Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 279)
MONDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2007
PROFESSOR DAVID
LATCHMAN, PROFESSOR
DAVID VINCENT
AND PROFESSOR
CLAIRE CALLENDER
Q260 Fiona Mactaggart: The President
of Birkbeck, wrote recently, "Part-time higher education
will become increasingly central in national life as the sheer
amount of knowledge which all but the simplest working modern
economies require keeps growing", and this seems to be reflected
by what your research shows.
Professor Callender: That is right.
Q261 Fiona Mactaggart: It just strikes
me that this group of people, half of whom have had experience
of higher education before, arguably ought to be easier and cheaper
to teach in some ways because they kind of know how to do that
thing, they have got some practice at that thing. They might not
know the content of this bit of that thing but I am kind of feeling
a bit sceptical about your claim that there is a kind of chronic
under-funding because I think there is an equivalent argument
that one of the reasons why students cost money is that you have
to put some money into teaching them how to learn at university,
which is different from the other kinds of learning they have
done elsewhere.
Professor Callender: I would like
to make one point and then I think my colleagues should take over
because they are involved in the face-to-face teaching of part-timers.
What we do know is that they are resource intensive in terms of
wanting a lot of attention. They are very demanding students,
part-timers. They are probably more demanding than full-time students
are.
Q262 Fiona Mactaggart: But full-time
students will change because they are starting to fund themselves.
Professor Callender: That is another
debate as to whether we can say that just because so many full-time
students do some part-time work that makes them part-time students.
I would question that very seriously for a whole variety of reasons,
but that is another track.
Professor Vincent: They are a
varied group. A third of our students do not have a basic A level
capacity as measured in formal terms and they need training up
before we can teach them properly to the level we have. I would
echo Claire's point that mature students who have had experience
in other universities have always had and still have very high
standards and make very high demands of us. I would say that three-quarters
of OU students are in work and almost all of our students in one
way or another are engaged in some kind of dialogue with their
employment. Your notion of serial in that it implies purely recreational
does not fit the student body that we have. The final point I
would want to make is that serial engagement in higher education
is exactly what this country needs and if we find a structure
that permits that then that is what should be supported.
Professor Latchman: Can I echo
that but also say on the issue of students being demanding that
I taught full-time students in UCL where I was before and I teach
part-time students in Birkbeck. It is the difference between fighting
to keep control of an 18-year-old audience, half of which does
not really want to be there, and fighting to stop the mature students
ripping the knowledge out of you, and that is undoubtedly true.
It certainly costs us more in terms of the resource. It is very
much more rewarding as well in terms of doing it and it also costs
us in simple arithmetic terms. Two 0.5 students cost more than
a 1.0 student because they have to be registered, because they
have to go through the whole process of university education,
many of which factors go on a head count basis. They have to be
given advice about financial support. We should not forget the
point in the UUK report that government support is not available
to students who already have a degree even though they may have
taken completely the wrong degree at the naïve age of 18
and now want to do a degree that is relevant to their work and
which allows them to deliver better to the economy. There is no
financial support available on a statutory basis. We spend a lot
of our time advising those limited income students in ways in
which they can benefit from other grants that are available and
so on, so it is very intensive, very demanding and also very fulfilling.
Q263 Mr Chaytor: Why should that
not be the case? The question surely is, what is the argument
for a higher level of public support to a student who already
has a degree? By virtue of having their degree their capacity
to gain useful, better paid employment will be higher than the
person who has not got a degree.
Professor Latchman: Yes.
Q264 Mr Chaytor: So this does seem
to me the central weakness of the case that you are trying to
make.
Professor Latchman: The first
point to make is that that is only a proportion of the students
and we certainly should not get into the fact that part-time is
not worthy of further support.
Q265 Mr Chaytor: Your argument, and
I think Professor Callender's argument earlier, is that one of
the two criteria for eligibility for support was household income.
Professor Latchman: Yes, but we
should not forget that those who are eligible for support get
considerably less support than full-time students, so whatever
your opinion about—
Q266 Mr Chaytor: Amongst the body
of part-time students what is the case for providing equality
of access to higher support for those who have already got a degree?
Professor Latchman: Because we
have a system in which people are driven to university at the
age of 18 because that is the way you do it. If you come from
a certain background you will go to university at the age of 18,
you will be encouraged by your school to do so. Very many of those
students take the wrong course at the age of 18. When I lecture
in molecular biology occasionally I say, "Those of you who
go on to research will study this, this and this. Those of you
who obviously have already decided to be accounts will do whatever".
I always get a great laugh from that and people looking round
saying, "How does he know that already, into two years of
my degree, I have decided to be an accountant?". I do not
think we should condemn those people because they study English
language rather than computer science or because they study computer
science rather than English language if it turns out that now
at the age of 40 it is necessary for them to do that in order
to contribute to the economy.
Q267 Mr Chaytor: The system is not
condemning them. The system is just recognising that their starting
point is actually stronger than those who have not got a degree.
They have the wrong degree but their starting point and their
earning potential is stronger than for those who have not got
a degree.
Professor Latchman: Nobody is
arguing that this system should not be earnings tested. I am perfectly
comfortable with a system in which those people are eligible on
the same income-related basis as students who do not have a degree
already. That is all I would argue for, but I do emphasise that
this is an issue but it is not the major issue.
Q268 Mr Marsden: If I may, Chairman,
I would like to continue the questioning to Professor Latchman.
It is the case, is it not, Professor Latchman, if you look at
this funding system, that certainly over a 10 or 15-year period
part-time students are a good deal better off than they were,
shall we say, if I take figure out of the ether, in 1997, but
the question is surely, has the Government gone far enough? The
latest announcements in October 2005 said that the means tested
fee would rise by more than a quarter, but are you arguing that
the basic progress has not been sufficient or the basic progress
needs to be speeded up because of the new fees settlement?
Professor Latchman: I am arguing
that the Government has done a considerable amount and, as has
been said, after the fee settlement it did improve the fee support
available to part-time students. I do not particularly think that
that is enough in terms of the thresholds of income and in terms
of some of the other issues about the amount of the course, the
timing of the course and about degrees. If you ask me which is
more important I would say to you that what is much more important
is that the Higher Education Funding Council recognises the need
to support part-time properly in the aftermath of the fees.
Q269 Mr Marsden: It is interesting
that you have made that last remark because I was going to make
that my link question to Professor Vincent. Of course, the Government
proposes but HEFCE, in this particular area, disposes. What would
you say has been the change in attitude in HEFCE over the last
two to three years towards the priority of part-time and, for
that matter, adult students, and has that change in priority gone
far enough?
Professor Vincent: We have to
recognise, as Professor Latchman has just done, that HEFCE with
the DfES jointly found the £40 million that was put into
the part-time sector under the heading of Widening Participation
in response to the case that we made in the context of top-up
fees, so they have made some movement. The issue for the Funding
Council is the level of specific attention they can pay to this
sector given the competing pressures which they are faced with.
They will find it very hard to redistribute money away from the
full-time sector and have done so in the past, but we are waiting
to see if there is going to be any significant further movement.
Q270 Mr Marsden: But is there not
another issue here and that is a slightly subtler and more intangible
one, and that is the historic culture within HEFCE? When we had
Professor Eastwood before us relatively recently we had to push
him quite hard and we certainly had to push some other senior
academics from, if you like, the traditional academic sector,
to recognise the breadth and the width of the contribution that
is currently made by part-time and by adult students. Are they
getting the message that this revolution in the balance of student
learning is taking place?
Professor Vincent: If you were
to ask me whether 41% of the time and effort of the Funding Council
is put to part-time education the answer, of course, would be
no, that they are still moving away from a view which was dominated
by the figure of the 18-year-old full-time student. We do think
that the Leitch report, if it is taken seriously, will have a
very significant impact because it has shifted the target away
from the 18-30-year-old group going into universities and towards
the whole of the working population and the proportion of that
population with Level 4 awards. If the Funding Council reads that
and believes it they will have to start addressing students across
the life course in the way that in the past they have not done.
Q271 Chairman: What gives you the
figure of 41%?
Professor Vincent: That is the
proportion of the student population who are part-time.
Q272 Chairman: Is that full-time
equivalents?
Professor Vincent: That is bodies,
not FTEs.
Q273 Chairman: Explain that to me.
Professor Vincent: An FTE is a
composite of a full-time equivalent, a whole time student. Most
universities will have more bodies on their campus than FTEs.
Q274 Chairman: Yes. They might only
be doing half a day or a day.
Professor Vincent: That is right.
Q275 Chairman: So you are inflating
the figures a bit, are you not, in saying 41% of all students
are part-time?
Professor Vincent: It is a literal
statement of fact. There is another way of measuring it, through
FTEs.
Q276 Chairman: Yes, but it looks
different if you do it with full-time equivalents?
Professor Vincent: Yes, it is
smaller.
Q277 Chairman: What, do you think?
Professor Vincent: I do not want
to put a figure on the record. I think 27% but I am not sure.
We can give you that figure.
Q278 Mr Marsden: I would like, if
I may, to move on to you, Professor Callender, and ask a couple
of questions about this issue of the variability of statistics
in this area. It is not an academic point because, of course,
it is on that basis that Ministers and officials from time-to-
time issue rather sweeping comments about the support that is
given to part-time level students. One of the things that we are
told in the DfES survey that was conducted by Alan Woodley in
December 2004 is that something in the region of 41% of part-time
students may receive some level of fee support from their employer,
but we also know, and this is included in the evidence that Universities
UK have given to us in written form, that actually, when you take
all these various surveys, there is an enormous variation. I think
Universities UK say that when you have surveys in conventional
universities the proportion varies from under 5% to 35%. I have
two questions for you. First of all, is there any light as opposed
to heat that you yourself can further shed on this variability
debate and, secondly, is it not rather dangerous that we get these
broad sweeping statements from Ministers and officials about many,
if not a majority of, employers being able to support part-time
students if these statistics are so variable?
Professor Callender: We can begin
to understand some of the variability. Number one, Alan Woodley's
study was based on a different sample from my sample, the Universities
UK sample. In my sample I have 35% of part-time students getting
some help from their employers, but we have also to recognise
who they are. We must not forget that because it is very much
a situation that "to him who hath shall have more" and
my emphasis is on "him" as well, namely, those who are
most likely to get some support are likely to be working full-time,
mostly men, they are higher paid and they tend to be taking a
vocational qualification. The sorts of employees getting help
are very particular. Going back to the issue about why do we have
this variation in the proportion being helped, as I have mentioned,
Alan Woodley's study was based on a different sample from my study.
He only looked at people who were potentially eligible for student
support. My study looked at all students irrespective of the number
of hours that they were studying, and then, in terms of what is
a reference within Universities UK, if it is the paragraph I think
you are referring to, that is a reflection of some work done with
different institutions. The important thing about institutions
is that they tend to report a much lower level of support from
employers, and that is probably some ridiculously pragmatic thing
that not everybody who gets help from their employer tells the
university, ie, if my employer helps me I just claim it back as
part of my expenses. Therefore, as far as the institution is concerned—
Q279 Mr Marsden: So it is a question
of definition?
Professor Callender: Yes.
| 
