Written evidence submitted by the University
and College Union
SUMMARY
UCU
1. The University and College Union (UCU) is
the largest trade union and professional association for academics,
lecturers, trainers, researchers and academic-related staff working
in further and higher education throughout the UK. We welcome
the opportunity to submit evidence to the Select Committee's inquiry
into the future of higher education.
2. The Browne review of higher education funding
and student finance has generated extensive discussion within
UCU. The views expressed in this memorandum reflect those of our
members. The starting point for those views is a deeply-held belief
in the value of higher education to society as well as to individuals.
Our members are strongly opposed to the policies of the current
government which seek ultimately to privatise higher education
by shifting its funding from the state to individual students
and their families. This represents an impoverished view of the
purposes of higher education and poses a fundamental threat to
its ability to meet the wider social, cultural and economic needs
of the country.
Browne Report: ideological not independent
3. Our members question the "independence"
of the Browne review. They have commented on its ideological character,
in contrast, for example, with the Dearing Review. It is based
on a particular view of higher education:
— students
as "consumers" purchasing a "product" and
seeking to maximise the "return" on their "investment";
— institutions
competing in a market driven by variable price and quality;
— the
state withdrawing from the funding of teaching for all subjects
other than those defined as of strategic importance; and
— the
encouragement of private providers.
4. The massive increase in tuition fees, combined
with the government's decision to cut teaching funding by 80%
over the next three years, places the future of our universities
at serious risk. It is a grossly irresponsible gamble which we
believe will:
— deter
many potential students from aspiring to enter higher education;
— lead
to the closure of many courses and perhaps of whole institutions;
— undermine
quality of provision as institutions cut costs in the struggle
to survive;
— embed
more deeply the existing hierarchy of status and resource among
our universities and the matching pattern of social class participation;
and
— threaten
the idea of the university as a community of scholars based on
academic freedom and collegiality.
UCU SUBMISSION
Access is the issue
5. For us the issue of greatest importance is
access. Since Robbins all governments have at least in principle,
and for the most part in practice, supported the idea that there
should be a place in higher education for all those who want one
and have the ability to benefit from it. This is partly a question
of social justice (higher education has a critical influence on
life chances and should therefore not be denied to people on the
basis, for example, of ability to pay); partly a question of sound
economics (higher education is a critical—an increasingly
critical—determinant of a country's competitiveness); and
partly a question of no less than the realisation of our highest
nature as human beings (the stimulation of critical thought, the
pursuit of new ideas and knowledge and their transmission between
generations).
6. The access goal is far from met. Family income
and the closely associated factor of geographical location still
heavily influence staying on at school and both entry to higher
education and choice of institution. The record of the Russell
Group universities in encouraging participation by students from
low income backgrounds remains disappointing despite valiant efforts
by many staff within those institutions.
7. The end of the publicly-funded expansion of
higher education was signalled before Browne by the cuts in university
funding imposed by the outgoing Labour government. With Browne,
it is dead and buried and replaced by a "you get what you
pay for" approach.
8. It is inconceivable to us that a near tripling
of tuition fees will not deter people from higher education and
that it will not have a disproportionate impact on the poorest.
Ministers appear to believe that the widespread negative reaction
to the fees hike among students and the public is due to a lack
of understanding of the detail of the proposed new fee and loans
regime: for example, the mistaken belief that fees will have to
be paid upfront and an unawareness of the new £21,000 repayment
threshold. However, the message that has hit home to potential
students and their parents is that higher education will be even
more expensive in the future.
9. Evidence on the influence of cost and debt
aversion on the decision to apply for higher education and on
the choice of institution is growing.
10. The important Futuretrack study has recently
provided data about applicants who do not enter higher education
and have no immediate plans to do so: the most frequently cited
reason was "Put off by the costs" (39% of applicants
who did not enter higher education), followed by 'Put off by the
prospect of incurring debts' (32%).[183]
11. The flip side of fee differentiation is social
differentiation in student choice, with poorer students opting
for cheaper institutions and choosing to study locally, and the
higher status, more expensive universities becoming the reserve
of the richest with a smattering of "access" students.
This restriction of opportunity by social class may be reinforced
by an impact on choice of course, with poorer students choosing
shorter vocational courses, and humanities, arts and social sciences
becoming the preserve of the wealthier students studying at the
elite institutions. Evidence from the United States also suggests
that poorer students are particularly vulnerable to recruitment
by hard-sell, cost-cutting, private sector providers.
12. The very different approach to fees in Scotland,
and now in Wales, provides a sharp contrast to England. Increasingly,
students in England are the least favourably treated within the
UK. The message that is conveyed is that the value of higher education
is better understood and more highly appreciated in the devolved
nations.
13. The conclusion that we draw from this evidence
on access, supported by the experience of our members dealing
directly with student admissions and with outreach work in schools,
is that the government's decision to raise tuition fees to the
highest levels in the developed world will deny opportunities
to hundreds of thousands of potential students, lead to a criminal
wastage of their talents and reinforce the social class inequalities
that bedevil our society and constrain our economy.
The current chaos
14. It is becoming very clear that the government
made a fatal miscalculation of the level of fees that institutions
would set under the new regime. There appears to have been no
proper risk assessment of the new fees regime or any proper economic
modelling of its potential impact on the sector. Ministers are
currently engaged in a desperate attempt to find ways of offsetting
the impact of high fees on access by threatening universities
with various penalties for failing to meet access targets.
15. The current chaos in the system should not
have come as a surprise. Following the Comprehensive Spending
Review announcement in October 2010 we calculated that most universities
would be forced to charge fees of almost £7,000 per year
in order to cover their costs, following the government's decision
to cut teaching funding completely for most courses. Some institutions
will lose all their government funding and will have to charge
around £7,700. There must be serious doubts about the ability
of some institutions to attract sufficient students at fee levels
of that order.
16. There is a real danger of institutional closures
leading to the disappearance of higher education on some regions
of the country. In addition to the educational and cultural impact
of this, the effects on local and regional economies and employment
will be very significant.
17. Our research has identified 49 English institutions
at high financial risk from the government's plans[184].
A recent report from the National Audit Office concluded that
"the new funding framework, coupled with a squeeze in public
funding, is likely to increase the level of risk within the sector."[185]
It went on to warn that the new system will potentially raise
the number of institutions at risk of failing.
18. Using research
from Ursula Kelly and Ian McNicoll at the University of Strathclyde,
we also looked at the impact higher
education institutions have on their regional economy in creating
jobs and revenue far beyond the confines of the campus. For example,
every £1 million in income lost by Sheffield Hallam University
would lead to a combined loss to the regional economy of £2
million.
19. Universities are a vital part of our economic
infrastructure, and generate extensive employment, output and
GDP. Globalisation, competition with the emerging economies such
as China and India (both investing heavily in higher education)
and the emergence of the "knowledge economy" all suggest
a more important economic role for higher education and the need
for increased investment.
20. The £2.9 billion cuts in higher education
announced in the CSR buck the international trend. President Obama,
for example, has put additional federal investment in higher education
and research at the centre of his plan for economic recovery:
I want us to produce eight million more college
graduates by 2020, because America has to have the highest share
of graduates compared to every other nation... Education is an
economic issue when we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that countries
that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow… And
that's why I'm absolutely committed to making sure that here in
America, nobody is denied a college education, nobody is denied
a chance to pursue their dreams, nobody is denied a chance to
make the most of their lives just because they can't afford it.
We are a better country than that, and we need to act like we're
a better country than that[186].
The Government's confusion
21. The Government's attempts to offset the deterrent
effects of increased fees on access are replete with contradictions:
— The government wants to
"marketise" higher education and set institutions free
from the state, yet it insists that most of them should charge
fees of no more that £6,000 per year. This at a time when
it plans cuts to their funding which make that impossible without
unacceptable reductions in the quality of their provision.
— There is no sign of significant
fee differentiation emerging, just as the fee differentiation
predicted by many when the cap was raised to £3,000 failed
to materialise. The main reason why many commentators are predicting
a drift upwards to £9,000 over the next few years is the
size and speed of the cuts on government funding for teaching.
Less widely noted, is the need felt by many institutions to try
to protect their research activity, following government cuts
to research funding amounting to a 10.1% reduction in real terms
over the CSR period. There are also, of course, the serious fears
about the impact of the new visa arrangements on overseas student
recruitment.
— The government wants a
market in higher education in which the money follows student
demand, yet it must also find a way to control student numbers
to limit the costs to the Exchequer—hence, Mr Willetts'
threat in his recent speech to vice-chancellors that if tuition
fees across the sector average out above £7,500 the state
could make more cuts: "So your own actions further increase
your risk"[187].
(We estimate that Thames Valley University, an institution with
an excellent record on access, will have to charge annual fees
of £7,598 to maintain its current funding level.)
— The government claims to
have found the solution to the problem, central to the Browne
review, of how to fund a long-term sustainable system of higher
education, yet the speed and extent of its "reforms"
has introduced unprecedented levels of uncertainty and instability.
As a group of Oxbridge academics put it in a recent letter to
the press: "We are being asked to 'fly blind' over matters
of the utmost importance in respect of our ability to continue
to deliver world-class education and research."
— The government, whatever
it may say about its "fairer" loans system, knows that
access for poorer students is at serious risk, so it is forced
to threaten universities with draconian fines and intervention
if they fail to achieve access targets. The new OFFA requirements
to be applied to universities charging fees above £6,000
are far too complex—in any case no university has ever failed
to satisfy OFFA and there is no evidence to support the notion
that the new requirements will have any greater impact on widening
access than the previous ones did.
— The government says that
it is committed to widening access, but abolishes the Education
Maintenance Allowance and the Aim Higher programme; it imposes
tuition fees on access courses in further education colleges (from
which 40% of university students come); and it introduces a National
Scholarship Programme which by its third year of operation will
still be less than half the amount that institutions will spend
on student bursaries in 2010-11 (£337 million).
Unmet demand: the ticking bomb
22. The main political time bomb waiting to explode
is the unprecedented level of unmet demand for higher education
that we have seen in the last two years and which is set to increase
again next autumn. It is now clear that the government's main
"solution" to this problem is privatisation and this
is what we expect to form the main thrust of the White Paper in
May.
23. In his speech to the UUK spring conference,
Mr Willetts referred to radical proposals for de-regulation in
higher education in order to pave the way for private providers:
"the global higher education providers that operate in many
countries from India to Spain to the USA need to know that we
will be removing the barriers that stop them operating as universities
here as part of our system—provided, of course, that they
meet high standards which are a key feature of our higher education
system"[188].
24. Mr Willetts did not identify in any detail
"the barriers" to privatisation to which he referred.
We do not accept that the current legislative framework covering,
for example, the granting of degree-awarding powers or the title
of university are "barriers". They are reasonable and
necessary protections of quality and standards, and, very importantly,
of the international reputation of our higher education system.
We would be strongly opposed to any relaxation of these provisions.
It would expose our future students to some of the nefarious practices
that we have seen in recent years in the American private higher
education sector, which the US government is now moving more and
more to regulate and control. It would also place students at
the mercy of institutions run from afar by international companies
more interested in their balance sheets than in individual students.
In practice, if such students have access, as Mr Willetts seems
to intend, to our subsidised system of fees and loans, their education
would ultimately have to underwritten by our government, who would
have to step in and rescue them when parent companies "from
India to Spain to the US" go bust or decide to invest elsewhere.
This is not what we want or need for our students.
25. We also believe very strongly in the continuation
of the Quality Assurance Agency as an independent body reporting
to the public on how universities maintain quality and standards.
We do not believe that this independence would be compatible with
any closer relationship with HEFCE, which has become no more than
an administrative arm of government, and certainly not with the
creation of Browne's "HE Council".
26. We do however welcome Mr Willetts' statement
that he has delayed the publication of the White Paper "in
part to test proposals more thoroughly". We would welcome
the opportunity to contribute to that process.
Academic freedom and collegiality: the essence
of a university
27. The marketisation and privatisation of higher
education also raises fundamental issues of academic freedom and
of institutional accountability.
28. Our experience of private providers in this
country, and our observation of the experience in North America,
is that they have scant regard either for the academic freedom
of their staff or for open and accountable systems of governance[189].
29. It is precisely the combination of academic
freedom and a collegial approach to academic decision-making and
institutional governance that defines the very nature of a university
community. These are the distinctive practices and values that
protect the university both from the stultifying effects of internal
managerialism and the dangers of external political interference.
We see little sign of any respect for these values in the world
of for-profit higher education. But we are also concerned at their
erosion in our own public institutions and fear their further
undermining as survival comes to depend on competitive marginal
cost-cutting in the scramble for fee-bearing students. We would
like to see these wider issues addressed in the White Paper and
reflected in statutory safeguards.
Alternative futures: ignored by Browne
30. The UCU's greatest disappointment in the
Browne review was its failure to approach the future funding of
higher education with a genuinely open mind. Apart from the graduate
tax, it did not seriously consider any alternative funding methods
to its favoured neo-liberal approach.
31. UCU has argued for some time that there is
a gross imbalance of contributions from the three main beneficiaries
of higher education: students; society as a whole represented
by the state; and business and industry, which profit directly
from the education and training of the graduates that they recruit
and rely upon. Now we are faced with an extraordinary situation
in which the state is withdrawing from the higher education contract
and the students are being asked to bear the whole burden, as
if there were no social return on investment in higher education
at all, as if it were a purely private good—an unsustainable
position in both principle and practice.
32. We believe that the partner who has under-contributed
and whose investment in higher education should be increased is
business, which is why we have advocated a Business Education
Tax (BET)[190].
We have shown how a modest increase in corporation tax, which
would still leave the UK's main rate below that of France, the
USA and Japan, would enable us to sustain a long-term high quality
public higher education system open to all.
10 March 2011
183 Kate Purcell et al, Futuretrack (2009), HECSU/Warwick
IER, p 159. Back
184
Higher Education at Risk: the impact of cuts in higher education
spending on local economies (UCU, December 2010). Back
185
NAO Regulating Financial Sustainability in Higher Education
(March 2011). Back
186
Speech to the University of Texas at Austin, 9 August 2010.
Back
187
David Willetts speech to UUK spring conference (25 February 2011). Back
188
Ibid. Back
189
UCU Privatising our Universities: a UCU report on the new cross-party
consensus and the Americanisation of our universities (2010);
also, UCU Subprime Education?-A report on the growth of private
providers and the crisis of UK higher education (2010). Back
190
UCU and Compass In Place of Fees: time for a business education
tax? (2010) Back
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