Memorandum 112
Submission from the Association of Business
Schools
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. For the reasons given below the Association
of Business Schools is firmly against the Government's proposal
to phase out support to institutions for students studying ELQs.
2. The effects of HEFCE's proposals will
be felt unequally in institutional and subject terms and there
may well be damaging and unintended consequences.
3. The list of strategically important and
vulnerable subjects (SIVS) is not a meaningful or a fair basis
on which to "protect" funding in the ELQ case.
RATIONALE:
4. The main reason against the ELQ proposal
is that it runs counter to and will undermine the current efforts
of Universities and Business Schools to meet Government's existing
policy in three significant areas. These are: improving our international
competitiveness; the development of lifelong learning and higher
level skills in the Leitch proposals and the encouragement by
HEFCE to engage more in "third stream" activities. All
three require the ability of Universities to offer individuals
the chance to acquire new skills and qualifications. In many cases,
particularly at Postgraduate level, such qualifications, although
very different, will be at an equivalent level to those already
held.
5. The effects of the proposal will also
be felt unequally in institutional and subject terms. We think
that business and management studies will be particularly adversely
affected and institutions such as the Open University Business
School and also those with little or no Foundation degree provision,
for example, Cranfield School of Management will be especially
penalised. We hope that this is not the intention of the proposals
but since it has not been modelled accurately by HEFCE, it would
be an unintended and most unfortunate consequence.
6. The list of strategically important and
vulnerable subjects (SIVS) is not a meaningful or a fair basis
on which to "protect" funding in the ELQ case. Firstly,
it conflates two very different sets of issues: national importance
on the one hand and vulnerability (ie, lack of market demand)
on the other. Secondly, it does not include for example, management
and leadership development, which the Government itself (via the
Council for Excellence in Management & Leadership) has already
accepted as being of major strategic importance to improved productivity
and international competitiveness.
Background: The Association currently has 116
business schools in membership across the UK. Collectively, the
members represent over 250,000 fte students and over 8,500 fte
staff. Business and Management Studies is the most popular subject
to study in Universities (1 in 7 of all HE students) and attracts
the largest numbers of overseas students.
January 2008
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