Memorandum submitted by the Campaign for
Science and Engineering (CaSE)
1. Campaign for Science and Engineering
is pleased to submit this response to the Committee's inquiry
into the future of higher education. CaSE is a voluntary organisation
campaigning for the health of science and technology throughout
UK society, and is supported by over 1,500 individual members,
and some 70 institutional members, including universities, learned
societies, venture capitalists, financiers, industrial companies
and publishers. The views of the membership are represented by
an elected Executive Committee.
2. It has not proved possible in the time
allowed to provide detailed evidence and fully-reasoned answers
to every one of the large number of important questions set out
in the call for evidence.
THE ROLE
OF THE
UNIVERSITIES
What do students want from university? What should
the experience involve?
3. Different students want different things,
and to treat the entire student body as a single entity is probably
one of the largest mistakes policy makers can make. In a mass
system of higher education, the variety of institutions and individuals
will be enormous.
4. Prior to entering university, the majority
of students probably want a pathway to a rewarding and lucrative
career. Many individuals want to study something they find interesting.
For example, a recent survey of what would induce 15-18-year-olds
to study the sciences found that interest (50%), good job prospects
(24%) and high salaries (17%) were the top reasons given1 .
5. Many students probably want to study
something with which they are familiar, and which extends their
earlier educational experience. Some, probably an increasing number,
want something not too demanding.
6. But many probably do not really know
what they expect or want. An increasing proportion go to university
because it is the thing to do, following their peers, although
they have no real career pathways in mind and no real interest
in acquiring new knowledge for its own sake.
7. In view of this, the deeper question
is to what extent the preferences of 16 and 18-year-olds, choosing
A levels and university preferences, should be allowed to determine
the structure of higher education.
8. Although they may not realise it, what
students really want is honesty about their higher education experience.
For too long, many in the system have colluded in the fiction
that all degrees are of equal value. Studying at different institutions
and (importantly) studying different subjects bring different
rewards, some very much greater than others (both intellectually
and financially).
9. The student experience should involve
acquiring new skills and knowledge, both general and subject-specific.
Students should be intellectually challenged to the limit of their
abilities throughout their courses. They should also be encouraged
to take the opportunity afforded by the student lifestyle to develop
as citizens across the widest range of activities possible.
10. Nevertheless, it is evident that current
financial arrangements are such that many students need to take
paid work both during and out of term, and it is unrealistic to
expect that a large proportion of students will have the time
to enjoy the ideal level of extra-curricular activities.
11. It is also crucial to remember that
the higher education experience should be considered not on its
own, but as part of the whole education lifespan of an individual.
What a student's experience at university should involve will
depend in large part on what he or she has experienced at school
or college.
What do employers want from graduates?
12. As with students, employers are varied and
want different things. The university system should be sufficiently
diverse and flexible to deliver many of the things they want.
13. In so far as it is possible to generalise,
employers want people who are perfectly trained for whatever roles
happen to be available in their companies today, but that is not
a realistic ambition. Moreover, the economy changes so constantly
that it is verging on impossible to predict what specific skills
will be needed by the time someone in their first term at university
comes to enter the labour market.
14. In preparing people for the world of
graduate work, therefore, the aim of the system should be to help
students to be flexible, adaptable and independent. Most graduates
go into employment that has no obvious connection with what they
studied at university; even those that go into broadly the same
field probably use in their jobs relatively little of the specific
information they have been taught at university.
15. However, it is possible to say that
the economy will continue to require adequate numbers of people
with skills falling within the broad range of experimentation
and reasoning inherent in the hard sciences, especially significant
mathematical ability.
16. Employers are certainly entitled to
assume that graduates will have good levels of literacy and numeracy,
and it is worrying that a number of recent surveys and opinions
have tended to suggest that many graduates of UK universities
appear not to have acquired some of the basic skills that one
might expect2 .
What should the Government, and society more broadly,
want from Higher Education?
17. The university system delivers, or could
deliver, a whole range of benefits to society. Perhaps one of
the more interesting purposes is to speak truth to power, to be
a repository of unconventional thinking from which comes genuinely
novel research ideas and questions that serve to sharpen the government's
thinking and improve its policies. Recent policy changes have
tended to play down this role, but if universities cannot perform
it, who can?
18. But the universities also have the more
prosaic purpose of producing graduates suitably skilled to work
in the modern economy and of conducting internationally competitive
research.
19. Other activities, such as widening participation,
engaging with schools and working with local industry may be valuable,
but they cannot happen unless the core business of teaching and
research is strong. Of course the benefits of higher education
should be equitably distributed, but it is absurd to propose that
"widening participation" should have the same strategic
status as sustaining the quality of teaching. There would be no
point in widening participation in a low quality system.
20. Moreover, although it is perfectly sensible
for universities to engage with local schools, and to offer methods
of entry into higher education that are suitable for as wide a
range of people as possible, this cannot be a substitute for sorting
out the failures of the schools system. If not enough young people
from relatively deprived areas of the country achieve the required
grades to get into university, and if not enough of them aspire
to higher education, then there is only so much the universities
can do. For example, as long as a quarter to schools teaching
11-16-year-old have no physics teacher3 , and as long as A level
results in physics differ so strongly between private and state
schools4 , no amount of subtly or unsubtly blaming the higher
education institutions will do anything genuinely to widen participation
in university-level physics or to give the state-educated children
of the inner cities the chances that every right-thinking person
believes they deserve.
21. While universities should do everything
to widen participation, we must recognise the abilities and limits
of different students, and create a range of qualifications to
match. Any temptation to lower standards in order to push students
past their academic limit should be avoided. There cannot be a
general dumbing down to meet fatuous targets on widening participation
at the expense of international competitiveness or intellectual
rigour.
22. Overall, it must surely be taken as
a given that the UK deserves and expects an internationally-competitive
higher education sector, and that the Government's role in this
is to ensure a stable platform from which the universities can
continue to develop their research and teaching activities.
23. In future, this may have to involve
a greater degree of honesty about the level of variation within
the system, and it will certainly require us to stop pretending
that all universities are equal or that all degrees are equivalent,
when they are not.
UNIVERSITY FUNDING
Is the current funding system fit for purpose?
Is the purpose clear?
24. The current system is manifestly not
fit for purpose. It is based on the idea that the Government can
set both the demand and the supply for higher education teaching
and research, but that it does each independently of the other.
The level of student fees is based on the political compromise
the Government could pass through the House of Commons rather
than any serious assessment of what is needed to do the job properly.
The system is basically still operating in a way that it did when
conditions were very different and there was far less diversity
across institutions.
25. The purpose of much funding is not clear.
Although some streams of funding have increased dramatically in
recent years, these changes have been accompanied by new and enhanced
demands outside of the universities' core business of teaching
and research. These include engaging with local industry, attracting
participation from under-represented groups and commercialising
the results of research. The increases in funding have not kept
pace with these demands, but perhaps more importantly, the funding
mechanism has not adapted to these purposes. In research, for
example, the bulk of the new money is channelled through the Research
Councils, which are designed to be good at picking basic research
projects from among competing applications. They are not set up
to fulfil other roles, such as knowledge transfer or outreach
to the wider community, but have nevertheless been expected to
undertake these activities.
What are the principles on which university funding
should be based?
26. The basic principle is that the nation
should decide what it wants, what it is prepared to pay for out
of the public purse, who it thinks should pay for the rest, and
what it is prepared to forego in the absence of adequate funding.
27. In more detail, one of the principles
for funding anything should be honesty. At present, the system
is based on a serious of half-truths, dodgy assumptions and unfunded
mandates. For example, the ratio of teaching funds between science
disciplines and others was reduced two years ago on the basis
of an analysis that the Higher Education Funding Council for England
admitted at the time was inappropriate5 . When asked to justify
it, the Chief Executive of HEFCE stated as facts reasons that
are either not supported by the evidence or for which there simply
is no evidence6 .
28. For example, he claimed that "there
is little differential between classroom-based and laboratory-based
subjects" in terms of the proportion of the total cost of
teaching that is attributable to the salaries of staff. When CaSE
asked for the evidence for this, HEFCE directed us to the 2001-02
Edition of Resources of Higher Education Institutions, published
by the Higher Education Statistics Agency7. Quite why this edition
was quoted was unclear, but in any case, the data it contains
show quite clearly that proportion of identifiable teaching costs
attributable to staff various from 72% to 79% for science and
engineering subjects and from 85% to 86% for arts and humanities,
a consistent and important difference. Sir Howard also claimed
as a fact in his evidence that the difference costs of IT equipment
had narrowed between science and non science subjects over the
past ten years, but when CaSE asked for the evidence base we were
told that "these are not areas on which HEFCE holds ... specific
quantitative evidence".
29. A second principle on which funding
should be based is some gross assessment of national needs. Precise
calculation of the numbers of graduates required in different
fields would be absurd and impossible, but at present, huge quantities
of public money are put into teaching particular subjects because
17 and 18-year-olds happen to think they want to study them, at
the expense of subjects that happen currently to be unpopular
with this age group. This false market does not serve the country
especially well, nor it there any reason to believe that it will
serve the students involved, who are being misled about the opportunities
that will be available to them following different choices.
30. A third principle is that of autonomy,
both within institutions and within the wider teaching and research
communities. For example, in research funding, there has been
a creeping tendency for more and more of the money to come with
strings and conditions attached. The Science Budget, which used
simply to be divided among the Research Councils has in recent
years come with ring-fenced pots for research on subjects like
the "rural economy" (where policy-driven research ought
properly to be in the remit of the Department of the Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs). On one occasion, there was even a list
of specific questions that that researchers should work to "solve
in the next few years". It included "What does it mean
to be a citizen of the expanding European Community [sic]?"
and "What is gravitation?"8
31. The first of these may be an important
policy question, but if so, it is the job of the Foreign Office
to commission research, not the job of the Science Budget to hypothecate
money to it irrespective of the quality of relevant applications.
The second is a genuinely fascinating and important question but
the idea that it will be "solved in the next few years"
by central diktat is laughable.
Should the £3,000 cap on student fees be
lifted and what might be the consequences?
32. It is difficult to see how the fee can
remain at £3,000 into the medium term future. The facts are
that universities are underfunded for the range of activities
that society expects them to perform and that there is no realistic
prospect of any other source of income making up the difference
within the next decade. There are many calls on public money,
even within the education system let alone more widely, and no
political party appears to have the will to promise the levels
of funding needed to sustain a world-class university system.
33. Of the other sources of funds, industry
already funds a higher proportion of university activities in
the UK than in other countries9 , borrowing on the necessary scale
would be both financially imprudent and probably impossible, and
endowments cannot be built overnight. There is no easy solution,
and it would be preferable to accept and admittedly-imperfect
one than to allow universities to be chronically underfunded until
the ideal method is devised. To hold fees at £3,000 may endanger
standards and quality of higher education.
34. However, the cap cannot simply be abolished
without an informed debate about the wide range of issues that
this throws up. For example, if differential fees become
a reality, science disciplines will cost more to study than arts
subjects, because the costs of laboratories will always make them
inherently more expensive. Proper thought will need to be given
to how the country maintains its strategic needs in different
disciplines, and it will not be enough to act as if a market based
on the whims of 17-year-olds is capable to delivering the optimum
result, or even an acceptable one.
35. The debate about uncapping fees must
recognise that a properly diverse higher education system will
have a shifting assortment of ambitions to meet a range of student
needs, not all of which necessarily demand the same level of resourcing.
If this debate is worked through properly, it has the potential
to lead to a sector that is not subjected in a mechanistic, uniform
manner to the Funding Councils' levers for implementing government
policy.
Should research funding be based on selection
of "quality"? How should quality be defined and assessed?
How might this drive behaviour across the sector?
36. How quality is defined and assessed
depends on what the assessment is for. The aim is not to reward
departments and individuals for being "good" but to
ensure that huge sums of public money are distributed in ways
that promotes the research the nation wants done. This means,
for example, that how far strictly applied research should be
included depends not only on how we judge its quality against
that of pure research in some abstract sense, but in part on whether
it is being adequately supported from other sources.
37. The key element of any assessment must
be that it measures outputs and outcomes not inputs.
How can leading research universities reach internationally
competitive levels of funding? Should limited central government
funding be directed elsewhere?
38. Leading, internationally-competitive
universities around the world obtain their funding from a wide
variety of sources, but the mainstays will always be public sector
grants, industrial sponsorship and contracts, fees, commercialisation
of research, philanthropic donations and endowments. To sustain
levels of funding similar to the best in the world, universities
need to maximise their income streams from all of these.
39. At present, the only one in which UK
universities excel is in industrial funding—a higher proportion
of British university research is funded by the private sector
than in most other industrialised countries, including the USA.
40. Of the other income streams, any enhancement
in fees is likely to be swallowed up by the desperate need to
remain competitive in teaching, with relatively little effect
on research. Income from commercialising research will never be
a massive element of the overall mix—the best in the world
produce a few per cent of their research income in this way.
41. That leaves two major potential sources—public
funds and endowments, including philanthropic donations.
42. The building up of endowments is an
essential part of the future of funding world class universities
in the UK, for a variety of reasons, not least that substantial
endowment funding gives a degree of freedom and independence from
Government. But reserves of the magnitude needed to compete with
the best in the world are not going to be generated overnight,
and any policy that relies on UK alumni suddenly behaving like
their American counterparts is doomed to failure. There should
be very significant tax and other incentives for individuals and
organisations to donate towards university endowments, with a
view to securing major financial benefits to the institutions
on a timescale of decades.
43. However, the only credible way
of ensuring in the short to medium term that our major universities
have the resources needed to compete on the world stage is for
them to be adequately funded from public funds. Preferably those
funds would be channelled through a variety of different routes,
allowing ideas that do not suit one funder to have a chance of
succeeding elsewhere. This needs to be carefully balanced with
the need not to create a confusing array of small and ineffective
pots of money.
44. At present, despite the very welcome
increases in research funding that have been delivered in recent
years, UK universities do not receive the same level of public
investment as those in the other major economies. If we are serious
about using our higher education institutions as important drivers
of economic, social, cultural and environmental development, we
have to acknowledge that their share of public spending is not
yet sufficient to the task.
How well do universities manage their finances,
and what improvements, if any, need to be made?
45. Different universities manage their
finances with differing degrees of competence, but all suffer
the same difficulty not shared by the private sector institutions
with which they might be compared. In higher education, the supply
and demand of all sorts of activities (teaching undergraduates,
performing research etc.) are both controlled by the Government,
which sets targets, dictates prices and micro-manages. But the
supply and demand are not set in conjunction with one another.
Inevitably, the supply of cash is rarely adequate to the full
cost of meeting the demand for activity.
46. Unlike private companies, universities
do not have complete freedom to axe the loss-making parts of their
businesses. If they did, then they would almost certainly close
down the vast majority of their science departments. In chemistry
and physics for example, detailed examination of the finances
of a range of faculties has demonstrated that they are all losing
money, and that their financial losses can be attributed to both
teaching and research activities10 .
47. Thus, there is little point in concentrating
on criticising the universities for poor financial management
unless there are to be changes that would give them the power
to improve their performance.
Are some parts of the sector too reliant on income
from overseas students?
48. Yes, and it is reasonable to ask if
UK taxpayers are getting value for money when too high a proportion
of the facilities they paid for and being devoted to educating
and training students from competitor countries. The UK should
be competing for business in the higher education sector, and
should be proud of its record in attracting foreign students.
But it cannot afford to rely on them.
THE STRUCTURE
OF HE
Is the current structure of the HE sector appropriate
and sustainable for the future?
49. No, the structure is essentially that
which evolved when only a relatively small proportion of 19-year-olds
went to university. It is not appropriate now is supposed to include
half the population.
How well do structures and funding arrangements
fit with "diversity of mission"?
50. Not well at all. The only mechanism
through which universities can obtain significant sums of additional
public money for being good at anything is the Research Assessment
Exercise, which measures one specific kind of activity.
51. There is no similar route to recognition
and investment for universities that are superb at internationally-competitive
teaching, or which are brilliant at creating educational access
for youngsters whose schools have let them down, or which expertly
solve the problems of local businesses.
52. There is an underlying assumption that
all universities are supposed to be achieving all the different
goals of the sector.
Can, and should, the Government be attempting
to shape the structure of the sector? Is the Government's role
one of planning, steering, or allowing the market to operate?
Should there be areas of Government planning within HE—eg
for strategic subjects?
53. At the beginning of the 21st century,
nobody would plan a higher education sector ab initio and
create the one we have now. But we must start from where we are,
and adapt the system we have for the future.
54. The diversity of mission that is arguably
needed by the country and which is espoused by the sector may
only be sustainable in the short to medium term if there is more
explicit stratification. Much of this already exists in fact,
even if it is not explicit, but it may well be advisable for it
to be codified in revised institutional mission statements and
funding mechanisms.
55. Given the number of universities and
other institutions delivering higher education in a country as
geographically small as the UK, resources are being spread very
thinly, and there is no case for further expansion without appropriate
consolidation and resourcing.
56. The Government spends billions of pounds
of taxpayers' money on higher education each year, and the idea
that it can simply absolve responsibility to "the market"
is ridiculous when there is no way a proper market, with everyone
free to do as they choose, could ever really operate. The market
is, and will always be, rigged by the Government.
57. Recent debates about strategic subjects
have been falsely polarised into the idea that any degree of central
planning is tantamount to micromanagement of the universities.
There is all the difference in the world between, on the one hand,
a minister instructing an institution that it must keep open a
struggling department and, on the other, a sensible assessment
of national needs leading to appropriate incentives. The science
community has been asking for the latter, but the Higher Education
Funding Council has been pretending that the debate was about
the former.
58. The Government should have a planning
role in relation to important subjects and must steer changes
to the sector. But in doing so, it must embrace the needs of the
nation in general and of employers in particular. It must also
recognise that students paying significant fees are customers
and will act as such. They can only be drawn into studying particular
subjects as a result of good school teaching, credible and timely
advice, guidance and information and attractive employment opportunities.
These would in themselves provide the one of the most secure methods
of supporting strategic subjects. Coupled with a much fairer funding
mechanism than currently exists, these things would obviate the
need for government interference.
What levers are available to the Government and
how effective are they?
59. The chief lever available to the Government
is money—he who pays the piper calls the tune. The problem
is that this can be a very clumsy lever. For example, the current
funding arrangements have led to the closure of many science,
engineering and related departments, but it is far from clear
that this was the Government's intention. The problems are not
simply a matter of demand from students.
Is there a clear goal for the future shape of
the sector? Should there be one?
60. The only body that could have a "goal"
for the whole sector is the Government on behalf of the electorate,
so the question should be "Does the Government have a clear
goal?" It may well do, and if so, it would be better to acknowledge
this openly.
Is there a clear intention behind the balance
of post-graduate and under-graduate international students being
sought? Is this an area where the market should be managed? Can
it be managed?
At present, there does not appear to be a clear
intention behind the balance because all the pressure is for universities
to attract as many international students as possible for financial
reasons. It is probably impracticable (and possibly not even desirable)
to manage the market across the entire sector, but it would be
wise at least to monitor the situation and possibly act where
there were problems, for example where there was a shortage of
places and home students were at an unreasonable disadvantage.
We believe that the University of Toronto Medical School, for
example, offers only 7 places a year (out of over 200) to students
who are neither citizens nor permanent residents of Canada.
December 2006
NOTES AND
REFERENCES1 What teenagers
think of science, London Metropolitan University, 2006.
2 For some examples, see The Observer, 21
February 2006, p.31.
3 Physics in schools and colleges, The
Gatsby Charitable Foundation, 2005.
4 Minutes of Evidence before the House of Lords
Science & Technology Committee, 28 June 2006, Science Teaching
in Schools, 10th Report of Session 2005-06, HL Paper 257,
p.13.
5 Funding method for teaching from 2004-05:
The Outcome of the Consultation, HEFCE, 2004 (HEFCE 2004-24).
6 Minutes of Evidence before the House of Commons
Science & Technology Committee, 7 February 2005, Strategic
Science Provision in English Universities, HC 220-II, Question
197.
7 In a letter dated 30 March 2006, which arrived
on 10 May 2006.
8 A Vision for Research, RCUK, 2003.
9 OECD Science & Technology Statistics.
10 Study of the Finances of Physics Departments
in English Universities, Institute of Physics, 2006; Study
of the Costs of Chemistry Departments in UK Universities, Royal
Society of Chemistry, 2005.
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