Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-28)
BARONESS WARWICK
OF UNDERCLIFFE
AND MR
CHRIS HALE
22 FEBRUARY 2007
Q20 Chairman: Yes, that would fit
in, would it not, with a trial period rather than one where you
take a couple of individual cases and create the mechanism, and
give it some standards to aspire to and then see whether it can
actually work. That would fit in with that approach.
Mr Hale: I think firstly you would have to establish
what it was trying to do, if you were then to establish the criteria,
and I do not think that is clear at the moment.
Chairman: That is right,
so your objectives and when you know you have achieved your objectives
are usually the two things that you have to be able to explain
to people if you want to get money out of them, are they not?
Lord Wade of Chorlton:
The problem in this business is you know very well that something
like 80 per cent are going to fail. You have to take a big sample
in order to know the thing is going to work.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
I am interested in Lady Gale's question being put because I do
not know about the nature of the degrees.
Q21 Baroness Gale: My question is
about awarding the EIT branded degree. In your paper you mentioned
that quite a bit, where you say there is still a question of how
these degrees will be recognized or quality assured, particularly
in the context of the Bologna process, and further clarity in
this area is still required. My question is, what are your views
on the Commission's proposals of the awarding of the degrees with
a prominent EIT branding, and how do think these degrees would
be regarded in the academic and business worlds?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Potentially,
a degree that has currency across Europe ought to be attractive.
Individual institutions, of course, believe that if they have
high-quality provision, those degrees are themselves portable.
So if you get a degree from a UK university or from a German university,
theoretically that should be well recognised, and there is a whole
structure being developed, a quality framework, across Europe
to try to ensure that there is comparability of degrees. It is
a very complex process and it is really quite unclear what the
nature of the EIT degree might be. It looks at the moment as if
it is intended to be somehow a joint brand, so that each of the
institutions in some way adds its imprimatur to the degree but,
again, that is really quite unclear and we know from other areas
that although it is possible to establish joint degrees, it is
another complex process. I think that the concept of embedding
innovation and entrepreneurship in the degree course and therefore
in the degree outcome is a very good one. The concept and purpose
of the degree itself is still, at least to me, unclear.
Mr Hale: I absolutely agree. There are already
a lot of universities that are embedding innovation and entrepreneurship
within their degree programmes and there are all sorts are examples
of that within the UK. The key question is again around supply
and demand: is there a demand for degrees from an EIT? I am not
sure, and I am not sure if anyone in Europe knows that. I think
what is needed is the flexibility within the KICs for universities,
if they want to do joint degrees, to be able to do them but I
do not think that should be a condition of being part of the KIC.
They need to assess whether there is a demand for these kinds
of degrees and if there is, they may go ahead, but I do not think
they should be straitjacketed in that sense. There is also a key
issue around making sure that the primacy of education stays with
nation states at a national level and is not transferred over
to a European institution. We would be more relaxed with an EIT
degree that was just a degree from a university, which had a badge
on it than an EIT degree as such.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: So it would
be like a kite mark. We would be very anxious to ensure that the
competency to award a degree remained within the UK. That is very
much the bottom line for us.
Q22 Chairman: I imagine that other
Member States feel much the same.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Yes, I am sure
they do.
Chairman: I cannot imagine
wanting anyone wanting to give that up.
Q23 Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
I still cannot see what one of these degrees would look like.
I understand the conceptual framework, but it sounds like a UK
or a Dutch or a German degree which happens to have some link
into some other institution because of some piece of work or link.
I find it hard in practical terms to understand what gives the
quality assurance.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Not at all.
It really does depend on whether it is intended that this be something
that looks like a joint degree, in other words, the curriculum,
the design of the course and so on is done on a joint basis to
achieve a particular outcome.
Q24 Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
Does this board of the EIT set the curriculum? I do not think
this is virtual, 60 people in a board. That is the institution.
Where does that institution fit in relation to setting the degree
and the standards, or is there somebody else who does it? It is
a very difficult concept.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: We certainly
have not in other areas in the European context established that
level of intervention at degree level. We have been very anxious,
as I said earlier, to ensure that degree awarding powers remain
in the remit of the UK.
Mr Hale: I think that is the answer, there needs
to be autonomy for those people within the KICs to be able to
develop degree programmes as they see fit. That may mean collaborating
and embedding innovation in the process; it may mean doing other
things to meet the strategic priorities they have set. It is about
them having the freedom. At the moment, the problem with the document
which has been published is that there are lots of "shalls",
for example, "universities shall do this" and "shall
do that". Some of that needs to be softened up a bit.
Q25 Lord Moser: Degrees come out
of teaching. Where is the teaching of these EIT degrees?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I can only
assume that it is within the participating institutions but perhaps
shared between them, because there is not any intention to have
a European University, one body where people will congregate in
order to undertake these courses, as I understand it. I think
the idea as it has developed so far—and it is still developing
-it now seems that it will be encouraging partner institutions
to develop joint degrees, and that is a more understandable concept.
That is something where you can see part of the teaching will
be delivered in one institution, it may be delivered in another,
it might require movement between the two or it might require
movement of staff between the two or three or four, depending
on how many there are. You are then into a very much bigger organisational
process. That is quite challenging and that would really have
to be very carefully worked through. To make this work, I think
there would have to be very considerable incentives for the institutions
themselves and in a way, that comes back to the point that Chris
made; you would need to know that you were delivering something
that students wanted; you would need to be responsive enough to
both students and employers to know that it was worth putting
in the effort to produce this outcome, and at the moment that
is not clear.
Chairman: And, as we know
from the study we did of movement of students at school level
and at university level, just to take part of their course somewhere
else that, the sheer administrative cost of dealing with what
are actually relatively small amounts of money, in the Erasmus
programme and so forth, is a real disincentive to people. You
have to be really devoted to the idea of it—and some people
are, thank goodness—before you are willing to take on the
labour of getting through the process of having really quite small
sums of money but they all have to be accounted for. As you say,
there are going to be some administrative and other problems there.
Lady Howarth, you were going to ask the question about what could
we do to improve things.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I think
those questions were answered earlier in the debate. I have probably
run off what I think the answers were, to do with Lord Moser's
proposition that, do we actually condone this at all, to Baroness
Warwick's suggestion that if it has to be condoned, we make sure
it is smaller. Those things have to be combined. If I have understood
the answer correctly, those two elements we already have in the
notes and we have covered it.
Q26 Chairman: This project is supposed
to address a problem, a problem which we all recognise. Suppose
it were to fall by the wayside, what could we substitute? Is there
a substitute approach to solving this problem of transfer of technology?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I wonder if
it comes back to Lord Wade's point about finding the right incentives
to encourage private philanthropy or private support, because
without that, whatever structure we put in place, it will not
work. So I think there really must be some incentive.
Q27 Chairman: Tax incentives or regulatory
incentives.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Something that
will encourage the private sector to think this is a process worth
going through.
Q28 Chairman: For its own sake, as
it were.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Yes.
Mr Hale: One of the issues floated by the League
of European Research Universities as a potential alternative,
or as something that could happen alongside the EIT would be to
use public procurement budgets, for example. I know that is something
the Government are considering and also the Opposition in the
development of their thinking around how you can incentivise business
to invest and do more R&D. There are all these different elements.
There is no single solution.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: And incentives
for universities to work together on this.
Lord Wade of Chorlton:
It is quite interesting that a lot of the regional venture capital
funds that have been supported by the EU are now coming to an
end. They have been extremely important in helping the commercialisation
of new ideas. Now they are going to stop all those, and they propose
to put another €2.7 billion into a new concept. It is really
the provision of finance that makes it possible, because you cannot
start new businesses without money. It is the fundamental issue,
which comes to it every time really: where do you get the money
from?
Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
The other fundamental issue is whether or not people want to do
it. It is very reminiscent of the Consumer Credit Directive discussion
this, where there was a concept that none of the businesses wanted
it but, because Europe wanted the concept, they were pressing
it forward, although business kept saying "It won't work
for these reasons, because there aren't the drivers."
Chairman: I think the
time has come to thank you both very much for coming to us today
and for having such an interesting discussion. We got good evidence
from you and a very interesting contribution to our future discussions.
I hope you will like the report when it finally comes out. Thank
you very much for coming to us. It was very kind of you.
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