Memorandum submitted by The Open University
(OU)
We believe that lifelong and skills-based learning
will be the defining feature of higher education in the twenty-first
century. We need to plan for a world in which continued learning
and development, both structured and informal, will be of critical
importance to individuals as they seek to accommodate and embrace
change in their lives and work and in the world around them. This
calls for two major developments.
First, HE must be made more accessible and flexible.
Adults will want access to learning at times and in places that
cause minimum disruption to their lives and work. They will look
for flexible, modular courses with multiple entry and exit points
and with opportunities for credit accumulation and transfer. The
Open University has shown that supported open learning, that blends
high quality, multi-media teaching materials with personal tutorial
support, not only meets those needs effectively but does so in
a way that combines high quality with large student numbers.
Not all institutions, however, are able to generate
the high student numbers that make such methods cost-effective.
There is considerable scope, therefore, for collaboration and
partnership in the development of study materials and delivery
systems, of student support and staff development, and of national
networks for credit transfer. A national programme of collaboration
between the Open University and conventional universities has
the potential to open up a new era of cost-effective expansion
in higher education which is capable of supporting lifelong learning
in new, more accessible and more flexible ways.
Second, there is a need for a new system of
institutional funding and student support that is appropriate
to lifelong learning. The present system of resourcing, that funds
full-time study more generously than part-time, is neither justified
nor sustainable. We urgently need to find a stop-gap solution
that restores parity of funding between full-time and part-time
study until such time as improved arrangements can be made for
the funding of higher education overall. Only then will lifelong
learning for all become a practical reality.
INTRODUCTION
1. The Open University warmly welcomes this
inquiry into the purposes, funding and structure of higher education,
not least because it enables the public debate on higher education
to move beyond recent preoccupations with full-time undergraduates
at conventional universities to a more expansive view of lifelong
learning. As a university that operates within this broader sphere
of education, we believe we have a very specific contribution
to make to this broader debate and thus to this inquiry.
2. In the submission that follows, we have
focussed our attention on the linked lifelong learning and skills
agendas believing that submissions from conventional universities
and from bodies representative of higher education will cover
issues more pertinent to younger students following full-time
degree programmes.
THE ROLE
OF UNIVERSITIES
OVER THE
NEXT 5 TO
10 YEARS
The Aims and Purposes of Higher Education
3. The objectives established by the Robbins
Committee in 1963 have stood the test of time. However, the world
has changed since then and those objectives need to be interpreted
for a new environment. The knowledge and skills acquired by young
people during an initial period of higher can no longer prepare
them for a lifetime of work. The pace of economic and technological
change is now so rapid, and the move towards knowledge and skills-based
jobs so pervasive, that everyone will need to update and extend
their skills and knowledge, and adapt to change, throughout their
working lives. This is especially the case in an ageing work force
where skills cannot be replenished solely from intakes of newly-qualified
young persons and where the task of re-skilling will consume a
lengthening period of the lifecourse.
4. Greater numbers of graduates will now
wish to re-enter higher education for updating, broadening, and
specialist courses and will do so more frequently. Many non-graduates
will wish to enter HE late in life, often with support from employers,
in order to develop their skills and experience and acquire recognised
qualifications. This is already happening. Just over half of all
entrants to HE are now mature students and more than half of all
students study part-time. The Leitch report, in shifting the HE
target away from the participation rate of 18-30-year-olds to
the level of qualifications possessed by the workforce as a whole,
marks a decisive shift of emphasis towards the education over
the working life. This new emphasis on lifelong learning and training
gives a vital added dimension to university teaching which was
only dimly perceived when Robbins wrote. It is important that
this new role be urgently recognised and built into the core activities
of HE institutions.
The Changing Nature of Demand
5. In future, universities will need to
cater for a broader, more diverse student body. Many students
will not have the traditional qualifications for entry. They will
want access to local provision at times which cause minimum disruption
to their life and work. They will seize on the new knowledge media
as a means by which they can construct their own learning programmes
at times and in places that best suit them, using resources from
across the globe. They will look for flexible, modular programmes
of study which offer opportunities to enter and leave at different
points with credits that can be transferred between different
modes and between institutions in different places. They will
place greater emphasis on skills development, vocational relevance,
and value for money. Certificate, diploma and short course opportunities
are likely to be as sought after as degree courses. In short,
there will be a blurring of the boundaries between education and
training, between full-time and part-time study, and between institution,
home and work-based learning.
The Role of Government
6. Government has a significant role to
play in setting a policy framework for lifelong learning. Throughout
the lifetime of the present Administration there has been an overriding
target of achieving participation rates of 50% amongst those aged
18-30. But this is only half the story. There is a need, beyond
that, to create capacity to update and reskill our existing "stock"
of graduates and to offer HE opportunities to a larger proportion
of non-graduates who are already in the workforce. The Government
needs to take the steer from Leitch and formally embrace targets
that seek to increase attainment levels across the whole of the
adult population.
7. In addition, Government should seek not
only to increase participation but also to widen participation.
The removal of the social class gap amongst those entering higher
education is as much a challenge for the over 30-year-olds as
the under 30-year-olds. Traditional access courses have not proved
universally attractive in attracting older students and there
remains a need for good quality and accessible second chance routes
to higher education, such as those provided by the Open University.
The Contribution of the Open University
8. The Open University is ready to play
a leading role in the continuing growth and development of lifelong
and skills-based learning. It is already equipped to deal with
large numbers of learners. With 160,000 home students, it is the
largest university in the UK, teaching 35% of all part-time undergraduates
every year. Moreover, the OU's traditional concern for adult students,
including those previously disadvantaged in the pursuit of higher
education, enables it to make a particularly significant contribution
to widening and increasing access for mature students. Nearly
all of its students are aged 21 or over—the median age of
new students is 32; three-quarters are in employment; one-third
have educational qualifications below A level standard on entry;
17% qualify for financial assistance; and 10% are from minority
ethnic backgrounds.
9. The University's distinctive provision
of supported, open learning, now incorporating new learning technologies
as integral elements of the learning experience, enable it to
respond flexibly and effectively to the demands of an increasingly
diverse studentship. The University offers courses across the
full range of academic subject areas (other then medicine and
the built environment): it is currently expanding its provision
in continuing professional development and it is developing new
pathways for work-related learning. And the OU deploys leading-edge
information technology to deliver its curriculum. All courses
have optional or compulsory online activities and from January
2007 all students will be supported in accessing the University's
curriculum and support services online. In all this, individualised
student support, whether delivered face-to-face or online, remains
fundamental to OU teaching and to student success.
10. Finally, the University is the most
cost-effective vehicle in public expenditure terms for delivering
the looked-for expansion of lifelong and skills-based learning.
Part-time students make smaller demands on the public purse than
full-time students and they generate more income to the Treasury
through income tax and national insurance contributions. Our calculations,
based on our students' income levels, show that part-time students
are net contributors to the public purse (contributing on average
£6,400 per FTE) whereas full-time students are net consumers
of public funds (consuming about £4,700 per FTE). In addition,
part-time students and particularly distance learning students
create a substantially lower environmental impact than those studying
on campus. For the most part they do not need additional housing
and educational facilities and their travel demands are substantially
lower.
11. At the same time, the quality of Open
University teaching is amongst the best in the UK. The OU received
the highest rating for overall student satisfaction in the 2005
and 2006 National Student Surveys. Furthermore, 17 of the 24 subject
areas assessed by the Quality Assurance Agency for the quality
of teaching have been placed in the excellent category, putting
the OU amongst the top five institutions in the UK. In addition,
the OU is only one of two universities in England to have been
given the leadership of four Centres of Excellence in Teaching
and Learning by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
Research and Scholarship
12. Research and scholarship are vitally
important in fulfilling the academic and educational objectives
of universities. The reasons are well rehearsed—the beneficial
interplay between research and teaching, the recruitment of high
quality academic staff, the contribution to the national research
effort, and the national and international standing of UK universities.
Research outputs not only make a major contribution to the intellectual
currency of a discipline but also focus upon key issues affecting
the social, political and geographical well-being of individuals,
communities, cultures and nations.
13. For the Open University, research is
also an essential part of the activities of academic staff involved
in the preparation of high quality distance learning materials.
Our teaching materials are in the public domain in a way that
teaching in other universities is not, and so must be demonstrably
authoritative, up to date, written by authors who are recognised
as fully conversant with their field and able to withstand rigorous
critical scrutiny. There are advantages, too, to the transfer
of knowledge and innovation to the wider community. Leading researchers
are able to reach much larger numbers of people through The Open
University, and through its partnership with the BBC, than would
be possible in more conventional institutions.
14. In addition, The Open University offers
a particular contribution as a provider of part-time routes into
postgraduate research both here in the UK and overseas, through
our support of key UK-managed laboratories abroad such as the
Wellcome Trust and MRC research laboratories in Africa. The Open
University has nearly 1,500 research students, half of whom are
studying part-time. Many of these students would not have been
able to access research opportunities without the unique framework
provided by the Open University, either because they wished to
combine work with study—many part-time students work in
government laboratories, specialist industrial centres and/or
small and medium sized enterprises—or because they do not
have access to local centres of research excellence.
15. It is imperative that these nationally
accessible routes into part-time postgraduate study, and the research
capacity that underpins them, are recognised, protected and nurtured
as key instruments in widening educational opportunity, building
research capacity, and contributing to research, enterprise and
wealth creation.
UNIVERSITY FUNDING
Fitness for Purpose and Principles for Funding
16. We welcome the steps that Government
is taking to overhaul the system of funding for teaching and student
support so that additional funds can be generated to support the
enhancement and further development of higher education. We are
very disappointed, however, that the new arrangements are concerned
principally with the funding of full-time undergraduate study.
They do very little to help learners wishing to study on a part-time
basis, or institutions seeking resources to provide the sort of
flexible, accessible and innovative programmes that part-time
students require.
17. If lifelong learning is to become a
reality, it is essential that we construct a funding framework
that supports structured learning in all its forms. This means
that we need to recognise that the distinction between initial
and continuing education, between full-time and part-time study,
and between campus, home and work-based learning is fast disappearing.
A funding system that perpetuates these outdated and irrelevant
distinctions is inappropriate to the needs of a learning society.
It inhibits participation, constrains choice and precludes the
creation of innovative programmes that combine part-time and full-time
elements.
The Problem
18. The current situation can be simply
stated. The new fees regime effectively generates over £1bn
of extra funding for those English universities with full-time
students but provides nothing for The Open University or for other
universities seeking to provide for part-time students. As a result,
units of resource for part-time teaching have fallen behind those
available for full-time teaching even though we face the same
cost pressures (on salaries and infrastructure) as other institutions.
19. The OU cannot charge the equivalent
of £3,000 a year (ie £1,500 for a half-time course)
and remain "Open". Our market research shows that and
the recent UUK research backs it up (see UUK Policy Briefing,
Part-time students in higher education—supporting high-level
skills and lifelong learning, 2006, paras 3.8, 3.12 and 4.10).
20. Recent improvements in the financial
support arrangements for part-time students have, of course, eased
the situation. The Government has increased the level of means-tested
fee support available to English-domiciled students studying 60
points or more to £750 in 2006-07. The DfES and HEFCE have
also improved the support available to poor and vulnerable students
by increasing the Access to Learning Fund and the Widening Participation
premium. These changes have enabled us to raise our fee levels
by an average of 7% in 2006-07 and to plan for a similar increase
in 2007-08. We intend to increase the average fee for a 60 point
course to the maximum fee support level by 2008-09 or thereabouts.
We believe this to be in line with DfES and HEFCE expectations.
Indeed, for us too, it has become an economic imperative.
21. Nevertheless, this is a high risk strategy.
The most vulnerable students will receive some degree of protection
from the enhanced fee and study grants (providing they are studying
60 credits or more and do not already have a degree) but the vast
majority of students will receive none. Every piece of market
research that we have undertaken, and that UUK has commissioned,
suggests that part-time students are price sensitive and that
further increases in fee levels will reduce numbers. And, though
further research needs to be undertaken, employer support of part-time
undergraduate study is minimal—at the OU only 17% of students
receive any help from employers.
22. But even if our strategy is successful,
we shall only by 2009 have got to the point of generating half
the fee income that full-time providers can generate today for
an FTE student. If HEFCE funding per student remains as it is
now (ie with no distinction made between full-time and part-time
students, other than through the part-time premium) the unit of
resource per student will be significantly greater for full-time
study than for part-time. There is no logical rationale for introducing
such a differential and there is no reason for maintaining it.
It is an unintended consequence of the HE Act and it needs to
be put right straightaway.
23. Over the six years ending July 2009
the adverse effect on The Open University of the differential
treatment of full- and part-time study is in the region of £55
million; in 2008-09 alone it is about £26 million. This shortfall
arises not only from increases in full-time fee levels, but also
from earlier changes in HEFCE's assumptions on part-time fee levels.
These figures would have been much higher if The Open University
had not consistently increased fees by more than double inflation
over the six year period.
The Solution
24. What then is to be done to restore parity
of resource between part-time and full-time students? There are
three potential solutions.
Student Support
25. The first is to extend to part-time
undergraduate students in England the same sort of facilities
to defer or extend repayment of their tuition fees as are available
to full-time students and the same pro-rata levels of fee and
grant support for students on low incomes. This will enable universities
in England to increase their fees for part-time students and thus
to increase their unit of resource for teaching part-time students.
However, the Secretary of State for Education has already ruled
this out. And mature part-time students will, in any case, take
a different view of fee loans from young, full-time students who
expect to recoup their investment over a lifetime of work. It
remains to be seen whether the Individual Learner Accounts recommended
in the Leitch report will find favour with Government or, if they
do, prove attractive to learners. In either event they are unlikely
to be introduced before 2010.
Employer Support
26. The second is to encourage employers
to invest more in the development of their workforces. We note
the emphasis in Leitch on additional employer support for skills
training, but we note that current levels of support fall significantly
short of need. Recently published UUK research on part-time study
reveals that employer support helps mainly full-time workers from
the wealthiest households taking vocational courses. Our own data
shows that only 17% of our undergraduate students receive any
contribution from employers towards fees.
Institutional Grant
27. The third option is to increase the
unit of funding that universities receive for part-time students
from HEFCE. This would enable the funding council to bring the
unit of resource for part-time students to the same (equivalent)
level as for full-time students, taking fees and grant together.
We hope that this will be one outcome of HEFCE's current review
of teaching funding. However, there is no certainty that this
will be the outcome. And such a change would not take effect until
2009 at the earliest.
Interim Solution
28. We therefore need to find a stop-gap
solution until such time as improved arrangements can be made
for the funding of part-time study. The HEFCE could provide such
a measure under the current funding method by introducing an institution-specific
allocation to direct additional funding to those institutions
with large proportions of part-time undergraduate students such
as The Open University, Birkbeck College and other (smaller) institutions
with more than 90% of their undergraduate students in part-time
mode. If these institutions were to receive the same benefit from
increased funding as other English institutions are likely to
receive from full-time fee increases, the additional funding required
would come to less than £20 million in 2007 and no more than
£55 million per annum in 2009.
29. This is not an ideal or long term solution
but it restores equity in the short term and it enables us to
invest for the medium term. And it honours commitments made to
the OU that there would be an improved package of support for
part-time study by 2007-08. We believe the OU has much to contribute
to national priorities around lifelong learning and widening participation,
skills development and employer-led learning but it needs to be
funded appropriately to do it.
THE STRUCTURE
OF THE
HE SECTOR
The Pattern of Institutions
30. The UK has a strong and diverse system
of higher education which should be valued and safeguarded. Diversity
of mission and provision enables a wide spectrum of demands to
be met in a multitude of different ways. It encourages flexibility,
responsiveness and change. It militates against uniformity of
thought and action and the tyranny of central planning.
31. It is not necessary—indeed, it
may be counter-productive—to force institutions into a number
of broadly defined typologies for funding purposes. It is important
that institutions are able to compete on fair and equal terms
for public funds. There must be a level playing field. A funding
method that attempts to discriminate between one sort of institution
and another, and favours one above the other, does not produce
equity and introduces an unacceptably large element of central
planning and control.
Collaboration and Flexible Learning
32. Open learning and the new knowledge
media will be of critical importance to the development of higher
education over the next few years as institutions look to more
flexible and effective ways of accommodating the growing demand
for lifelong learning. The Open University has just launched "Openlearn",
the first of the second-generation open educational resource projects,
funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This will
make available a broad sample of curriculum and learning support
tools free of charge to national and worldwide learners. This
experiment has the capacity to make a profound impact on raising
aspirations for learning amongst the socially excluded, and amongst
the large under-skilled population identified in the Leitch Report.
33. Nevertheless, the use of new technologies
for learning and teaching is still at a developmental stage and
investment in the development of high quality materials and in
the creation of an IT infrastructure is substantial. Not all institutions
are able to generate the resources or the high student numbers
that make such methods cost-effective. The OU, by contrast, has
substantial experience and expertise in this area and is of a
size to make resource-based learning more cost-effective than
other teaching methods. What it lacks are the staff and resources
to provide an extensive curriculum in all subjects.
34. There is considerable scope, therefore,
for collaboration and partnership in the development of open learning
materials and systems and of curricula to support lifelong and
skills-based learning. And there is a critical opportunity now
for developing an ambitious programme of open educational resources
and other learning technology which grows from within the sector
rather than being developed outside it as in the failed UKeU intitiative.
A broadly-based national initiative supported by the OU could
help to provide strategic direction and coherence, the development
of multi-purpose courses and materials to meet common needs, and
the delivery of those courses through the OU (in distance learning
mode) and through other institutions (in other modes). Such collaboration
need not be confined to HE or even to the UK, but could draw in
a range of institutions elsewhere in the UK and Europe, the Commonwealth,
and the wider world with academics working through internet links
as virtual course teams and with materials transported around
the system in similar ways. Such an approach would transfer expertise
(academic and pedagogic) around the sector, share costs, widen
markets, and reduce duplication.
35. A national programme of collaboration
between the Open University and conventional universities has
the potential to open up a new era of cost-effective expansion
in HE which is capable of supporting lifelong learning in new,
more accessible and more flexible ways.
Bologna
36. The Open University supports the Bologna
agenda. It notes however that the ambition to "enhance the
mobility of students from the UK" (and between European countries
more generally) is unlikely to be achieved whilst the emphasis
remains on physical mobility. At present less than 1% of the UK
student body takes part in the Erasmus exchange programme, and
any foreseeable expansion of that scheme will leave the great
majority of students lacking a European dimension to their studies.
We strongly urge that the Government foregrounds the concept of
virtual mobility as a means of radically increasing the integration
of the European HE community. This would imply supporting the
creation of on-line programmes, trans-national advice and guidance,
common credit systems, translation services, compatible learning
platforms, which would enable students to move virtually across
the rich and diverse learning resources of Europe. Only by this
means can any serious progress be made to this crucial Bologna
target by 2010.
December 2006
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