Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460
- 479)
WEDNESDAY 21 MARCH 2007
PROFESSOR TIM
WILSON, MR
RICHARD BROWN
AND MR
RICHARD GREENHALGH
Q460 Chairman: Professor Tim Wilson.
Professor Wilson: I am here, obviously,
as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire; the Committee
will also know I am a member of the HEFCE Board. I am very happy
if the Committee wants to talk of my role in the CBI and in the
Regional Development Agency also. I feel there is a contribution
to be made here from universities like mine, a new breed of universities,
business facing universities, representing another dimension of
the sector as it has evolved. The sector is becoming increasingly
diverse and differentiated and universities like mine are focused
on business need, meeting the needs of our economy in a very direct
and relevant way, so I welcome an opportunity to talk with the
Committee about this.
Q461 Chairman: Good. Let me start
with you, Tim Wilson. I will revert to first names, if you do
not mind; it makes it less formal and we get moving faster.
Professor Wilson: Please.
Q462 Chairman: Tim, I was once told
by a vice chancellor, not many years ago, that, "If you are
looking for entrepreneurs do not come on a university campus.
That is not what we do." Was he right?
Professor Wilson: He might have
been right at the time; I am not sure he is right in the year
2007. Business facing universities are a relatively new breed
of university, a different type of university that is now evolving.
I can clearly only talk about my own university, but there are
others that are moving in a similar direction. We look at our
university's activities through a business lens, everything we
do we look at it through a business lens, business in a very broad
way. That is not just the private sector but also the public sector.
So, we embed innovation, employability, enterprise skills within
our curriculum so our students are trained in those skills. We
try and match students' skills to business needs in a proactive
way, not in a responsive way. We work on knowledge exchange, improving
productivity processes with companies, especially SMEs, and we
build enterprise hubs, enterprise hubs which have spin-in, spin-out
companies and provide a base for our staff and students to gain
practical experience in business.
Q463 Chairman: But most of the research,
Tim, suggests that the spin-outs from universities are quite small
scale?
Professor Wilson: There are a
number of spin-outs. There is a report from Cambridge which has
come out very recently from Library House which looks at spin-outs
by research-led universities, and I would argue they are very
good, but, equally, universities like mine have spin-out activities,
but not to the same extent as the research-led institutions. We
are far more orientated towards the business production end rather
than the research/IPR exploitation end. We work with our staff
and our students developing their own companies on campus, equally
welcoming companies onto our campuses where they can gain advantages
from the intellectual strength of the university. It is a different
type of university from the traditional research-led university.
Q464 Chairman: What is your opinion,
Richard, in terms of looking for entrepreneurs on university campuses?
Are they places we now can find entrepreneurs?
Mr Greenhalgh: I think increasingly.
I do agree. Certainly if you go back to rather more years than
I care to remember when I was applying to companies, the selection
process was largely around cognitive skills and a little bit on
the general competences, whereas now employers are looking for
personal capabilities and particularly, as Tim said, about business
and organisational awareness, which are the sorts of things that
you would expect from entrepreneurs. Of course you get some celebrated
entrepreneurs who say, "I did not go to university and I
think I benefited from that." I think what they really mean
is that they had to work a whole lot harder because they did not
have that start. Therefore, it is a question still of the motivation
of people to be entrepreneurial. It is very much, of course, inside
every individual, or not, as the case may be, but I think there
is no reason at all now why universities cannot produce entrepreneurs
in the same way as they produce other sorts of people. One other
thing is that entrepreneurs are often thought of as the people
who are standing alone and starting businesses, but there are
also, particularly in larger companies, a lot of entrepreneurial
roles within companies, the sort of creative roles that we look
for in a large company in the marketing department, and, obviously,
they are people coming out of today's universities.
Q465 Chairman: Do we build teams
within universities? It is not just the stand-alone, self-made,
single entrepreneur; is the education appropriate to building
that team approach that companies need?
Mr Greenhalgh: Yes and no. My
personal view is that one of the consequences now of the fact
that people often have to take part-time employment while they
are at university is that the team-building exercises that used
to be in place are there but people have not got the time to do
them. I think that is possibly the case, and I think we need to
think hard about that. Equally, I think it is very clear now that
most universities are providing team-based learning.
Q466 Chairman: Tim, do you do it?
Professor Wilson: Very much so.
I can give examples of students working in teams to solve real
business problems, small businesses coming to the university asking
teams of students to look at their marketing plans. It is a win-win
situation. The students get real life experience of working with
a company in a real life problem, as a team, working with employers
and academics. That is one example inside my own university. There
are many examples of team working within universities on specific
business type projects.
Q467 Chairman: Richard, you wanted
to come in?
Mr Brown: If I might, first of
all, on entrepreneurship. We have just completed a report, which
we can give to the Committee, with the National Council for Graduate
Entrepreneurship, which looks at what is happening across UK universities.
This shows, as Tim was saying, that a lot is happening, but a
lot of it, I am afraid, is marginal, it is dependent upon a few
key individuals, enthusiastic individuals, it is often dependent
on short-term initiative funding, it is not fully embedded across
the sector and within institutions. The UK is not unique in this.
We have also done studies with colleagues in the United States
and in Asia, and our next project is to stand above all of this
and to say: "What appears to work and why? Can we develop
a suggested higher education experience?", (it is more than
just a curriculum experience) because the students develop their
enterprise often through on-campus activities or, as has been
mentioned, through working in small entrepreneurial companies.
Can we develop, from the knowledge that we have, a suggested experience
which we could then pilot within a major university to see what
the effect of implementing that best practice has? To pick up
your earlier question, "Is enterprise knocked out of individuals?",
evidence from the Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(the CMI) does indeed suggest that students arrive at universities
in the UK and USA—this is not just unique to the UK—and
are keen and enterprising, but at the end of the first year, when
tested, they are found to be less keen and enterprising. But that
can be rebuilt. Remember, since most companies are developed by
people in their early thirties, it is not a question perhaps of
individuals leaving universities and immediately establishing
a company, it is having that depth of knowledge, that understanding,
on which they can draw and maybe go back to business schools at
a later stage and say, "Okay, I learnt a certain amount at
university. How can you take me to the next stage now that I am
thinking of establishing a company?"
Q468 Chairman: But, Richard, is there
a small number that still exist, and may give evidence to this
Committee at a later stage, whose view is that universities should
really be ivory towers, that they should get on with the pursuit
of academic excellence and have no regard to the gross world of
commerce? There is always still in universities, "Please,
it is nothing to do with business." They do not want you.
Mr Brown: A very small voice from
the past, I would suggest, Chairman. I would hope that all academics
would accept that one of the purposes of higher education
(one of them) is to add to national wealth and produce employable
graduates. If I put it the other way around, I think few vice
chancellors would say it was their job to produce unemployable
graduates.
Q469 Chairman: Even Tim, in the evidence
he has given to this Committee, says his first priority above
working with business and so on is to bring out the potential
of the young people, or the older people, he gets in his university.
It is not about providing good fodder for business, it is about
developing individuals. Tim, you say that in your written evidence.
Professor Wilson: Developing the
individual to meet business need. It is a business-led education
system in the context of my type of university.
Mr Brown: There is a wider issue
here, Chairman, I think, about the relative roles of business
and higher education in developing employable or entrepreneurial
graduates. You will hear some business organisations almost imply
that it is the job of universities to produce oven-ready graduates
that can be slotted straight into jobs. That is not our view.
Our view is that there is a shared responsibility, that it is
the role of higher education, as Tim was saying, to develop the
powers of the mind, the analytical abilities, to develop some
of the team-working, problem solving, interpersonal skills, but
actually it is then the job of business, partly on campus, to
come and help in the development of the specific business skills
that are needed; to actually offer work placements and quality
work experience so that students can have a better idea as to
what work is all about; and then actually to inculcate the specific
culture and skills that are appropriate to the particular sector
or to the individual company. It has to be a shared responsibility.
Chairman: You know the Chair's role in
these proceedings is the warm up act. Now you are warmed up, if
not oven-ready, we can get started. Can I emphasise to my colleagues
and you, we want to get the most out of this short session. Can
we be rapid fire as much as possible, both colleagues and witnesses,
so we drain every bit of information out of you? Gordon.
Q470 Mr Marsden: It sounds like factory
farming to me, Chairman, but I will not pursue that analogy. With
your leave, Chairman, I will start by talking a bit about the
implications of Leitch for higher education. Perhaps if I could
start by asking the two Richards a couple of questions here. Leitch
talks about the absolute priority of upskilling the adult workforce
with HE qualifications. You have put emphasis on that in your
written evidence to us very strongly. Do you think the current
structure of HE in this country is up to upskilling large numbers
of older workers?
Mr Brown: Ever since we were formed
20 years ago, CIHE has said that we need more educated people
in all walks of life, and that remains our position. Therefore,
we support the broad Leitch analysis and the objectives that have
been set. But the challenges are, in our view, understated by
Leitch, and the question is whether the Government also appreciates
the nature of the challenges. First of all, we do not know much
about business demand for higher education; there are no adequate
statistics. We have today, Chairman, put up on our website the
report which we have sent to the DfES, which analyses what we
do know. Secondly, businesses are interested in having their problems
solved. How do I market my products in a particular market? How
do I develop a business plan so that I can access further capital?
Higher education, by and large, is in the business of delivering
two, three, four year qualifications, and Leitch over-emphasises
qualifications and assumes that it is just a marketing issue,
that somehow, if you can market existing products in a better
way, then the market is there and is receptive. While we do not
know much about business demand we think that most small companies
are interested in, let us call it, bite-sized bits of learning,
15, 20 maybe 30 credits. I am sure the Committee know what credits
are, but there are about 360 credits, on average, in a three-year
degree, 120 credits in a year. So 15 to 30 is a fairly small bit
of learning, and I would ask Tim in a second, if he might, to
explain in more detail. We do not think that the funding systems
at the moment are appropriate for that, nor are the quality systems
appropriate for analysing what has to be delivered into the workplace,
(not people coming on campus to access learning). So there need
to be fundamental shifts. Some institutions, such as Tim's, are
capable of doing it, maybe only a few have really bought into
this agenda; but they all need support if they are to be able
to deliver on this agenda.
Q471 Mr Marsden: Before I do ask
you to comment briefly on that, Tim, could I come to the other
Richard and put you slightly on the spot. You heard what your
colleague says, which I take is a "No", the current
structures are not fit for purpose, particularly in terms of portability.
Are there certain groups of universities who are doing this better
than others? Are the Russell Group up to it, for example?
Mr Greenhalgh: I am not dodging
the question, I really do not know sufficiently well each of the
universities to comment on that.
Q472 Mr Marsden: Are there other
types of universities that do it better than others? My Russell
Group comment was perhaps a bit harsh, but are newer universities
better at doing it than the older ones, say?
Mr Greenhalgh: What I would say
is that higher education has in the last few years become much
more capable and willing to change, but it has got an awful long
way to go. In the same way that businesses, and the businesses
that I have been associated with, have quite often had to learn
the hard way that to compete means to change, that has certainly
got to happen with higher education and, therefore, the ones that
will succeed, I think, will be very sensitive to the needs of
the students, on the one hand, and the customers, the employers,
on the other. Indeed, I think, as Richard has said, the Leitch
agenda will make that change ever more necessary.
Q473 Mr Marsden: Tim, can I come
to you but can I put in a very specific point of view. There you
are, Vice Chancellor of the university, business focused, but
you know that your students who come to you, for family reasons
and other reasons, sometimes need to dip in and out, sometimes
need to do short courses and all the rest of it. They do a great
short course with you that maybe gets them 30 or 40 credits, and
then they have to do something else, perhaps in Central London,
or travel, or move, or whatever. Are you confident that the universities
will allow them to continue and pick up from where they have left
off with you?
Professor Wilson: I am assuming
you mean the credit transfer system, which is what Professor Burgess
talked about.
Q474 Mr Marsden: Yes.
Professor Wilson: That will depend
upon individual universities. One hesitates to go into the issue
of universities accepting other universities' credits. I think
there is a growing acceptance of a common credit framework.
Q475 Mr Marsden: But there is a big
question mark about it?
Professor Wilson: With respect,
that is really not the Leitch question, is it? That is the credit
accumulation question. The Leitch question, which I think is an
extremely good question, is how do we address the issue of bite-sized
learning? How do we fund it and how do we quality assure it? Can
we, as a university, deliver that sort of education? That is a
large part of the Leitch agenda. Richard is quite right, we have
a task as universities to create a market, because the evidence
at the moment is that the business need is not perceived as being
there, but actually our experience is that it is there. Once a
business is exposed to the university's expertise, once that business
is engaged with the university, perhaps in technology transfer,
perhaps in a knowledge transfer programme, perhaps in some need
for R&D, that is when that relationship is bridged, that is
when you get access. I think the issues about quality assurance
and funding can be resolved. I sit on the HEFCE Board and there
is a will there to resolve them, but it is not straightforward.
Q476 Mr Marsden: I would like to
stay briefly with you, Tim, and ask you some follow up questions
to that. You wisely or rashly volunteered your membership of a
development agency board earlier on.
Professor Wilson: Yes, I did.
Q477 Mr Marsden: I want to press
you on that. Do you think that HE and business, and I am not saying
it is a fault of one or the other, has sufficiently grasped the
need for regional strategies? You sit on the East of England Development
Agency, for example. Is there an East of England development strategy
between business and higher education?
Professor Wilson: Yes, there is.
If you look especially in the context of innovation and enterprise
hubs and the development of a knowledge based economy, there is
a significant investment by regional development agencies into
university business interfaces. If I might add, and I can only
speak for my own region, East of England, there is also very significant
investment going from the Regional Development Agency into the
high level skills agenda: the co-funding of new university campuses
in Ipswich, in Southend, one being dedicated now for Peterborough,
Harlow. These are major investments by the Regional Development
Agency improving the high level skills of the region.
Q478 Mr Marsden: Richard Brown, it
has been suggested in other areas and in other sessions that the
performance of RDAs, the choateness, if I can put it that way,
is very patchy and, similarly, that the performance of universities
working together on a regional basis is very patchy as well. You
have an overview of the whole country. What is your impression?
Mr Brown: That the partnerships
are stronger the further north you go and weaker the further south
you go, and if you look at the south-east, it is perhaps not surprising.
This is an enormous region. If I might, though, just put a couple
of facts on the earlier question, if that is allowed, Chairman.
The best estimates we in the DfES have made is that the market
for work-based learning that higher education might access is
around £5 billion. So it is quite substantial, to reinforce
what Tim was saying. The supply side analysis suggests that universities
capture just £300 million of that; so a very small percentage.
Furthermore, of that £300 million, about £90 million
is from major companies and just 4 universities have 50% of that
market, and most of that is by business schools. 12 universities
account for 50% of the income from all commercial and non-commercial
organisations So, to come back to Richard's earlier point and
your question about the Russell Group, we should remember that
business schools have been at this for a very long time, and that
is where most of the money is. The final bit of evidence and you
have always encouraged us to produce evidence based proposals,
Chairman, is that although universities say they are working closely
with SMEs, only £18 million worth of money is captured from
the SME market by universities, and nine universities capture
over 50% of that—needless to say, Hertfordshire is one—but
I think that puts it in perspective.
Q479 Chairman: What was that last
bit?
Mr Brown: Only seven universities
account for 50% of the income from SMEs.
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