UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 520-ii
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
Higher Education Issues
Wednesday 26 October 2005
PROFESSOR DRUMMOND BONE and BARONESS WARWICK OF UNDERCLIFFE
Evidence heard in Public Questions 99 - 171
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Education and Skills Committee
on Wednesday 26 October 2005
Members present
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods
Mr David Chaytor
Mrs Nadine Dorries
Jeff Ennis
Tim Farron
Helen Jones
Mr Gordon Marsden
Stephen Williams
Mr Rob Wilson
In the absence of the
Chairman, Helen Jones was called to the Chair
________________
Witnesses: Professor
Drummond Bone, President, and Baroness
Warwick of Undercliffe, a Member of the House of Lords, Chief Executive,
Universities UK, examined.
Q99 Helen Jones: Good morning, everyone, welcome to this
morning's Committee hearing. My name is
Helen Jones, I am chairing today in the absence of our Chairman, Barry Sheerman,
who sends his apologies for his unavoidable absence. He is not absent very often, but I am afraid today it was not
possible for him to be here. Can I,
first of all, welcome our witnesses this morning, Professor Drummond Bone and
Lady Warwick? We do have a number of
questions for you this morning but I wondered if either of you wanted to make a
brief statement about how you see the sector at the moment. Is there anything in particular you want to
draw to the Committee's attention before we begin?
Professor Bone: Thank you very much, Chair. As it is my first time here I thought it
might be worthwhile summarising just one or two things that we have on our
mind, at the moment. Firstly, as I said
when I first addressed UUK, we are very concerned that we move through the next
few years, after a lot of change, into a period of relative stability, both in
terms of policy and in terms of funding, if that is at all possible. When we look, certainly, to the next year,
which is obviously important for the sector, we do hope that we will be able to
preserve that crucial unit of resource for teaching and, therefore, preserve
the additionality that will be brought by fees. There are also, I think, one or two research issues which we are
quite keen to follow, particularly in the European context, where the
introduction of FEC will change the research environment in the UK quite
considerably. We are much in favour of
that as a long-term way to provide stability, but there will be certain
transient issues in Europe where, obviously, European providers are not
functioning on an FEC basis and where we might be at a disadvantage. In financial terms, too, there is also the
question of fully funding the recent modernisation of the pay structure, which
again will take quite a chunk out of the extra money that we hope to receive
from fees. Then, I suppose, last but
not least, there is the issue of our international competitiveness in terms of
students as well as research. These are
just one or two of the issues that are in my mind at the moment, and they are
probably in yours as well.
Q100 Helen Jones: I think they might be. Thank you.
Lady Warwick?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think I am happy to just answer questions.
Helen Jones: Thank you very much. You have highlighted there, Professor, a
number of issues which I think the Committee will want to follow up. We want to start by looking at fees and
funding.
Q101 Dr Blackman-Woods: As you will both be aware, the justification
for top-up fees was that it was going to bring additional funding into the HE
sector. Is there a guarantee, do you
think, that the fee income is not going to be clawed back, particularly after
2007/08?
Professor Bone: We have been told that there will not be any
reneging of the promise to maintain the unit of resource up until then but we
have not actually been given any promises beyond then. Certainly, it is one of the things that we
will be underlining in our submission to CSI (?). It is very important. It
would be, I think, quite ridiculous, in a way, to give money through one route
and then take it away with the other, but on the other hand we realise, also,
that CSI is going to be very tight.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think the important thing, though, is that
this will produce additional resources for the sector to improve the student
experience as well as the other things that Professor Bone has referred
to. Therefore, it is an enormously
valuable additional funding stream.
Yes, perhaps to reinforce the point, we will certainly be trying to
ensure that it is additional money, otherwise there really is not any point in
seeking to expand numbers or even to expect more of the sectors; clearly,
everybody does expect more of the sector.
Q102 Dr Blackman-Woods: Are you gathering evidence about how
important a contribution variable fees are making to the sector and will you
continue to do that?
Professor Bone: It is very, very important, I think. This will not be true of all institutions in
the sector but of a fair number, but roughly one-third of the income will be
going straight back to students in terms of bursaries, one-third of it,
broadly, will be taken up again by the modernisation of the pay agenda, and
that is probably already spent, which is something we have to underline - that
we have taken on that commitment in advance of the fees actually appearing -
and one-third of it, again in very round figures, is probably going on
infrastructure, and that is not new infrastructure that is delayed maintenance
of infrastructure and actually keeping us standing still. So the idea that there is a sort of windfall
coming is simply not right.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think it would be enormously helpful to
have an assurance - if this Committee is minded to look at this - that there
will be a continued commitment to ensuring that the unit of funding is
maintained. I think that will give the
kind of long-term planning perspective that higher education institutions
obviously need.
Q103 Dr Blackman-Woods: One additional question: one big difference between universities and
universities in America is the amount of money that they raise from
endowments. Do you think that we should
be going down the American model and trying to get more endowments, and do you
think it is possible?
Professor Bone: I do not think we should be going down the
American model lock, stock and barrel (I think there are difficulties with the
American model) but I do think we should be trying to raise more in terms of
endowments. That is a different
issue. I think, again, most
universities probably are now ramping up their endowment-raising capability, if
I can put it that way. We have to
realise that is a long-term business and it also depends on the fundraising and
philanthropic context in the nation as a whole.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: We have got a very practical project at the
moment, with support from the Department for Education and Skills, to try to
ensure that we, if you like, raise our game in this area. We are investing new resource in infrastructure
to provide the help in fundraising, in alumni development and in managing the
process. There is a lot of skill in
fundraising; it is not easy and lots of charitable organisations (of course,
universities are charitable organisations) put an enormous amount into the
underpinning of their fundraising, and I think that is what we have to
have. We recognise it as a key area for
further expansion; we do not expect - indeed, in the States it is not a huge
proportion of their income - but, nonetheless, it could be improved in this
country and we need to make ourselves more professional in doing that.
Helen Jones: Thank you for that. We will be expecting letters from you.
Q104 Mr Wilson: I would like to turn to bursaries, if I
may. Do you think that competition
amongst the universities will be increased by the level of bursaries that they
give?
Professor Bone: Yes, I think it probably will. I do not see there being much evidence in
advance, if I can put it that way, of discounting of the actual fees. I do not think that is the way it is going
to go, but there might be competition in terms of actually offering
bursaries. In some ways I think that is
helpful.
Q105 Mr Wilson: Do you think there is going to be a
temptation for some institutions to cream off the better students to raise
their standards and reputation?
Professor Bone: Again, I do not think I would like to use the
word "cream off" but every university is very keen to get the best
students. What represents the best
students, I think, varies from institution to institution, as well. I think it is a question of institutions
getting appropriate students for that particular kind of institution. That may mean, in some cases, particularly
high academic standards, and in other cases it might mean the universities with
a particular commitment to a kind of community - a local community, perhaps, or
a regional community or some other community - which feeds the particular
subject areas they are interested in.
There is bound to be competition but it is a very segmented market.
Q106 Mr Wilson: How would you respond, then, to the KPMG
survey which shows that one-in-four institutions would top-up the amount
students receive depending on their A level results? The better the A level results the more bursary they get?
Professor Bone: Again, I would have to know more about the
detail of the survey. Obviously, lots
of universities at the moment offer scholarships for academic excellence. Some of the bursaries that the universities
have introduced are academic related, but there is nothing new in that. However, I think the majority, by far, of
the bursaries that have been introduced are not academic related, they are
genuine bursaries. We have tried to
clarify this by talking about scholarships on the one hand and bursaries on the
other, but not everybody uses the same terminology.
Q107 Mr Wilson: Do bursaries not change the whole basis on
which fees were introduced recently - ie, the more an individual benefits from
their education the more they should pay?
Do bursaries not fundamentally change all that?
Professor Bone: No, I do not think so. Most of the bursaries that I know about that
universities are offering are actually being offered to people who are in
receipt of maintenance grants and, therefore, in some sense or another
financially managed.
Q108 Helen Jones: Do you think the current situation is far too
complicated for students to understand?
Maybe Lady Warwick will want to come in on this. We have a whole plethora now of different
bursaries and different scholarships.
Do you think people out there who are applying to university are really
in a position to understand the system and work out what financial support they
are going to get and what their prospects will be?
Professor Bone: I think there is a real issue there, and
perhaps Lady Warwick will take that up.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: It is very complicated and I think part of
the responsibility must lie with institutions to try to ensure that we explain
what is on offer better and as well as we can through prospectuses and through
all the outreach work that we are doing.
We have said right from the start that this was going to be a very
complicated package, and we were very concerned - because for many people this
is actually a beneficial package, it is an improvement on what they were going
to get before or might have got before - that the Government would, if you
like, promote this new package rather more than, at least initially, it
did. Now, I think, the Government has
put a lot of effort and weight behind it, the Minister for Higher Education has
put an enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm into promoting the new bursary
scheme, the whole fees structure, and I think there is no doubt (they are doing
quite a lot of marketing analysis) that the message is getting across, but it
has been a cause for concern because both the fees system itself, or the
contribution to fees and the bursaries, the maintenance grants which are
available and the bursaries, do produce quite a complicated package. We have now got what we have called a
one-stop shop, a website where students or potential students can get access to
not only explanations of the current system but, also, they have access through
links to every institution's information about its own practices and
processes. So, hopefully, we are on the
way to providing much better explanations.
Q109 Helen Jones: That is very interesting but I think the
Committee would be interested in what evidence there is that that is getting
through. Certainly the experience that
most of us have in our constituencies is that students do not understand the
current system and are not aware of the support that is being offered
them. There has been a £1.6 million
public information programme. Where has
that gone? Who designed it? How do we know that it is getting through to
potential students?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: It has been designed and the money has been
produced by the Department for Education and Skills, so I think in detail it
would be helpful, possibly, to ask them that question. What I think they have sought to do is to
target those places, like television programmes, where the age group of young
students potentially coming into university are likely to watch those programmes.
Q110 Helen Jones: We are not talking just about young students,
the student profile is changing.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Indeed.
In fact, the largest increase has been in the number of those who are
mature students applying. I think
getting the information out through UCAS has been enormously helpful in that
respect, or will be. I think trying to
ensure that a complicated package like this is made very much more widely known
publicly is quite difficult because there is a whole range of audiences that
you are trying to hit. Nonetheless, I
think, from the university perspective, we have done an enormous amount to make
sure that the information that individual universities put out about their
packages and the access that is available through UCAS and through the website
should be, I think, much clearer than it was a few months ago.
Professor Bone: I agree there is a problem here - there are
no two ways about that. UUK, obviously,
now has its website, and we have been pressurising, I think, the Department for
sometime to get this media campaign up and running. We are also running workshops with personal finance journalists
and we are running workshops with career advisers in schools, and so on and so
forth. Most universities now have
financial advice booklets which are not just about themselves but give general
financial advice. We thought at my
university we were being very good for doing that but we then discovered that
absolutely everybody is doing it, but I think that is a very good thing. The question of evaluation of how that is
going is something, I think, which individual universities will feed into
UUK. From our point of view, I
understand the Department will have its own evaluation system.
Q111 Helen Jones: Do you think the current situation is fair
either to students or to universities?
If you are a poor student and you get into Oxford, shall we say, you
might get a very good financial package; if you are a poor student going into
one of the universities which has a lot more students coming from deprived
backgrounds, you will not get the same financial package. Is that fair either to the students or to
the universities, where those who are taking in more of the students from
non-traditional backgrounds have to pay out more in bursaries? What are the implications of that for the
sector as a whole?
Professor Bone: Obviously, the current system is dependent on
the financial help of an institution, and that is the case. One of the major targets of the DfES seems
to have been to widen access to institutions which were not traditionally open
to those from a disadvantaged background or traditionally open to those who are
first-time applicants to university. In
that sense, giving larger financial incentives to these people from the more
traditional institutions is probably a good thing, but it is certainly not
equitable. One takes that point.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think it is worth saying that the package
that is available to the poorer students is now a great improvement on what was
available before, but there is no doubt that, as before, those institutions
that, for example, have raised more in endowments or have additional resources
over and above the money provided through the funding councils and other
sources do have more money available to pay higher bursaries. I do not think that is anything new, it is
just that it is highlighted now because all institutions are now involved in
paying a lot more bursaries, but I think it is right to say they will be able
to afford to pay more, yes.
Q112 Tim Farron: You made my point for me, partly, Chairman:
the gap between the richest and the poorest universities is significant. Just pulling out of the air Middlesex
University, that has a turnover of £120 million with 22,000 students; Cambridge
has a turnover of £650 million and 17,000 students. The widening participation profile of Middlesex University would
be vastly different to the one at Cambridge, and all points in between on the
scale. So, as the Chairman has already
mentioned, the bursaries are going to be focused upon those institutions which
have the worst widening participation profiles. Sir Howard Newby accepted when he came to this Committee the
other week that that would have a damaging impact on the attempts to try and funnel
money towards those students. I wonder
whether UUK should not be supporting a national bursary system rather than a
variable institution-by-institution bursary system.
Professor Bone: Again, it does depend, to some extent, on
what the policy is intended to produce.
If the policy is intended to produce a swing from non-traditional
applicants to Middlesex, let us say (just to take your example), to going to
Oxford or Cambridge, then arguably what is in place will do that. It does not provide equitable funding across
the whole spectrum of institutions, and the notion of a national bursary scheme
is something which it might be worth looking at, but it is simply not on the
menu at the moment.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Also, I think, if one is talking about a
national bursary scheme, one is not talking about, for example, the higher
bursaries that are available. I think
we need to be quite careful about not suggesting that those institutions that
can afford and wish to provide higher bursaries for students with poorer
backgrounds should be prevented from doing so.
I think that would be a poor outcome of a change in policy.
Q113 Tim Farron: I take the point but I think it does fly in
the face of the evidence of how you reach students from difficult-to-reach
backgrounds. In Cumbria, for example,
where I am an MP, the reality is that there are cultural issues about how you
get to apply for higher education in the first place; you are not going to get
people to apply to universities more than 50 miles away at all, and that is a
growing feature. So concentrating
bursaries on a handful of wealthy universities with this kind of idea that that
is going to somehow open the doors of those universities to the less well-off,
I think, is a pipedream. We need to be
concentrating on widening participation in reality rather than in theory.
Professor Bone: I have got some sympathy with that. It goes back to my response to Rob Wilson
earlier on. I think there are
appropriate institutions, not necessarily better institutions, and I understand
what you are saying.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I just think that is not a policy issue
really directed at the universities per se, I suspect. Congratulations on the prospect of a
university actually in Cumbria, because I think you are absolutely right to
highlight the fact that a large number of students - and it is a growing number
of students in those who are mature - are, if you like, unable to move out of
their localities who require greater opportunities for higher education, and we
are certainly delighted that in Cumbria that new opportunity will be available,
as indeed in one or two other places as well.
I think it is important for us to ensure that we are playing our part as
institutions in enabling those who are limited to local access to learning have
access to higher education experience of high quality.
Q114 Mrs Dorries: I would like to bring it down to the
day-to-day survival level of the actual students. I am not sure if the talk of bursaries and fees and what-have-you
actually relates to the fact that we have such a high drop-out rate during, or
at the end of, the first year. I would
like to talk about Newcastle, which is a city of high unemployment, therefore
making it almost impossible for students who arrive there to find work and
jobs. The day-to-day cost of their
living - for example, their cost of halls of residence which is supposed to
include food but actually includes four meals a week (it does not include
weekends) and the cost of just doing things like their washing and their
ironing and day-to-day existence - some of these students are finding so
difficult that they drop out of university because it is impossible financially
to carry on. With all the will in the
world, talk about bursaries and the wider participation has to apply here because
in other universities, such as - as has been mentioned - Oxford and Cambridge,
the bursary scheme covers all these costs for students. It brings me back to the question of wider
participation but I am not sure enough account is taken of how expensive it is
for a student to live and survive with the funding that is available on a
day-to-day basis. Is that not the
reason why the drop-out rates are as they are?
Professor Bone: I think universities are individually very,
very conscious of that fact. It is one
of the things which hits us and hits our welfare offices every single day. Obviously, all the universities are trying
to maintain as many students in the system as they possibly can for community
reasons but, also, for selfish reasons - if I can put it that way. So I think it is something that is very much
part of the day-to-day experience of trying to run the university. The catch-all in this is finding the funding
to actually give the necessary support.
One of the conundrums which the Government faces is the fact that the
proportion of education spend on student support in the UK is very, very high,
if you actually look at our OECD competitors, and yet still, quite obviously,
as you exactly say, students have great difficulty in actually financing their
way through university. I think there
is a great obligation on universities to provide particular support in that
first year because it is often that first year where it is not only financial
pressure but financial pressure contributes to the unease of a radically new
experience, whether it is somebody moving back in from work into student life
or moving from school into student life.
I think we have got a responsibility, but there is also a serious funding
issue.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I do not think we should fall into the trap
of thinking that where there is a high drop-out rate the main cause is
financial, because the evidence suggests that is not the case; it is a
contributor, certainly, but the main reason for most students to drop out is
course-related; it is to do with the way in which they have related to that
particular course. It is not that
finance is not important but I do not think it is the main cause, because that
is what studies have shown. That is not
to suggest, however, that students would not like to have more money - of
course they would - but I think the new grant system means that they have now
got a maintenance grant which they can access up front and which enables to at
least plan for their expenditure. I guess
it does not mean that students are not going to borrow, but nonetheless I think
it is very advantageous - both maintenance grant and loan arrangements - at a
considerable cost to the Treasury. We
have got the lowest drop-out rate (and I think Sir Howard Newby made this point
as well) of OECD countries, so it is relative.
Mrs Dorries: It may be the lowest rate but it is still
high. I think you slightly trivialise
how absolutely difficult it is to students to live on a day-to-day basis. Of course, they would like more money - we
would all like more money - but the issue for students is that they have their
loan offers and they borrow to the nth degree to live on a day-to-day
basis. Nine months into the year, what
are you going to cite as your reason for having to drop out? That you cannot manage financially? That your family cannot support you
financially? No, you are going to say you
have chosen the wrong course. That may
be the reason why they drop out but I think financial pressure is by far the
main reason.
Helen Jones: We are going to move on to part-time students
now. Can I remind Committee we are
supposed to ask questions and not make statements.
Q115 Jeff Ennis: The Government recently announced an enhanced
package of support for part-time students.
Have these measures gone far enough or could we have been a little bit
bolder, shall we say?
Professor Bone: They could have been a little bit bolder, but
I am going to ask Lady Warwick to elaborate.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: There is no doubt that this is a step in the
right direction. I think it is
providing the greater equity of treatment as between part-time and full-time
students that we have been pressing for, although we were not pressing necessarily
for equal treatment. Once you start
unpacking the issue of part-time students it becomes quite complicated. We do not really know what the background of
our part-time students is; we know a lot more about our full-time students than
we do about our part-time students. For
that reason we decided in UUK to undertake a study looking (of course we know
the numbers of part-time students) at the numbers who are supported by their
employers, their background, the financial arrangements that they make and so
on. They are different kinds of students. The initial outcomes of our survey has
suggested that they are rather different in terms of cohort, in terms of
gender, in terms of ethnicity, in terms of whether they are home-based or
willing to study away from home. I
think it is quite a complicated area, but the new package is a step in the
right direction, although clearly it would be enormously helpful if it could be
improved. I know that the funding
council is looking at ways of seeking to provide additional support to that
provided by the Government.
Q116 Jeff Ennis: I take your point that they are a different
cohort, as it were. Last week, Sir
Howard Newby argued that we will not achieve flexible learning and a widening
of access to HE until the distinction between part-time and full-time students
has ended. So, what is the difference
between his philosophy and your philosophy?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think the problem is that what one does not
want to do is use public money to subsidise employers. At the moment, a substantial proportion -
not a majority - of part-time students are funded by their employers, and we
certainly do not want to stop that.
Finding ways of ensuring that you can target the support provided for
part-time students, I think, is the problem.
The way in which the Government is proposing to do it, I think, is a
very practical one, in that the Access to
Learning fund is already administered by universities, so already they know
what their local - and it tends to be local or relatively local - part-time
market is. So I think it is a scheme
that can be very efficiently run.
Professor Bone: If I may be so bold as to try and interpret
what Sir Howard may have said, I think the key thing is that we have to learn
(and this applies to universities and to government alike, I think) to see
part-time students as on the same playing field of importance, if I can put it
that way, as full-time students. I
think there is an awful tendency, perhaps for everybody, to still think of the
traditional full-time student rather than (a) the lifelong learning student and
(b), in particular, the part-time student.
We have no argument with that at all; I think it is important for
everybody to get that plea in. Then,
however, as Lady Warwick has said, you have to deal with market-specific
problems.
Q117 Jeff Ennis: One of the main measures that were not taken
last week by Bill Rammell was to actually defer the fees of part-time
students. Should that have been in the
package?
Professor Bone: My view is that it was important to get some
improvement in place quickly. There is
this major study which UUK is actually undertaking at the moment and which will
be ready by the end of the year, and what I hope we will do is return to this
issue once the results of that study are out and we can produce proper,
evidence-based policy. I do think it
was important to do something quickly.
Q118 Jeff Ennis: I accept what you say about what Sir Howard
said last week and the interpretation that you put on it, Professor Bone, but
does it not still send out a message that part-time students are second-class
citizens, to some extent, having a different deferral system?
Professor Bone: I think anything which sends out that message
is the wrong thing but I do think we should base what we are going to do on
real evidence rather than on licking our fingers. On the other hand, having got into the position we were in
something had to happen, I think, quickly.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: In answer to your specific question about
deferred fees, deferred fees have obviously been a great advantage in terms of
full-time students. One suspects that
they could give the same advantage to part-time students. We have to take into account the complications
that we have already mentioned, but I suspect that the main problem that has
prevented that policy choice was cost.
However, that is not to say that it might not be the best policy
outcome.
Q119 Mr Marsden: I wonder if I can take you both to some of
the practical consequences that flow from the announcement over the improved
package, which as you have already said you welcome? I suppose people might think that there is a danger, with the
perception of all this extra money flowing in, although the sums are relatively
modest, that universities might feel, particularly those that have felt
financially pressed: "Oh well, we can ratchet up some of our fees to part-time
students". Do you think that is a
danger, and if it is how can it be avoided?
Professor Bone: I think it is a danger but it is not
likely. I think one of the arguments
that we have heard a lot in UUK from those universities most affected by the
part-time situation is simply that they could not raise their fees; that if
they raise their fees that would discourage people from coming, and that was
one of the reasons why they were pressing so urgently for the change. Obviously, in a sense, it is a danger, but I
do not think it is likely, Lady Warwick, do you?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I doubt that fees will be raised
dramatically, although I think the intention is that by providing the support
there will be scope for institutions to raise fees in those areas where in
terms of the market they believe that they can afford to raise those fees. I think it is important to remember that
part-time fees have always been unregulated, so it has been a matter for
institutions to judge their marketplace and determine how they will recruit and
into what subjects, and so on. I think
what this might do is provide institutions where they know they have demand
----
Professor Bone: It could be company-sponsored courses.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: It could be company-sponsored courses where
they can make a judgment. Universities
have got quite good at judging their marketplace where there is a marketplace,
and in this area there is a marketplace.
I would not expect at all to see a major hike across the board.
Q120 Mr Marsden: That is helpful. You mentioned, professor Bone, those universities with large
numbers of part-time students and, of course, that includes not just the Open
University and Birkbeck but, obviously, a large number of the post-1992
universities. Are you concerned
(because we have talked about the Government not moving on deferral of
part-time fees) that universities in those categories are still going to face
financial difficulties because of the difference in the fee regimes between
part-time and full-time students?
Professor Bone: Yes, I am concerned but I am not in a state
of panic, if I can put it that way.
Clearly, there will be some universities which this affects
significantly, and obviously, as I have already said in answer to Jeff Ennis,
it would be better if we had a more fully-thought-out support package, both for
students and for the institutions. I
think the institutional support here is very, very important; it is not just
the support for the students too. If
you are asking me is this going to plunge some institutions into serious
financial difficulties, then not that I know of but perhaps that question would
be better directed at Sir Howard.
Q121 Mr Marsden: I was going to say that a lot will depend -
we heard about it last week - on the way in which HFCE decides some of these
institutional arrangements in the next couple of weeks.
Professor Bone: Yes, the consultation on financing will be
interesting.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: There are something like 19 institutions, I
think, that have more than 50 per cent part-time students. Most of them are adept at managing both the
income that comes in through the part-time route and the income that comes
through the full-time route, so I do not expect a major perturbation. Part of the problem, of course, is their
concern that they are not able to raise as much additional money as those
institutions where they have the fee income coming from almost 100 per cent of
full-time students. I think that is
possibly the area of concern, but I do not expect that to lead to greater
financial difficulty in managing their institutions.
Professor Bone: What it does play back into is the
affordability of bursaries issue. It
exacerbates that problem.
Q122 Mr Marsden: When Sir Howard Newby came before us last
week he admitted that possibly HFCE - leaving aside the issue of part-time
students - had not paid enough attention to the issue of the growing numbers of
HE students who actually have their courses done by further education
institutions. Is this something that
Universities UK would want to put their hand up on, or have you begun to
address that issue as well?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: It is something that we have encouraged. Do you mean he expressed concern that the
funding was not right? What was the
issue of concern?
Q123 Mr Marsden: He said, in general terms, in terms of their
planning and funding and in terms of everything else, that perhaps they had not
taken into account in the past the number of HE students having their
coursework done via FE. My question to
you, on the back of that, is whether Universities UK have taken sufficient
account (in the policy which the university is offering) of the need for
co-operation with the FE sector, given that there is a larger number than ever
of students who are doing their HE courses via it?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think we have got very positive
co-operation with the further education sector. We work, as Universities UK work, closely with the Association of
Colleges; individual universities, which is where I think it is most important,
have either franchise arrangements or partnership arrangements with their FE
colleges. I cannot put my hand on my
heart and say everything in relation to those partnerships is absolutely rosy,
but certainly, I think, the links between those HE institutions and FE
institutions with those kinds of partnerships seem to be working very well. The foundation degree programme, which has
grown very substantially, is largely being delivered in FE colleges with the
support of HE, and there is clearly (I do not want to sound at all complacent)
a lot more to do, but for those institutions who have good links with FE
colleges they often exist in a symbiotic relationship because they rely through
transfer for many of their entrants from the FE college. So it is very much in their interests to
work closely with them.
Q124 Mr Marsden: Have you commissioned any research or are you
looking at projections for the future as to how many more students are going to
have HE delivered by FE? Is that going
to affect what you have just said?
Professor Bone: It is under discussion at UUK, I can reassure
you, but I do not think we have any research specifically commissioned. If I could perhaps make a personal comment
on this: as you can obviously hear from my voice I come from north of the
border, and I must say, coming down to England, there is a time-lag in England;
HE in England does not work so well with FE as happens north of the
border. So I think there is still quite
a lot of work to do. However, it is
very much on UUK's agenda. In fact, at
the executive committee last week this subject was under discussion. We have not thought of doing a formal study,
but that is maybe something we should do.
Q125 Mr Marsden: Can I ask you a final question, again,
touching on something that Sir Howard Newby raised last week? We asked him about flexible learning and,
again, he said that perhaps we needed to do more in that direction. I am particularly concerned - and I know we
will come on to this later when we are discussing Bologna - about how easy it
is for students, particularly older students, particularly women, to be
flexible in terms of their coursework if they want or need to move in and out
of university. Are you happy that you
have done enough in the organisation to promote that?
Professor Bone: No, I am not. I think there is a lot of work still to do on that. That does not mean that because universities
do not, again, have it on their agenda that they are not aware of the problem;
I think we are aware of the problem and we are aware that it is not just a
problem for universities it is an opportunity for universities, again, to get
more people in and to offer a more flexible service to, as you say, comers and
goers throughout their career. I think
the new lifelong learning network programme, which started last year, is
something which we are very excited about and a lot of universities are working
hard on, but if you are asking me has enough been done, I think we would all
have to say no, not yet.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think the structure is in place in terms of
links and collaboration between FE and HE.
I think that is a route whereby those, particularly women and
particularly older women, who are not able necessarily (I say "older" women but
women with families anyway) to move out of their locality are going to be
entirely reliant on the quality of the programmes that are offered through
their FE colleges at local level, and that is going to very much depend on
improved links between the FE colleges and their linked higher education
institution. I do not want to be
complacent about that; I am sure there is an enormous amount more to do, but I
think the links are there to be built on.
Professor Bone: It is worth saying, as well, that driving
this kind of link from the HE point of view, and making sure it actually works
and making sure it is not just there in principle but actually happens, does
cost quite a bit of management time. It
is not costless, and we have to bear that in mind. If this begins to develop, and I think it should develop, there
is a cost to the institutions.
Q126 Helen Jones: Thank you for that. Before we move on I want to ask about this survey that UUK is
undertaking on part-time students. Why
has it taken so long for you as an organisation to start looking closely at the
needs of part-time students, given that the sector has been changing rapidly
for sometime? Why has it not been done
before?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I do not think it is a question of whether it
should have been done; it has been done in response to the changes in the fee
and bursary structure. It has been, in
one sense, entirely a matter for institutions in terms of responding to the
market in relation to the courses that they have put on, what they offer
part-time and so on. I think it has
been very much seen as something to be determined through supply and
demand. Now, I think, we are facing a
situation where additional support is being provided for full-time students and
what we do not want to do is change the terms of the playing field, so to
speak; that institutions, because of the additional resource either they get or
they can offer to full-time students, could well see that it is more in their
interests for full-time students to be recruited rather than part-time
students, and we think that would be a very bad idea. However, I do not think it is an issue that has come up, if you
like, to hit us before.
Q127 Helen Jones: Is it just about markets? What research are you doing into those who
would like to study part-time and still encounter barriers to doing so? Having suffered the vagaries, some years
ago, of being a part-time student and finding childcare very difficult -
lecturers changing the time of their lectures, throwing the childcare
arrangements into chaos - what research are you doing into that? Is it not true that you may find - we do not
know - that many people do not even get to first base because universities are
not adjusting to their needs?
Professor Bone: Certainly a lot of individual universities
have, for quite a long while now, done exactly that kind of research and tried
as best they can - again, within the financial envelope in which they are - to
accommodate their part-time students. I
do not know the answer to why UUK has taken till now to get round to this. I think the fact is that there is now a
great deal of demand from our members to do this research, so that research is
now under way. Individual institutions
have been doing exactly the kind of research that your experiences suggest is
necessary for quite a while.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Your question was about whether there should
be national work done to investigate this.
Perhaps there should and we need to reflect on that, but I suspect that
it is very much a matter for determining the market at a local level and with
other institutions locally, because this is not something that I think can ever
be only answered by individual universities; they are not often in the
locations where they could provide the kind of part-time courses and so on, or
where it would be sensible to provide them because the people who want those
courses are elsewhere. So I think it is
quite important that the market is determined at a local level, or even perhaps
at a quasi regional level, that the market is looked at and the needs of
part-time students, in relation to courses, is determined. You are looking at something else; you are
looking at the circumstances in an individual institution ---
Q128 Helen Jones: I am looking at the whole thing.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: ---- where universities are providing
childcare and so on.
Q129 Helen Jones: I did not actually say that. I am sorry, I must correct you there; I said
there are problems with doing that and universities do not research their
market. Whether your childcare is in
the university or somewhere else, universities have to tailor their courses to
take account of the needs of their students, and that includes students who
have childcare arrangements in place.
Professor Bone: I am sure universities have been researching
that, Chairman.
Q130 Helen Jones: What puzzles me here is that you were talking
about the market in terms of employers and demand, but do you, as UUK, research
the potential market, not simply the obvious market with people actually coming
through your doors on course but the potential market that might be out there
if the arrangements were different?
Professor Bone: Again, this is being done at an individual
institution level, and has been for quite sometime. I cannot speak for every institution but certainly for a very
great number that I do know about. It
has not been done nationally, and maybe it should be done nationally, but one
of the things, again, is the difference from institution to institution is so
considerable that it might perhaps be most appropriate for it, actually, to be
done at individual institutional level.
We could then, of course, do a survey of the individual institutions, I
suppose, and compile something which might help develop policy, that is true.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Although it is from a slightly different
direction, what we have done, since 1999 through our From Elitism to Inclusion project, is report each year - we have
had four reports now - and look at the way in which universities have developed
projects to encourage a greater degree of both widening participation and,
also, attracting what used to be, of course, non-traditional students and now
becoming much more traditional students.
So we have got examples of what is happening on the ground in relation
to part-time and mature students and, indeed, other groups who are part of our
widening participation agenda, and we have also produced something called the Patterns Report since 2001, which
identifies the patterns of what is happening in higher education. What it does not do is look at whether or
not those patterns might be changed, which is what I think you are suggesting -
that we do rather more commercial marketing, or more thorough marketing, or
market analysis. That might be a
question of cost, but it is certainly worth looking at and seeing whether, if
we cannot do it, others might do it.
Helen Jones: I think the Committee would be interested at
some point if you started looking at those people who do not get past first
base who might be potential students.
If you ever have that information we would be grateful if you would
share it with us.
Q131 Mr Chaytor: Why is Universities UK so opposed to a
post-qualification application system?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: We are not opposed to a post-qualification
application system. In fact, all other
things being equal, if it provides a fairer system for students and a clearer
system for students and institutions then it makes sense. It is when you look at how to do it that one
gets into difficulty, I think. For us,
the problem has been that under the various proposals that have been under
discussion to make the selection between different students - and,
particularly, for those areas where interview is the norm, in medicine, for
example - there just is not the time to go through that process under the
proposals that were under consideration.
The alternative, then, was to start the academic year later, so that one
started the academic year, say, in January.
The problem there, I think, is that we were concerned (a) what would
happen to our international student market, because if international students
are expecting to start a course in September/October, which is the norm
internationally, I think we would certainly lose out in that area, but, also,
we were anxious that the very students who might be perceived to be
disadvantaged by the current system, ie, those who might be part of the
widening participation agenda, might be the very ones who, if there was a
six-month gap between qualifications and starting their course, might well
choose to do something else. So I think
we were just anxious about the detail.
We have been working very closely with the Department (we are part of a
group looking at this), with the further education sector, the schools sector
and the local authorities to try to see whether there is a way through this,
but it might end up being a halfway house.
It might be a step on the way to full PQA but, I think, at the moment,
it is the detail of the scheme that is a problem for us.
Q132 Mr Chaytor: Do you think PQA, in principle, is a good
idea? Is it preferable to the status
quo and it is only the issue of detail and timing that concerns you?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Yes.
We have supported the idea of a post-qualification application system
and we have tried to see whether there are ways in which it can be made to
work.
Q133 Mr Chaytor: If timing is the problem, how much time is
needed? If it is only the issue of
interviews by medical schools, should medical schools be ----
Professor Bone: It is not, unfortunately, just medical
schools. There is clearly quite a
difference here between the recruiting institutions (institutions which,
largely, recruit students) and those which, largely, select students. Of course there are differences inside
institutions too, but you can broadly categorise them in this way. It would be true to say that the selecting
institutions are much more nervous about PQA than those institutions which
recruit. Nevertheless, I think we would
all agree that the more certain information that is available in the recruiting
process the better the recruiting process is likely to be. So, in principle, PQA has got to be better
than where we are at the moment. If I
can just lean on that word "only the detail" that you used, the "only" is quite
a big "only". We have not yet seen or
been able to really talk in concrete terms about a scheme which answers both
the practical problems, on the one hand, and the difficulties of a substantial
delay in the start of the university term, on the other. That route would mean quite a big social
change, if we moved it even a couple of months back; there are all the problems
about international students that Lady Warwick suggested as well and there are
the problems that it would particularly damage, we think, people who come from
less supported backgrounds, if we can put it like that, who have to hang around
for a bit before they come into the university system. It is not impossible but it is quite a big
step. What we are very anxious to say
is: "Look, we have got fees coming in in 2006, there is the proposal on the
table for a kind of halfway-house modification of the current system, if you
like to put it that way; let us get that out of the way first." We think we can handle that, as it were,
without causing too much disruption, not just to the institutions but to the
students as well, because this is going to be a big change for them and for
their understanding of the system. Let
us get that out of the way first and then we will go back to the PQA.
Q134 Mr Chaytor: You are happy to revisit it after the
introduction of the new system?
Professor Bone: Yes, absolutely.
Q135 Mr Chaytor: You referred to the period of two months, so
you are saying, really, that if it is going to change ----
Professor Bone: If it is going to change it is going to have
to be a substantial period. We have heard
about shifting it back two weeks. If
you go to a pure PQA model it is going to be a lot longer than that.
Q136 Mr Chaytor: It is somewhere between two weeks and eight
weeks?
Professor Bone: I said eight weeks and that was me doing what
I said we should not do - licking my finger!
It is going to be at least eight weeks.
Q137 Mr Chaytor: Can I press you on some of the arguments that
were put in favour of PQA, particularly the accuracy of predicted grades on
certain groups of students. This seems
to be quite confusing because the DfES were arguing that this was a way of
discriminating against non-traditional students. The author of the report on which they base their judgment said
he did not say that at all; it is all about the fact that it is just easier to
predict A grades. What is your
understanding of the limitations of the current system in terms of the accuracy
of predictions?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I do not think I can second-guess the
researcher but what I do know is that there have been a lot of statistics
bandied around about the differences between predicted and actual grades. Again, it is the fine rain (?) of this. Something like nine per cent of students are
predicted to achieve grades that are lower than their actual grades. Of those whose predicted grades are
different to their actual grades, the vast majority of those are inaccurate
within plus or minus one grade. I think
it is important to understand the way universities use these predictions. They find them a helpful tool, but they are
one tool in a range of qualities and qualifications that are looked at. So I think any outcome, from our
perspective, I guess, ought to be seen to be proportional to that, but that is
not to say that I think it is believed that it would be fairer if students knew
when they applied exactly what they had got.
There are studies that suggest that, in fact, that is not necessarily
the case, and that students might actually work harder if they have had a
predicted grade that is less than they thought they might deserve. As I say, I cannot really second-guess the
researcher. The numbers of students who
are actually directly affected by this appear to be - again, it is not terribly
accurate - a lot smaller than I think the 45 per cent figure that was originally
postulated.
Professor Bone: Some suggest about 800 students. The issue, again, is the granularity of
this, if I may underscore that. A
difference of one grade is unlikely to make the difference between acceptance
and rejection from the university point of view. The difference is going to be very much wider than that because
the university would set a target for a student to achieve rather than refusing
a student on the basis of a predicted grade.
Q138 Mr Chaytor: It is not the only argument for a change to a
PQA system, surely. Are there not huge
savings in the general efficiency of the administration, in that we do not have
all these multiple applications which are then rejected, with people going into
clearing? Are there not administrative
savings?
Professor Bone: I suspect you would still have multiple
applications, but, yes, there probably are administrative savings. The main
argument, I think, for PQA is just the logic of having the maximum amount of
information available when you make a decision. There is not really much argument against that. That would clearly be a better situation.
Q139 Mr Chaytor: Accepting the importance of having maximum
information available, is there a risk that the A-level grade might become a
more important indicator or might tend to be the sole indicator used by some
admissions tutors, and would that lead to a slightly narrower approach to
recruitment of students?
Professor Bone: That is certainly an argument that I have
heard. Again, I doubt in practice
whether that would be the case, but it is certainly a danger. I think anything that makes the process more
automatic works against precisely the kind of widening participation,
multi-factorial entrance requirements which we are actually trying to
encourage. I hope it would not become
something automatic.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Here we are trying to make this process more
student focused and I do not know that we really know enough about both why
students make their choices and what they do when they are going through the
applications process and the clearings process. Maybe that is something we need to look at, possibly with the
Department, to see whether or not we could learn more about how students'
behaviour affects their choices.
Q140 Mr Chaytor: What is your general view of the reliability
of the A-level grade itself as a predictor of student performance as an
undergraduate and the final class of degree?
Is there a close relationship there or are there any variable factors or
uncertainties?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I believe there are statistics on that. I do not have them to hand, I am
afraid. I could certainly look them out
for you. Of course A levels are now
only one indicator that is taken into account.
There is a large number of students who come in with other
qualifications that are accepted. I
think that is really all I can say in answer to that. There is data on this, and I think we should find it for you.
Q141 Mr Chaytor: It would be useful if we could have a note
about what research tells us about the relationship between A-level performance
and final degree performance.
Professor Bone: We will provide that. It is often said that A levels are the best
possible predictor, but the question is: What is in the set of predictors that
you are using?
Q142 Mr Chaytor: What does UUK think about the whole issue of
the educational context from which the student is coming? I recall a few years ago when the
vice-chancellor of Bristol got into a lot of difficulty with the Daily Telegraph because he suggested
that Bristol was operating a differential admissions policy. He said, for example, that a grade A student
from Eton was not necessarily absolutely the same as a grade A student from an
inner city non-selective school. What
do you think about weighing up the school from which the student comes in terms
of the offer which should be made to that student?
Professor Bone: I agree with the Schwartz report here: one
should weigh up the student. That is the key thing. If one gets led down - again, it is the point you were making a
minute ago - some kind of mechanical scoring mechanism which actually suggests
school X gets so many points for being school X, and school Y gets so many less
points for being school Y, I think one is on very, very dangerous ground
here. One has to look at each
individual case and consider the evidence in the round.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: The information we have agreed to provide for
you in terms of whether A levels predict final success outcomes at graduation
may well offer some clarity on that, because I recall some years ago now
studies suggesting that those students who were force-fed into doing well at A
levels were not given the more rounded skills that enabled them to do well in a
more independent environment in a university, so that was reflected in the
outcomes. Whether that is still the
case, I do not know. As I say, we would
need to check on the outcomes. But I do
think it is quite important that admissions officers at universities take into
account the potential of the student to benefit from the university
course. That is one of the things they
are required to do. I think it is quite
important that they are able to do that without being necessarily forced into
accepting only one particular criterion, the A level, to determine whether or
not a potential student is going to benefit from the course.
Q143 Mr Chaytor: What happens in other countries? Does any other country operate the system we
have, or do they all have PQA?
Professor Bone: No other country operates exactly the system
we have, is the short answer, but there is a whole multitude of sins covered by
the phrase "PAQ" it has to be said.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: One relatively common feature in European
countries, for example, is automatic entry on a basic graduation from
school. The corollary of that, of
course, is a very, very, very high drop-out rate at the end of the first year.
Helen Jones: Thank you.
I am going to bring in Stephen Williams now, who has a question to ask
on this theme and then he can lead us onto the international issues.
Q144 Stephen Williams: Would you say that universities still have
full confidence in A levels as the best way of assessing whether a student
should be able to go to university? We
hear that lots of universities for particular courses are now introducing their
own entrance exams. How widespread is
that practice?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I am not sure I have the information that
would tell you that. I do not know
precisely how many institutions operate their own separate test. Certainly many medical schools - and I do
not know how many -----
Professor Bone: Almost half.
Some departments in some institutions always have as well. There is a lot of press speculation I have
read about institutions introducing new examinations. I do not know of any that have been recently introduced. That is not to say that it might
happen. If I could put a slightly
different slant on the question, I do think it is very unfortunate that we get
the annual A-level beanfeast in the press.
It is no help to students, who have worked very hard for their A levels
and are looking forward to committing themselves to a university career. We have to be careful in all this talk about
denigrating the gold standard, etc, etc, which I think is very inappropriate;
on the other hand, I think a number of our members, not all of them but a
number, do feel that Tomlinson was a missed opportunity.
Helen Jones: Stephen, would you like to lead us onto
issues about international students.
Q145 Stephen Williams: Professor Bone said in his introductory
remarks that international competitiveness is one that concerns you. Perhaps I may start off with EU students. Our previous Education Minister Alan Johnson
said in evidence to a previous committee, in the last parliament, that he did
not anticipate there would be a big growth in the number of students from EU
countries. When Sir Howard Newby was
here last week he said that the UK currently funds the equivalent of two
universities from EU students. How do
you see this market? Do you see it
growing in the future?
Professor Bone: That is an interesting statistic. I think it probably will grow, but I do not
know that it will grow hugely. There
has been quite a bit of growth over the last, let us say, 10 years in EU
students. Obviously we have an enlarged
EU and that might lead to increased growth, however, there is one thing going
against that, and that is that, under the Bologna process, the majority of
education systems across the EU are what I would call modernising:
fundamentally moving to the UK model or something which looks very like the UK
model. That will actually make them
more attractive to their own students, because it means that they will get
through their undergraduate course in four years on average, which makes it
look much more like the UK. I think
that is a pressure against the expansion of EU numbers into the UK.
Q146 Stephen Williams: Could we look at the new funding arrangements
that will come into place, the deferred fees to which EU students will be
entitled. What sort of issues do you
think arise there in terms of collecting those fees post-graduation,
particularly if a student actually goes back to Warsaw or Prague or wherever.
Professor Bone: I think there is a major issue there. I do not know that I have an answer to that
issue. Again, that is perhaps one for
the Department. I do think there is a
major issue there.
Q147 Stephen Williams: A similar question on maintenance. Originally Alan Johnson was saying that the
reason you did not expect a take-off in EU applications was because the
Government thought when it brought in the new funding arrangement that EU
students would not be entitled to grants, whereas now it turns out, as a result
of a court judgment, that if they have lived here for three years they may well
be.
Professor Bone: That judgment was a judgment on a very
specific case. If I understand the
details of that case correctly, it is not necessarily going to be a ruling
which sets a precedent. If it did, then
the difficulty you have just described of course multiplies considerably.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: The great strength that we have is that we
teach courses in English. That is an
attraction, and it has proved to be a very considerable attraction, for
example, for the new accession states, so we have seen a very considerable
increase. But this also applies to
international students as well. Many of our European counterparts are now
establishing not only three-year degrees and masters that are very like ours,
but also teaching many courses, the most popular courses, in English. That may mean, not just in terms of
attracting international students but also those students for whom English and
studying in English is a very attractive proposition, that can now be provided
in their home country. That has been a
very considerable attraction and I suspect it will continue to be a great
strength of the British sector.
Q148 Stephen Williams: Could I move on to non-EU international
students, which is something I have taken a lot of interest in recently. Your own figures and other institutions'
figures show that universities are very largely dependent now on increasing
growth in international fee income. I
had a look at Bristol University and the University of the West of England's
accounts. In the last figures that are
available, they have £28 million in additional fee income from international
students, which is clearly very important to them. Do you think the Government is doing enough to encourage further
growth in international students coming to this country?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: The Prime Minister's initiative was an
enormous help in focusing attention on the conditions and resources that needed
to be available in order to encourage international students. We did see a very considerable growth. It was a direct correlation between the
amount of emphasis placed on those conditions and the increase in the number of
international students. Are they doing
enough? We have been very concerned
about what has been happening to the Home Office on the visa front and the way
in which changes have been introduced without consultation and without any
preparation, either on the part of institutions or those recruiting
international students, to be able to alert them to these changes, so that,
although I think everybody would accept the additional amounts of money that
are being charged are not huge, nonetheless the impression has very quickly
been created that Britain is no longer a welcoming country. We are in a highly competitive market
here. Our Australian and New Zealand
counterparts are putting a huge amount of money into marketing to attract
international students. America, which,
after 9/11, introduced quite draconian entry arrangements, has now relaxed
them, and they are already seeing a benefit in that through an increase in the
number of international students. I
suspect that, whilst on the one hand the Foreign Office and the Department for
Education and Skills recognised through the Prime Minister's initiative the
huge value to this country and to institutions of international students, the
Home Office has been, if I may put it this way, slow to recognise that
advantage.
Q149 Stephen Williams: The Immigration Nationality and Asylum Bill
is currently going through Parliament, which is introducing some of the changes
to which you have just referred, not just the visa review right, which they can
do anyway, but also taking the right of appeal against an entry clearance
officer's decision in a British embassy abroad. I spoke in the second reading of that debate back in the
summer. It was on the same day that
about 100 of your colleagues signed a joint letter saying that this was going
to have a detrimental effect on students coming to this country, and the
reaction of the Minister Tony McNulty, when I quoted this, was "Rubbish and
even more rubbish." Do you have an
elegant response to that? Because the
Bill is just about to come out of committee and to come back to the floor of
the House for a third reading.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think he is wrong. I do not know how elegant that is.
Q150 Helen Jones: We will settle for the truth.
Professor Bone: I think there are a number of statistics
which suggest this. The number of
applications, for example, from China to the UK is down about 20 per cent; the
number of successful visa applications is down 30 per cent. The number of successful visa applications
to the United States is up 15 per cent.
If you look at the statistics supplied by one university - you will
pardon me if I keep it anonymous at the moment, but we could later, I am sure,
reveal it in writing - 90 per cent of the students who are refused visas the
first time through get these visas on reapplication. If the threat of formal appeal is withdrawn, there will be
nothing like that same incentive. We
have quite a lot of evidence which shows the sometimes seemingly arbitrary
nature of initial decisions, which are of course checked on review, but if
there is not the incentive for that review then we feel we will suffer really
very badly.
Helen Jones: Could I bring in Roberta Blackman-Woods on
that.
Q151 Dr Blackman-Woods: Could I just follow up on that last point you
made. Are you making that information available to the Home Office in order to
argue the case?
Professor Bone: Yes, indeed.
Q152 Dr Blackman-Woods: The UK is hosting the next meeting to
progress the Bologna process. I wonder if you could tell us what level of
enthusiasm you think there is in the HE sector in the UK for this process.
Professor Bone: I think this has changed really quite a lot
over the last three or four years. If
you had asked me that question a few years ago, I would have been in despair,
quite frankly, but now I am happy to say there is really a quite considerable
level of enthusiasm and certainly a considerable level of understanding that
there was not a few years ago. I am
happy to say that is the same too of Government. If you had asked me that
question three years ago, I would have been despairing on the Government's
behalf as well. Now we have ministerial
attendance at the Bologna meetings, and we are very grateful for that. The word through the Europe Unit, at which
of course the UK participates as a key partner, has been very, very helpful in
spreading the word about Bologna. The
word is mainly positive. There are
obviously one or two issues for UK higher education, but by and large we
support a strong European higher education system.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: We have put an enormous amount of work into
it as an organisation. We play a part
now in all the many conferences that take place on the different strands of
activity that are working towards producing a European higher education area. Increasingly, it is seen by most institutions
as a very important area for our sector.
I think people are looking to the opportunities that might be offered by
a European higher education area - and, indeed, a European research council,
which is also on the stocks. I think
there has been a very considerable change in approach and attitude and
engagement.
Q153 Dr Blackman-Woods: How close are we to being able to implement a
system for European credit transfer?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: There is a lot of work being done on this, a
lot of discussion about the best way forward.
Not everybody shares the UK view, which is that the credit system ought
to be based on outcomes rather than on length of service or length of
study. That is quite a major area of
disagreement, I think, within different European countries, but I certainly
perceive a change in some countries and an acceptance that an outcomes-based
process should be the one that we go for.
We already have in the UK the Scottish system - and perhaps Drummond can
say something about that. It is patchy
though. In terms of what is happening
on the ground, institutions of course determine their own entry, so the
question then is whether there is effective trust between the feeder
institutions and the accepting institutions.
That, I think, will take time to build and there will have to be a
better understanding of the way in which the credits are built up and the
courses are developed in order to ensure that an institution can feel confident
that the potential student will be able to benefit from the course that they
are offering. I think it is a
process. It is certainly being
positively developed, but we are not there yet in overall terms.
Professor Bone: I would add that we are winning the battle on
an outcomes-based system. That is quite
clear. The ground has shifted. Another thing I should say is that we are
very grateful for the Government's line on the European research council, which
I think is very, very important for the sector.
Q154 Jeff Ennis: Do you think we will ever get one specific European
credit transfer system, or do you think there will be a transition period
whereby you get a number of countries?
You kept referring Professor Bone to the fact that a lot of the new
accession countries are adopting our model.
Do you think we will go to a situation of two or three different types
of model before we get to where we want to be?
Professor Bone: I suspect we will. There is quite a large
differentiation, it has to be said - and of course one is talking here about
the European higher education area, which is 45 countries, not just the members
of the EU - and there is no doubt that some are very much more advised than
others. There are some countries and
some institutions with which institutions in the UK would be perfectly happy to
move to some kind of credit transfer arrangement - and, indeed, they have got
it already - and there are some areas where that will be very much more
difficult. I suspect there will be a
two- or three-speed system, yes, before we move to something solid. That does not mean we should not travel in
that direction.
Helen Jones: Could we move on, before we finish, to have a
look at the student experience.
Q155 Tim Farron: The satisfaction rate amongst students in
response to a national student survey produced some fairly surprising results,
if you take the approach of looking at traditional hierarchies. Do you think that indicates a level of
complacency on the part of some of the universities when it comes to teaching
and perhaps student support? Or do you
have other explanations as to why the table looks different from what one might
have expected?
Professor Bone: I do not know that I was quite as surprised
by the results as people affected to be - and my own institution is one of the
Russell Group institutions. Institutions
do have students who are liable to respond in different ways depending on the
kind of course they are taking, for a start, and I think that is one of the
factors. It is rather interesting that
certain courses, if you look across the board, had higher ratings than certain
other kinds of courses. If you have an
institution which has a preponderance of a certain kind of course, your chance
of getting a higher rating is considerably higher than if you are an
institution which has a preponderance of courses which do not. There are various reasons for that, and some
of them, I think, are quite complicated.
Students sometimes find themselves in subjects because they have been
pressured to go into that subject, perhaps for family reasons, rather than out
of choice. They perhaps discover
themselves studying a subject which they did at school but which they discover
at university is very, very different.
If a university got a particularly low rating, the thing it should be
doing is looking very seriously at why that is the case. Is it real?
Is it not real? I am sure most
of our members would do that.
Q156 Tim Farron: What do you think your numbers are, taken out
of their individual rankings?
Professor Bone: Speaking of those people I have spoken to recently
- and obviously this survey is relatively recent on our agenda - it is quite
simply that individual universities are looking at those areas in which they
have scored lower than they would have expected and are taking very concrete
actions to remedy that - first, of all to find out why it is the case, and,
secondly, to try to remedy it. I think
there will be a whole slew of people looking very seriously and practically at
this, because it does not do us any good - to state the crashingly obvious - to
have these results out there. The
difficulty we have had - and it will not surprise you that I say this - is the
construction of league tables by the newspapers of these results. I think that is unfortunate but inevitable.
Q157 Tim Farron: I guess I might say that there are other
league tables constructed which tend to be in favour of universities such as
your own.
Professor Bone: Indeed.
Q158 Tim Farron: It is perhaps good to see one which is
looking at a different angle: what the consumer thinks.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: We always said: The more league tables, the
better, in the end.
Q159 Tim Farron: Well, it confuses the whole picture then and
nobody takes them seriously!
Professor Bone: I did say I was not surprised at the
results. Self defence!
Q160 Tim Farron: Interestingly enough, you will have noted
that Oxford and Cambridge do not feature here and it would appear that their
students were actively encouraged not to respond. What do you feel about that?
Professor Bone: I have no comment to make on whether they
were actively discouraged or not. I
simply do not know the answer to that.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I do not know the answer to that either. Anybody subject to a survey has criticisms
of the methodology, but where a survey is well constructed, where it offers
students clearer, more accessible information, I think it is helpful. I am sure Drummond is absolutely right,
everybody will be looking at the outcome of the survey and seeing how they can
improve, because they want to be as attractive as possible for students. I think they will be looking at the outcome
of the judgments on teaching and seeking to do something about it.
Tim Farron: I am sure that is so. There is a strong proportion - I would say
we are looking at the majority of HEIs here - that are listed. I have never
thought Oxford and Cambridge students were particularly reticent and bad at
participating, so one can only think there is something under the surface here,
and it just is a shame that people are not prepared to be assessed on things
that they might not be so confidently strong on. But you are not going to respond on that and I understand why.
Helen Jones: We have noted your spirited defence of Oxford
and Cambridge.
Q161 Tim Farron: Indeed.
I have a final point, if I may, Chairman, which relates to one of the
issues of concern that came out of the student survey and certainly a concern
facing many students and also the communities in which universities have their
sites; that is, of course, campus closures.
We recognise that institutions have autonomy and should have autonomy
and need to respond to market pressures, and that sometimes you will need to
expand an institution, sometimes there will be a retraction, and sometimes a
new course will be developed and sometimes a course will be phased out. I understand, that but I wonder if you
recognise that there could be a severe impact - obviously on the students who
are involved, but also the staff, and sometimes, when it is a campus closure,
on a whole community that that institution serves. Will Universities UK be
looking to try to set up protocols that institutions which belong to UUK will
be able to follow when it comes to going through the process of course closures
and campus closures?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think certainly UUK is a repository of good
practice. I do not know that we had
imagined setting up a protocol for autonomous institutions but good practice is
certainly something which we do see it our job to disseminate. We were very pleased with the way FC
reported on the subjects that were in danger, if I may put it that way. We now have a voluntary code, as you know,
whereby we will be giving early warning to the Funding Council if there are
difficulties. I take very, very
seriously the question of regional consultation, I have to say. I think that is a very fair and very strong
point that I think should be a part of university good practice, that, where
they are thinking of closing something or indeed closing a whole campus, it has
to be the subject of regional consultation - and not just with other HE
institutions in the area either, which is sometimes what that means, but with
the local councils, with the development agencies, with the Learning and Skills
Council. I take that point.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Looking back on what I recall of closures of
campuses, they are often very prolonged.
They are decisions which take a very long time and it is often the
length of time rather than the lack of notice that can be a problem. I am sure
that from an organisational point of view we are anxious to provide a means for
members to alert those who might be affected.
That could be the Funding Council but it certainly could be the local
community. The links between
institutions and local communities, Regional Development Agencies, Learning and
Skills Councils and so on, all these links mean that what is going on in an
institution is very much more likely to be shared than used to be the case.
Professor Bone: I can certainly provide the Committee
reassurance that this subject has been a matter of considerable debate and
concern in UUK over the last year or so.
Q162 Mr Marsden: Student satisfaction, of course, is quite
closely related to staff satisfaction in universities at all levels, and I would
like to draw you on a little bit in that area.
Professor Drummond Bone, right at the beginning, when we were talking
about where the fees income was going to go, you talked about modernisation of
the pay structure. Do you still have
concerns, notwithstanding that, about structural shortages within the teaching
profession at university? Perhaps you
would like to illustrate where you think those lie.
Professor Bone: There is no question about that, we do, and
they lie I suspect in the regions where one would expect. Economists, for example, are extremely
difficult to come by; lawyers can be extremely difficult to come by; some
categories of engineers increasingly can be difficult to come by; people in
computing science in certain areas - not across the board, but in certain areas
of computing science - can be difficult to come by; and I suspect there are
other areas which I just cannot think of off the top of my head. Mathematicians are quite difficult in the UK
as well. So there is a real shortage. There is also a demographic problem looming,
and there is increasing competition, because of a demographic problem in the
States, from the United States as well.
Again, one of the problems that we have is not just the base level of
salary but the fact that, in trying to attract people from other countries, the
UK is an expensive place to live.
Q163 Mr Marsden: What is the answer to that? The one obvious answer all the way round is
more money. I am well aware of that,
and no doubt you would like to get your begging bowl out to HEFCE now. The other issue is how universities
themselves are able to use their existing funding more effectively to tackle
some of these issues. I know the
maximum line has been removed in terms of staff recruitment at professorial
level and so on, but are there more things you could be doing as institutions
or UUK could be doing to tackle and focus on the shortage areas?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I am thinking of the new framework agreement,
which has been negotiated through the Universities and Colleges Employers
Association with the university unions, which introduces a greater degree of
flexibility. I think that is going to
be very important in ensuring that we can respond to changes in the
marketplace. That does not necessarily
mean that in 10 years time or six years time economists will be the group that
it is most difficult to recruit. I think introducing a degree of flexibility
into the process will be helpful. We
are in competition, particularly for our scientists and engineers, with
organisations or companies that pay a great deal. But it is not only pay: it is the ability of the institution to
be able to provide particularly in the research area, the research environment and
the teamwork and the support that good researchers, excellent researchers,
require when they want to teach in a university or want to work at a
university. So I think there is more to
it than pay.
Q164 Mr Marsden: Sure, I would accept that, but do you not
also have an issue, particularly in the sciences, of the fact that in the
universities you still pay pretty low rates for many of the crucial support
staff, not least the technicians, who need to keep the show on the road?
Professor Bone: Yes, that is a real problem. I think there are a number of issues. At the top end of the professorial market,
if I could put it that way, salary really is not the issue, it is
resources. There is no question about
that. The difficulty is somewhere in
the middle, if I can put it that way, where retention is a real problem. You get city companies and so on and big
multinationals approaching our staff and it is very, very difficult to get them
back. The flexibility that Diana has spoken
about will help there. But, let us not
kid ourselves either: it will introduce problems into the system as well. There are some institutions, it is quite
clear, who will be able to pay more now that we are effectively in a local
bargaining situation than other institutions and that is going to create an
issue as well.
Q165 Mr Marsden: Even where you have a situation of teaching
staff and academics where there is not a particular problem in terms of
recruitment into the profession, there are concerns, are there not -
particularly going back to student satisfaction, in terms of teaching - that
the incentive balance is skewed in universities towards research and against
teaching by the nature of the RAE and the nature of many of the other funding
regimes? I know many younger academics
in particular feel frustrated that some of the things they would like to do, in
terms of social inclusion, in terms of relating to schools and other
institutions - some of the outreach work, for want of a better word - does not
get an automatic recognition. It certainly
does not get an automatic recognition in terms of the pay cheque or the time
they are allowed to do that sort of thing.
Are there more things - and I am not talking about opening up the RAE
question, because we know the situation there - that UUK could do to send out
to its members some more welcoming suggestions in that area, or more things
that universities themselves could do to balance things more in favour of
teaching perhaps and less absolute focus on research?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Perhaps I could address that in a slightly
different way by saying that in our submission to both the last Comprehensive
Spending Review and certainly the next one, our highest priority is support for
teaching infrastructure - and, indeed, for pay, but support for teaching infrastructure - in the sense that the
additional resource that has been provided for universities through the last
funding round has been heavily weighted towards research. It has been enormously welcome but it has
meant that the support that can be provided for teaching has lagged behind and
certainly we see that as a key priority in our representations to government.
Q166 Mr Marsden: It is about academic recognition as well, is
it not? What incentive is there for a
young science lecturer at a university to go out and do an open day in, say, a
socially disadvantaged area of schools or to promote science, or for a young
historian, for example, to do a similar sort of thing? There is not anything formal in the
progression process or the promotion process in university that assists those
people, is there?
Professor Bone: Yes, I think there is. I cannot speak for all universities but most
universities employ a balanced scorecard approach to promotion. Typically, it is divided into three - and in
some cases there are other things taken into consideration as well: certainly
teaching; the administrative load undertaken in university; and research. In most universities it is an equal number
of points for each and that is roughly how it works. But, nevertheless, I understand the remarks you are making. In university HR departments now,
particularly because of the discussions we have been having about the new
framework which involves equal pay for equal work, there is a lot of awareness
of the necessity to value people's work in different ways. I think the situation is improving, but that
is not to say there is more to be done.
I think you will find that most universities are employing some kind of
scorecard approach which does involve teaching and promotion.
Q167 Mr Marsden: Obviously you can do things at the margins,
but, to some extent, inevitably these things are going to be dictated in the
amount of funding which is distributed via the RAE as opposed to via other
processes. Are you happy or content
that the changes have taken place and will take place over the next RAE
assignment in 2008 are sufficient and adequate to reflect many of the concerns
that have been previously expressed about getting the balance right between
teaching and research?
Professor Bone: As a question near the end of the session,
that is a very big question. I think I
would, at the moment, quite frankly, like to leave the RAE stone unturned. It has taken an enormous amount of trouble
and discussion to get us where we are.
We are now only three years or two years away from the submission date
of the RAE - October 2007 the census date.
I think there will be room for a great deal of discussion following the
RAE. If you mean has the new format of
the RAE rebalanced things towards teaching, then I cannot say that it has.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: That was the point I was going to make. I do not know that the RAE has specifically
addressed that issue. It seems to me
that is an issue that can only be addressed by looking at the outcomes of the
way in which universities determine their promotions. I am not even sure whether it would be possible to judge that by
outcomes. I do not know what statistics
are kept. Because it is a balanced
scorecard approach, I do not think one normally in those circumstances draws
out particular elements to determine whether one was given more weight than
another. It might be quite difficult to
get at, but certainly there is a perception.
I accept that there is a perception.
Q168 Mr Marsden: There is a problem of universities allegedly
buying in bright young professors or for that matter bright older professors
and simply having them there because of their publications to ratchet up the
RAE scorecard and not actually contributing to the teaching in the university. That is going to still be an open question,
is it not?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: As a result of the RAE.
Q169 Mr Marsden: Yes.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I suspect that must be the case. Yes, I suspect is the answer, but there is
not a huge amount of evidence that there has been a major shift in terms of
poaching from one institution to another.
Professor Bone: The trouble about that -----
Q170 Mr Marsden: Perhaps we should leave this stone unturned.
Professor Bone: No, Diana is absolutely right, but one of the
issues is how much universities are actually paying people who do not move
because there is an approach. I think
there is a real issue there. However, I
do not think many of these chairs who may be brought in because they are good
researchers are given carte blanche
to do research. Often good researchers
are good teachers as well and want to teach.
Q171 Helen Jones: Thank you very much indeed. We are going to wrap it up there. Professor Drummond Bone, Baroness Diana
Warwick, thank you very much for coming before the Committee today. You have given us some very interesting
evidence and it is very nice to have had an English literature specialist in
front of us for once, Professor. That
is my abuse of the Chair! We do not get
many of them. We are extremely grateful
to you for the evidence you have given to us today, some very interesting
things which we will mull over in the future.
Professor Bone: Thank you very much, and, through you, the
Fund.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I wonder if I might also say that I think I
made a mistake, in that I said the inquiry we are doing on part-time is due
next year and in fact it is next year.
It will be towards the end of the academic year.
Helen Jones: Thank you very much for that correction.
