but not wholly. There were some institutions, like Bolton Institute, for example, which got 24, but you are right; broadly speaking, that is the case, and I have tried to offer you an explanation for that in terms of the greater resourcing of many of the older institutions, the emphasis upon research, and a lot of rhetoric about the link between the two. I think if you stripped away the resource advantages, you would see possibly a different kind of picture. I speak as the author of a book on quality assurance in higher education.

(Ms Ambrose) It is worth adding that actually, the specialist colleges have the highest scores of all in terms of Teaching Quality Assessment, and many of those, while they are research-active, and some are very research-intensive, tend to focus much more on applied and performance-based research. It is an interesting distinction actually that they tend to do very well in TQA.

I think what concerns us is if research is concentrated more so than it is at the moment, where are the young researchers going to come from? Dr Brown, you did say that you have researchers and they go off to the Russell Group. You get , 33,000 compared to , 68 million at Cambridge, but there are other institutions, for example the University of East Anglia, which the Minister quoted, which gets , 340,000. Does it concern you overall that this is encouraging up and coming research assistants, who might then go? You can call it a brain drain, or you can say that it is actually preparing the ground for people to go to the institutions that have the most research.

(Dr Brown) I think you mean Anglia Polytechnic. I am sure the University of East Anglia gets a lot more than that. I am personally very strongly opposed to even the existing concentration of research funding. I think it is very unhelpful, and I think therefore the proposal of further concentration is even more reprehensible. What has happened, of course, is that the whole sector for many years has focussed on one particular notion of research, deriving from the big sciences, and because there was extra money available, the arts and humanities and social sciences and the other sciences all pile on top. We now have this Frankenstein monster called the Research Assessment Exercise. If you were really serious about improving the excellence of teaching, and I would say in some ways even the excellence of research, I personally would scrap the RAE, but that does not seem to be on the agenda. You could have a formula-based system of funding. The research councils could still fund research of interest to them. It would enable all institutions in higher education to build up some quantum of research. However, the mantra is that you need to have concentration and selectivity to have high quality, which may have been true in the mid Eighties, when it first started, but it is not true now. As it happens, the present allocation of resources suits certain very powerful institutions very well, and therefore the thing continues.

What is the difference between now and the Eighties?

(Dr Brown) In the Eighties there had not been all the pressure on universities to become more efficient. The RAE was basically about getting universities to be accountable for their resources in research. We have now had four or five RAEs. It is a bit like the first scene in the Mutiny on the Bounty film in 1934, where the sailor has been flogged through the fleet and the sailor is already dead, but Bligh orders him to have 40 lashes. So we have another RAE. To simply ratchet up even more concentration than we already have I think is very damaging to research itself. You mentioned the difficulties of attracting people and keeping people. The other thing is that no-one ever asks about the pots of money that the funding council has. That seems to be off limits for discussion. The fact is that the existing RAE, as well as stylistically favouring certain disciplines, is not very helpful for new disciplines, new disciplinary areas. Patricia mentioned the performing arts, areas of professional practice. These have only recently come into the RAE scope. Education, nursing - education perhaps not so much but nursing - have come into the RAE scope relatively recently, and they have the small amounts of money, so not only are you not able to encourage new kinds of research, but you are also not able to encourage research in these new disciplinary areas.

Chairman

Is there not a problem? I can see where you are coming from here. Let me put to you a hypothetical. Let us imagine there was a conversation between Sir Richard Sykes and the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister was told by Sir Richard Sykes that to be internationally competitive in the global economy, we just have to absolutely concentrate research in four or five universities in this country, especially in the science area, otherwise we are doomed to mediocrity and failure in all these breakthroughs that lead to wealth creation in this country. Let us imagine that conversation took place and the Prime Minister was persuaded by it - what is wrong with the logic of it?

(Dr Brown) First of all, I do not know why we need a few leading worldwide research universities. I spent much of my time as a civil servant in the Seventies and Eighties trying to develop various world class British firms, and where are they now? I even question the assumption. But secondly, if you are going to do that, let us do it; let us designate certain institutions as world class universities, give them protected funding, etc, and then see where we are in four or five years= time, and give them criteria to perform against which really are international. Let us see what they do with the resources.

Mr Jackson

I am interested in this suggestion. The phrase was used that the research councils support research which is of interest to them. I rather like to regard the research councils as being quality indicators in the pattern of their grant giving. The great gap in the system, of course, was the absence of an Arts and Humanities Research Council, which I always campaigned for and I am very glad to see the Government are now doing. Basically, it seems to me that the problem has been, going back to the 1980s, when the RAE was introduced - when I was actually the Minister - that there was a very considerable gap or dislocation between the pattern of distribution of research council awards, which were quality-based, and what was being delivered by the formula-based system, which gave a formulaic funding for research to the then university sector. We have seen evidence from that that quite a lot of money was actually not going to high-quality research through the formula-based system. My question is this: do you accept that the pattern of distribution of research council awards actually is in some sense a proxy indicator of quality of research?

(Dr Brown) Yes, I think that would be so, although I would slightly query whether either system of funding is the best way of having quality in research. If you look at it in terms of value for money, by far the most effective form of research support was something called Development R, which was given to the former polytechnics, which you may remember - it may even have been during your time as a Minister - whereby the PCFC, and then initially HEFCE, provided a relatively small sum of money, I think , 9 or , 10 million a year, to the polytechnics to develop their research, and that provided the basis for them to come in, not from the 1992 RAE but subsequently. You do not really need to give evidence, because the coalition can provide you with it, of the tremendous improvement in quality, assuming that the RAE is a measure of quality, that has taken place in those institutions. In other words, the RAE and the research councils and external funding from business and industry are not the only ways of funding research, and may not be the best.

But would you not accept that if there is a degree of concentration in the allocation of research council peer-reviewed awards to particular institutions, that suggests that the best research is being concentrated in those institutions?

(Dr Brown) Yes, I would agree with that, but I would simply say that research in higher education, if it is going to take place in higher education, has to feed across into other activities. I mentioned the American Liberal Arts Colleges quite deliberately because they do not get much actual funding for research, but I think you will find that in those institutions people are making the connection across from research and scholarship into teaching that many places here claim but do not always demonstrate.

Mr Jackson: Of course, one of the great advantages in America is that they have a plurality of grant giving agencies and that is something we ought to perhaps - not in this inquiry - reflect upon. The Wellcome, of course, is a very big institution in its field, but one of the great things in America is the multiplicity of private and grant giving agencies in support of research. That is something I think we should try to emulate in this country.

Chairman: I want to move on now to funding expansion.

Paul Holmes

In terms of differential fees, how do you see differential fees being implemented by the colleges that you represent?

(Dr Brown) First of all, the colleges have not met to discuss the issue. It would not be safe for me to make any kind of prediction. All I would say is that I think that the level at which the thing has been set is less likely than a higher level of fee would have been to encourage price competition, because, as you know, by 2006 we are talking about a gap - not a huge gap - between the current , 1,100 and the , 3,000, so I cannot say but I think there must at least be a risk that no institution for the generality of its provision would charge less than , 3,000.

The Minister seemed to be suggesting that some places, like colleges, for example, might actually not charge the differential fee as a selling point - A Come to us because we are not charging the , 3,000@ - but you seem to be saying you think they will all try to charge it.

(Dr Brown) I personally think that it is unlikely. There has been the odd institution here and there that has tried to buck the trend. For example, at one stage Peter Knight of the University of Central England in Birmingham, was talking about waiving the , 1,000 fee for his engineering students, and he was leant on, or did not pursue it, shall we say. I think the way things are, I would personally be surprised. The other thing is that the colleges have much the same kind of cost curves as the universities. Some of them are quite high up the cost curve because they provide specialist provision. I cannot see them cutting the fee.

(Ms Ambrose) There is one important area that the Committee might want to think about, and that is the training and education of public sector work force professionals - teachers, nurses and health professionals. The HE colleges are significant providers both of teachers and health professionals, and I think there are some real issues there around whether or not institutions would charge a higher fee for some of those programmes or not. It is quite a difficult moral issue, I think, actually, and it could, of course, also impact on future teacher supply and health professional supply if people feel they have larger debts to repay.

(Dr Brown) Unless the Government caved in and waived it.

Chairman

What was that comment?

(Dr Brown) I was simply saying that what Patricia is describing is a potential problem, to answer the Member= s question. However, I think that in those circumstances, if there were to be an adverse impact upon teacher supply, for example, my guess is that the Government would come in and find some way of compensating the student so that they did not get the full effect of the fee.

(Dr Thrower) Looking at the type of students that we have, my own group felt it was highly unlikely that they would be adding any additional fees; they would be keeping them where they are, simply to encourage the widening participation, because that is the key to what Mixed Economy Colleges are about.

Paul Holmes

Do you have any thoughts on how the access regulator is going to work, again, with regard to your institutions? There was a lot of vagueness when the Minister was here and we were asking about the access regulator. Will they, for example, say to institutions, A You can charge differential fees but you must within the next five years show that you are bringing in a wider range of students@ or will they base it on the previous five years= record?

(Dr Brown) I think the whole thing is a nightmare. First of all, I do not actually agree that institutions should necessarily be forced to take widening participation students. If you have a genuinely diverse system, you have exactly what you have here; you have institutions prepared to in effect discount and not charge an additional fee to attract categories of students, and others like mine which might do it, and others which certainly would not. I do not see any difficulty at all about certain institutions becoming recognised as access institutions. The only argument is that they should get the resources that are necessary to be able to fulfil that role and not be penalised because they are not research universities. I think the access regulator has just not been thought through at all. It is bound to involve a layer of bureaucracy. The regulator is bound to want to get involved in things that are not any of its business because that is the way you get on. Admissions is an area that has hitherto not been externally regulated - it is one of the few areas of higher education that is not externally regulated closely by the funding council. It is now going to be part of the funding council, so you are back to the state agency. I think it is a terrible mish-mash, quite honestly. I do not have anything very positive to say about it, I am afraid.

Chairman

Is that view shared by all of you?

(Dr Brown) I think it is pretty well a universal view. It is a political fig leaf.

It was not the universal view that I heard when there were dozens of Vice Chancellors across at the QEII Conference Centre yesterday. Dr Thrower, do you agree with all that?

(Dr Thrower) No, I do not. From our point of view, I think that having an access regulator who starts to recognise the role that our type of institutions play and can, if you like, quantify those resources that we do need to undertake that work would be an excellent move forward.

Paul Holmes

But you have said that you do not think your colleges would actually charge the differential fee, and the whole point of the access regulator is supposed to be....

(Dr Thrower) One hopes that they would have a wider role, but surely it is about access in total, not simply access being caused by additional fees or otherwise.

But in political fig leaf terms, is it not that the access regulator was there to reassure MPs who were upset by the negative impact of differential fees?

(Dr Thrower) That may well be, but I am quite happy to put on a fig leaf if it helps me.

If you are charging differential fees, would you see an institution just charging it across the board, or would there be differences for different courses?

(Dr Brown) I think there would have to be. If you went into a properly price-competitive market, which I do not expect, then obviously you have to charge less in areas like engineering, for example, where students are scarce, and you might even charge more - you cannot at the moment but in due course. I think one of the fundamental points about the White Paper is it is essentially a transitional document. There is not much in it which is genuinely new, and what is in it now is only a portent of what may happen in the future. So at some point, if we are moving more in the liberalisation direction with fees, I certainly think it must vary by subject, as it does in Australia, for example.

For the student, what do you think the point of the , 3,000 a year fee is? Is it because they are going to get smaller classes and better library resources? Is it simply to pay for more expensive courses like science and engineering? Is it to pay for the ethos or the elitism of a certain institution? What are they getting out of this higher fee?

(Dr Brown) I have always been cynical, and I have said this publicly and written articles about it, that the institutions that wished to charge a top-up fee were those that wished above all to support their research, and if I were a student going into one of those institutions, I would want to have some kind of contract - here is another role for the access regulator, if you like - which specified that, for example, I would actually see the professor whose name was on the prospectus when I applied, and that I would not be taught by one of his graduate research students. If you were to enforce that, that in itself would greatly improve, I think, the quality of teaching in many of our universities.

One final question, which I asked the universities as well: have you any confidence, looking three, five, ten years down the line, that having charged all these differential fees, the Government will not just compensate for that by giving you less grant in the first place?

(Dr Brown) No. I think the record is clear. The only country I know where the effect has not been to reduce the government contribution is New Zealand. Certainly it is clear in Australia and it has certainly been clear in Britain since 1998 that all that has happened is private funding has substituted for public funding.

So the student is going to go into debt to improve higher education, but the cash difference is going to be nil anyway.

(Dr Brown) It comes back to the same thing. At the end of the day, you still have your poor student ratios, your decaying buildings and all the other pressures that you have, which, to be fair, the Government has begun to address, but there is such a lot to do, this is only a small step forward really.

Chairman

You are coming over as rather a cynic in the sense that in your opening remarks you said the White Paper was a bit of a mixed bag; I am waiting for the mix. You do not seem to be very happy about most of it.

(Dr Brown) Since you put the point to me, let me make two points. First of all, I have been involved in this area since 1987 in different capacities, and therefore maybe I have seen too much policy making in higher education for one lifetime, but there are some positives. I am cynical about some of the things in the White Paper, and I am cynical about some of the things that institutions say about what is in the White Paper. First of all, there is the fact that the Government, even more clearly than in David Blunkett= s February 2000 speech, has talked about the value of higher education. They have acknowledged the under-funding; that is very helpful. There is more money for research; that is helpful, certainly for those institutions that will benefit from it. I think the liberalisation of university titles is a good step forward. The recognition that the key to widening participation is improving the numbers of qualified school leavers is a very helpful step forward. Not all the adjustment is to be borne by the institutions, which is not to say the institutions could not do more. So I am positive about those things, but I have also indicated that I think there are other negative issues that need to be teased out.

(Dr Thrower) Could I add a couple of positives as well? I welcomed in the White Paper a challenge to perhaps the perceived model of student experience, and that is, of course, the Oxbridge model. For the first time we were looking at different ways of delivering higher education, and some of the modes that we are employing are starting to be recognised as being quite valid routes to higher education. Also, I think the dividing line, which has been fiercely defended, certainly by what I would regard as the HE establishment, between further and higher education is at last breaking down. A lot of people at senior technician level - the old foreman, the supervisors - are the people we are chronically short of, and they are the people that we should be delivering.

Ms Munn

That brings me nicely on to the question that I wanted to ask, which was around this whole area. Are there not actually a lot of opportunities for your institutions in term of the proposals within the White Paper? One of the issues which we discussed at a seminar that we had before we began this inquiry was that the difference that has been made to students from poorer backgrounds, as opposed to the well-off students that the Chair was talking about earlier on, is not that great really. Therefore, there will be incentives for people to stay closer to home. Is that not an opportunity for your institutions?

(Dr Thrower) I think there are tremendous opportunities for our types of institutions, providing we can get rid of some of the bureaucratic hurdles that exist, and I am more than happy to talk about those. I think local education has a real part to play, and not just because it is cheaper. It is because a lot of our students progress through vocational routes, where they feel comfortable in that environment. It is not the kind of A Ivy League@ environment that was described by some of the students this morning. They do feel comfortable in that environment. They also respond certainly to the vocational thrust of those programmes. So there is a lot of opportunity for us there, I believe, but we have to sort out things like the fact that we currently do not receive any capital funds from either HEFCE or the LSC for our higher education work. We have the dance of hypocrisy, where we pretend we do not do it, and that way we can fit it into buildings that are funded by the LSC, and then of course, they say, A Your utilisation factor is not very high,@ because you are not actually admitting you have higher education students in there. There is all that nonsense, and we have to get rid of that. But the opportunities are there, and I am sure that our sector will grab them. Certainly our record is one of grabbing those kinds of opportunities, and I would actually just correct you slightly: in my sector and in my group, widening participation has been on the agenda for decades.

I do not think we have suggested otherwise.

(Dr Brown) My answer would be yes, I think there are opportunities in the White Paper, as I have mentioned: the liberalisation of university titles. Frankly, I do not see an awful lot else in the White Paper that is helpful in that kind of way. We are a widening participation institution. My institution, amongst 80 institutions, has the widest participation of any institution on the south coast. We have a large proportion of students coming in without any conventional entry qualifications, for example. So there are opportunities there, but the things that are really going to make a difference are a big improvement in the number of people coming forward with qualifications and wishing to be in higher education; an improvement in the basic funding of teaching, which has not really started to happen; and much more demand from employers for vocational sorts of courses. We are a vocational institution. We have tried very hard to get employers interested, for example, in foundation degrees, CPD and things of that kind, and we have had a very mixed response. These are the fundamental structural things that go on that are not greatly affected by the White Paper. The White Paper might improve our ability to respond to those things if they happen, but it does not in itself do much about those particular things.

If I can come back to Dr Thrower, you were talking about vocational routes, and the White Paper does talk about trying to get rid of this unhelpful distinction between vocational and academic, where vocational is seen as being for those who are less able, and it has all sorts of implications and knock-on effects. How do you see that debate and how would you want to contribute to that?

(Dr Thrower) First of all, I agree that that still exists. I think the perception that vocational is less than academic is still present throughout most of our education system, rather sadly. Certainly, it seems to be almost a peculiarly British attitude. Sorry; English attitude. I think we have to do what we can to change that. I think the changes that we are now getting with the A levels and perhaps moving more to a baccalauréat type system will help that. I think that we have not helped ourselves. We have a massive number of different awards, and they do not make sense to the average employer. We have to get our own house in order regarding that. A lot of work has been done, but not enough. In an odd way, the foundation degrees have exacerbated the problem, because they are now calling into question in the minds of employers the value of HNDs and HNCs, and some of those have a long tradition, are much valued by certain employers, particularly in certain niche areas where they have had HNDs providing really the higher education element for most of their middle managers and senior managers. In those kinds of areas, again, we have to clarify the position of HNDs and HNCs as soon as possible, because to allow a kind of A death by a thousand cuts@ is not the best way to proceed, and we have to plan for these changes. HNDs and HNCs are different to foundation degrees. I think there is a particular problem with an HNC, because how we are going to convert an HNC into a foundation degree is a question that is worrying me. Again, the HNDs have a long and I think excellent history of providing short, and indeed, highly focussed skills for employers. There is a lot we have to do to try and put the thing right, but the one thing we must do is raise the level of acceptability of vocational courses in the minds of the general population.

Mr Pollard

I did the HNC route donkeys= years ago, and it was the route into chartered status for engineers in particular. That has been closed a long time now; now you need a degree, so there is less relevance in the HNC. However, that is not the question I wanted to ask. My daughter has just been offered a place at Brighton University to do a pre-registration nursing diploma. She has to pay no fees, and she also gets a , 5,128 bursary, which is very handy indeed. Next week she goes to Hertfordshire University, which is only a quarter of a mile away from where I live, and she is likely to be offered a place there as well, and she still has no fee and will get the , 5,128 bursary, which will be very handy again, because she will live at home. That has been engineered because of an acute shortage of nurses. Is that fair? We have an acute shortage of students of physics and mathematics. Should we not be addressing that in the same way?

(Dr Brown) I am not sure whether you should be asking us or the Government.

I am asking your views, you have given your views on everything else!

(Ms Ambrose) I was just going to say that I think there is clear justification in areas like nursing, teaching other health professions and social care professions where we need a well qualified skilled workforce for the social health of the nation and educational health and well being of the nation. I am sure that if there are employers out there who particularly want more physics and math graduates then to some extent they have to bear some of the responsibility for that in terms of encouraging graduates into those programmes, again by offering the waiving of debt, or whatever.

(Dr Thrower) May I come in on that, I know this is higher education but as I represent both further and higher education if I may be allowed to stray into further education. I find it fascinating that we do that, that we provide additional resources for shortage areas. I wonder when we will be doing it for plumbers, plasterers and ---?

Chairman

Could you repeat that? I am sure it must have been about electricians and plumbers?

(Dr Thrower) I think it is an argument between the vocational and the academics.

One thing that surprises me is that I expect we will all be dancing in the streets and popping champagne in the sense that is this not a wonderful opportunity for you if the Government says, this expansion in HE/FE is absolutely not going to be in traditional degree courses, it is going to be in other courses, and obviously most of them in FE. In a sense on the one hand it is good news but the other piece of news is that it is going to be done on the cheap. Is that not the truth?

(Dr Thrower) The problem as usual is the devil is in the detail. We do not know how some of these things are going to the work. For example, the suggestion here that our direct funding from HEFCE might be under some kind of threat as a group would worry me greatly because one of the ways in which my own group has developed its courses is to be able to have the long-term planning that is required to set these degrees and sub degrees in motion. You do not often get that with a relationship with a local HEI and the reason being that the local HEI has its peaks and troughs in funding and, of course, one of the first things that will go will be the relationship funding with the FEC, with the Further Education College. I would certainly be dancing a jig if I were considerably younger than I am.

Mr Pollard: You would be able to then.

Chairman

You look pretty fit to me, Doctor.

(Dr Thrower) Thank you very much, Chairman. I do believe that the White Paper, as I indicated earlier, has enormous potential for colleges like mine. I fear that some of the nonsense, like being under two different assessment inspection regimes, being under two different funding regimes, not having access to capital funding, all of those kinds of nonsense will actually frustrate the excellent developments that are contained in the White Paper.

Why can you as an organisation not take a positive role in communicating with the Department that that will be the barrier to progress?

(Dr Thrower) That is why I am here this morning, sir.

Absolutely, and you are making the point well. It seems to me there is a conservatism amongst the FE sector, why are you not grasping the opportunity of mergers with universities? There is a slight sign of this between Huddersfield and Doncaster and Bradford and Bradford College, why is that not going at a pace? It seems to me that is what is needed, would you agree with that or not?

(Dr Brown) I would simply say that on that specific point I think, if I may say so, with great respect, you under-estimate the differences of culture and things like pay and conditions between the two sectors. There are differences of quality. There is no point in beating about the bush, some of those mergers you talk about are now coming part because of the differences on sector, differences of quality, ability, concerns on the part of the FE college that the new college will be all HE, concerns on the part of the HE college that you will get some dilution. I am not saying that it cannot happen, but as a factual answer to your question I think that is what is happening at the moment. On the general point you make about foundation degrees it seems clear to me that the only reason we have foundation degrees is because the Treasury was caught napping by the Prime Minister's statement of 50 per cent, and advised the Prime Minister that this country could not afford to have everybody on publically funded honours degrees. At the same time there has been a lobby for many years that more effort should be put into higher vocational qualifications and technician qualifications and so the foundation degree was invented to meet that particular need. It can only work if it can be done more cheaply. There is no evidence that it can be done more cheaply. Most of the institutions that are offering foundation degrees are having to subsidise them from their other courses. Most foundation degree students, if you look at it closely, are being taught in the same groups and the same classes as the HNC students. It does not stack up, either you have to have much more demand from qualified score leaders coming through or you have to have much more demand from employers for those kinds of qualifications. I cannot see how it can possibly be made to stand up and I cannot see particularly how the Government can ensure that the expansion takes place in those areas because most higher education institutions have vacancies on their honours degree courses and many of us will take students on to honours degree courses or HNC courses who might otherwise have gone in to foundation degrees. At the moment I cannot see what beyond Government rhetoric is actually going to make the trick with foundation degrees in FE as much as in HE.

(Dr Thrower) Chairman, I wonder if I can quickly respond to your question about merger. I think one has to understand that the philosophy of an institution like mine is somewhat different to a university philosophy. Superficially you would say that we have a great deal in common with the new universities, indeed we sprang from the same stable. I would say that we have a lot in common with the polytechnics as they were originally conceived and not a lot in common with the polytechnics as they had to become new universities. We are about progression. We are about taking students from craft level through to higher education in vocational areas. We are about looking at innovative ways of delivering that, why not 48 week years, a two year honours degree. That is the kind of thing we have to get into, we have to look at those kind of things. I have to say, this is not a comment about my neighbouring institutions, I hasten to add, many of the new universities are very reluctant to take on board further education. Any kind of merger would mean dropping the very things that give us strength in terms of regression.

(Dr Brown) Can I just add one brief thing to that? I think you could achieve what you would like to achieve, which is progression, without mergers by closer articulation between further and higher education, and that is beginning to happen.

By clusters?

(Dr Brown) You do not even need to do that, you simply have the institutions working together to create progression possibilities, you do not need to have a great bureaucratic super structure to achieve that.

Mr Jackson

Which is the point on mergers, is it not the case that the problem with mergers is that it could reinforce the chronic British disease of institutional drift and convergence to one model and greatly damage the diversity? Could I pick up on that point, leading into the question I should ask about access, I must say I have found your evidence a breath of fresh air after some of the stuff we have heard.

(Dr Brown) I pity you in that case.

In particular the stress you have made on the point about diversity and the way you have drawn the connection, I believe entirely correctly, between diversity and access. Just on access I wonder if you can say a little bit about the proposals that the Government made to increase access on the post-grad premium, do you think that is going to be of any use?

(Dr Brown) First of all we do not exactly know how they will do it. The thing which would make a difference, in my view, would be if they were either to reward institutions that take a higher proportion from state schools or if they were to reward institutions that take a high proportion of students without any convention entry qualifications. If you look at the statistics you will find there is a very close correlation between the institutions, and I am talking about all institutions, universities and colleges, that have a high proportion of the social class listing of 3M, 4 and 5, and particularly students coming in with unconventional entry qualifications, that in itself would be a big step forward. I do not know precisely what we are going to do with the post-code premium, everyone recognises it is not a satisfactory measure, but we do not know what will replace it nor do we know how much money will be allocated to it. The other matter is where the money will come from, will it be taken away from the money that would otherwise be allocated for teaching or will it be additional to the money allocated for teaching? I am not well cited on that, there may be others who know that answer.

What about the reintroduction of maintenance grants, will that help?

(Dr Brown) I think that will help. There are signals there. If any of you are familiar with the recent excellent book by Louise Archer and colleagues of the London Metropolitan University, showing us what a very complicated subject participating in higher education is, funding is a relatively small bit of it actually. As we all know the signals about debt, many of these are very debt adverse students and that is commonly accepted.

Can I just ask about dropout rates because this is something that concerns people, dropout rates growing as a consequence of the expansion of the system and particularly its expansion to people who are necessarily are all that knowledgeable and all that committed when they come into the thing. Can you comment on what could be done about that issue because it does represent a substantial waste of resources?

(Dr Brown) First of all, it is one of the most complicated subjects and there are a whole series of reasons for it. Fundamentally I think it is a corollary of on the one hand having more students who are not from higher education sort of backgrounds, which is certainly true in my institution, and on the other hand, and I say this against my own institution, if you like, I do not think we have yet adapted the curriculum to the needs of these kind of students, so I think you get a miss-match between the kind of students that are coming in and the kind of curriculum you had. In my case there is a major issue with professional bodies, nobody ever mentions the professional bodies in relation to access but actually I have yet to see a professional body that has helped the cause of access, be it science or the Engineering Council they are directly detrimental to access because of the requirement that you have to have 3 Cs at A-level to be on a course that could attract accreditation. I think there is both a demand side in terms of the complexity there and the supply side. There are other factors as well. The biggest single reason why students drop out at my institution is what are called A personal reasons@ . We track the number of students that drop out, we track their reasons, we have a questionnaire, we ring them up on Sunday mornings to find out why they have not returned and very often it is the girlfriend has moved away, got a job, decided higher education was not for them, they are not really about us as an institution at all but because we attract relatively more proportions of those kind of students those tend to be the patterns that come into play.

On this point about curriculum, you must accept, surely, that there must be a limit to the extent to which the curriculum can be driven by the needs of attracting this group?

(Dr Brown) I do, absolutely. I can reassure you on that, not only with the professional bodies but we have all the paraphernalia of the QA, we have the external examiners. We are not under regulated in that sense, which is why I think the variations and standards across the system are not as great as sometimes people imagine.

(Dr Thrower) If you are going to prevent dumming down you are going to prevent inevitably the retention rates dropping when you are taking away from participation, there has to be an acceptance of the cost. The biggest single factor in persuading a student to stay on a course is the tutor at the sharp end, they require support and training and above all they need time to undertake that activity. Taking the widening participation agenda on board means that you also have to take on board the additional costs of teaching. If you look at the contact hours of a traditional degree programme they are relatively low compared with the kind of courses that we run, that is not because those students necessarily need more tuition in the curriculum areas it means they need more support.

(Ms Ambrose) Could I add to that, specifically looking at the members of SCOP the colleges demonstrate quite an interesting trend in that they are about as good as the new universities in widening participation and about as good as the old universities in retention, and that is because they do invest lot in student support and the quality of the student experience. The sort of feedback that students give, I would have to say particularly from the smaller institutions, and that is another significant factor in many cases, is that they feel like an individual.

Chairman: That has been an excellent session. Can I thank you. It has been of very great value to the Committee. I hope we can remain in touch. When you go back to your institutions if you think of questions we should have asked you please do drop us a line.