Examination of Witnesses (Questions 520
- 535)
WEDNESDAY 21 MARCH 2007
PROFESSOR TIM
WILSON, MR
RICHARD BROWN
AND MR
RICHARD GREENHALGH
Q520 Helen Jones: We have talked
about the needs for business of bite-sized learning and so on,
but how would delivering that drive changes in the funding system
for universities like yours: because at the moment the funding
system does not help you do that, does it?
Professor Wilson: I have to say
that that is a really very tricky problem for HEFCE, because the
HEFCE model is not ideally suited towards funding bite-sized learning
because it is designed, frankly, to serve a 120 credit year. But
I think the will is there within HEFCE to alter the system, to
enable the system to start funding smaller amounts of learning.
It is not there yet in terms of delivery, but I think it will
be there. I would not be surprised if it is not there inside the
next 18 months. The will is there.
Mr Brown: You might remember,
Chairman, that slightly west of Bristol, where HEFCE is, is another
system and in Wales they are indeed funding by credit, and maybe
we can learn a lot from the practices there.
Chairman: We have seen some very interesting
statistics from both those parts of the country in terms of HE
recently, but I will not bother you with that.
Q521 Mr Chaytor: Tim, you arrived
in Hertfordshire in 2003, which was the year in which Richard
Lambert produced his report on business and HE, and he referred
to the profound culture gap. Did you find that was the case in
your university four years ago, and, if so, what have you had
to do to change it and, particularly, how has the organisation
of learning and the range of the curriculum changed to reflect
the new emphasis?
Professor Wilson: Firstly, I did
not actually arrive in 2003, because I was Deputy Vice Chancellor.
I was an internal promotion, so most of the problems I inherited,
I had caused, I could not blame anybody else. More seriously,
the Lambert Report was very timely for universities like mine
and it enabled us to put our strategy around a very well respected
public report. You asked about cultural change. Yes, cultural
change does not come quickly, it comes over a matter of time;
it involves a lot of discussion, conversation and debate. One
of the strengths of the university is that you are dealing with
intellectually strong people and they will respond to rational
argument. I feel that we have moved quite a long way, we are changing
the curriculum quite genuinely now, more and more of our students
are taking working experiences, more and more of our staff are
working in business at the same time as they are teaching. I encourage
staff to run their own businesses. In some areas of my university
half the staff are running their own business. What better way
to bring to life to abstract concepts than to take it back to
business reality.
Q522 Mr Chaytor: What kind of protocols
do you need to have in place to ensure that staff who are running
their own business are not doing it at the expense of the public
purse which is funding their salary?
Professor Wilson: That requires
quite a lot of sound management technique and sound management
experience, but it can be done by sound management. I think it
should be encouraged actually. We should encourage people to do
this. Equally, quite a lot of our graduates start their own businesses
and some stay on the university campus in incubation centres.
Once you make running a business a respectable part of your portfolio,
it spreads very quickly.
Q523 Mr Chaytor: Have you had to
change the organisation of teaching in terms of the structure
of the university year and the development of credit-based systems?
Reference was made earlier to the limitations of the funding system.
We tend to think in terms of three-year degrees and not smaller
units of learning.
Professor Wilson: Yes, we have
changed it, clearly. I will give you an interesting example. We
work with MBDA, a major corporate in Stevenage. The students work
with us two and a half days a week and work with them two and
a half days a week. So these students are doing a full-time degree
programme in five years instead of four years. We have had to
play around with the curriculum to meet their requirements, to
meet the customer's requirements. That is a model we will develop
further with more corporates. We clearly have to move our curriculum
around occasionally to accommodate work placements, but actually
it is not that difficult, it is just needs the will to do it.
Once you have got the will to do it, then you can create this
sort of change.
Q524 Mr Chaytor: Is the typical Hertfordshire
student still on a 30-week year?
Professor Wilson: No, all sorts.
It depends what you mean by "typical", I suppose. We
are open, like most universities, 52 weeks a year, but students
will come and go at various times of the year.
Q525 Mr Chaytor: How many redundancies
did you have to make to bring about the kind of cultural shift
you wanted to achieve?
Professor Wilson: None. Some staff
have chosen to leave, and that is fully understandable. We have
to manage that situation.
Q526 Mr Chaytor: Have areas of the
curriculum been taken out because they were not appropriate to
the kind of future that you envisaged?
Professor Wilson: We have re-profiled
certain areas of the curriculum. We have not extinguished parts
of the university.
Q527 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask Richard
about the question of innovation, enterprise and productivity.
In our investigations we have always been told that the French
and Germans are way ahead of us in terms of productivity. What
are they doing that we are not doing and how do their universities
compare to our universities in the emphasis on innovation and
entrepreneurship?
Mr Brown: The received wisdom
is that the productivity gap between France and Germany is largely
caused by the weaknesses at supervisory and intermediate level,
Level 3, if you like, rather than Level 4 skills, and that our
productivity gap with the USA is caused by the lack of adequate
investment in R&D in the UK compared with the US; so there
are different causes for the productivity gaps. In terms of the
effectiveness of higher education systems, Richard Lambert did
another report with Nick Butler of BP on the EU system of higher
education, and that was really a wake-up call to higher education
systems in Europe, by saying that they are under-funded, that
the mass higher education systems in Europe have to provide the
higher quality that the US is providing and the UK is increasingly
providing; and that would be our analysis. We are, and have been,
part of a European partnership of like-minded organisations, and
I would say that, although we may feel that we could go even further
in the UK in building relationships between business and higher
education, we are ahead of what is happening generally in continental
Europe. That is not to say that in places like the Grandes
Ecoles, where work placements, for example, are de rigeur,
we cannot learn from that, but if you look at the mass higher
education system in a place like France, I think you would realise
the difference. If we look at the research rankings, again, whatever
we think about that, and I know that a lot of research is undertaken
in different institutions in various countries, nevertheless the
UK undoubtedly has an edge over what is being provided in other
European universities.
Professor Wilson: Can I come back
on one point very quickly. You talk about learning styles. I think
we have seen, not just in my university, but in a wider range
of universities, students are learning on a 24-7 basis nowadays
with virtual learning environments which are just pervasive. We
had 10,000 log-ins on Christmas Day last year. Ten of them were
mine!
Q528 Chairman: A lot of teachers
log-on to the departmental website on Christmas Day!
Professor Wilson: Correct.
Q529 Chairman: I did not catch what
you said to David. Did you say your staff have gone to an American
system and only get paid 30 weeks a year?
Professor Wilson: No, I did not
say that.
Q530 Chairman: Is that a way we should
go?
Professor Wilson: It is an interesting
model. I would not wish to take that one on, I don't think.
Q531 Chairman: Nobody else will speak
up for that. Richard?
Mr Greenhalgh: No, I was not going
to speak up for that. I was just going to add to the question
that 10 years ago as a businessman one would have looked across
the continent of Europe as much as across the Atlantic to see
where you thought excellence lay in higher education. Now look
to India and China is what I would suggest we do very, very carefully.
There is enormous potential, particularly in India, particularly
in basic research, which we need to link into. We should not see
it as something that we close our doors to; quite the reverse.
We have not discussed it today very much, but the need for higher
education institutions to see themselves as global players, I
think, is going to be very important. Not all of them—as
we have said, there will be some who will be very focused on the
UK even, indeed, perhaps a region of the UK—but others'
futures will lie, just as it has done with companies in terms
of being global—
Q532 Chairman: You would like to
see MIT Cambridge sort of links, would you, but with India?
Mr Greenhalgh: I would not like
to say what sort of shape they might take.
Q533 Chairman: No-one ever mentions
MIT Cambridge, which also incorporates British Petroleum, does
it not? Richard you must know about that?
Mr Brown: MIT is a special type
of institution. We would not want to say that the Chancellor was
wrong in picking on one particular type of institution as a model
for partnerships.
Q534 Chairman: It has £10 million
behind it. Has that been a success, Richard?
Mr Brown: We are undertaking a
study on internationalising higher education, and we would be
delighted to share our results with you. We believe we have to
develop global citizens, and Hertfordshire would want to develop
global citizens, and it is not a question of just attracting bums
on seats, paying full fees to shore up the finances of Hertfordshire
University. In this interconnected world we have to develop those
individuals that have a wider cultural awareness, and that can
be done on campus even if you do not have partnerships with research-led
institutions overseas and send students and staff overseas. Our
businesses are looking for those students who have that global
awareness.
Professor Wilson: I would not
want you to think the local regional universities are not global
players in a different sort of way. Each year we have Chinese
postgraduate students from the Shanghai Bureau of Justice; we
provide them with internships in local companies here in the UK
and that is part of our service to that particular profession.
Increasingly, our students want placements overseas because they
want to be global citizens. Next week I am meeting the Chamber
of Commerce in Beijing and the CBI, then I am going to Mumbai
to talk to the Bollywood people because that is a leading industry
in my region. We must provide our students with that international
experience and that is in work placement environments, not necessarily
working in a university.
Q535 Chairman: Tim, we will have
to invite you to the Bollywood Awards in Bradford! I am sorry
we have run out of time. See this as a taster; we see it again
as a genuine partnership. We want to make this inquiry as good
as it can be because we only do things where we can add value.
As you leave this Committee and you go back to your day jobs,
if there is something you did not tell us that we should have
known, keep in touch with us and let us know. Thank you very much
for your attendance.
Professor Wilson: Thank you for
the opportunity.
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