Written evidence from the University of Buckingham

The Proposed Creation of a British Ivy League

Introduction Following the kind invitation of the Committee, the Vice-Chancellor answered questions on Tuesday 24th May at 10am. At the end of the session, the Chairman suggested that any further written submissions would be welcome to complement oral evidence. In this brief submission, the University of Buckingham recommends to the Committee the creation of a British Ivy League

The Background Although Oxford and Cambridge are of course wonderful, Harvard regularly beats them both in international league tables, and the Ivy League generally has a much bigger impact globally than does Oxbridge, even accounting for differences of national population. The University of Buckingham proposes that the Ivy League model is better than any other, and that Britain should adopt it amongst other models.

(It should be noted that the low standing of continental European universities is in marked contrast to the GDP per capita of European countries, which shows that university quality correlates with university independence and not with national wealth).

The Ivy League Model The Ivy League is based on financial independence and freedom from government at the level of teaching (i.e. no Hefce involvement in teaching arrangements) while research is fully funded by government agencies. The advantage of this model is that the taxpayer is not required to subsidise teaching (such subsidies being socially regressive except in the case of bursaries) yet Ivy League research is of stellar quality.

No British university can afford at present to dissociate itself from Hefce because that would mean losing Hefce’s QR money administered under the RAE/REF scheme. But if British universities would be allowed to subscribe only to the REF without having to subscribe to the rest of the Hefce package, they would enjoy the same position as the American Ivy League.

Conclusion By tying teaching money to government provisions, universities appear to crowd out private fee funding: the Ivy League example apparently confirms that the government provision of teaching fees impoverishes universities. Some universities should therefore free themselves from government funding, and thus of government restrictions over fees, for teaching. But there can be no substitute for the public funding of science, so those self-same universities should be allowed to be autonomous of Hefce over teaching whilst still having access to Hefce’s REF monies, to become our Ivy League.

25 May 2011