Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-73)
MS JESSICA
OLLEY, PROFESSOR
DRUMMOND BONE
AND PROFESSOR
LORD MAY
OF OXFORD
10 JANUARY 2007
Q60 Chairman: Which reforms?
Ms Olley: The main one is the
introduction of the three cycle system. That is the most obvious
one.
Q61 Chairman: We already had that.
We have not introduced it.
Ms Olley: That is what I am saying.
That was already in place.
Q62 Chairman: You said you have introduced
reforms. The original point I made was that we are asking everyone
to catch up with us.
Professor Bone: A slip of the
tongue, I think.
Ms Olley: Yes, I think it was.
We already had the three cycle system in place. Our quality assurance
arrangements have been very influential in the discussions on
European standards and guidelines. There are a number of other
areas: qualifications frameworks, and the whole learning outcomes
approach where we are seen as examples of good practice, which
puts us in a strong position in influencing the debates at London.
Professor Bone: We know from evidence
that is to be given to the OECD review of tertiary education,
which is not due to be published until the end of 2007, just what
a leading position the UK has. We are in the driving seat and
we are perceived to be in the driving seat. That can make us optimistic.
Q63 Chairman: What would make us
pessimistic surely would be something that Jessica Olley just
mentioned? In terms of quality assurance and other aspects, that
is the area where we have a quality assurance system that is pretty
government hands off, is it not?
Professor Bone: Yes, I agree.
Q64 Chairman: There is a mainland
Europe tradition that is very much more centralist and government
interfering. That would be a worry to us if we started a much
more state-ist approach to that quality assurance.
Professor Bone: It would indeed.
One of the worries is the effect which the new European quality
assurance register will have and how dirigiste that is
going to be. We are winning the battle on learning outcomes at
the moment so let us hope we can win the battle on quality assurance.
Q65 Chairman: What does that mean:
"learning outcomes"? If you go to a Bologna university,
you are likely to go into undergraduate lectures with 300 or 400
people or even 600.
Professor Lord May of Oxford:
Half of whom will not be there next year.
Professor Bone: You are absolutely
right but nevertheless it is very striking at European University
Association Council meetings that the leaders of these universities
realise they have got it wrong.
Q66 Chairman: You can see why our
students do not want to go to 600 people lectures.
Professor Bone: I can.
Q67 Chairman: Lord May, are there
any implications? We have had a lot of foment and discussion around
the Research Assessment Exercise. Is the initiative we are getting
from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in response to that European
dimension that you were pointing out that came out of Lisbon,
the 3%? You quite rightly identified that a lot of that is development,
taking research and developing it. You said the difference between
the United States and Europe was that development bit which was
funded by the private sector, by industry. Is what the Chancellor
is after in terms of changing the RAE to a metric system trying
to push research in the UK in that direction?
Professor Lord May of Oxford:
I do not think that is the primary motive. I could be wrong. Certainly
the primary motive that I have had consistently on this derives
from the 11 years I spent as the vice-president for research at
Princeton which created, just after World War Two, the American
indirect cost system. There is a feeling that while both our research
council competitive grant awarding system and separately the Research
Assessment Exercise in its early days were useful. We are almost
unique in having two separate processes, one looking forward and
not inhibited by collaborations across departmental or institutional
lines, the research councils, and another which looks backward
and is based on a bureaucratic fiction. Departments do not do
research; groups do research. It demonstrably somewhat inhibits
certain kinds of collaboration. Having two things, one of them
becoming increasingly rigidified and bureaucratic, is just not
an efficient thing to do. I would like to think that looking partly
towards the way these things are done in the United States and
the fact that the outcome of the two separate processes is very
highly correlated anyhow, the Treasury is motivated to think:
could we lift some of the growing burden and cost, because they
both cost to administer and they cost even more to help central,
administrative, bureaucratic growth at universities. Could we
simplify?
Q68 Chairman: You are more of a metrics
man?
Professor Lord May of Oxford:
I do not want to do it by metrics either. I would attach it to
the outcome of a research council and charity and other grants,
competitively gathered by peer review, the way it is done in the
States largely. The attempt to address the adventure of taking
the new knowledge and cashing in on it is something that has right
from the beginning of this government been high on their agenda.
They have done a lot of imaginative things in universities that
have been very useful. You can demonstrate they have borne fruit
in just counting the more than doubling of the number of courses
taught jointly with people from industry or the research collaborations
and publications and so on. There is still more that you could
do. I do not think it is directly connected with that particular—
Q69 Chairman: One of the reasons
for getting rid of the RAE is it takes so many academics' time.
How much time does all this palaver around Bologna take, with
people going internationally, the committees, the commitment?
It must take a lot of academic time that could be used for teaching,
researching or even administering back home.
Professor Bone: I am not saying
it does not take any time at all. It does. There is no question
about that but it is certainly not comparable with the RAE or
anything of that sort.
Q70 Chairman: Not now.
Professor Lord May of Oxford:
One of the other problems with the RAE is that it creates a single
yardstick of esteem, research excellence. It has been abused as
such. That was not its purpose. It is an inappropriate single
totem pole because it discourages diversity of aspiration. We
want to be more like the States with some universities taking
particular pride in being useful to local business and community.
You can construct a totem pole like that which is an interesting
collection of universities at the top: Herriot Watts, Strathclyde,
Cambridge, or universities whose graduates are sought. You find
places like Luton at the top of that.
Q71 Chairman: You were going to mention
Huddersfield?
Professor Lord May of Oxford:
I am out of date but that is another separate problem that goes
much wider than what we are talking about.
Q72 Mr Chaytor: Coming back to the
negotiating position at the conference this May, is there anything
in the UK universities' negotiating position that is not designed
to protect the status quo in the UK as of now?
Professor Bone: I do not think
that is why our negotiating position is designed. What it is designed
to do is to protect flexibility.
Q73 Mr Chaytor: Is that the outcome
of the negotiating position?
Professor Bone: It may look as
if what we are doing is defending the status quo in the UK. What
we are trying to do is promote flexibility and the principle of
autonomy. That is the key negotiating position. That allows us
to change as well, whether it is two year honours degrees or whatever.
It is not a question of defending the status quo; it is a question
of putting in place some kind of framework which allows the systems
to be flexible and yet in some sense also facilitate movement
between them.
Chairman: It has been a privilege to
have Lord May, Professor Bone and Jessica Olley in front of the
Committee. We have learned a lot. Thank you for your contribution.
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