Select Committee on Education and Skills Written Evidence


Memorandum submitted by the University and College Union (UCU)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Purposes of higher education

  1.  While recognising the financial benefits of higher education to the UK economy, UCU believes that the purposes of higher education as laid down by the Robbins report and the subsequent re-expression of these values in the Dearing report (1997) remain valid today. Although the instrumental, economic value of higher education was stressed by Dearing, the report also highlighted the intrinsic value of knowledge and the wider social, cultural and democratic purposes of a learning society.

  2.  In our view, the instrumental purposes outlined in the Dearing report ("to serve the needs of an adaptable, sustainable, knowledge-based economy at local, regional and national levels" and ensuring that students are "well-equipped for work") are becoming the sole drivers of government policy.

Fees and funding

  3.  The Government would suggest that higher education is a means to improving social cohesion and equality of opportunity, as well as a means to improving the UK's economic performance.

  4.  It is important the Government recognises that continued investment in the sector is required if it is to operate as an engine of economic growth and as a contributor to social justice.

  5.  Continued investment is needed in widening participation activities in higher education—as well as initiatives in schools and FE colleges—and in supporting "non-traditional" students once they are at a university or college of HE.

  6.  There is a problem that potential "widening participation" students are the ones most likely to be discouraged from entering higher education because of its cost.

  7.  The Government wants greater selectivity in research funding in the hope that developing an elite group of world-class institutions will have good knock-on effects for the economy. The impact of that policy is to concentrate research funds in an increasingly small number of institutions and to jeopardise for many staff and students the opportunity to work and study in a research-active environment.

Quality of teaching and learning

  8.  There is a consensus that teaching in higher education is currently under-funded. While the Government has been prepared to make some additional investment in relation to research this has not been the case with respect to teaching.

  9.  We are extremely concerned about the growth of the student:staff ratio. The increasing age profile of academic staff means that a growing number of staff will be retiring over the next 10 years.

  10.  The expansion in student numbers, the growing pressures on staff to publish and bring in research income, burgeoning administrative demands, and the increasing casualisation of the workforce have all led to reduction in students' contact time with their lecturers.

  11.  The amount of academic staff time spent on bureaucratic monitoring and administration must be limited in order that proper attention can be given to teaching and related activities such as the developments in pedagogy, programme and approaches to learning and assessment.

Research and scholarship

  12.  There have been major increases in public spending on recurrent funding for research compared to teaching.

  13.  The result of withdrawal of research funding from departments not performing sufficiently highly in the Research Assessment Exercise, may increasingly lead to the closure of departments, particularly ones which are expensive to run.

  14.  UCU also believes that the current DfES proposals for a metrics based system for assessing research are flawed—for example, 81% of UCU members in a recent poll said they are opposed to the government's plans. We call on the DfES and the funding councils to pull back from their metrics proposals and examine the full range of options for a post-RAE world.

Balance between institutional autonomy and government intervention

  15.  The protection of higher education institutions from government interference is crucial to the protection of academic freedom. At the same time, as the provider of public funds to higher education, government has both a right and a responsibility to satisfy itself that those funds are used effectively.

  16.  We believe that the existing legislative framework is now due for review. We would argue for a strengthening of HEFCE's independence by giving it specific duties to represent the views of higher education institutions through published advice, and also by restricting the secretary of state's control over the appointment of the council's Board and its chairman.

  17.  In parallel to a review of HEFCE's statutory basis, we also believe that the legal protection of academic freedom should be examined as has been the case in Scotland.

  18.  We believe that academic freedom should be protected in law and that alleged contraventions should be investigated and adjudicated by a body similar to the OIA.

  19.  With regard to governance, UCU believes that there should be an independent, public review of the composition and appointment of university councils and governing bodies.

UCU

  20.  The University and College Union (UCU) represents nearly 120,000 further and higher education lecturers, managers, researchers and many academic-related staff such as librarians, administrators and computing professionals across the UK. We welcome the opportunity to respond to the select committee inquiry into the future sustainability of the higher education sector.

  21.  Given the broad-ranging nature of the inquiry it has not been possible to respond to all the questions. Instead, we have decided to focus on what our members perceive to be the key issues: fees and funding, the quality of teaching and research and the balance between institutional autonomy and government intervention. Before addressing these issues, we would like to make some brief comments on the purposes of higher education.

Purposes of higher education

  22.  The future of higher education white paper, 2003: "The skills, creativity, and research developed through higher education are a major factor in our success in creating jobs and in our prosperity. Universities and colleges play a vital role in expanding opportunity and promoting social justice. The benefits of higher education for individuals are far-reaching."[137]

  23.  The HE sector is of huge economic importance to the UK: Higher education institutions are worth £45 billion to the UK economy according to a report published by the vice-chancellors' organisation, Universities UK.

  24.  The higher education sector is now a larger contributor to the UK economy than the UK pharmaceutical industry and aircraft industry and only slightly smaller than UK legal activities and auxiliary financial services.

  25.  While recognising the financial benefits of higher education to the UK economy, UCU believes that the purposes of higher education as laid down by the Robbins report and the subsequent re-expression of these values in the Dearing report (1997) remain valid today. Although the instrumental, economic value of higher education was stressed by Dearing, the report also highlighted the intrinsic value of knowledge and the wider social, cultural and democratic purposes of a learning society.

  26.  Dearing, therefore, recommended a number of wider purposes for higher education, such as the ability "to inspire and enable individuals to develop their capabilities to the highest potential levels throughout life" and enabling students to "grow intellectually" and "to contribute effectively to society and achieve personal fulfillment". The report also stressed the intrinsic value of learning and the major role played by higher education "in shaping a democratic, civilised, inclusive society".[138]

  27.  In our view, the instrumental purposes outlined in the Dearing report ("to serve the needs of an adaptable, sustainable, knowledge-based economy at local, regional and national levels" and ensuring that students are "well-equipped for work") are becoming the sole drivers of government policy.[139] This is both unfortunate and regrettable.

  28.  This is intimately connected to the increasing marketisation of higher education represented by recent initiatives such as deferred fees, the commercialisation of research funding and the plethora of performance targets. Moreover, the government's agenda to develop and expand "provision which is fully or partly funded and led by employers" will further narrow the purposes of higher education.

  29.  We believe that there are hidden costs in embracing a narrowly instrumental employer-led approach to higher education. In particular, we are concerned about the detrimental effects on academic standards and academic freedom, including pressures to suppress "unwelcome" research results and to cut corners in relation to student assessment. UCU reaffirms its commitment to higher education as an essential public good.

Fees and funding

  30.  The Government would suggest that higher education is a means to improving social cohesion and equality of opportunity, as well as a means to improving the UK's economic performance.

  31.  We consider that it is good for higher education to have these roles, provided they are seen in the context of universities and colleges as places of teaching and research, scholarship and discovery of the widest kinds, and provided there is sufficient investment to make these goals successful and sustainable.

  32.  It is clear that higher education is a good investment. For every 100 jobs within higher education institutions, a further 99 FTE jobs are generated through knock-on effects. For every £1million of HEI output, a further £1.52 million of output is generated in other sectors of the economy.[140]

  33.  It is important the Government recognises that continued investment in the sector is required if it is to operate as an engine of economic growth and as a site for the promotion and generation of social justice.

  34.  Continued investment is needed in widening participation activities in higher education—as well as initiatives in schools and FE colleges—and in supporting "non-traditional" students once they are at a university or college of HE. We welcome the links between further and higher education through, for example, Lifelong Learning Networks.

  35.  It is important to recognise that sometimes the Government's economic and social goals operate in tension.

  36.  The Government wants greater selectivity in research funding in the hope that developing an elite group of world-class institutions will have positive consequences for the economy. The impact of that policy is to concentrate research funds in an increasingly small number of institutions.

  37.  Between 1997-98 and 2005-06, the allocation of recurrent funding for research (mainly under the QR stream) generally became more concentrated in the hands of a small number of HEIs. In England, the research funding share for the highest 10% of research-earning HEIs rose from 56% to 59%; in Wales the highest research earner, Cardiff University, incrased its share of total funding from 39% to 57%; in Scotland, the funding share of the highest 10% of research-earning HEIs rose from 48% to 49%. Data for Northern Ireland's two research universities—Queen's University of Belfast and University of Ulster—in 2005-06 were unavailable at the time of writing. In all three counctries, the highest 50% of research earners accounted for almost 100% of allocated research funds.

  38.  Withdrawal of research funding leads to departmental closures and withdrawal of provision hits "non-traditional" students hardest, ie the students whose background is working class and includes certain black and minority ethnic groups.There has been a real lack of progress in increasing the proportion of young full-time undergraduates from socio-economic groups four to seven.

  39.  Recent research indicates that the student groups with the lowest incomes include those who live at home with their parents; come from a minority ethnic group; come from the lowest social classes; and come from a family where no one else has studied at university. Those most likely to live with their parents include minority ethnic students and students from the lowest social classes. In addition, students living at home were more likely to work during the academic year.[141]

  40.  Again, the Government wants a world-class university system. That requires investment. The means of investment chosen by the Government in the UK (with the exception of Scotland) is variable tuition fees payable in the first instance by means of subsidised loans and repayable by graduates once their income reaches a certain level. Under £3,000 variable fees, average graduate debt levels are likely to be in the region of £15,000.[142]

  41.  Increased funding is also needed to support widening participation activities in schools, FE colleges and HEIs. There is a problem that potential "widening participation" students are the ones most likely to be discouraged from entering higher education because of its cost.[143] This may help explain why, in the UK, since 2002-03, the proportion of students from working-class backgrounds in the UK has fallen slightly, from 29.2% to 28.7%. About 15,000 fewer full-time undergraduates started university in the UK in 2006 compared with the previous year, it remains to be seen whether this fall disproportionately includes non-traditional students.[144]

Recommendations

  42.  That the proportion of UK public expenditure on higher education is increased to the OECD average, of 1.1% of GDP.

  43.  That long-term investment in enabling knowledge transfer is needed; we consider that England's Higher Education Innovation Fund is an important step towards this aim. We recommend that the majority of such funding continues to be allocated on a formula basis.

  44.  That there is a review of the use of widening participation funding, to identify best practice in WP activities and to appraise priorities in the use of WP funding between widening access, improving retention and other activities

  45.  That tuition fees are abolished, with additional funding coming from the Government and employers.

The quality of teaching and learning

FUNDING

  46.  There is a consensus that teaching in higher education is currently under-funded. While the Government has been prepared to make some additional investment in relation to research this has not been the case with respect to teaching. This impacts particularly on institutions with large numbers of less academically prepared students, and students studying part-time, where teaching costs will be high.

  47.  Over the past three decades, the student:staff ratio in UK higher education has also increased from 9 students to 1 teacher, to 19 students to 1 teacher. This is a rise of more than 100%. Over the same period, the pupil:teacher ratio across all UK schools has fallen from 19 pupils to 1 teacher, to 18 pupils to 1 teacher. Since 2000-01 the higher education SSR has been higher than the schools PTR. Over a five-year period to 2003, OECD data show the student:teaching staff ratio in UK higher education fluctuating at around 18:1. This was consistently higher than the mean ratio for OECD countries, of 15:1, and was also considerably higher over that period than for the USA, Germany and Japan.

  48.  We are extremely concerned about the growth of the student:staff ratio. The increasing age profile of academic staff means that a growing number of staff will be retiring over the next 10 years. More staff will be needed to meet the Government's aim of 50% of young people participating in higher education by 2010, at a time when the young adult age cohort in the population is increasing. Ever-increasing dependence on casualised staff makes no sense in terms of quality for students, equality for staff or smooth management.

  49.  The expansion in student numbers, the growing pressures on staff to publish and bring in research income, burgeoning administrative demands, and the increasing casualisation of the workforce have all led to reduction in students' contact time with their lecturers. For example, lecturers and teachers on average work longer hours or unpaid overtime than most other occupations and suffer higher levels of psychological distress than other occupational groups, including doctors, managers and professional staff.[145] All of these workload pressures have led to a reduction in students' contact time with their lecturers.

  50.  Pressure from performance indicators such as degree classifications and student retention rates may also be leading to compromises over academic standards. For example, a number of surveys point to unacceptable pressures on academic staff to award higher grades and to avoid failing students for primarily financial or PR reasons.[146] Similarly, during the 2006 pay dispute in higher education, a large number of universities were willing to by-pass the usual quality assurance provisions. Examples included allowing students to graduate without completing the full qualification, the abandonment of second-marking procedures and the use of non-specialists to set exam papers and mark scripts.[147] Quality assurance provisions have become more and more demanding in recent years and to be told that when it became inconvenient to the employer, the employer would simply abandon them, UCU members found insulting. Professional and statutory bodies such as the Law Society also expressed their concerns about the impact on UK degree standards.[148]

  51.  Overall, we believe that financial pressures on staff and institutions are leading to a reduction in the quality of the student learning experience and assessment.

  52.  New provision at all levels—programme, course and module—should be predicated on appropriate attention to the significance of student:staff ratios. This should feature as an indicator of the quality of provision and the rigour of assessment in validation procedures. The amount of academic staff time being taken on bureaucratic monitoring with little evidence of its contribution to the quality of service, needs to be limited and reduced further to allow the more productive use of the time available for learning, teaching and assessment.

  53.  In addition, a growing number of undergraduates are being forced to take paid employment during term-time. Recent research shows that high levels of term-time working can have a negative impact on student involvement in classes and attainment. We are already experiencing the emergence of a "two-tier" student experience—with major implications for the government's social inclusion agenda.[149]

  54.  UCU believes that students deserve a high quality learning environment irrespective of their background or their course of study.

Recommendations:

  55.  That income generated by student contribution is additional and is not used to replace public funds.

  56.  That the costs of offering financial support to poorer students are shared by the sector as a whole, via the introduction of a national bursary system.

  57.  That there is a restoration of proper maintenance grants to prevent a "two-tier" student experience.

  58.  That all part-time students should be given pro-rata access to the full range of grants and bursaries and the ability to defer paying fees.

  59.  That funding is made available to safeguard and enhance teaching capacity and quality on an equitable basis at institutions across the sector.

  60.  That the additional costs of widening participation in relation to student retention and student success are met through additional funding.

  61.  That validation and auditing procedures should pay specific attention to staff student ratios as an indicator of quality assurance.

  62.  That caps on academic staff time required to undertake adminstrative work should be applied by employing institutions.

  63.  UCU believes that additional resources must be directed towards improving the student experience, and supporting staff:

  64.  That additional staff are employed to bring about reduction of the SSR in the UK to the level of the OECD country mean over the coming decade.

  65.  That hourly-paid teaching posts are converted into fractional contracts.

  66.  That there is an expansion of continuing professional development for all academic and academic-related staff.[150]

Research and scholarship

  67.  Compared to teaching, there have been major increases in public spending on recurrent funding for research. Between 1997-8 and 2006-7, there was an increase of 91% in recurrent research funding for higher education institutions in England, 57% in Wales and 115% in Scotland. The great majority of recurrent funding for research in UK higher education is allocated on the basis of departments' results in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

  68.  The result of withdrawal of research funding from departments not performing sufficiently highly in the Research Assessment Exercise, may increasingly lead to the closure of departments, particularly ones which are expensive to run (of course, change in student demand is also a contributory factor). This in turn reduces the number of places where particular subjects, such as chemistry and physics, are provided.

  69.  We welcome the introduction of funding streams additional to quality-related funding which are intended to stimulate research potential, but we believe that research funding is already too concentrated and any additional selectivity risks undermining the intellectual culture across the national university system as research becomes unduly concentrated in very few institutions. We do not accept that high numbers of students should study in universities that are not or barely research-active.

  70.  UCU also believes that the current DfES proposals for a metrics based system for assessing research are flawed—for example, 81% of UCU members in a recent poll said they are opposed to the Government's plans.

  71.  A number of different concerns were raised by members, of which the following were the most frequent:

  72.  Income-based metrics reflect a "big science" model of research, ignoring huge swathes of HE subjects and disciplines, including desk-based scientific research in areas like mathematics.

  73.  There are problems in linking all Quality-Related (QR) research funding to an ability to win grants from the big funders. Ultimately this system could have a negative impact on academic freedom, especially the ability to finance or publish research in unorthodox or controversial fields.

  74.  Income-based metrics could result in further "short-termism" in HE research, making it more difficult for universities to move to greater use of permanent contracts and/or to avoid redundancies in the future.[151]

  75.  UCU calls on the DfES and the funding councils to pull back from their metrics proposals and examine the full range of options for a post-RAE world.

  76.  Private and commercial sources of funding make up a growing proportion of the research income of UK HEIs. We are concerned about the ways in which the research agenda can be distorted by an excessive reliance on commercial funding. For example, a New Economics Foundation report has shown how oil and gas industry funding of university geology departments and research centres can help skew research priorities, ie the bulk of research funding (both public and private) continues to go on developing new ways of extracting fossil fuels rather than on renewables.[152]

  77.  Moreover, UCU has major concerns about the detrimental impact of commercial funding on the freedom to publish. For example, a survey carried out by AUT and Prospect, published in March 2005 found that more than 10% of scientists have been asked by their commercial backer to tailor their research conclusions to meet the sponsor's requirements.[153] More needs to be done to strengthen the ethical and accountability structures attached to commercial (and government) funding.

Recommendations

  78.  That there is a restoration of recurrent research funding for departments rated 3a in the RAE.

  79.  That the Government widens the scope of its review and the composition of its working group on the RAE—to include practitioners as well as official representatives.

  80.  That with regard to the commercialisation of research, an ethical research framework should be developed which ensures research funders can not unduly influence or cover up uncomfortable research findings.

Balance between institutional autonomy and government intervention

  81.  UCU welcomes the Committee's decision to include in its inquiry an examination of the relationship between government and higher education institutions. The key to this issue is the role of the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE).

  82.  The protection of higher education institutions from government interference is crucial to the protection of academic freedom. At the same time, as the provider of public funds to higher education, government has both a right and a responsibility to satisfy itself that those funds are used effectively.

  83.  This is a difficult balance to strike.The traditional solution has been to place a public body between government and institutions to act as a "buffer" between the two. This was the concept behind the old Universities and Grants Committee (UGC), the historical forerunner of HEFCE.

  84.  However, the legislative framework for HEFCE (principally, the Further and Higher Education Act 1992) emphasised its role as a conduit of government policy, giving ministers a much greater control of funding allocation, although of course still indirectly. The functions of the funding body as an advisor to government and the public, as a promoter of the interests of institutions, and as a protector of their autonomy, were downplayed.

  85.  In our view, the balance has swung much too far in favour of HEFCE operating as an administrative arm of government. Our members would view its "independence" as largely illusory. If it does exercise independence from time to time and resist government pressure, it certainly does not do so publicly, or, as far as we can see, successfully.

  86.  We believe that the existing legislative framework is now due for review. We would argue for a strengthening of HEFCE's independence by giving it specific duties to represent the views of higher education institutions through published advice, and also by restricting the secretary of state's control over the appointment of the council's Board and its chairman.

  87.  It is important for the funding council to have the statutory strength to resist any attempts by government to use its control of funding to shape the structure of the sector. Planning and management of higher education should normally be left to the funding council and the institutions.

  88.  Policy-directed funding should be minimised except where there is an overriding national interest at stake. The need to widen access to higher education is a good example of the latter, as is the present urgent requirement to protect strategically important and vulnerable subjects such as physics and chemistry. The primary responsibility of government is to provide adequate funding. It is for the funding council in close cooperation with the institutions to allocate funds in a way which acknowledges the diverse purposes of higher education and which does not stifle the creative abilities of institutions to meet those purposes in different ways.

  89.  On the specific issue of departments in strategically important subjects threatened with closure, we believe that HEFCE should be funded to support such departments in defined circumstances. HEIs should be required to alert HEFCE at the earliest possible stage if strategically important and vulnerable subjects are at risk.

  90.  Recent research on STEM subjects by UCU shows a decline in the period 1998-2007 of 31% in the number of single honours chemistry courses offered in the UK, of 14% in single honours physics courses, and of nearly 10% in single honours maths courses. In some regions of the UK, in 2007 there is only one provider of core science and maths subjects—a situation which could undermine widening participation aims.

  91.  With regard to languages, UCU research shows that in the decade to 2007 there has been an overall decline of nearly 20% in the number of HEIs providing French, German or Italian undergraduate language courses. This is making provision more concentrated in fewer HE institutions. The government's decision in 2004 to make languages at GCSE non-compulsory could reduce still further the number of institutions providing courses in these languages. Already the number of pupils taking French and German at GCSE has dropped sharply. As with STEM provision, it seems the number of departments providing these subjects looks set to continue to drop.

  92.  A set of criteria for the allocation of special funding to vulnerable departments should be developed through widespread consultation with all interested parties in the sector.

  93.  The criteria should include an assessment of the impact of closure on undergraduate and postgraduate student access regionally, nationally and internationally, as well as on research output and on staff retention and recruitment.

  94.  If the concept of strategically important subjects is to mean anything in practice then we should be prepared to pay the cost of saving departments where institutions can demonstrate their potential for successful survival over a reasonable period of additional support.

  95.  In parallel to a review of HEFCE's statutory basis, we also believe that the legal protection of academic freedom should be examined.

  96.  The ability of institutions to conduct teaching and research free of political interference is essential to our democracy. Academic freedom operates both at the level of the individual academic and as a vital component of institutional independence.

  97.  In recent years, academic freedom has been undermined by the intense pressures on staff to attract students and research funding. More recently, government proposals on anti-terrorism and extremism on campus have clashed with the values of academic freedom. Whether or not one takes the view that those proposals have crossed the line and restricted academic freedom, they have highlighted the vulnerability of academic freedom and the absence of any effective legislative "safety net" to afford it ultimate protection.

  98.  At present, the only specific protection of academic freedom in English law is under section 202 of the Education Reform Act 1988.[154] This places a duty on chartered universities "to ensure that academic staff have freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at their institutions." The provision applies only to the pre-1992 universities. (The Scottish Parliament included a clause on protection of academic freedom in its 2005 Further and Higher Education Act). Some other references to academic freedom and freedom of expression on campus can be found in legislation, but there is no clear, overarching protection covering all institutions.

  99.  Furthermore, the Government recently removed the route to redress in relation to the limited protections of section 202. The incorporation of the terms of section 202 into the charters and statutes of the pre-1992 universities enabled academic staff who believed that their academic freedom had been infringed to complain to their institution's Visitor, an individual, often legally qualified, appointed to police the application of the statutes impartially.

  100.  In the Education Act 2004 the Government effectively abolished the Visitor's jurisdiction over staff complaints. In the case of student complaints the Visitor was replaced by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA).

  101.  There is now very real concern among UCU members about academic freedom. We believe that academic freedom should be protected in law and that alleged contraventions should be investigated and adjudicated by a body similar to the OIA.

  102.  Recent changes in the governance of higher education institutions represent a related area of concern to UCU members. The trend over the last 15 years or so has been towards smaller councils and governing bodies, with diminished staff and student representation.

  103.  It is not clear to us that these changes have either increased the public accountability of institutions or improved their management. On the contrary, in our experience lay representatives on councils and governing bodies often have little knowledge or understanding of the distinctive values and purposes of higher education. They rarely question the recommendations of the vice-chancellor and senior management, who themselves become unaccountable for the considerable executive power that they wield in today's universities. The readiness of many councils to delegate powers to vice-chancellors is a particularly worrying recent phenomenon.

  104.  It is these practices which explain why councils and governing bodies are generally viewed by staff as part of the top down "command and control" culture of managerialism that has undermined and in some cases virtually destroyed the sense of academic community and shared purpose in many institutions.

  105.  It is ironic that while best practice in business emphasises the cultivation of a feeling of ownership and participation in decision-making among employees, in higher education staff are increasingly excluded from any say in the running of their universities and colleges. This disenfranchisement contributes to the low morale of staff in the sector.

  106.  UCU does not deny the importance of external representation on councils and governing bodies and of the valuable contribution that lay members can make. However, we do believe strongly that a more balanced mix of staff and student representatives, senior management and external lay members is needed in order to ensure that decisions are better informed; that the core academic mission of the institution is given proper weight; and that an effective check on overbearing managerial power exists.

  107.  We also believe that the method of appointment of lay members should be reviewed in order to assess whether Nolan standards of public life, and also equalities principles, are being followed. The role and appropriateness of the membership of vice-chancellors and senior managers on councils and governing bodies should also be reviewed. While the guidance produced by the Committee of University Chairmen is welcome, it does not deal adequately with these important areas.

Recommendations

  108.  That the legislative framework for HEFCE should be reviewed with a view to strengthening its independence from government.

  109.  HEIs should be required to alert HEFCE at the earliest possible stage if strategically important and vulnerable subjects are at risk.

  110.  That the Government should provide additional funding for targeted support to departments in strategically important areas faced with closure; the fund should be allocated according to objective criteria developed by HEFCE following widespread consultation with interested bodies.

  111.  That academic freedom should be safeguarded in law and supported by an independent complaints procedure.

  112.  That an independent public review of the composition and appointment of university councils and governing bodies should be undertaken.

December 2006






137   DfES, p. 4. Back

138   National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (1997) Higher education in the learning society, http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/  Back

139   See the recent report by Jennifer Bone and Ian McNay (2006) Higher education and the human good and some of the observations in the report by the Council for Industry and Higher Education (2005) Higher education: more than a degree. Back

140   Universities UK (2006) The economic impact of UK higher education institutions, London: UUK, p. 7 (http://bookshop.universitiesuk.ac.uk/downloads/economicimpact3.pdf) Back

141   Claire Callender and David Wilkinson (2003) 2002-03 Student Income and Expenditure Survey: Students' Income, Expenditure and Debt in 2002-03 and changes since 1998-99, London: DfES, research report no. 487, section 2.3.1, 2.6.1, 2.6.2 Back

142   http://www.natwest.com/global options.asp?id=GLOBAL/MEDIA/131 Back

143   CHERI and London South Bank University (2005) Survey of higher education students' attitudes to debt and term-time working and their impact on attainment, London: Universities UK, p. 7 (http://bookshop.universitiesuk.ac.uk/downloads/termtime work.pdf) Back

144   http://www.ucas.ac.uk/new/press/news181006.html Back

145   TUC (2006) Work Your Proper Hours Day, 21 February 2006; Gail Kinman and Fiona Jones (2004) Working to the limit-stress and work life balance in academic and academic-related employees in the UK, London: AUT. Back

146   Phil Baty (2004) "Poll reveals pressure to dumb down" Times Higher Education Supplement, 19 November 2004; Phil Baty (2006) "Academia has sold out, 72% believe", Times Higher Education Supplement, 27 November 2006. Back

147   Phil Bary (2006) "Liverpool slated as number of firsts soars", Times Higher Education Supplement, 22 September 2006.  Back

148   Anushka Asthana (2006) "Universities plan easier degrees to beat strike", The Observer, 30 April 2006.  Back

149   Claire Callender et al (2005) Survey of higher education students' attitudes to debt and term-time working and their impact on attainment, a report to Universities UK and HEFCE by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) and London South Bank University.  Back

150   It is critical that such funding is explicitly earmarked for practitioners' professional development, as experience shows that when funding pressures are acute, budgets for CPD are not safeguarded at the faculty/departmental level, where they are most needed and can most effectively be deployed.  Back

151   UCU (2006) The future of research funding and assessment: the voice of the profession, http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/1/4/researchfundingfuture 1.pdf  Back

152   New Economics Foundation et al (2003) Degrees of Capture: Universities, the Oil Industry and Climate Change, http://www.carbonweb.org/documents/degreesofcapture.pdf  Back

153   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4379457.stm  Back

154   By contrast, the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005 provides for the protection of academic freedom in all Scottish further and higher education institutions. Back


 
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