Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 639)
MONDAY 23 APRIL 2007
PROFESSOR JOHN
BRENNAN, PROFESSOR
PHIL BROWN,
MARTIN DAVIDSON
AND PROFESSOR
BERNADETTE ROBINSON
Q620 Mr Marsden: Can we move on and
talk about some of the issues around the international market
for research. You have said already, I think, from the panel,
that you do not think there is an issue in terms of brain drain
and brain circulation—I am waiting for brain substitution—but
is it the same thing when you are attracting academics, the same
factors when you attract academics that you get when you are attracting
students: quality, reputation, employment prospects? Is there
any change in the rankings when you are trying to attract academics
as opposed to when you are trying to attract students?
Professor Brown: I think the same
things apply. Academics are driven by a number of things; one
would be resources, will you get the resources you need, will
you get the time to do the research that you are doing, will you
be surrounded by people who are leading people in that field,
these are things you are driven by. I think that applies to most
academics, in most countries, to some extent; obviously, the salary
makes a difference, but if that were the case then more British
academics would go to the US, and they do not leave, so there
are other considerations as well. There is absolutely no doubt
about it that the key thing, in terms of attracting high quality
staff here, is the reputation of the university, which I think
is absolutely vital, and all the universities in the UK, it seems
to me, are doing the same thing now, they are all looking at the
Shanghai rankings, The Times ranking, they are looking
at how they are being put together, and they are trying to work
out how they can lift their profile. One of the problems with
that, of course, is if you lift your profile globally then what
is the impact on the domestic, national structure for the university
and the competition, for example, within the universities in the
UK, in terms of access to resources? Do we say that we should
try to target, say, 10 universities in the UK to be in the top
100, in terms of global rankings, or do we say that we should
give more resources to all the universities within Britain to
improve the student experience and the staff experience? For example,
in my university, I get a lot of time for research; in new universities
there is far less time for research. It is not a level playing-field.
Q621 Mr Marsden: Professor Robinson,
in other circumstances and about other issues when the Committee
has looked at HE, it has become apparent that, in the UK set-up,
in terms of UK students, the issue of particular schools or particular
departments, rather than just the issue of the overall reputation
of a university, is becoming more and more important. If I can
put it this way, with not just your Chinese hat on but with your
other experiences in other countries as well, is this something
which is happening overseas? If you are a Chinese academic, do
you think automatically "I really must go to Oxford or Imperial,"
as opposed to "I'm going to Nottingham" or "I'm
going to Liverpool, because they're particularly good in my subject
area"?
Professor Robinson: I think, first
of all, they would choose the top band of universities that they
would consider, and then, within that, they would look for the
clusters of excellence.
Q622 Mr Marsden: There is still a
banding approach?
Professor Robinson: There is still
a banding approach. In fact, in China, I think the banding is
more formalised than it is in the UK. There are, as it were, government
rankings of universities, so they are expecting to find similar
rankings when they come here.
Q623 Mr Marsden: There is a lot of
discussion, and no doubt, when we go to China, we will probe it
a bit, in terms of how far the economic and intellectual classes
in China are able to develop their own ideas via the Internet.
Is there the ability to have use of the Internet to pursue alternative
views of where they should go, as opposed to the state views?
Professor Robinson: I think students
have quite a free choice, in getting information about universities
and deciding where to go, and many of them are not coming on government
funding any more.
Q624 Mr Marsden: There is much more
independent thought?
Professor Robinson: I think so.
Professor Brown: Of course, it
depends which universities they have heard of; probably they have
heard of only four or five universities in the UK so that immediately
they are driven towards those universities. I think it is the
issue of lifting the profile of some of the other universities
in the UK which is important, to give them more of a choice about
where they might go; that is an issue, I think.
Mr Davidson: From a different
country, India, where we run an Education Research Initiative,
recently we made 30 awards on linking departments to departments.
Certainly it is clear, just looking down the list of those, that
the Indian institutions have identified departments with which
they are interested in being linked, rather than universities.
Q625 Mr Marsden: We will come on
to ask a couple of things perhaps, Martin, in a moment, but I
wonder, Professor Brennan, if I could ask you, in terms of where
the UK stands over its global reputation for research quality,
where you think we stand today, compared with, say, 10 years ago,
and are there particular areas where we are on the up, as opposed
to on the down?
Professor Brennan: Honestly, I
do not think I have got any real evidence to provide a good view
on that. Perhaps I would comment though, on the point of internationalisation
of research, on what I think is the growing volume of research
collaboration on international projects and multinational research
teams working together, that in many cases it is no longer a pattern
of academics choosing to up sticks and go to live on the other
side of the world, for many people now, your closest collaborators
can be on a different continent. I think there is a different
take perhaps on internationalisation.
Q626 Mr Marsden: Can I come back
to you, Martin Davidson. Professor Brennan has raised the issue
there of collaboration. We know, do we not, that scientific and
technical research is a major issue, in that respect; do you think
that the UK's generally good reputation for research in those
areas has been affected, in terms of overseas perception, by the
threatened closure of science courses at some universities, because
clearly that has been something which has been in the news and
around?
Mr Davidson: There is no doubt
that anything which happens in British higher education gets reflected,
to a greater or lesser extent, in different countries. For example,
in Singapore, normally you will find an article about the closure
of a department reflected almost the next day in headlines in
the New Straits Times. It does vary from country-to-country.
I do not think that the individual actions of universities' particular
departments have a long-term impact. As I say, there is anecdotal
evidence but also some statistical evidence that when we are talking
about research collaboration the factors which are likely to have
the greatest impact are the reputation of the department internationally,
the opportunity for individuals within that department to have
been cited in literature which a potential research collaborator
might have read, and the opportunity to meet at international
conferences. That tends to drive the selection of individual departments.
Certainly it is true, if you take international citations of research
as one element, that the level of citation from the UK research
is as high as, if not slightly higher than, it has been over a
number of years, it runs roughly around 30% of the most highly
cited, at the moment. I think that sort of evidence actually is
of more importance, in terms of decisions that departments make
about where they are going to create their research, than any
particular headline or particular institution.
Professor Brown: Just an aside
really; we were talking about closing departments of science.
In relation to engineering, I was reminded of an interview with
a leading German multinational company, which said how appalling
was the state of science and engineering in Britain and the US
and how far we have to go to catch up with China and with Russia
now. Certainly the view within some multinationals is that we
are already massively behind and show no evidence that we are
moving forward, and it was a bit of a shock to hear this person,
who had global responsibility for recruitment, talking about the
state of science.
Q627 Chairman: Where did German and
Russian universities come in the research rankings? I have always
understood that Germany does not have one university in the top-ranked
universities?
Professor Brown: It depends where
you go. Within the top 100, I think there are five; which, of
course, is how they responded, because now they are very worried
about this, and before they had a level playing-field. They have
said, "Look, all our universities are good," so pretty
much they were defending as being across the board. Now, they
have introduced this I think it is like an `excellence' policy,
and they try to identify, initially, five universities and put
more money into those particular institutions. Of course, the
consequence of that will be that internationally they will be
seen to be the top German universities, that German students now
will want to get into those universities, more and more resources
will be fed into those universities, so what are the implications
then for the other German universities, which have not been selected
within that top five? That is how the impact of global competition
and thinking at that level then can have national implications,
which we need to think about.
Mr Davidson: On that, going back
to the point which you made much earlier, Phillip, Germany has
roughly the same level of international citation as the UK for
its research, even though it does not have a university in that
top 20. Russia, in contrast, has about one-third the number of
international citations.
Q628 Mr Marsden: I might raise the
issue of where the German citations come from, whether they come
from German universities or German academics at other universities;
but we will let that one pass, for the moment. I want to move
on, finally and relatively briefly, to the issue of collaboration,
which has been touched on already. The Committee has been given
some facts and figures about the UK-India Education and Research
Initiative, which is talking about developing 50 new collaborative
research projects, saying, at the moment, I think, 40 new UK award
programmes delivered collaboratively in India, 300 additional
Indian research students, postdoctoral researchers and staff will
have worked in the UK, and a target of 2,000 Indian research students
completing research degrees in the UK through collaborative delivery.
I would like Professor Robinson to comment on the specifics of
that sort of model for China, but I wonder if any of the rest
of you has any views as to how that particular model is shaping
up, and how useful it is as a model perhaps for partnership and
collaboration with other countries?
Mr Davidson: As you know, the
British Council is managing this scheme on behalf of the partners.
Inevitably, perhaps, I would see it as a very successful model.
We have already established 30 research agreements, six major
ones and about 24 minor ones. I think perhaps more to the point
than the numbers is the impact which undoubtedly it has had, in
terms of the sense in India of the UK being interested in and
committed to Indian research, the idea that the UK collaboration
is not simply one way—"Give us your students; come
and do your research here"—but that we are interested
in the development of research capacity and capability in India
and recognise the quality of the research which has been done
there. I think that has made a significant shift, inevitably it
is uninflatable, in perception of the UK and the UK's interest
in India. Again, anecdotally, we have been approached by two other
countries, most notably by Pakistan, to recreate similar schemes
for them.
Q629 Mr Marsden: Professor Robinson,
if we talk about India, and Pakistan perhaps to a slightly lesser
degree, we are dealing there with countries and cultures with
which, for good or ill, this country has had a very intimate relationship
over a 200-year period, where the academic structures, the educational
structures, are much closer to the UK's traditional structures
than a country like China, for example. Would a similar sort of
research partnership initiative work between the UK and China,
and, perhaps the trickier question, when you have a country like
China, which historically has not had a culture of open academic
inquiry in the way that we have had, is that an insuperable barrier
to the construction of something similar to what the British Council
now are overseeing with India?
Professor Robinson: First of all,
I would like to say, China is not the only country which has not
had an open academic system. As I go to Pakistan tomorrow, I am
very aware of the constraints on my work there. I think the models
are good and have got potential in many contexts, so I see no
reason why some version of these models would not work in China.
The difference is the past historical relationship, I guess, with
India and with Pakistan, and that may play a role. China has got
a very strong government policy to develop research. The Chinese
Government is investing in research and so it is very strongly
policy-driven; so, again, that is a favourable environment. I
guess, on the openness, it depends very much on the subject areas
you are talking about. We think, for many technology, science-oriented
programmes, for management, business practices, languages, though
that is maybe not of so much interest, for many areas of research
I do not think there would be too many problems, though, of course,
like other countries, there is a big bureaucracy to work through
in getting some of these things implemented.
Mr Davidson: My own experience
of China would be that I think many of these schemes would work
extremely well there, and indeed in the past there have been schemes
linking institutions together, including for joint degrees as
well as joint research. On the question of openness, one issue
which one always has to bear in mind is about the transfer of
data, and certainly there are problems with China, particularly
in some of the social sciences areas, about transfer of data,
if you are going to be involved in joint research. There are particular
areas where there are some complexities.
Chairman: We are going to move on; but
there is a bit of me that thinks we are not using your knowledge
as well as we could. You know our topic for this; this is a major
inquiry into higher education, a sustainable university, and what
I want us to get out of this next bit is much more a focus which
we started to get, some of you were getting towards it, because
probably we were asking you the wrong questions, how sustainable
is it? Some of you were getting near it when you were saying "But
it's all about international competition; if the Germans are putting
all the money in five universities, what happens to the rest?"
This is what we are after, what is the kind of world we are living
in, in higher education, now, and what is this international market
doing; is it for good or for ill or are there real dangers, or
should we be bouncing back and investing far more in whatever?
Can we have that frame a bit more, from colleagues and in terms
of the answers: Paul?
Q630 Paul Holmes: There always used
to be a view that overseas students would study here, go back
to their country and be an ambassador for Britain, because they
would rise up the ranks of business and government and journalism
and they would have fond memories of having studied in the UK
and that would benefit us. Was that ever true and is it true now?
Professor Brown: I can give you
an answer of sorts, on current research with these companies.
Overseas experience is important, if you get the linguistic experiences
and the social and cultural experiences, because that is what
they are looking for in international companies. The problem is,
if you stay at home, you might even go to an elite university
but you do not have that range of experience that they are looking
for; that is why a lot of the élite in China and India,
and elsewhere, will still want to come to the US and to the UK.
There is some evidence now, and this is one of the things we need
to think about also, that, of course, some of the Indian companies
and the Chinese companies are becoming multinationals in their
own right and they are looking to recruit, and, of course, because
there are linguistic and cultural differences between Europe and
Asia, they are likely to recruit from their own élite institutions.
We begin to see a slight change, where there are better job opportunities
now within India and China, and especially the élite institutions
in India, if you can get in one you will go in there. The Indian
institutes of management and technology are the best in the world,
they are more difficult to get into than Harvard; so if you get
a chance to go you will go there and you might well end up then
working for a company which has become multinational, like Infosys,
or something of that nature. I think there are the beginnings
of change. Going back to the general points, it seems to me that
the pace of change was so rapid that our knowledge at the moment,
and all the assumptions with which we are operating, about higher
education, jobs and rewards, I think is fundamentally flawed.
I think we need to go back and look at this in much more detail
and not assume simply that we understand what globalisation is.
The basic model we operate with is this view that they are, if
you like, `head and body' nations, that the economy develops in
an evolutionary way, you go through industrial to post-industrial
development, it takes a very long time to develop good universities
and to expand those universities, and therefore it will take a
long time for India and China to catch up. We are the head nations
in the developed economies and most of the high-skill, high-wage
work will stay here, or in America, and our competitors, fundamentally,
in what we see as `knowledge wars' are within Europe and North
America or Japan. I think that is fundamentally flawed. I think
that does not understand whatsoever what is going on in places
like China and India particularly. The pace of development is
extraordinary; when you think that now China has more people in
higher education than the US. China has 20 million students; the
US is a bit below that.
Q631 Chairman: That is an accurate
figure, is it?
Professor Brown: It is from one
of their senior civil servants.
Q632 Chairman: From our briefing,
the Chinese are building a university a week; that sounds really
strange to me?
Professor Brown: I think that
is an exaggeration. One concrete example I can give you, and I
do not know where you are going to in China but I suggest you
go to Guangzhou, which is Canton, and there you will find, I think
it is called, the University City; this is just on the outskirts
of Guangzhou. There was nothing there in 2001. The regional authorities
were concerned about the state of higher education, they thought
they needed rapidly to increase their resources, primarily it
was agricultural land, so they built 10 universities on this site;
there was nothing there in 2001. In 2005 there were 80,000 students
and that will increase next year to 120,000 students. I did not
believe it, so I went there. You take the high-speed, underground
tube, where the stations are like Westminster, one of the few
which is built like that, and it is `state of the art' buildings.
They have done that in five years. When you combine that kind
of knowledge, the largest training institute in the world, I think,
is Infosys, near Bangalore, which can train 15,000 people at any
one time, when you put this kind of information together with
talking to the multinationals, which are themselves, if you like,
denationalising their training and their skill formation, and
previously they would go into a country, where it would be the
home base, and basically they worked with what they had got, they
knew there was a national system, but as they have become more
globalised themselves, of course, they are having to think more
strategically about what they put, where, and the greater flexibility
they have to combine knowledge bases in Britain and Asia and elsewhere
means they can do things differently. One of the things they can
do differently, of course, is that they can get innovation at
a much cheaper price. We are not competing just on skills, we
are competing on price, and we are competing on price further-and-further
up the skills and knowledge chain. It seems to me that what we
need to be studying is precisely what that process is, how extensive
it is and what the implications are then for British higher education
and for our students and for our competition strategy, because
if we do not we are going to be finding answers to the wrong questions.
Q633 Paul Holmes: Phillip, effectively
you are saying that the old view of overseas students being the
ambassadors for Britain is just totally out of date. Martin, the
British Council have said: "Higher education has the potential
to make a major contribution to the Government's international
strategic priorities. It plays a very significant role in the
UK's cultural and diplomatic relationships with other countries."
Which view is correct, the British Council's or Phillip's?
Mr Davidson: The British Council's,
of course. I do not think there is any question whatsoever that
in the past the opportunity for students to study in the UK and
return to their own countries has been a very substantial and
significant component of the long-term relationship which they
create, whether it is commercial or, if they move into other areas
of work, political or economic relationships with this country.
You have merely to take China as a case in point, where the relationships
built within an academic environment are relationships which last
throughout a lifetime and are regarded as relationships which
can be drawn upon. Clearly it would be foolish for us, as a nation,
simply to regard that as something which is going to continue,
because the flows of students in the past largely have been élite.
The environment we are moving into is where there is a mass flow
of students, a mass flow of knowledge, and we have to engage in
that. As I said earlier on, I do not think any longer we can see
ourselves as a domestic higher education system, isolated from
the rest of the world. Like it or not, we have become part of
an international flow of students, and you have only to look at
some of the numbers, 74% of research students in finance are from
overseas, 63% in electronic engineering, 56% in architectural
building and planning. A large proportion of our research base
is populated by flows of foreign students, our own students are
moving overseas as well, while not perhaps at the undergraduate
level, certainly at the postgraduate, and at the post-experience
level British academics are working overseas. We are part of this
global movement now.
Q634 Chairman: We may be part of
the global movement but is it dangerous to our British higher
education, or is it just a question of taking on large numbers
of foreign students just to balance the books, not about the integrity
or, something that Phillip said earlier, the public good? Is this
the way to death and destruction or going to hell in a handcart,
just by following this market willy-nilly?
Mr Davidson: I would argue that
institutions have not simply followed the trend. It is part of
the environment within which all advanced nations and nations
seeking to create advanced education systems for themselves are
going. Singapore, Malaysia, China, India are all making substantial
shifts of their education system into an international environment.
It increases the competition for us. The number of countries where
actually you can now, in Europe, study in English, so that those
education systems can take part in this flow of students, is enormous;
France, Germany, all the Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands,
all are now offering degree courses in English, in order to attract
foreign students and to take part in this international flow.
To an extent, it is the environment where we are. I suppose one
may regret it. I am not sure one should regret it, but actually
it is the environment in which we are working now.
Q635 Chairman: We heard Phillip saying
we should be concentrating and make all our universities as good
as possibly they can be, to train our own people to the relevant
levels to compete globally. Is that what you were saying, Phillip?
Professor Brown: I think, more
and more, we have got to stop thinking that we are going to be
the winners all the time; basically, more of these research jobs
now are going to go to Asia. I think the thing that we have to
do, more than anything else, is develop the links, international
links, with other high-rated universities and research institutes
so that we will get some of this work. It is highly likely that
the leading corporations will not be putting all their eggs in
one basket, they will be spreading a lot of this work and development
around and we have to get a slice of that action. I think there
is no doubt about it, of course, we need to train up our students
as well as we possibly can; now they need to do that in an environment
which is not monocultural. The sooner we get away from class,
middle-class, boys and girls, from the South East and elsewhere,
the better. It seems to me, it is not simply the question "Is
this class full of Chinese students?" but "Is the class
full of white, middle-class, British students?" It seems
to me, it is about the social mix, is it not? It is about how
you get a mix of cultural experience, and adult learners as well;
how you combine them so you improve the quality of the education
for them to be able to have some kind of understanding of the
world beyond London, or Cardiff, or wherever it might be; that
seems to be absolutely crucial. If you have not got that kind
of cultural understanding then you are not going to get very far
in the way in which things seem to be going today.
Professor Brennan: To echo that
point, in terms of UK students, part of a high quality, higher
education experience needs to be an international experience,
in some sense of that. That does not mean necessarily being mobile
or studying somewhere else, it is to do with what is going on
in your own campus, and international students are part of that,
as is the staffing profile, as is the overall activity of the
university. Just a model which interested me, which I would share
with the Committee, I had lunch, a few months ago, with a former
vice chancellor of a British university, who has now been hired
as a consultant to the Technical University of Kuala Lumpur. The
Technical University of Kuala Lumpur is opening campuses simultaneously
in London, New York, Beijing, and I think there is a fourth one
as well as the Kuala Lumpur home. What I found quite interesting
about this model was that a requirement of studying at this multinational
university is that you divide your time between two of the campuses.
To me, that is reflecting a model of internationalism which I
found quite interesting; and these were quite substantial ambitions,
they were talking about a campus for 4,000 or 5,000 students in
the UK. Where those students come from is another question; they
may be competing for the home UK market, which would be an interesting
one.
Q636 Paul Holmes: Bernadette, from
your point of view, you work with a lot of overseas students who
come to Nottingham, you work inside Pakistan and China, are there
two different goals here, the mass volume of business and science
students and the more rarefied world of people who are going to
go into government and journalism, for example, where the old
idea of the ambassadors comes from?
Professor Robinson: I think the
old idea of ambassadors is changing, and partly because now many
people study in more than one country, so you find, in China,
they do not come just to the UK, the same people go also to Malaysia
or Korea or Japan even and they are getting experience of more
than one country, Australia as well is very popular. The idea
that they go to just one country and develop an allegiance to
that country I do not think is true any longer, but I think it
is true that, having worked with students, lifelong contacts develop
with them and a relationship which you can use for other things
as well. I would like just to throw in a couple of snippets; one
is, nobody has mentioned the language issue and the students who
come to the UK and get a PhD are coming and getting it often in
a second language. They are then competing sometimes with students
from the UK for the same jobs. Our students have a declining language
competence and I think, unlike other governments, of course I
should except the recent initiatives in the UK, many other countries
have been promoting second, even third, language development.
In China you cannot get a degree unless you pass an English examination,
at any university, and we seem to be going in the other direction,
recent initiatives excepted, so that we are producing graduates
who, when their CVs are put together, will lose out because they
are not as well qualified as some of their foreign competitors
in the international market. The other snippet I would like to
throw in is about research. There is growing research capacity
in Asia, which I think will be very challenging for the UK. If
we look at US research investment, for instance, in recent years
that has increased in China by 25% a year; in Europe, US research
investment has increased by only 8% a year, so we have a declining
share of investment in research from the US, which would reflect
our perception of the research here. There is growing capacity
elsewhere.
Q637 Paul Holmes: Is that 8% of a
much larger starting-point, as opposed to 25% of a small base?
Professor Robinson: I have not
got the figures. I can give you the reference to the figures behind
that. I think what it is indicating is a judgment about where
the future lies and it is not in European research and American
research, this is just China, there is also investment in other
Asian countries as well.
Q638 Paul Holmes: Thinking of the
concept that people talk about now, of a global citizen, if we
look back in 20 years' time will the UK have lost out on that,
because, on the one hand, the global citizens are this massive
tide of expanding institutions overseas and, on the other hand,
we have got an increasingly insular and non-linguistically able,
like me, graduates in the UK?
Professor Robinson: It is an interesting
question. I think another snippet is the EU's Innovation Scoreboard,
where it compares EU, US and Japan on 26 indicators, and the EU
comes much lower than US or Japan. Ján Figel', the Commissioner
for Education and Training in the EU, estimated that it would
take the EU 50 years to catch up with US innovation, yet innovation
is one of the things which will determine the future of economies
and education and the whole well-being of countries. I think that
is a very interesting thing to look at, so looking not just at
courses or programmes but the whole position in relation to the
education system that research is producing by comparison with
other countries I think is a big question which needs more explanation.
Q639 Paul Holmes: In a world of global
citizens, in 20 years' time we are going to be the country bumpkins,
are we?
Professor Brown: Our greatest
strength is the English language; without that we would be in
big trouble, I think, but with it we have got a chance. If you
think about the Internet, and such things, and you talk to these
companies, and what have you, the language is absolutely crucial.
The relationship between language and culture, of course, is the
interesting one. I think probably we could get away with our poor
language education, but if we do not get those broader cultural
experiences we really will be the country bumpkin.
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