Examination of Witnesses (Questions 231
- 239)
MONDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2007
PROFESSOR DAVID
LATCHMAN, PROFESSOR
DAVID VINCENT
AND PROFESSOR
CLAIRE CALLENDER
Q231 Chairman: It is a pleasure to
have Professor Claire Callender, Professor David Vincent and Professor
David Latchman here today on an area that is very interesting
to us. As part of our review of university education we are very
interested to know how part-time education fits in with the overall
structure and system and that is what we are going to be asking
you about today. I am going to ask David Latchman to start us
off because, David, you came to see me privately expressing your
concerns about the treatment of part-time students, and so you
get two minutes to start and say why it is a concern. Is it a
concern?
Professor Latchman: Yes, it is
a concern.
Q232 Chairman: Are you special pleading?
Professor Latchman: No, it is
not special pleading. First of all, thanks to the Committee for
inviting us to talk about this issue. We face a very serious issue
in this area and the issue, I think, arises from the dichotomy
between the expectations of this sector of part-time education
and, if you like, the resources that are provided for it. We have
enormous expectations of this sector. Forty per cent of students
are currently defined as studying part-time and that is something
which has an enormous importance in an era of lifelong learning
where we all talk about people developing their skills, changing
their skills as they go through life and we have a government
aspiration now for 40% of the workforce to have Level 4, university
level, qualifications by 2020. That is only going to be achieved
by individuals who are above the 18-21 age range, individuals
who are in work, seeking work or seeking to change their work,
studying at university. It is a given that this is an area where
we really need to focus attention and where we really need to
try and move forward. The dichotomy arises from the resourcing
issues in that area and it arises in two ways, first of all in
terms of the support that is provided to students, and secondly
in terms of the support that is provided to the institutions that
teach them, both the specialist institutions like the Open University
and Birkbeck and the other institutions that have a mixed economy.
Just to deal with those two points very briefly, in terms of resources
part-time students continue to be less well off in terms of the
support they receive. They have had improved support but it is
still considerably less than is provided for full-time students.
We know very well that there is a market limit on what fees we
can charge for part-time and most institutions are at that limit
already. Professor Callender's research has confirmed that, the
UUK research has confirmed that, and that means that institutions
with part-time students get on average 50% of the resource in
terms of fees that they would get if they had the same level of
full-time students. That is something which is damaging institutions
because we have pay claims and changes in pay and conditions which
are predicated on the increased fees in the full-time sector,
and quite rightly predicated by the unions, and we want to pay
our staff those increases. We are paying our staff those increases
and we are running a deficit because of that because we do not
have the fees. On the other hand we have HEFCE support which we
believe should compensate for those shortfalls. Not only does
it not compensate for those shortfalls; it does not even pay the
costs of our teaching those part-time students. HEFCE's own research
says that it costs 20-40% more on a head count basis to teach
part-time students because lots of these issues are not about
full-time equivalents. Two half-time students cost more than a
full-time student because they have to have registration, they
have to have all the pastoral care, they have to have all those
sorts of things, and yet we get a 10% premium compared to what
we should get, a 20 or 40% premium. The problem is that this is
vital for the future of education if we want to deliver upskilling.
If we want people to be able to do the jobs that they are going
to need to do we need to support this sector; it is going to be
absolutely critical to provide that support.
Q233 Chairman: Professor Vincent,
your Vice Chancellor has evaded coming in front of the Committee
is it two or three times now? Has she got an aversion to coming
in front of the Select Committee?
Professor Vincent: The Vice Chancellor
is this day accepting an honorary degree in Pakistan by long arrangement
and I think she has written to you to say that.
Q234 Chairman: She did miss the last
time as well.
Professor Vincent: I was here
last time so I suppose that must be true, yes. She has, I think,
expressed serious regret at not being here today but it was pre-arranged.
Q235 Chairman: As long as it is not
an aversion.
Professor Vincent: Not at all.
Q236 Chairman: Professor, you are
swimming with money, are you not?
Professor Vincent: We are running
a very small surplus by prudent management of our resources. We
think that the loss to the OU against the full-time sector next
year will be something like £15 million and £26 million
the year after that. That is taking into account the award that
has been made to support widening participation in part-time education
and it is taking into account the practice we are now engaged
in of increasing our fees at the OU by three times the rate of
inflation, which is as far as we think we can go. Our case to
you is very similar to that of David. The one stress I would put
on it is that we would wish to tip the debate forwards away from
the Higher Education Act and towards the kind of university system
which the country needs five years out from now and then try to
think through what kind of funding and what kinds of systems we
need to get to that position five years out. We have drawn attention
in our submission to the two main drivers of change, one of which
is the changes in information technology which are going to transform
much of what universities do. The other is the Leitch agenda and
elsewhere the continuing need to provide a scale of quality across
the system, and we think that the funding arrangements that need
to be put into place have got to permit complete flexibility and
sustain world-class quality in the system. We cannot do it just
by counting degrees. We think it will need equality of funding.
We are very concerned that we get more employer engagement into
the system, that we are funded adequately to respond to the opportunities
that the web is bringing to the system, that we can have a system
which supports a move away from the tradition of institutional
self-sufficiency which we think is hampering change in the system,
and finally, and this is a point for the Open University particularly,
that supports us in the work we can do in fulfilling the Commission
for Africa agenda in the developing world and particularly in
Africa.
Q237 Chairman: Thank you for that,
Professor Vincent. Professor Callender, where are we in all this?
You have done quite a lot of research for Universities UK on this.
Is it a dire situation for part-time students?
Professor Callender: The current
system has been put in place after some very important changes,
and in that sense that is the first thing that needs to be stated,
that prior to 1997 part-time students were getting no support
whatsoever; now there is some support, but that support is limited
and it is limited in several ways. First, it is limited because
of the eligibility criteria for the two key sources of support,
namely, for course costs and tuition costs. There is a very narrow
definition used for what is part-time study and what is a part-time
student. For these two key provisions only students who are studying
over half a full-time course are eligible, and only students who
do not already have a degree or a Level 4 qualification, and then
both of these are means tested. What that means according to the
study that we conducted for Universities UK, is that over three-quarters
of all part-time students are not eligible for the two key sources
of support, so there is a problem with eligibility. Our study
is a bit different from other studies that the DfES has done,
including by myself for the DfES, on part-time students. They
are different because our study included all students irrespective
of whether or not they are eligible for student support. We have
the rather crazy situation that the largest studies on part-time
students commissioned by the Department exclude those who are
not eligible. So how can we evaluate the effectiveness of the
student funding system if we exclude those who are excluded from
the system? Returning to the current system, one is the problem
about eligibility, that so many people are not eligible for anything,
and amongst those people who are not eligible there are some groups
who would be of interest in terms of both Leitch and Widening
Participation, namely, those people who have no or low skills.
They are one of the groups of people who are excluded by the current
criteria. The second issue about the current funding mechanisms
is the level and adequacy of the support available. There are
two things. For those lucky people who were eligible, we found
that 58% of them had course costs that exceeded the maximum course
grant, which is £250. Of the students we interviewed who
were eligible, 58% of them were spending more on their course
costs. What I mean by "course costs" is things like
books, materials, things that are necessary in order to carry
out their course. The other thing is to what extent does the tuition
fee grant meet the average costs of tuition fees that the students
we interviewed had to pay, and there we found that 28% of students
were paying fees above the current level of fee grant. However,
you have to remember that our study was conducted last year before
there had been any changes in part-time fees, and colleagues here
can talk about what they have done in this past year in relation
to fees and whether or not they have put them up, so our figures
are based on, for want of a better term, the charges for 2005
and consequently we will underestimate the proportion of students
who do not get their full fees covered by the grants. I think
those are the two key problems with the current main forms of
student support, namely, course grants and tuition fee grants.
Chairman: Thank you for that, and thank
you for your opening remarks.
Q238 Mr Wilson: Could you point the
Committee to the evidence that it costs more to educate a part-time
student than a full-time student? Where is the research for that?
Professor Latchman: I can answer
that. That is in a report which JM Consulting produced for the
Higher Education Funding Council in, I think, around 2003 which
documented the increased costs for different intensities and different
modes of study, whether it was part-time evening or part-time
during the day.
Q239 Mr Wilson: Can I stay with you,
Professor Latchman, in that Professor Vincent said that the Open
University is currently in surplus? Is your college in surplus?
Professor Latchman: No. We estimate
that the shortfall in terms of a fee income if we were to charge
the equivalent of the full-time fee pro rata is around
£3.7 million a year to us, and that is on a turnover which
is around £60 million or £70 million so it is a rather
substantial proportion. By good housekeeping and prudence and
various other activities we have reduced that to a deficit which
is somewhat under a million but not that much under a million.
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