Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
MONDAY 23 MARCH 2009
PROFESSOR GERALD
PILLAY, PROFESSOR
MICHAEL BROWN
AND PROFESSOR
JON SAUNDERS
Q40 Mr Marsden: Sorry to interrupt
but I know the Chairman wants to come in on this particular point
and I want to ask one very simple, straightforward question. Do
you therefore think that it is reasonable, with all the weaknesses
and deficiencies that the RAE system has been alleged to have,
for you to make critical decisions about the closures of departments
on one snapshot RAE exercise?
Professor Saunders: We would not
make those decisions on the basis of any single factor. We are
reviewing all departments as a matter of routine between the RAE
periods and we will be looking at the research activity of all
of them. We will obviously concentrate on those that did not do
so well in that particular national competition. If there are
faults with the system then everybody in the country is subjected
to the same faults.
Q41 Chairman: What concerns me, Professor
Saunders—and remember this is an inquiry about the student
experience—is that we spent a significant amount of time
trying to look at quality, and in particular quality of teaching,
and what makes good teaching, and yet it does appear from the
announcements, and admittedly they have come via a third party
and therefore you have always got to have a question mark over
them, that the University of Liverpool would look at the future
of a department based on its research but not on its teaching.
Professor Saunders: That is not
so. You rather correctly pointed out that this information has
come from a third party not from the university. The proposal
in front of our Senate and Governing Council was to examine the
RAE performance and the research performance of departments, and
then to consider options to improve that performance, and indeed
what the impact might be on all the other activities. That is
part of the consultation process which is taking place now. It
does not cause prejudice to any outcome and will take account
of all the possible ramifications of any action that was taken.
Q42 Chairman: Would you not agree
that with hindsight actually referring to possible closures as
a result of RAE is the wrong starting point for a consultation?
Professor Saunders: If you are
to address difficult issues, you have to be open and honest about
them. I do not think you can say we will not consider something
because it might cause a furore in the press, for example. It
has to be based on evidence about whether you can afford to support
certain areas, whether you need to invest more in certain areas,
and you need to have a rational discussion. We have opened up
that discussion. It has gone through the normal procedures and
is now out to staff and students. We will receive their feedback
by the beginning of May and then we will have proper discussions
aligning that to what the external review process says.
Q43 Chairman: If you take an area
like dentistry, and I know a number of colleagues who work in
North West universities and North West MPs fought very, very strongly
to extend the dentistry school across the North West to try to
make sure that we have got capacity, the possible closure of the
dentistry school at Liverpool University would be absolutely horrendous
for the area.
Professor Saunders: I agree.
Q44 Chairman: Let me finish the question.
Is it not therefore important to have a consultation with a wider
group of people, not simply the academics and students who are
currently involved in that particular activity?
Professor Saunders: Yes, we will
consult our stakeholders. We have not proposed to close dentistry.
You need to be careful with dentistry. Dentistry research and
research in dentistry schools are two separate things. It would
be quite possible to maintain dentistry but have the research
done in other cognate areas.
Q45 Chairman: You have just said
to us earlier that you cannot have good teaching without good
research.
Professor Saunders: The people
who teach in dentistry do not have to be dentists, for example.
Those people who teach the fundamental science—
Q46 Chairman: Sorry?
Professor Saunders: All medicine
is based on pre-medicine, biochemistry, cell biology, all those
things, and you do not have to do the research to deliver the
high-level teaching in those particular areas in the context of
the mouth, let us say. It is quite possible to have research-led
teaching in dentistry by people who are not dentists. The dentists'
job is to teach the clinical side of it. There is a distinction
there.
Chairman: It was important to try and
get that on the record. Graham?
Graham Stringer: Five years ago the House
of Commons was in turmoil about top-up fees—
Chairman: We still are!
Q47 Graham Stringer: We may be again
if the proposals that have been mooted recently come to fruition.
Can I ask the three of you if tuition fees went up to £6,000—£7,000
whether your universities would charge that level?
Professor Brown: Shall I take
that death pass first? The honest answer is that the university
as a whole has not addressed that issue yet and it is too early
days to do it. The issue for us, I think the fundamental principles
are that the Government should ensure that the funding of the
student experience, including the teaching part, at every university
should be the same and should not be dependent on people paying
extra out of their own pockets to get extra benefits, if that
institution is receiving public funds as a whole. In other words
a private university is a private university that is acceptable;
but I do not think public with a private wing is acceptable. I
am also concerned that there may be a tendency in some universities
that are very research-intensive with a strong brand to charge
higher fees and that money will not be put entirely into the student
experience. I put it no stronger than that. As to what the right
figure will be, that is a different matter. What I do think is
important when the so-called top-up fee was introduced (and of
course everybody topped up so it is not really a top-up fee, it
is the new fee) was that there were bursaries in place for students
from poorer backgrounds not to be disadvantaged. In fact, they
ended up better off in the main than they were before and the
money they could obtain on extremely good terms from the government
to support them paying those fees and the money they had for living
on was enough to live on. There was a period of course three or
four years ago when the money that students could borrow from
the Student Loans Company was not enough for them to provide minimum
living standards to do a degree full time. That has been corrected
now. I was delighted to support that when the Bill came through.
For me the important ingredients are that students from economically
poor backgrounds will be able to study full time and do the work
properly, and that funding for all the universities and all students
for their teaching should be the same, and there should not be
any disadvantage. Of course the fee level, if you think about
it, is a government statement, about what should the balance be
of the private individual and the state investing in higher education
and the balancing of financial advantage.
Q48 Graham Stringer: Can I interrupt
there. It is in one sense but it is also a response by government
to strong lobbying and requests from the universities. It is not
something they thought of in the bath one night. There was terrific
pressure for the top-up fees.
Professor Brown: Yes, there was
terrific pressure for additional public finance because universities
were in deep financial problems and the political solution, which
I fully understand, was top-up fees, which essentially asked the
individual for whom there is evidence they would get some financial
benefit from it in some cases (not all cases) to contribute a
bit towards their higher education which then gave them financial
benefit later on. A good part of the policy that was introduced
was that if someone did not get a large financial advantage from
higher education, in other words went into a job that was not
well paid, then they did not have to pay it back. I thought that
was a good compromise between not disadvantaging people who go
into higher education and yet some people who get a financial
benefit paying something into the pot.
Graham Stringer: I would like it if you
would say, "We would charge this if allowed to ... "
that would be helpful to the inquiry, but if you cannot say that
because your Senates and Councils have not considered it, I would
be interested to know in answer to the hypothetical question that
if you had that freedom how the universities would improve, how
the student experience would improve if that extra money was going
into your universities?
Q49 Chairman: Because we have been
told it is perfect.
Professor Brown: To give a personal
answer as opposed to a university answer, I would like to improve
the number of academic staff in university to improve the staff/student
ratio. I cannot do that at the moment. On the other hand, part
of me also asks if the judgment was taken five years ago about
what the private individual should be prepared to contribute to
the advantage of high education, has that moved in the last five
years? In the present financial situation, I think it has probably
gone the other way, so I do not think there is a case, frankly,
on a personal basis to increase the fees at this stage.
Professor Saunders: I think the
fee level is a matter for the Government. We will have to live
with it whatever it is. I do not think we should say without considering
our own position.
Q50 Chairman: Do you mind if I just
interrupt you there. Universities UK, of which you are a member,
came forward last year with the very question which my colleague
has asked of a £6,500 fee. They are the people who represent
you and I do not think you can be a little bit like whoever it
was who said we will simply ignore it and we are not part and
parcel of this organisation.
Professor Brown: I was not intending
to imply that, but I think if there was additional funding available
to us we would use it, hopefully wisely, to invest in the student
experience.
Q51 Mr Marsden: Are you pushing for
it?
Professor Brown: Not at this moment,
no.
Q52 Chairman: Who is then because
you are all members of Universities UK? We have had a farcical,
sorry, we have had an unfortunate situation whereby we have had
the Chairman of Universities UK, we have had the head of the Russell
Group, the head of the 1994 Group, all of whom say everything
is perfect in higher education, and within two weeks there is
a demand to double the student fee. To be fair, Professor Brown,
I think you have made an excellent point to say what we would
do is give students the sorts of things they have asked for in
the Student Survey, which include more contact time.
Professor Pillay: Some of us were
opposed to top-up fees in the first place. I was one of those,
simply because I believe that the commodification of higher education
is not in the cultural interest of a country. That is my personal
view. When we did go to £3,000, as Professor Brown just pointed
out, it was because there was £9 billion of underfunding
over a 10-year period. The top-up fees do not make up for the
£9 billion of underfunding. Also the UK Government is spending
less of its GDP than many other Western countries on HE.[2]
In the absence of correcting that and making up for the £9
billion underfunding, we went to the market. There is a point
at which in going to the market you commodify and marketise the
system. One of the greatest drawbacks I find coming from the outside,
(and I enjoy my work in this country, but I am always stunned
by it), is the level of entrenched elitism in the system. Governments
and ministers often remind us that we need to have at least half
a dozen "world class" universities but when they compare
them they are comparing them to private institutions in America
that are not government-funded and somehow we believe that we
can get government funding, raise our top-up fees and compete
with these private institutions. While I am against the marketisation
of the sector, I am all for having three or four who if they think
they can command £20,000 a year to go ahead and do that,
provided they do not come to the public purse for a penny. If
we really want to undermine the elitism in the system I would
suggest to them that for every two pounds you get more they should
give up a pound from the purse, so that the others serving the
country, like our institution, which if they are a British university
also have to provide a top-class education, are better funded.
Q53 Graham Stringer: I can imagine
parts of the country where that would not be very popular.
Professor Pillay: Sure.
Q54 Graham Stringer: Just two or
three quick questions as we are running out of time. Professor
Brown, you mentioned bursaries. Is it fair that students attending
Liverpool University get higher bursaries of £1,400 than
people attending your university? If you do think it is unfair,
do you think a solution to that is to have a national bursary
scheme?
Professor Brown: I would be very
happy with a national bursary scheme. I think it is implicitly
unfair now. You might ask why are we not more generous and why
do we not match the University of Liverpool bursary scheme. The
answer is very simple: we could not afford it. We spend about
a third of the additional money that we get from so-called top-up
fees on bursaries and scholarships. 42 per cent of our students
qualify for the full government grant and 62 per cent qualify
for the full and partial grant. That is the mix of our students.
Our bursaries match that. It is £1,000 for people who would
qualify for the government grant and it is £400 for those
who qualify for the partial grant. We mirror it exactly. We have
a few specialist scholarship schemes and one of our scholarships
is £10,000 a year for really outstanding students; there
are not many of those! Because we have so many students in those
categories, we spend a lot of money and a small increase in our
bursaries would be a very expensive final solution for us. A national
scheme which would then not take account of the mix of students
(we do very well, as you can see, on the wider participation agenda)
would be a great advantage to us and therefore to our students,
which is more important.
Q55 Mr Marsden: The issue about the
type of students that you have just touched on, Professor Brown,
brings me to ask a question briefly of all three of you, but particularly
perhaps initially to Professor Saunders. We have talked about
widening participation but much of the evidence that we have taken
in this inquiry and evidence that has been going around for some
time suggests that if you do not actually target non-traditional
participants in university education at a much earlier age, your
ability to deliver that agenda is going to be fettered. If I could
just ask you, to what extent is building up relationships with
schools at the age of 13 or 14 or 15 a key part of what you are
trying to do to broaden the agenda, both locally in the area and
outside the area?
Professor Saunders: As a major
part of our strategy we are recognised within the Russell Group
as a leading university for wider participation and related topics.
I would take you further than the 13 to 14 year-olds and go back
earlier than that. We are engaged with both secondary schools
and with primary schools in terms of engendering knowledge about
the university sector and raising aspirations amongst students.
Q56 Mr Marsden: How does that deliver
itself in concrete fashion?
Professor Saunders: We have a
very able team who go out to schools on a very regular basis both
within the region and outside. They bring students at very young
ages into the university to see what it is like to be a student
and what that leads to in terms of the professions.
Q57 Mr Marsden: Can I ask you, Professor,
because we are running out of time, and perhaps also a brief comment
from Professors Brown and Pillay, we know that the whole qualifications
process at secondary level is in flux, and we now have the diplomas
coming through for the first time, and we have an increasing emphasis
from the Government on the role of apprenticeships as a mechanism
to get into higher education. How equipped is Liverpool University
to cope in terms of judging on admissions with apprenticeships
and diplomas?
Professor Saunders: We would have
to take them on on the basis of equivalent qualifications to enter
the university. We have been considering various approaches of
that type. It is not our primary business at the moment to do
that.
Q58 Mr Marsden: Do I take that as
a lukewarm reference to apprenticeships and diplomas as a way
to get into HE?
Professor Saunders: Not necessarily,
but it is not something that is going to be mainstream for us.
It might well be for other institutions.
Q59 Mr Marsden: So it is good enough
for other universities but not for you?
Professor Saunders: That is not
the point. There is only a limited number of things that we can
do. We do full time-provision and part-time provision and we have
a very high post-graduate opening and we have overseas campuses.
We cannot do everything.
2 Note from the witness: on Higher Education Back
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