Memorandum submitted by William Devine,
Chief Executive Officer, the National Forum of Engineering Centres
(NFEC)
1. EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
i. Make Bologna "think globally":
NFEC reserves its position on the committee's parallel inquiry
into the impact upon UK HE of the Bologna Process. However, the
Select Committee's recommendations will shape the future of HE
in the UK, and the resulting structure must be influenced by the
outcome of the parallel inquiry into the implications of the Bologna
Process for HE in the UK. Bologna should see UK and European HE
in the broader context of the global HE market, with particular
regard to China, India and Australasia, and to the EU's "regulated
by Directive" system of professional qualifications. NFEC
wishes simply to urge consistency in the recording of the "professional
status" of any engineering course in "Diploma Supplements",
and also as between Certificate and Diploma Supplements.
ii. Holistic approach: experience teaches
NFEC members that the purpose, funding and structures of HE in
FE are best understood holistically. This is because HE in FE
is complex involving many individuals and institutions, among
them universities, colleges, employers, Sector Skills Development
Agency, Sector Skills Councils, National Skills Academies, Quality
Assurance Agency for HE, Ofsted/Ali impact on quality assurance,
Learning and Skills Council, Higher Education Funding Council
for England.
iii. Vocational routes of entry into HE:
in engineering and technology, vocational routes of entry into
HE at the very least must be viewed as of equal importance to
A Levels. Vocational routes are of potentially greater importance:
in many cases, they have achieved that position.
iv. Opening up HE in FE: measures that would
cut back duplication and waste of public money include:
— Single-quality assurance by Ofsted,
informed by QAA
— Single funding: expand the remit
of LSC and allocate funds through direct draw-down by FE colleges
— Pilot schemes for Learner Accounts
v. Equality of pay and conditions: if indeed
there ever was, there is no longer any case for discrimination
against lecturers working in an FE college in matters of pay and
conditions. There should be the same structure irrespective of
whether a teacher teaches in an FE college or in a university.
vi. Flexibility: content and delivery of
teaching should be allowed to vary, reflecting local needs, especially
in matters of employment and inward investment.
vii. Diversity and inclusiveness: under
the present HE structure, large numbers of able people from ethnic
and other large minority groups are excluded. NFEC strongly argues
that HE in FE must focus on developing the potential of all UK
citizens.
viii. Personal and economic development:
HE can no longer be about "one size fits all". For example,
research, internationally-acclaimed or otherwise, should not be
valued at the expense of an undergraduate provision that is world-class.
HE policy from now on should be based on entwining personal development
with the need for graduates that add value to the UK economy.
This in turn should be a world-class knowledge economy that satisfies
both the needs of society and those of self-development. We should
move beyond the sterile debate on "needless (allegedly) research
versus curriculum". Research and a productive curriculum
can co-exist in a system of HE provision whose guiding principle
is that its organisations and institutions may be ornamental but
must be fit for purpose and should never be clones.
ix. Empowering the individual: The individual
learner needs to be developed through a framework of qualifications
that meet the needs of the knowledge economy, now and in the future.
This is not a binary one or the other situation but an analogue
with an infinity of possible models.
x. Quality street: remove the need for FE
to be quality-assured by a "parent" university and transfer
QAA responsibilities to Ofsted; direct QAA to help establish the
new inspection/review requirements.
xi. Why one standard for FE, none for HE?
FE has long developed and improved by working to national quality
assurance standards. HE is more autonomous and less well-placed
to develop a national HE standard, if in fact we need one. If
we do not, then why have a national standard for FE?
xii. Not a filter, but a trap: funding for
HE in FE should no longer be filtered through a lead university.
It is not cost-effective, and it wastes time and administrative
energies. Funds should not be needlessly diverted from the learning-process
and curriculum-delivery. LSC's remit should be expanded to cover
funding HE in FE direct to colleges.
xiii. Government: less is more: Government
should not attempt to shape the structure of the sector until
it has learned how to listen, facilitate and then walk away. The
productive role for Government is not planning, steering, or allowing
the market to operate; it is listening, engaging, debating, deciding—and
then leaving the sector to grow.
2. INTRODUCTION:
NATIONAL FORUM
OF ENGINEERING
CENTRES (NFEC)
i. This memorandum is submitted on behalf
of NFEC by William Devine, Chief Executive Officer, NFEC. To the
best of NFEC's knowledge, no comment is made on matters before
a court of law, or matters in respect of which court proceedings
are imminent.
ii. NEFC's main interest and expertise in
the sustainability of the HE sector being to do with the purpose,
funding and structures of engineering and technology HE in FE,
the remarks that follow should be taken as pertaining to that
vital sector.
iii. NFEC members daily demonstrate that,
in engineering and technology, HE in FE is successful, as measured
by the diversity of the subjects and the people taught, value
added, and learner success. Our members and our students do much
to make this so, often with scant political or official encouragement
or understanding.
iv. NFEC members welcome the present inquiry
by the Parliamentary Select Committee. We see this inquiry as
further evidence that HE in FE is at last on the way to being
recognised and valued for the value HE in FE adds to the mix of
individuals, society and the national economy popularly-known
as "UK plc".
v. The National Forum of Engineering Centres
(NFEC) is an independent advisory body that represents individuals
and organisations across the UK committed to the achievement and
exchange of best practice in, and to the consistent delivery of,
best-quality work-based post-16 and lifelong learning in engineering
and technology.
vi. NEFC's main interest and expertise in
the sustainability of the HE sector is to do with the purpose,
funding and structures of engineering and technology HE in FE.
Otherwise, NFEC is primarily concerned with the 14-19 agenda,
the 16+ sector and lifelong learning in engineering and technology.
vii. NFEC is not a bureaucracy, but a self-funding,
self-help membership body of FE and HE in FE professionals, and
a registered charity. Members span the widest-possible range of
education and training and providers, including employers, group
training providers, professional training companies, specialist
schools, and over 80% of FE colleges or departments, especially
those active in HE in FE.
viii. Revenue from membership and commercial
consultancy enables NFEC to provide its members with practical,
problem-solving assistance without charge or at reduced cost.
NFEC operates through its six regional organisations, regular
regional seminars and a twice-yearly annual conference.
ix. A particular strength of NFEC is its
close links with awarding and other bodies in both the engineering
industries and professions. Among these are:
— Key Sector Skills Councils such as
SEMTA, the Engineering Employers Federation, and the Engineering
Council UK; professional institutions
— Organisations in the academic and
vocational education infrastructure, among them QAA and QCA, HEFCE
and LSC, SSDA, OFSTED
— Awarding Bodies, several of which
operate at HE level
— Organisations responsible for quality
improvement, such as Subject Centres and Quality Improvement Agency
(QIA) and the Learning and Skills Network (LSN)
3. THE SELECT
COMMITTEE AGENDA:
A REQUEST
i. HE cannot be considered in isolation
from the FE and work-based learning sector, and HE cannot be considered
only from the perspective of the HEFCE-funded "English"
perspective. The environment in which HE in FE functions is becoming
increasing convoluted. On the one hand, there are artificial divides
between HE- and LSC-funded provision in England, and these erect
obstacles to apprentice frameworks that require elements of HE
as their "Technical Certificates".
ii. There is also a parallel infrastructure
of the Skills for Business network (SSDA and SSTs), National Skills
Academies and "Train to Gain". This infrastructure can
be valuable means of collaboration and the expression of employers'
needs. But there must be clarity about the work being done by
QCA on the Qualifications and Credit Framework, the proposed European
Qualifications Framework, and the existing Framework for Higher
Educational Qualifications and the European Credit Transfer System
in HE.
iii. HE provides essential educational routes
towards professional qualifications, while professional and industrial
bodies set standards on which engineering educational programmes
are based. FE provides valuable opportunities to enable a more
diverse range of entrants to meet these standards as they progress
towards higher qualifications and competence. It is therefore
essential that an inquiry of this stature should take a holistic
view of the post-compulsory education sector in the UK, including
recent and important reviews not immediately directed at HE, such
as Foster on FE and Leitch on Skills.
iv. The "educational geography of the
UK has become more complex since devolution, for awards, qualifications,
frameworks, funding policies and relationships to employment have
proliferated across the United Kingdom. It is not clear whether
the present inquiry will confine itself to HE in England, or will
also look at Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The review
will be of greatest value if it seeks the broadest-possible perspective,
across the whole of the UK. Many, perhaps most businesses are
UK-wide, and national differences in provision and regulation
of FE in HE only vex prospective users and sponsors.
v. NFEC respectfully requests the Select
Committee to cover the issues raised in 3.i.-3.iv. in both inquiries.
4. THE FUTURE
SUSTAINABILITY OF
THE HIGHER
EDUCATION SECTOR:
PURPOSE, FUNDING
AND STRUCTURES.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
ACTION
i. What do students want from universities?
(a) NFEC believes a more informative reply
would ensue if the committee were to subsume this question within
another and briefer: what do students want? After all, universities
are not the only providers of FE. As it stands, the question fails
to ask what stakeholders want from other providers of HE-level
work, for example in FE, or by industry and professional bodies.
In NFEC's experience, what many students (and many employers)
want is flexibility, part-time and local access, and ability to
combine learning with work and learning at work. All these features
are already being provided to great effect by non-university HE
providers.
(b) Access, participation and engagement
with society increase when there is innovative and flexible provision
of HE in FE, enabling people to progress through different levels
and aspects of learning at different stages of life. The artificial
divisions between funding, contracting and quality assurance models
must not continue to divide rather than integrate. In particular,
a way should he found to allow the best "HE in FE" providers
to give HE qualifications of their own. One suggestion: a "Foundation
Degree" with a less-emotive name.
(c) HE, as delivered by universities, colleges,
or private providers, or parts of the supporting HE infrastructure,
must raise its game.
ii. University funding
(a) This inquiry is into "higher education"
but, again, the sub-heading "University funding" bespeaks
a narrow preoccupation with the role of universities to the exclusion
of those FE institutions, which deliver HE. Funding for "HE
in FE" and for work-based HE may differ from that of HE,
but there needs to be "joined-up thinking" in the approaches
of LSC and HEFCE towards the funding and support of teaching and
of learners, in England as throughout the UK.
(b) It is high time, for example, that consistent
logic was applied across the piece to the share of the cost that
students are expected to pay (for their own career and personal
good. The same goes for the shares required of actual and potential
employers (for the direct subsidy to their businesses), and for
the share contributed the state for the common good. There should
be consistency throughout business sectors and the four countries
of the UK.
(c) The men and women who do the work in
HE in FE say that funding urgently needs to follow students directly.
Suitable awards could be made available to FE Colleges and other
providers. Before that can happen, however, two logjams in the
current system need to be removed. First, HEFCE funding should
no longer be channelled through (and "creamed off" en
route by) the universities. Second, there must be an end to the
present conflict between HEFCE- and LSC-funding of Higher Apprentice
Frameworks.
(d) FE has never accepted that "one
size fits all"; the same goes for FE in HE, and it is time
that one size was not held to fit all in HE either. True academic
scholarship must continue where it is done best; equally, however,
academic scholarship must now be so funded so that it no longer
relegates the teaching of students to a matter of secondary importance.
(e) Equally, some HE must be funded in ways
that both match the "skills agenda" and encourage practical,
applied research. Funding should encourage "home-grown"
talent to progress through to the highest levels of HE- and post-doctoral
work. Funding is urgently needed for industrial/academic exchange
placements, particularly in the HE areas of the "skills agenda".
The system we now have is clearly unbalanced, in the sense that
it is neither rational nor effective for present purposes: it
certainly may not be relied upon to carry the weight of a new
programme aimed at assuring the sustainability of HE, and in particular
of HE in FE.
(f) The system in which practitioners currently
work frequently works against them. It is overly-reliant upon
non-UK national students, especially at doctorate in engineering
(over 50%); it is biased in favour of "pure" rather
than "applied-and-practice" research; and the present
"unjoined-up" system blocks free movement of learners
between industry and academia. The UK urgently needs funding to
enable more lecturers to work in industry.
iii. The Structure of the HE Sector
(a) The introduction of higher and repayable
fees has yet to make much impact in the HE. To begin with, HE
is by no means homogenous. Not all universities will charge the
full permitted £3000 per year. Indeed, there are already
some deliberate "discounts" in the "HE in FE"
sub-sector, as well as offsets recoupable through sponsorship
or employer-funded and work-based learning. In engineering, there
may be a slow return to the model whereby students begin work
on an advanced or higher apprenticeship, while gaining phased
access to the highest-appropriate levels of HE through Technical
Certificates. This is an attractive model to students and HE providers
both financially and in terms of opportunity and motivational
interest. But many students will be slow to take this route; most
are conditioned to accept indebtedness as indivisible from normal
life. Nonetheless, "phased-access" to HE in FE would
do much to drive forward the opportunity and diversity, for more
students are likely to begin in the "technician"—or
"associate professional"—level work, and then
progress to full "professional-level" through "bite-size"
steps. In turn, progress on this front would increase the importance
of HE in FE, and of flexible, part-time and distance learning,
as well as of work-based and professional providers.
(b) All HE need not be designed, controlled
and structured by and within universities. Neither should it be.
Current funding and support arrangements work as much against
as in favour of HE. These structures work in pilot- and demonstrator
schemes but have yet to be embedded in the culture of mainstream
HE. Unless HE adapts, therefore, the "opportunity and diversity"
agenda is bound to fail. The need for "intermediate"
or "associate professional" skills is stressed by research
findings, international comparisons, and Sector Skills Agreements.
Without radical change in funding and support structures, however,
those needs will not be met.
(c) The Select Committee's Terms of Reference
do not mention the impact of other education/training strategies
and structures. Yet these have enormous influence upon professional
education, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics. Examples of these strategies and structures include
those of the Sector Skills Councils and their work on Sector Qualifications
Strategies; National Skills Academies, whose new prospectuses
target HE; there is also "Train to Gain". We must also
consider the role of HE's lower-level structures, among them Higher
Nationals, Foundation Degrees, and Technical Certificates in Apprenticeship
Frameworks.
(d) The Select Committee's present inquiry
is an opportunity to bring to consideration of the future sustainability
of HE a quality of which that both HE and HE in FE have long been
starved. This quality used to be called "The Vision Thing".
For lack of political vision and the will to back it, confusion
reigns in many industries, professions and regions of the UK.
Disaster threatens if employers alone set the FE and HE in FE
agenda, yet that is what is taking place. This committee holds
in its hands a long-overdue opportunity to challenge Government—in
the shape of the DfES, DTI and other departmental Ministers—to
stop praising the idea of "joined-up Government thinking",
and for a change to start doing some. Two years on, it is it not
high time to implement the recommendations of the Foster Report
on the future role of FE Colleges? As with Foster, Ministers have
also favoured the more-recent Final Report of the Leitch Review
of Skills with words of welcome. As with Foster, is Leitch also
to be gathering dust two years from now? Even if both Leitch and
Foster were dusted off tomorrow, however, we could still end up
with the worst of all worlds. That world is the one in which employers,
especially those in SMEs, are even more discouraged from backing
HE in FE more than they now by the present plethora of bureaucracies
with their tangle of competing, overlapping and hard-to-evaluate
initiatives. The Foster and Leitch recommendations should be implemented
without further delay; but their recommendations should be implemented
as part of a co-ordinated programme, and not separately. To do
otherwise is to unleash another cloud of initiatives, complicating
still further an education and training system that is already
myopic and Byzantine, and wastes vast amounts of public money.
5. APPENDIX:
RECENT RESEARCH
Engineering UK 2006: A Statistical Guide to
Labour Supply and Demand in Science, Engineering and Technology.
Engineering Training Board Research Report, December 2006.
NFEC comment:
i. It is widely agreed that the UK is competing
in a highly-competitive global market place for STEM, Science
Technology Enguineering and Mathematics, skills in products and
services.
ii. It is further agreed that this market
demands of players high levels of technical innovation. Nobody
disputes that crucial to the UK's success is the ability to produce
engineers and scientists of sufficient quality and in sufficient
quantity to supply the needs of the nation's industry.
iii. It is to the production of such engineers
in such numbers that the HE system, including FE in HE, must now
commit. One essential is a "joined-up" HE strategy that
must range from undergraduate degree to doctorate, and be of benefit
to "UK plc" as an economy as well as a society. The
two are indivisible.
iv. Judged against developments elsewhere
in that competitive world, HE—and therefore the UK—is
living on borrowed time. Over the past decade or so, the UK has
increased the number of STEM degrees by slightly over a half (53%).
Impressive? It depends where you are standing. During
that same decade, China more than doubled STEM degrees (124%):
translated into raw figures, China now produces 350,000 STEM graduates
a year to the UK's 75,000. But even that evidence is rapidly becoming
historical.
The latest figures are from 2002. Anecdotal
evidence suggests that China's rate of growth in STEM is not slowing.
The same seems to be true of India.
v. The UK compares favourably with other
countries in the proportion of STEM degrees awarded, America and
Japan, for example. However, the available figures suggest that
STEM students that would once come to the UK are now beginning
to look elsewhere. This alarming development should inform discussions
on the relative importance of home and the overseas students to
the future of HE in the UK.
vi. The statistics that ought to worry HE
most are those for post-graduate uptake in engineering, especially
at doctorate level. The number of non-UK students on doctoral
programmes is set as high as 50% in engineering and technology.
Yet how many of these students leave the UK immediately after
their studies? What is the value of these departing students and
their degrees to the UK economy, apart from beefing university
treasuries and the HE head-count?
vii. We should not carried away by heady
debates on global HE markets. There is enough to do here and now
without such distractions. Reliance upon overseas students, always
a quick fix to avoid the hard work of creating a healthier home
market, is yesterday's default position. In engineering and technology,
for example, the proportion of non-EU nationals studying in the
UK fell from just under 13% to 5% between 2001 and 2002.
viii. The UK's salvation in engineering
and technology lies not overseas, but in the UK itself, for in
many respects UK plc is shockingly backward, the production of
bureaucrats excepted. We should concentrate upon developing UK
plc.
ix. This does not mean cutting back on overseas
students, many of whom in any case no longer automatically aspire
to a UK qualification. But developing UK plc does mean that we
must redress the shameful position whereby one in two doctoral
studentships in the UK is taken up by non-UK residents who, their
doctorates achieved, add little or no value to the UK economy.
To say thus is not xenophobia. Let as many more non-UK nationals
pursue doctorates here as wish to, at whatever price UK HE establishments
can exact. But let us also, in seeking to increase the total number
of doctoral students in technology and engineering, tilt the proportion
so that significantly more UK then non-UK nationals are enrolled.
x. The present HE structure fails UK students
and the UK itself. HE fails students, especially females and ethnic
minorities, because HE fails to persuade enough of them to choose
engineering and technology. HE then fails to persuade too few
engineering and technology students to persevere into the higher
reaches of this indispensable learning. In this respect, if no
other, the structure of HE requires review. It neither gives students,
of UK origin or otherwise, what they or the UK want.
xi. HE in the UK has got to open up, and
learn from elsewhere, in practical terms from FE. HE's future
lies in resolving to develop and being made capable of developing
the knowledge and skills of UK permanent residents. It should
do so irrespective of race, wealth and social origin. HE should
also balance personal growth with economic prosperity.
xii. That future is already here, in undergraduate
provision, not in HE, but in HE in FE. The future sustainability
of the HE sector, its purpose, funding and structures, will not
be clearly envisioned without reference to HE in FE, and certainly
will not be achieved without much closer co-operation between
HE and FE.
December 2006
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