Higher Education: Affordability and Quality

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, what a superb debate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has secured. I thank all noble Lords this afternoon for their excellent and informed contributions. I feel the least academically qualified in the House to speak among so many doctorates, master’s and prestigious holders of positions at some of the universities to which we have referred. What I have heard this afternoon is that where our higher education is good, it is really good—world-beating. Where it is not so good, there are so many factors to consider that what we need—as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has said this afternoon—is a lot more data to understand and dig into where it is going wrong.

We on these Benches welcome the work the Government are doing on apprenticeships. But we also believe that we need more data on whether those apprenticeships will provide fair outcomes for those who participate, in the same way that the IFS has undertaken an exercise on university degrees. We need to think about the lower-value courses. I take on board the point the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, made about the creative arts. I spoke during a Question on history master’s degrees and made very clear my position: that the humanities are essential to the health of our nation and our future intellectual vigour. But we need to understand which of those creative arts courses are not performing. Again, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, that perhaps there is more data to be collated by the Government. I invite the Minister to think about this—if not today, when so many other points have been raised, then on another occasion. We have to find a way of analysing some of those creative arts subjects, which really are not coming up to scratch for the students who are spending money and accruing a lot of debt to take part in them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, made some very important comments about social mobility and the value of education for children; when their parents are educated, that is very important for their outcomes. I declare an interest as the founder of a behavioural science business, MindGym, but also of its philanthropic arm, Parent Gym. We have always looked at what education means for families overall, and we should not neglect that.

However, as has been made clear this afternoon, we need to think about how to resolve the tension between individual aspiration and what we as a country can aspire to. There is some tension there, because in funding higher education and the courses students take, we need to think about our growth strategy, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough. How we fund all of this, and how we create employment at the end of it, is crucial; otherwise, it is not sustainable. I was alarmed to hear the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, refer to a dropping off of research. I had a beautiful passage prepared about our current research—I am now ad-libbing. I would be very grateful if the noble Lord shared that information, because I would hate to see our research dropping off. It is very important to continue to ensure that our universities are incentivised to invest in research, and that the Government look at how to encourage this.

The previous Government looked hard at how we build our economy and grow our future as a nation globally using our universities. In 2023, we backed the reform of how well universities share their research through the independent review of university spin-out companies, as some noble Lords may recall. It did work. The UK’s spin-out value has nearly tripled since 2020, second only to the US. In Cambridge alone, the cluster of firms around the university, known as Silicon Fen, now numbers over 5,000 and turns over more than £18 billion a year. The barrier now, according to the UKRI, is speed and early capital, and I urge the Government to build on the previous study and to act on that.

The other thing is that, whereas American colleges build lasting relationships with employers, sometimes securing places for their own graduates in different firms with places held specifically for their institutions, British universities do not have that culture or tradition to the same extent. It should become a measure of performance and not an afterthought. There are ways of measuring quality that benefit both the nation’s economy and individual students on outcomes.

I would caveat the recruitment of international students—bringing more international students here—with making sure that they do not lean on our loan system. The displacement and cost identified by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, are serious. We already have an employment crisis for our graduates which needs to be addressed, and we cannot fund and subsidise international students at the cost of our own.

I support the case made today for minimum entry standards and for a cap on the proportion of firsts at any institution—both are modest, sensible steps. I also agree with much that was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lords, Lord Verdirame and Lord Biggar, about the culture at our universities; I will come back to that in a moment.

I want to say briefly—the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, touched on this—that AI could serve us so much better than it is currently doing. On this, I urge the Government, perhaps more than anything else, to consider that the cost-saving potential of the proper harnessing of AI is huge, not only in how universities deploy teaching and learning for students but in the efficiencies of how they run. The diagnostic technology now is incredible, and we have seen it used in the workforce quite regularly. We see it used in the NHS. This could be deployed across higher education to much greater effect, removing the managerial class, which so often creates the cultural problems and difficulties identified so well by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame.

We have to come back, I am afraid, to the culture point, because without the muscular defence of liberal education, as the noble Lord, Lord Biggar, so beautifully put it, none of this is really of any value to us as a society or for the individual students. I am very proud that the Conservatives introduced the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, but I am sorry that it was necessary to do it because of the nature and extent of cancel culture across our campuses. Vice-chancellors must be ready to confront cancel culture and insist on vigorous debate as a measure of the quality of an institution. I urge the Government to look at this more carefully so that we are restoring the value of a degree by restoring the confidence in the institutions that award it.

The year after the publication of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, in an Oxford museum in 1860, Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley argued out the theory of evolution in public before a packed hall. It is hard for us to imagine now how absolutely controversial that was—it was one of the great contests in the history of science, won by argument and not by cancellation or silence. Too many higher education institutions today appear to struggle with that concept. I urge the Minister to address this, along with the many other issues on her desk, as she moves forward.