Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 23 FEBRUARY 2005
PROFESSOR MICHAEL
DRISCOLL, PROFESSOR
JOHN TARRANT
AND PROFESSOR
DAVID VINCENT
Q1 Chairman: As everyone is settling
down, may I thank John Tarrant, David Vincent and Michael Driscoll
for joining us this morning. It is very clear why we have asked
you to appear before the Committee. First of all, we always try
to swim against the tide and, with the rest of the world talking
about Tomlinson today, we thought we would go back and talk about
how the new system of higher education finances looks like bedding
down as we get to 2006. We wanted to have a look at some of the
unintended and intended consequences of the change that was introduced
very recently. I always give the opportunity for our witnesses
to say a few words to open up if they want to, otherwise you can
opt to go straight into questions.
Professor Driscoll: Very briefly,
Chairman, may I thank you and your colleagues for giving CMU the
opportunity to present evidence and to come here and answer questions
on the evidence. Our concerns in the evidence we have set out
to you are to do with both the intended and unintended consequences
and the way these particularly impact on universities that are
doing the most in this country to promote access to higher education
and to widen participation. We think it is particularly iniquitous
that those universities are the same universities which are least
able to afford some of the unintended consequences of the Higher
Education Bill and the arrangements over fees and bursaries. That
is what we are keen to discuss with you, Chairman. Thank you.
Q2 Chairman: We will be drilling
down to some depth on that a little later on in questions, but
what was your attitude to the whole notion of variable fees as
the Government suggested this and we move towards the decision?
Were you doubtful, in favour or against? What was your position?
Professor Driscoll: The way it
was presented to us, Chairman, is that we had no option. I think
opinion on this matter was as divided within the higher education
community as it clearly was within Parliament. CMU in the end
decided that we had to support the Government because we were
really being presented with a choice of this, with more funding
to support payment for your staff and for equipment for students
and the students' experience, or nothing. We were being told that
nothing serious would be done to assist the financial plight of
our universities for at least another decade, and it was in that
climate and with that hanging over us that we supported the introduction
of fees. I think, overall, the sector would have backed a higher
fee level. I think the division was even greater (as it was within
the House) on the variability of fees and the creation of a market—which
seems to have failed anyway, as, I think, with the exception of
only one institution, all institutions have elected to post their
fees at £3,000, the ceiling.
Q3 Chairman: That institution is
Leeds Metropolitan, is it?
Professor Driscoll: That is correct.
Q4 Chairman: There were a lot of
people who thought that this new independent source of income
was going to be rather healthy for the higher education system.
Is that still not true?
Professor Driscoll: That was the
hope. The Government did two things in the HE Bill. First, it
strengthened the funding for poorer students by the introduction
of grants and additional loans. The fee element was meant to address
the substantial—acknowledged by the Government—shortfall
in funding, the under-funding, of higher education. We are now
faced with a potential increase in funding, arising from fees—which
the Government itself has acknowledged is not adequate—which
is being siphoned off, under pressure, into further student support.
We are not against supporting students. Students do need support—and
universities within CMU are the first to want to see more students
from poorer backgrounds come into higher education—but what
we do about the pay of our staff, which is being eroded against
average earnings year by year .... I think pay levels are now
at a serious point, where we are finding it increasingly difficult
to attract good staff and to retain them in the system—and
that is particularly acute here in the capital where there is
a strong economy and alternative better-paid opportunities for
work for professionals in all sorts of areas where higher education
needs good teachers.
Q5 Chairman: For those who are not
delving into these proceedings at any time and do not understand
what CMU is and the universities it represents, could you put
that on the record?
Professor Driscoll: Yes. CMU is
a group of universities that are drawn essentially from the newer
universities, some of them former polytechnics, some of them more
newly designated universities. In terms of our undergraduate student
population, we account for nearly half the undergraduates who
are taught in the UK. They are nearly all quite large universities.
Q6 Chairman: How many are there?
Professor Driscoll: There are
about 31 universities now within our membership and we expect
that to grow in the future.
Q7 Chairman: What does it stand for?
Professor Driscoll: It used to
stand for the Coalition of Modern Universities, but we decided
we did not like either of the words "coalition" or "modern",
so CMU was retained for historical reasons but we operate under
the strap line of "Campaigning for Mainstream Universities"
because we believe that what we offer and what we do is at the
very heart and at the mainstream of UK education today.
Q8 Chairman: David, this is not a
slight to you, but I am going to switch now to John Tarrant, in
order to stay on what I would call the traditional university
sector, and come on to the OU later because there are some specific
things I would like to raise with you.
Professor Tarrant: Thank you,
Chairman. I would like to raise with the Committee the particular
issues arising from higher education in further education colleges.
My colleague said, rightly, that all but one of the institutions
will be charging £2,000.[2]
That is true of the university sector but it is not true of the
FE college sector. A very large proportion now of higher education
is delivered through further education and the implications of
the fees and bursaries scheme within further education is complicated,
very messy, and I think is in danger of heading for a serious
disruption. I think it is one of the unintended consequences,
because I do not think anybody thought about the implications
of fees and bursaries in FE at the time the Bill was passing through
the House.
Q9 Chairman: If we could hold drilling
down on those and come to David Vincent. I know that the Open
University has let it be known that they feel they have been let
down over recent months, in the sense, as we understand it from
the newspapers, that the Open University and some other providers
in a similar category thought they had a deal with the Government
and with the Department for Education and Skills to be looked
after, as it were, as the changes came in. There is certainly
a feeling that has been expressed that you feel let down on the
deal you thought was there.
Professor Vincent: As we sit here,
there is no deal; there is no support. We were able to make a
case with Birkbek to the Funding Council last month, after a delay
of some six months, and we are now awaiting the outcome of that.
So it is possible that the Funding Council may do something, either
for the OU and Birkbek specifically, or—as I think more
likely—for the part-time sector as a whole.
Q10 Chairman: Why are the OU and
Birkbek in a special situation?
Professor Vincent: They are a
particular concentration of part-time education. They are the
only two universities with 100% part-time students (the next largest
is at about 56), so these institutions are unable in any way to
cross-subsidise their part-time operation from their full-time
operation, where there will be higher fees, and also are unable
to subsidise their domestic work by importing high-fee-paying
overseas students.
Q11 Chairman: How many students do
you have?
Professor Vincent: We have about
150,000 undergraduates across the UK, and then postgraduates and
overseas students take us up to over 200,000. We are, by a long
distance, the largest university, in terms of bodies, in the country.
Q12 Chairman: What about Birkbek?
Professor Vincent: I do not think
I want to give you their numbers across the table.
Q13 Chairman: Okay, but—
Professor Vincent: But much smaller.
Q14 Chairman: Were you assured by
the Department that you were going to be looked after? They knew
you were a special category, they knew these changes were going
to impact on you, were you given assurances?
Professor Vincent: Yes, it was
during the debates, particularly in the House of Lords on the
top-up fee, that we were given assurances by the Minister.
Q15 Chairman: Which minister?
Professor Vincent: The Lords'
Minister at that time. It was not then Lord Filkin but his predecessor,
if someone could tell me.
Chairman: They all move so fast we are
not sure who to hold accountable. We will discover who the Minister
was. Let's get into more general questions now. I will ask Andrew
to open the batting.
Q16 Mr Turner: Following on from
Professor Vincent, could I ask the other two witnesses: To what
extent do you cross-subsidise from full-time to part-time?
Professor Tarrant: Could I start
a little bit further back and say we have about 4,000 part-time
students, so part-time students are distributed throughout the
whole sector. The uniqueness of the OU and Birkbek is that they
only have part-time students. Not knowingly, is the answer to
your question. There are no doubt quite a lot of hidden cross-subsidies
that go on at school and department level but not knowingly at
an institutional level.
Professor Driscoll: In many CMU
universities the part-time headcount is 50% of the student body,
therefore the scope for cross-subsidy is extremely limited. At
the moment, universities charge typically pro rata to the
full-time fee rate. The concern we have is that that will not
be possible, or, if we do charge the pro rata rate, then
we will drive people out of part-time higher education. That has
to run counter to the Government's aspirations to wider participation.
The answer at the moment is that in most institutions, cross-subsidy,
if there is any, is extremely limited, and they look to charge
fees and to receive funding support roughly pro rata to
the full-time equivalent.
Q17 Mr Turner: Pro rata might actually
conceal a cross-subsidy from full-time to part-time because of
the additional costs of maintaining part-time students.
Professor Driscoll: That is certainly
possible although I cannot give you details of exactly what that
might mean because there is such variability in the nature of
part-time provision and in the extent of it across universities
in higher education. CMU universities have very high proportions
of part-time students and that is why we share the concerns of
the Open University and Birkbek about this matter. We believe
that the solution, notwithstanding the particular issues for the
Open University, has to be a solution for the whole sector, because
the threat to the supply of part-time provision and to participation
is very, very real as we run up to 2006 and the change in the
regime.
Q18 Chairman: Many people who are
interested in higher education but do not have a deep knowledge
would say, "What are all these part-time students doing?"
Are they doing full-time undergraduate degrees over a longer time?
What is the nature of this very large number of part-time students?
What sort of courses are they on?
Professor Driscoll: It is very
variable. A lot of them are doing what you might regard as standard
undergraduate programmes on a part-time basis, particularly people
who have caring responsibilities—single parents and so on,
people who cannot, because of other responsibilities, access full-time
higher education easily. There are others who get support and
sponsorship from their employers. The Government have suggested
this could be as much as 60%, but the inquiries we have made within
our members suggest that that figure is exaggerated. For example,
the University of East London have looked carefully at this and
they estimate that only 20% of all their part-time students are
in receipt of any support from an employer. So there is a real
issue. People in part-time higher education are having to put
their hand in their pocket or take funds out of their family's
income in order to support this activity. Any hike in fees pro
rata to the increase in full-time fees in 2006 is likely to
have a very big impact, because those students are not going to
be treated the same, they are not going to be allowed to defer
their fees out of future income. This is a direct discrimination
against those classes of individual who wish to get into higher
education and runs totally counter to the spirit of what the Government
says it wishes to do, and that is to get more of these people
into higher education to be able to transform their lives and
livelihoods.
Q19 Chairman: Professor Tarrant,
you are not part of this organisation, are you?
Professor Tarrant: No, we are
not.
2 Note by Witness: My colleague said, rightly,
that all but one of the institutions will be charging £3,000,
not £2,000, as indicated. Back
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