Higher Education

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I have a sense of anxiety in addressing the House today, because I feel that I need to explain that I did not go to the University of Cambridge. I am not saying the same for they who begat me or they who we begat or he who I married, but I wish they House to be aware that I did not go to University of Cambridge.

Secondly, I most warmly congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his maiden speech. I did not entirely agree when he described himself as some jobbing priest, because I fear that he trained for the priesthood at the University of Cambridge. He was also at Oxford, and started off at another very distinguished university, the University of Durham, but I claim great affinity with him, as I am Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, on the Isle of Wight, where I was christened and married and spend much time. He will know that the educational attainment and expectation for people on the Isle of Wight is all too pitifully low. I know that he will join others in doing all that he can to work on that critical issue. I also want him to know that I have an honorary doctorate from the University of Portsmouth, of which I am extremely proud.

Like others here, the interests that I must confess are too numerous. My greatest pleasure in life is being chancellor of the University of Hull, alongside the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth—another great port city, like Portsmouth, and a wonderful university with an incredible legacy acting as a catalyst for the city, the region and the nation in a most remarkable way. The contribution of the university in gaining for the city the accolade of City of Culture is yet another example of what a university can do, in collaboration with Siemens with its new investment in the area, which needs employment and investment all too greatly.

Aligning the University of Hull with the world tables, I have become part of the international advisory council of Sebanci University in Turkey. To reinforce the international link, I am also pro-chancellor at Surrey, where the excellent Professor Chris Snowden, now president of UUK, is vice-chancellor. I shall be there on Friday awarding degrees. Finally, I have been a governor of the London School of Economics for, I think, 30 years—it shows how good its governance structures are that they seem to be beyond review.

My serious point here is that my prejudices all arise because my noble kinsman Lord Hunt of Chesterton—I am afraid that he has disappeared, but not without sending me a delightful note—and I shared a grandfather, Dr William Garnett, who was secretary of the Technical Education Board and worked with the Webbs. He established the Institute of Education and Greenwich University, and was one of the original signatories for the London School of Economics. He was a contrary man who did a great deal of good but caused quite a lot of enmity as well, to his credit. He then retired into writing and the great work that he wrote was Education and World Citizenship. I deeply believe that universities, with all their importance in creating employment and in innovation and research, provide education for world citizenship.

What excites me is the international nature of our universities, where 24% of academic staff are non-UK nationals. Seventeen per cent of students in UK universities are non-UK domiciled, 12% from outside the EU, and it is up to 37% at postgraduate level. This is nothing compared to Singapore, where I was asked to go the other day by Phil Baty, who runs the Times Higher league tables. I went to Nanyang Technological University, which is an incredible dynamo where 70% of the faculty do not come from Singapore. Wherever you go around the world, it is a story of international collaboration. In Korea, I was talking to the people who have a partnership with the University of Surrey. We see that everywhere. Then at the other end of economic activity, in industry and commerce, global perspective and cultural sensitivity are absolutely critical. The fact that our universities are so international within their faculties, research partnerships and student populations is a huge strength and great benefit for us all.

I wanted to share most strongly in the comments made by my friends the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Warwick, the noble Lord, Lord Rees, and others about the diversity of our provision. What is so stale and dated is this idea of a snobbish hierarchy about universities. I do not mind whether you are pre-1992 or 1994, or a Russell group. Universities are and should be distinct, and have different personalities. Of course the league tables show something. They are good fun and people can game them, and they help students to have an idea of where they are going and what the benefits and strengths are. However, the real issue today is how we can make our universities have different personalities and characters.

I want to refer briefly to the work done by Sir Michael Barber at the IPPR because I thought that Members of the House would like to know about his typology of the universities of the future. There is the mass university, taking advantage of globally developed content and adapting it for its own students. Those universities will use predominately online or blended approaches, perhaps in collaboration with respected institutions. They will cater for hundreds of thousands of students at a time and provide good education for the growing global middle class. Of course, this is about UK higher education but how can we discuss that ignorant of the rest of the world? There is the niche university to which the noble Lord, Lord Rees, referred: effectively, like the New College of Humanities in the UK and the classical liberal arts colleges in the USA. They have deep specialisms in narrowly defined areas, possibly taking global stars on to their staff. There are local universities which are community-based, fostering strong relationships with regional students and businesses and playing a role in the constant renewal of local and regional economies, through opportunities for the development of skills in the workforce and applied research. They may be developing more of the part-time or sandwich courses which so many have hankered for.

We will of course continue to have the elite universities, which we spend a great deal of time discussing because they are jewels in our national infrastructure. I am sure that they will continue to produce great research, be led by great academics and be sources of great pride and influence.

Then, I suspect, we will also have those universities really using the new technologies and new business ideas. We at the Open University have seen so much of what can be achieved. It has been said that almost every sector has re-engineered its product. For trainee accountants, airline pilots or doctors, new technologies are used. Are we are doing all that we can in higher education to ensure that we are looking with an open mind at the most effective ways of opening people’s minds and teaching them new skills?

With that, I wanted to talk about leadership. To me, our cadre of vice-chancellors in this country are a source of great pride, and increasingly they come from different backgrounds. Professor Steve Smith at Exeter said:

“This may be a perilous time to be a university leader, but it creates tremendous opportunities for the brave”.

We know about the problems of funding, student caps and immigration policies. I am not going to share the debate around those subjects because they are constant and ongoing and we will continue to debate them. However, the opportunities today for real leadership and reinforcing the mission, whichever university it is, are very exciting. At the Open University, for example, we saw Martin Bean, who comes from Microsoft. A former colleague from the Commons, Bill Rammell, is now the vice-chancellor of Bedfordshire. University of the Arts London, which is hugely successful, actually has someone out of professional services. Reading University, which is very successful, has a former Permanent Secretary, Sir David Bell, as its vice-chancellor. Aston, to which I am very grateful for my degree, has Dame Julia King, who is an academic and someone who has been in business, as has the excellent Chris Snowden, a fellow of the Royal Society but also very much a businessman in his own right. These backgrounds are different and, above all, global. Our vice-chancellors come from all over the world, quite a number from South Africa, while Louise Richardson is from the States. This is hugely welcome. We should look at these individuals maybe as great academics or maybe as great business leaders, with a profound commitment and concern about leadership and higher education.

However, there is a serious gap. We spoke the other day on International Women’s Day. Personally, I am a little exhausted by the debate about women on boards. They are doing fine; there are 25% of them. However, fewer than one in five of our vice-chancellors are women. How can this be? The majority of undergraduates are women and they do better than the men but no, only a handful of vice-chancellors are women. There has an increase, rapidly in recent years, to 17%. All too few women are chairs of councils, too, a group that we ought to talk about as the voluntary commitment of people who chair universities often brings huge skill, devotion and dedication to the role. Let us hope that with Madeleine Atkins now at HEFCE and Nicola Dandridge taking over from the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, at Universities UK, we will see some progress. However, I share a paradox with noble Lords: the female vice-chancellors are disproportionately from the STEM subjects. Dame Nancy Rothwell, Dame Julia Goodfellow and Dame Julia King are all from STEM subjects at a time when we are constantly complaining about the lack of women in STEM subjects—a subject of ongoing work and debate.

In talking about leadership, though, I need to mention a particular individual who I think has scarcely been acknowledged. Our Minister for Universities and Science in another place, David “Two Brains” Willetts, is hugely to be admired and congratulated. I have seen the way that he builds alliances with people of all political parties and none. He is hugely dedicated and effective, and someone of real calibre at such a sensitive time. Similarly, those at HEFCE—Sir Alan Langlands has recently stepped down—who have navigated this controversial, argumentative and innovative sector so magnificently in recent years also deserve our recognition. If I have failed to declare my professional interests, they are as outlined in the Members’ register.

Nelson Mandela said that education was the easiest way to change the world. I agree, and I applaud this debate.