Examination of Witness (Questions 460-479)
8 NOVEMBER 2004
DR KIM
HOWELLS MP
Q460 Mr Jackson: Chairman, the Minister
was about to answer the question I put to him about embedding
eLearning into the DfES's target and its progress towards this.
Dr Howells: It certainly is an
important part of our aims for the future. I have to admit to
this committee that I am still very unclear about this particular
project, UKeU. I think we have learned some lessons from it but,
whether or not we are going to become great world players, if
indeed there are going to be great world players in this area,
which I think is a different matter altogether, we ought to have
enough humility to ask ourselves if the original idea, exciting
though it was, was not a little too ambitious. I do not know.
I am sure there are lots of people who will disagree with me and
these things take on a life of their own, of course, once they
start rolling. It is quite clear that there was great enthusiasm
amongst those who were working for UKeU and running it as well
as people inside the department and inside higher education in
general who thought that this was an important way forward.
Q461 Chairman: Did you not put your finger
on it in a sense by the remarks you made just before we came back
to Robert's questioning, that is, that people do not sign up for
the best possible course in the world; they sign up for an institution
with a record, with a brand, with a reputation, that they want
to be part of? Paul is going to take us through the last bit of
questioning on the University of Edinburgh's more modest but successful
scheme where people in a sense want to do a course, even if it
is distance learning, with Edinburgh or with the London School
of Economics or with Brunel or whatever, and that is in a sense
part of what seemed to be missing when I was again re-reading
some of the evidence that we have taken, that although there were
lots of universities involved in this scheme what had been taken
out was that people were saying, "I did that course with—"—a
particular institution?
Dr Howells: I am not sure that
was the reason why there were such abysmal numbers of students
signing up to this but I have no doubt whatsoever that if there
was a clearer brand—I get tangled up just trying to say
UKeU anyway. I do not know who dreamt that one up but it is not
a great title. It is typical of the sort of rubbish that was around
at that time.
Q462 Chairman: You are just about the
most experienced minister in the government, Dr Howells. You have
been in, I think, five departments.
Dr Howells: Four departments really
but I am a retread from Education.
Q463 Chairman: Five different experiences.
Dr Howells: Five different learning
experiences.
Q464 Chairman: The average length of
a ministerial career is something like two years and three months
and you have lasted somewhat longer than that. If you had done
this yourself, if you had been in charge of this, would not common
sense have said, "Give £10 million to five universities
or £5 million to 10 universities and see what they can do"?
Would you not have come up with something a lot more sensible?
Dr Howells: I am a great believer
in testing models. I think we should be much more evidence based
in terms of how we devise policy and run organisations. We probably
could have done with more time in terms of looking around the
world, perhaps not reacting as quickly as we did to what we perceived
to be great threats coming mainly from America of our own students
being captured to do degrees by universities like Phoenix and
so on. I think we should pilot and test more often with these
kinds of things, so probably we could have been a little bit more
modest in our aims and also used some of the great expertise that
is out there, Edinburgh being one of them, although I know there
are discussions going on with Edinburgh and with the Open University
and with a number of other universities about how this could have
been done. I can see that there was a real sense of adventure
at the time that this was a great new future and we had to be
in there right at the very beginning. It is easy for me to say
this with hindsight now.
Q465 Chairman: But do you still believe
in the future of eLearning?
Dr Howells: Oh yes, there is no
question about it. There is too much evidence out there, especially
in schools, where teachers are using this very imaginatively.
There are some tremendous programmes being devised. When people
are older they want other things. After all, school is very much
a collective activity, a very community based activity. It comes
back to the question you asked about what it is that people feel
comfortable with and what they want. You have not asked me this,
Mr Chairman, but I think probably it would have been very wise
to have had a crack at postgraduate work first. There very often
you might have another job, you might be doing other things, and
you would want to be primarily based on your PC or your laptop.
I think we could have tested that one first before going for this
great mass of undergraduates that we assumed would be flocking
to this platform.
Q466 Chairman: So you agree with this
Committee that there is a great future for eLearning?
Dr Howells: I do indeed.
Q467 Chairman: And £50 million in
a sense has gone down the tube on quite an expensive experiment.
Are you going to give some more money to progress eLearning in
a different way?
Dr Howells: I am notorious at
being tight-fisted as far as taxpayers' money is concerned.
Q468 Chairman: The rail industry seemed
to do all right with you.
Dr Howells: Well, no. A year last
June when I was appointed Minister of that department the cost
of the West Coast mainline upgrade was £13 billion. It is
now £7.6 billion. Helping Alistair Darling, who is also very
careful with taxpayers' money, to bring that down was—
Q469 Chairman: But are you going to put
a bit of money into eLearning?
Dr Howells: They have got the
residual amount of about £12.5 million at the moment to experiment
with. That is a fair chunk of money and I would have to see some
very good plans before I would say, "Okay; there is another
£10 million funds. Get on with it".
Q470 Chairman: So HE has got enough money
altogether anyway, has it? You are the Higher Education Minister.
You are content with how much money they are getting?
Dr Howells: Yes, I am broadly
content with it. It is a huge budget, £9 billion, plus money
coming in from other sectors. I think that is a pretty good start
for higher education.
Chairman: I can see we are going to have
some robust exchanges in the future.
Q471 Paul Holmes: We have partly covered
this subject but, just to summarise, you have got a global e-market
estimated at about £18 billion in value and we have had a
brave attempt to get to the forefront of that which ended in disaster,
so there are three ways the government could go now. You are now
the Minister responsible as opposed to saying, "This all
happened before I was there". Do you say, "We got our
fingers burned like we did with ILAs, so we do not want to touch
it with a barge pole any more, or do you say, "We will put
some more money into a new venture", and we have partly touched
on that, saying they have still got £12 million to experiment
with, or do you say, "We will just leave it to the private
sector, to the universities, and let them get on with it"?
Dr Howells: Or to other countries,
of course.
Q472 Paul Holmes: Yes.
Dr Howells: A bit like the space
programme.
Q473 Paul Holmes: So what are you going
to do?
Dr Howells: I think we have to
be very astute about ensuring, based on the kind of model that
was created by HEFCE or by creating a new model, that we are there
or thereabouts. We cannot afford to ignore this area because there
is a good deal of truth in the fears that were expressed in and
around 2000 that this is a market that is up for grabs; there
is no question about that. It may not be the market which UKeU
identified, although there will be elements of it in there, but
there is certainly a good market out there, if only to learn English.
Q474 Paul Holmes: In looking, for example,
at why this experiment failed but other experiments seemed to
be more successful, the Chairman or yourself said that the Edinburgh
example was a more modest example. It was modest in terms of money
because it did not have £62 million of taxpayers' money but
where the eUniversity got 900 students for £62 million the
Edinburgh University example has got 75,000 students from 23 countries.
For a lot less money they have much more successfully hit a very
large market. Why have they done so well whereas this particular
experiment was a disaster?
Dr Howells: One of the reasons
is certainly the one the Chairman touched on, which is that Edinburgh
is a very clear brand, people want to be associated with it. There
was no fog surrounding what it might end up as. Mind you, it is
subsidised by Scottish Enterprise, the old Scottish Development
Agency. They have put a bit of money into the pot. By the way,
I made a mistake, as usual. It is not Edinburgh University; it
is Herriot Watt University in Edinburgh that has been running
this. I am also told on good authority that I have overestimated
the higher education budget by £3 billion. It is £6
billion. It works up towards £9 billion.
Q475 Chairman: I think that is what you
want it to be. I think we have got that written down.
Dr Howells: I am giving secrets
away here.
Q476 Chairman: We have got the information
that Edinburgh is a consortium of three or four universities in
Scotland.
Dr Howells: Yes. It has got 80,000
students who mainly are studying highers and it has got about
1,200 students who are studying HE.
Q477 Paul Holmes: In conclusion, which
way are you leading as the Minister who is now responsible: to
let consortiums like Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Herriot Watt get
on and be very successful, to just use the last of the £12
million and not put any more in, or what?
Dr Howells: We have to ask for
and receive proposals on how this thing gets taken forward. The
last thing we need after this experience is an open cheque book.
We need ideas and we need solid business plans. I think there
is a future here but we have to be very careful after this. This
is taxpayers' money.
Q478 Paul Holmes: So you are asking for
bids from everybody who reads the minutes of the select committee?
Dr Howells: I have not formally
gone out and asked for bids off anybody, but I hope they have
got the message that we are certainly interested in these kinds
of ideas.
Q479 Mr Chaytor: Before we leave this
can we just look to the future a little bit and ask about the
eLearning Research Centre, which I understand is now jointly run
between Manchester University and Southampton University? What
is it going to research? Is it going to research the technological
side, is it going to see how the technology works, is it going
to be a more market-focused research operation, or is it going
to be entirely abstract and theoretical? Is it going to be of
any use in advising government or other universities about how
they might break into this global market?
Dr Howells: It is operating now
under the HE Academy which is a very new organisation which Paul
Ramsden and Leslie Wagner are running. They are running the eLearning
Research Centre on these split sites in Manchester and Southampton.
I think you may have been out of the room, Mr Chaytor, when I
said that the focus of the Manchester site will be in the area
of process modelling based on the concept of an end-to-end process
for design development, evaluation, delivery and maintenance of
e-learning, and at Southampton, which I know Mr Turner would be
interested in, the focus is going to be on the pedagogic aspects
of eLearning in that end-to-end process of development. They are
complementing each other's work. The thing to say, Mr Chaytor,
is that everybody is watching them very closely and I know that
Paul Ramsden, who is the Chief Executive of the HE Academy, is
very interested in these concepts, and Leslie Wagner, because
they have had experience in other parts of the world in how you
allow people to access very sophisticated elements of learning
when the geography is difficult.
Chairman: We have enjoyed this evidence
session, Minister. Thank you for a full, frank first meeting with
the committee. Just like you are going to be watching the HE Academy,
we will be watching you.
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