Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 136)
WEDNESDAY 23 FEBRUARY 2005
DR JOHN
HOOD AND
SIR ALAN
WILSON
Q120 Mr Chaytor: Sir Alan, is the
purpose of having an institution based bursary system to widen
access to our universities, to increase the numbers of students
applying or simply to redistribute the existing students between
the different universities?
Sir Alan Wilson: I am sure widening
participation is part of the brief. The role of OFFA in part is
to ensure that there is a widening participation component in
the way that bursary schemes are implemented.
Q121 Mr Chaytor: Of all the various
policies that are in place to widen participation and increase
the number of applicants from families who have not been to university
before, how important is the existence of a bursary as against
the existence of outreach programmes or other approaches that
have been tried?
Sir Alan Wilson: There is no easy
answer to that question. We have a number of evaluation schemes
in place for the widening participation programmes that have been
running. If you look at schemes like Aim Higher and some of the
predecessor schemes that have been running for such a short time,
it is not yet possible fully to evaluate them. It seems to me
that it is entirely appropriate to have a variety of widening
participation schemes so that we then can evaluate them. Dr Hood
talked about evaluation schemes for Oxford's own schemes. I was
at the University of East London the other week and I was impressed
to see that they had a research centre that was working through
a national evaluation programme for widening participation schemes
in collaboration with some Scandinavian countries. All this research
needs to be combined. The department is certainly funding some
research in this area. As a general point, we have had widening
participation schemes. We are going to move towards these kinds
of bursary schemes which will contribute to that and ongoing monitoring
and evaluation, not just for widening participation but for the
impact of fee regimes and bursaries on different kinds of students,
will be critical in something of the order of the next decade.
Q122 Mr Chaytor: Will there be a
point at which the department feels confident about assessing
the precise value of the different strategies? Is it conceivable
that when that point is reached the conclusion will be that institution
based bursary schemes are largely irrelevant in widening the pool
of applicants?
Sir Alan Wilson: I would be very
surprised if that was the case. If I may, I will go back two or
three years and cite my Leeds experience, where one of the things
that the Chairman will be aware of was running a privately funded
scholarship scheme/bursary scheme for youngsters to keep them
in school. Although it was a small scheme—we are talking
about something like 40 students a year—I have no doubt
it was keeping kids in school and a very large percentage of those
kids were then going to university. The financial support was
a very important part of that. A good number of them said that
without those scholarships, which were quite generous, the family
would have expected them to work and contribute to the household
income.
Dr Hood: I think the answer to
your question is bursary and other related financial support from
the institutions. If we are going to have fees, it is a sine
qua non that we have to have bursary and other financial support
for all time, to have needs blind admission. That is a very simple
lesson that we can learn from across the Atlantic. It has been
pioneered over there and has been unbelievably successful in terms
of broadening access and providing needs blind admission for all
those who have the talent to come to these institutions. On the
question of access and outreach programmes, I can see generations
forward that we are going to have to run brilliant programmes
to raise aspiration levels, to raise understanding, knowledge
and so forth in this country.
Q123 Mr Chaytor: Do you accept that
the impact of institution based bursary schemes is inevitably
to widen the differentials between the institutions and polarise
British universities even further?
Sir Alan Wilson: It depends what
you mean by "widen". It will have a great variety of
impacts. It will widen participation. Dr Hood has talked about
his own widening participation schemes for under-represented groups
in Oxford but there is a huge community out there from lower socio-economic
groups that we need to encourage to stay in education, to move
into higher education. It is such a big group. They will move
into a great variety of universities. It is very difficult to
see what the precise impact will be. I am confident that, from
the experience of the schemes that are already in place and what
I think are considerable successes from widening participation
programmes, as these schemes continue we add things like bursaries
and other schemes and we will begin to crack that problem.
Q124 Paul Holmes: In one of your
earlier comments, you were talking about the extra income that
will derive from the £3,000 a year tuition fees. Are you
confident that in three or six years' time that will still be
extra income rather than being clawed back by the Government,
in effect, by them reducing the amount of central grant? The £1,000
tuition fee that was introduced in 1998, we were told, would be
extra income for universities but over the next three or four
years the amount coming from the Government to universities went
down by more or less exactly the same amount as the £1,000
tuition fee represented coming in, so it made no difference in
the end.
Dr Hood: I would have thought
that was a question I should be posing to your Committee. You
are the Parliament. You make these rules. You make these decisions.
I do not make them. I do not know what degree of confidence I
should have.
Q125 Paul Holmes: I am asking you
to speculate. I know what I think.
Dr Hood: I do not see what benefit
you get from speculation. I could speculate positively or negatively
on the question and give you a range of reasons for both but I
do not see that speculation takes us forward. What would take
us forward would be if this government and the opposition were
to make a firm statement and say one thing or another. Then we
could start planning our institutions with a great deal more certainty.
Sir Alan Wilson: As your Committee
will recall, the then Secretary of State gave strong assurances
in the passage of the Bill that fee income would be additional
and that the unit of resource would be maintained. I am now in
a position in the job that I do that enables me to oversee those
calculations and, to the best of my knowledge, those assurances
will be maintained. They are being maintained now.
Q126 Paul Holmes: Another question
that John Hood would not answer earlier on: Nick Gibb asked about
vocational qualifications that Oxford might be prepared to accept
as entry into university and you said that unless Nick could specify
what sort of qualifications he meant you would not be able to
answer. Can you tell us, in your experience, what vocational qualifications
currently does Oxford willingly accept to get students into Oxford
who are coming from less traditional, academic backgrounds? I
am not speculating on future vocational qualifications. What now?
Dr Hood: Would you give me an
example of these vocational qualifications about which you are
talking? I did not refuse to answer it; I asked for a definition
of vocational qualifications which was not forthcoming.
Q127 Paul Holmes: Would you give
a definition of what you accept now as vocational qualifications?
Dr Hood: We do not as a matter
of course accept vocational qualifications other than through
our continuing education programmes where we do obviously support
them very strongly and we have close to 20,000 students on those
programmes, part time. Into the mainstream disciplines, we typically
do not consider them.
Q128 Paul Holmes: When I was head
of the sixth form and advanced GNVQs were first introduced, Oxford
admissions teachers were not interested in the slightest. Effectively,
you are saying that some years on now that is still the case?
Dr Hood: Yes.
Q129 Paul Holmes: You only really
look at traditional A levels or Baccalaureates and that sort of
thing?
Dr Hood: Correct.
Q130 Paul Holmes: Nick asked you
another question and we cannot get much further on that one because
we would need Professor Driscoll back. Professor Driscoll had
estimated that Oxford has £37,000 per student per year compared
to £5,800 for Middlesex.
Dr Hood: If you take Oxford's
total revenues as published in its accounts and divide them by
the number of students, you may come to a figure like that but
what it does not recognise is that close to half our revenues
are for research and are directly expended on research. What you
have to do is take the revenue that we are getting for teaching
which is identical, I would suggest, to the revenue any other
university is getting for teaching with a very slight premium
for a continuation of one particular element of past policy, and
then do the sums. That is why I said earlier that I would like
to see those calculations because they are seriously flawed and
it would be a matter of considerable concern to me if they were
to remain on the public record in that form.
Q131 Paul Holmes: One of the points
is that the amount of research that goes to universities is not
equal for everybody because the Government is skewing it very
much into a concentrated, small band of universities to the detriment
of others, which is why we have had the argument about chemistry
courses closing in Exeter, for example, recently.
Dr Hood: What is the question?
Q132 Paul Holmes: They would include
the money for research as part of the overall funding for students
and not all universities are getting equal access to that.
Dr Hood: We spend research money
on research, not teaching.
Q133 Paul Holmes: Oxford has calculated
it costs £55,800 to put an average student through a three
year degree course. How does it cost that much compared to other
universities and how much of that is paid for from public money?
How much is from university endowments, for example? What is the
relationship?
Dr Hood: I do not have those figures
in my head but I would be very happy to make you a submission.
Neither am I aware that Oxford calculated those figures. Someone
has calculated that figure.
Q134 Paul Holmes: You have been telling
us earlier on that Oxford is very badly done by and is having
big problems in terms of staff/student relationships but most
universities in the country would give their eye teeth to have
the staff/student relationships that you have.
Dr Hood: This country has to make
a decision as to whether it wants to have some universities standing
shoulder to shoulder with the very best in the world or not. If
the answer to that question is yes, I would suggest that supporting
the very best universities so that they are competitive with the
very best elsewhere, by having the public policy frameworks that
will allow that to happen, is the logical outcome. It is entirely
conceivable that you may not. Then it would be up to Oxford as
an independent institution to make a series of decisions as a
result of such public policy outcomes.
Q135 Chairman: Some of us on this
Committee might feel, listening to the two sessions of witnesses,
that here we are as a government having had quite a bruising and,
some people would say, courageous battle to bring in a variable
fee structure to give the university sector more money. Most of
what we hear today has been that it was not quite what we wanted;
it is not enough, a group of very disappointed men. Is that an
accurate reflection?
Dr Hood: No. I hope that is not
your take away. I was at pains to say that I felt there were some
very good results from the debate that was had in this country,
including the embedding in the public mind the cost of quality
education, including the embedding in the institutional mind that
if fees are to be charged at higher levels institutions have a
responsibility to provide the mechanisms for needs blind admissions
and so forth. There have been a lot of very good outcomes to this.
There are a lot of very good things happening in the public policy
arena, like the move to 80% of full economic cost for new research
contracts and so forth. This is all very helpful. The only point
I would leave you with is that for a university such as Oxford,
which has very high costs in its undergraduate teaching, the amount
of net gain that we will get out of the move to a £3,000
fee is but a small increment in closing the deficit we currently
have on that undergraduate teaching.
Sir Alan Wilson: Inevitably, when
people come to you with particular concerns about funding, you
will hear what you heard today. In a sense, it is the job of people
to say, "We are still interested in having a funding system
that will benefit one kind of university or another." I believe
we have a strong, diverse system. The contributions across that
system are very effective. In terms of vice-chancellors and universities
feeling disappointed with where we have now got to, I have spent
some of my time since I have been in this job travelling around
the country visiting all kinds of universities and I see tremendous
enterprise, tremendous innovation, tremendous commitment to making
the system work for students, for delivering good research programmes,
for being inventive with new ways of engaging with employers.
I am very impressed with it and that goes right across the sector.
One particular example is I had one morning with the principals
and vice-chancellors of church colleges and universities which
happen to be very small institutions compared, say, to Oxford.
They have a public service ethos. They are delivering graduates
into public sector social care incredibly effectively. If you
look at the different kinds of examples right across the system,
we can be very proud of what is being delivered. What I hear from
the people who are doing it is not disappointment. They are getting
on with the job.
Q136 Chairman: If real problems started
to emerge as we get into the new system, have you in the department
and HEFCE the flexibility to come to the aid of those people who
are in trouble?
Sir Alan Wilson: We will monitor
very carefully. One of our priorities is to ensure as best we
can a smooth transition into the new system. If there are unintended
consequences, we would like to be in a position to respond to
those and I believe that we will be flexible.
Chairman: Thank you, Sir Alan, Dr Hood
and all our witnesses this morning. It has been an extremely informative
session and we will be pursuing our inquiries later on. Thank
you.
| 
