Examination of Witnesses (Question 300-319)
DR DAVID
COLLINS, DR
MALCOLM MCVICAR,
PROFESSOR DAVID
EASTWOOD AND
PROFESSOR DEIAN
HOPKIN
9 JULY 2008
Q300 Dr Gibson: It is Radio Four
material!
Dr McVicar: I think it is Radio
Four material. The argument that higher education and further
education have not been demand-led is fallacious. We respond to
demand and if we did not supply courses that people want to come
on, we cannot run those courses and eventually we go bankrupt.
I think it is whose demand are we responding to. We have to respond
to students' demands, and increasingly students of course are
significant contributors to the cost of their higher education.
You also have to be able to respond to employer demand as well
so I think there are lots of different demands. There is not a
simplistic demand-led model.
Q301 Dr Gibson: I have always believed
that education in this country is about jobs. That is the basic
Marxist philosophy. You can have all kinds of education at all
levels and at the end of the day it is the employers who control
the planet who want the employees educated in their interests.
Is that what Leitch is all about? Is the demand coming from employers
in both further and higher education?
Dr McVicar: Chairman, I do not
think it can just be that model for Leitch because, in my experience,
employer-demand is very important but it tends to be medium term,
and individuals, as I said earlier, have got decades. The people
qualifying and leaving university now to work have to think about
their qualifications long term, not just in the next five years.
Somehow we have to make sure that the individuals are flexible
but for example a couple of years ago if we were trying to meet
the demand for the economy in 2008, who would have predicted the
economy would be in the shape it is now, how would you predict
what has happened in the construction industry or the house-building
industry or whatever. It is very, very difficult to hit a short-term
target in terms of the economy. You have to take a longer term
view than that and that is why flexibility is crucial.
Professor Hopkin: I think there
is an issue about latent demand as well. You asked the question
are these people actually out there knocking on the door? I have
to say many of them do not realise they ought to be knocking on
the door or maybe they are not prepared to be in a position in
order to do that. I think one of the problems we have comes much
earlier than universities. If we do not get the business right
much earlier on, we will not have a business, and so therefore
we need to be looking at raising aspirations amongst young people
and particularly explaining to them that this is something for
them and not for somebody else. Far too many of our young people
are switched off and that is why things like Aimhigher are trying
to raise participation, particularly in communities where there
is no great tradition of this. I think if you do all of that maybe
then you will get nearer the target.
Q302 Dr Gibson: Then you could argue
that the demand would be a consortium between people at different
levels of education working together in partnership to excite
and enthuse people either through university for university's
sake, just to learn, or for a job, as the case may be.
Professor Hopkin: I am tempted
to say that is what we have been trying to do for the last 100
years.
Q303 Dr Gibson: I always knew you
were a Left-winger really!
Professor Hopkin: Gosh!
Q304 Ian Stewart: I am with Ian Gibson
on this education/jobs analysis point. We as politicians have
to look at helping to create decent jobs, which is not necessarily
your area of responsibility. Leitch tries to promote the concept
of partnership, and on each occasion that I have been asking questions
to panels on the Leitch Report I have asked them what has been
left out. For example, if the Leitch Report proposes partnership
between government, individuals and employers, where do education
providers fit into that? In your opinion, why are trade unions
not mentioned anywhere in the literature?
Dr Collins: I think the educationalists
have a considerable role to play in helping employers to define
their needs to start with, and we have certainly found that employers
are not able automatically to assess their needs demands without
some assistance from outside. I also would like to make the point
that if you want to increase demand for education and training
and link it more closely to jobs, maybe you should go so far as
making it a right for employees to access training, certainly
up to Level 2, rather than being able to request it as they are
at the moment. If indeed the argument is true that more skills
equals more productivity equals more profit then employers should
welcome that right because it should be adding to their bottom
line. My view is that there are various ways in which we can help
employers see the value of what training means for them and also
to help them assess the training needs that they have got.
Q305 Ian Stewart: David, when you
put that analysis forward, we now know that there will be significantly
fewer unskilled jobs in this country in the future?
Dr Collins: Yes.
Q306 Ian Stewart: Is there not a
role therefore between further and higher education and directly
with workers, not just leaving it to the employers?
Dr Collins: I could not agree
more.
Q307 Ian Stewart: Because workers
perhaps do not understand that they will not have the jobs that
they are doing currently.
Dr Collins: I could not agree
more. I think the problem at the moment is that the funding has
swung rather too far towards the employers determining what is
available.
Ian Stewart: That is what I wanted to
hear.
Mr Marsden: Malcolm, I wonder if I could
come back to what you said about whose demands because of course
very few people want to be tagged with the image of some Marxist—sorry
Ian—monolith imposing targets from below—
Ian Stewart: You cannot call him a monolith!
Q308 Mr Marsden: But the fact of
the matter is that particularly for universities like your own
and other universities in the North West of which I am aware there
is an element of dependence on "plan and provide" in
terms of government spending. You have mentioned the dental school
for example. You do a lot of other important stuff in terms of
health workers and health degrees. How does that push/pull factor
affect you? Is it something that affects individual universities
or across region?
Dr McVicar: I think if you are
talking about the relationship between higher education and the
NHS as a monopoly purchaser of a significant proportion of our
output—I think our NHS contract is about 20 or 25% of our
total university—it is very important, with a large number
of people joining the workforce in the National Health Service
and other social care agencies, and that is a part of our provision
where there is a very, very close relationship between the employer
and the provider. As you will know, it has not always been an
easy relationship because you have a workforce planning model
which is difficult to sustain in a changing environment but that
has also been subject to short-term changes because of financial
cutbacks which in the end were not necessary. That did cause tremendous
destabilisation and job losses and the curtailment of capacity,
which we know will have an adverse impact in five years' time.
Although that model is very important and the Government through
the NHS is buying considerable capacity and supporting those students,
it is a model where you do have to be quite careful to protect
it and not let it be affected by short-term factors. If you have
a whole sector which is dependent on that sort of monopoly or
a series of large-scale oligopolistic purchasers, it could be
very destabilised.
Q309 Mr Marsden: So the answer is
just to accept that these things will happen from time to time
in government and spread the different pots in your basket?
Dr McVicar: You certainly have
to diversify.
Professor Hopkin: I was going
to say, I think universities have become a mixed economy in a
far greater way than they were in the past. Certainly, I have
to confess I have been 41 years in higher education and I have
seen it all and the cycles come and go. What has changed has been
the responsiveness of universities which are far more responsive
now in recognising that policy will change, things will happen,
and you will come across things that you do not expect. What you
have to do is to build an enterprise which enables you to respond
in different ways. That is why the universities are so keen on
for example lifelong learning because that is potentially a far
more sustainable business in many respects than depending on core
14 to 18 year olds which will be diminishing in the next 10 years.
We are very aware. Yesterday Universities UK launched a very important
document on the future shape of higher education. We cannot predict
that but what we have to do is prepare ourselves for it.
Q310 Mr Marsden: Can I come quickly
to you, David Eastwood, because again a crucial question is about
how much the HE system is going to be able to deliver responsively
to the level of workplace skills. We have got Malcolm there representing
a lot of the universities that are already very well engaged in
that sector, but I think it is fair to say that others are not—or
at least not yet. What is your responsibility as HEFCE to knock
a few heads around and make sure that universities who are not
knocking on the doors of employers and who are not operating within
their region and sub-regional factors actually do so?
Professor Eastwood: We see employer
engagement as operating across a broad front. I think that is
important. Our latest survey of income to the sector from employers
suggests that £1.5 billion has come into the sector in 2005-06
from employer-related activities. That can be CPD, it can be knowledge
transfer, it can be short course provision.
Q311 Chairman: Is that an additional
1.5 billion or is that 1.5 billion in total?
Professor Eastwood: That is 1.5
billion in total from business, as it were, buying services, knowledge,
partnerships with universities.
Q312 Mr Boswell: Including increasingly
SMEs or not?
Professor Eastwood: Including
increasing engagement with SMEs. Obviously there is a lag there
and there is a challenge there.
Q313 Chairman: It would be good if
you could let us have a note just to say what that trend is.
Professor Eastwood: We have trend
data going back to the beginning of the century and we will happily
give that. I make the response in answer to Mr Marsden's question
because I think we do see different universities having different
kinds of engagement and that is quite important, not least in
terms of what you might describe as market-making and that where
universities are offering knowledge transfer, where they are offering
CPD and where they are offering co-funded programmes, they are
developing a different and much more wide-ranging engagement with
employers and that I think is starting to unlock new kinds of
demand and a new kind of understanding of what HE can deliver
to employers and also what HE needs to deliver given the employer
demand.
Q314 Mr Marsden: I understand that
you are moving on to be Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University
in due course. Which of those models do you think are going to
be applicable to Birmingham?
Professor Eastwood: All of my
waking hours and some of my sleeping hours are currently devoted
to the Higher Education Funding Council. I will happily share
my thoughts in due course.
Chairman: I think that is a very diplomatic
answer. Back to you Dr Gibson.
Q315 Dr Gibson: Can I return to financial
support. I find it rather ironic because when I argued with my
old sparring partner David on the issue of top-up fees, I argued
vehemently that industry should be putting money into universities
instead of charging students exorbitant debts to carry throughout
their lives, and I suspect we will return to that issue in a few
years again. I just wondered what evidence you really do have
that industry—the pharmaceutical industry for example—is
prepared to put money into courses, laboratories and so on rather
than giving money for consultancies, undeclared consultancies
I might add, just as an aside, by academics, it does not appear
in the register of interests like the very honest MPs that are
around this table.
Professor Eastwood: I would offer
two thoughts. One is the evidence from the development of co-funded
programmes. We are on course to meet or exceed the 20,000 target
and we are getting an average of at least 30% employer co-funding,
so that is real money and that is real investment and that sits
alongside the shift as a result of fees back in 2006. I think
the other thing which is interesting and is sometimes forgotten
in the debate about the investment that employers make is that
they still pay a premium for graduates, in the case of the industries
to which you refer a very substantial premium; and we could see
that too if we were thinking about the premia for mathematicians
in the City. Employers clearly place a high market value on graduates
who for other purposes might look like very traditional graduates—mathematicians,
physicists and so forth. I think we see abundant evidence, in
employers' willingness to co-fund and in the premia they are prepared
to pay for graduates, that they are making a contribution to the
overall cost of delivering higher education.
Q316 Dr Gibson: Professor Hopkin,
do you see that picture emerging in your 41 years of sweat and
toil at the coalface?
Professor Hopkin: I am glad you
put it that way.
Q317 Chairman: Surely you began as
a ten year old?
Professor Hopkin: You are very
kind! I think we are on a your journey here, if I can take another
Radio Four phrase. I do not think we know the answer, to be absolutely
frank. What we have to do is really test the market with some
real propositions. Very often there is a strange lack of synchronism
between employers spending a lot of money retraining people and
what they are prepared to pay upfront. I think part of the equation
is to actually help employers understand that if they take part
in developing the curriculum—and by the way none of us is
saying that this is a one-size-fits-all, it has to be a much more
diverse educational system to respond to different needs—employers
might actually see some very great advantage if they are able
to diminish some of the later costs of retraining and the rest
of it in the early stages if they get people who are prepared
better at the point at which they arrive. That said, I think employers
also have to understand that this is not something which stops
after they employ someone; it continues. I think helping employers
to understand what their future training needs are going to be
rather than simply reacting to what their present day needs are
is something that universities do particularly well. That is what
we are engaged in. That is what you have been engaged in, Dr Gibson,
yourself in the past, looking forward and trying to anticipate.
I think we can help employers in that respect.
Q318 Dr Gibson: Have you an estimate
of how much money might be contributed by industry? Have you an
El Dorado figure or a guestimate of what could come in if everything
went right? Are we talking billions, millions or what? You named
some figures; could that be improved?
Professor Eastwood: The contribution
from businesses will continue to grow and all the trend data suggests
that it will continue to grow. I think though you ask a challenging
question. Certainly our view, if you look at for example co-funded
provision, what we are investing in we believe is of high quality,
relevant and sustainable. How scaleable this is, I think is a
question that we will not have a strong answer to probably for
another 18 to 24 months.
Q319 Dr Gibson: Lastly, in terms
of other countries and what they are doing, is there anything
we can learn from any country or countries to reach the 40% target
that Leitch has pointed out for Level 4. Could we learn from America,
Estonia?
Professor Eastwood: I think one
of the things we could learn and are learning from America is
that it is important that as we grow provision and as we continue
to grow the sector, we maintain quality. One of the things which
characterises the American system is higher volumes of entrants
to higher education but a much higher drop-out rate. If we are
providing forms of engagement with higher education, which do
not lead to completion then we are not delivering to students,
we are not delivering to the taxpayer and we are not delivering
to employers. I agree with Deian's point of a moment ago that
what we need is varied and appropriate provision and what we need
is high-quality provision.
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