Higher Education

Baroness Greenfield Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greenfield (CB)]

I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his inspiring and insightful speech. I warmly welcome him to your Lordships’ House and look forward to his continuing contributions on a wide range of issues, including economics, social welfare and the Navy. Turning back to universities, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, for introducing this important debate.

Having spent most of my working life in the university sector, I am fully aware of the diverse issues that we need to explore. I have been in turn an undergraduate, a postgraduate and a tutor of medicine at Oxford University, where I remain a senior research fellow at Lincoln College. In addition, I served for seven years as chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, as well as working in higher education establishments abroad; namely, the Collège de France in Paris and New York University Langone Medical Center. I am also aware of the thrills and spills involved in commercialising university science, having recently spun out a biotech company, Neuro-Bio Ltd, where I am chief scientific officer.

This debate will encompass many different questions, each of which could be the single subject of its own debate, but there is a common theme, which can be summed up in a single word: ideas. Surely universities are all about ideas, be it the dissemination of existing ideas —teaching; the generation of new ideas—basic research; or the application of those ideas—commercialisation. Inevitably, time constraints will mean highlighting just a few examples of concern in each of these areas.

With regard to teaching, the particular issue I would like to flag up is the impact of IT. In one study 55% of academic staff reported that lecture attendance had decreased as a result of introducing digital audio recording of their presentations. When asked why they did not attend lectures, almost 70% of the students surveyed claimed that they could learn just as effectively using digital audio recordings. However, in yet another study, students who learnt course material via virtual delivery performed significantly worse than those who attended traditional lectures. What is particularly interesting is that while the two groups did not differ in regard to grasping basic concepts, the group learning virtually fell significantly behind in their grasp of complex material, surely indicating that it may be more difficult for sophisticated ideas to be transferred via the screen. When college students in an economics course were randomly assigned either face-to-face or video-streamed lectures, the students who attended lectures in person had higher test scores.

The reciprocal of teaching is learning, and the mindset of the generation used to living for varying numbers of hours a day in front of the screen in a parallel universe is surely a consideration. The brain becomes good at what it practises and research suggests that those who have rehearsed the various skills required, for example in video games, will have a higher IQ and an improved working memory. However, they may also have the less welcome profile: a short attention span, a greater propensity to low-grade aggression, greater recklessness, a higher degree of narcissism, lower self-esteem, a premium on sensational experience, a less deep understanding and a more volatile sense of identity. Teaching someone with this disposition will clearly require different strategies compared to earlier generations. Incidentally, I would be very happy to refer noble Lords to the peer-reviewed papers reporting the research I have just cited.

The second broad area of university activity is the generation of ideas—basic research. Francis Bacon, the 17th century philosopher and scientist regarded as the founder of empiricism, distinguished two types of experiments: experimenta lucifera, those that shed light; and experimenta fructifera, those that bear fruit. Other noble Lords may well speak in favour of the former—basic blue-skies research—so I will simply give a telling example from a century ago illustrating the essential need to allow the scientific mindset to range free, since it is impossible to predict where such imagination will lead.

Quantum theory, concerning the inseparable nature of waves and particles, seemed when it was developed to be a highly abstract notion that no one could really understand. However, this baffling theory gave insights into the basics of matter and energy and was eventually to have astounding effects on more translational areas of both the physical and biological sciences. Advanced devices such as lasers and transistors and therefore ultimately computers rely on the principles of quantum theory. Likewise, in biology, the currently emerging feats of gene manipulation, triggered by our ability to manipulate atoms, are reliant on an understanding of molecular bonds and the technique of X-ray crystallography, both of which hark back to quantum theory.

That leads us to the third area of university activities, the application of ideas—experimenta fructifera, those that bear fruit. It is well known that UK universities carry out significant levels of innovative research but are generally less successful than countries such as the US in implementing the research into practice. Great research needs to benefit mankind, and technologically complex advances require capital and business expertise. Translation of university research into businesses, jobs and national prosperity is vital to make best use of British science. Sadly, our ability to exploit our science falls well short of our ability to do the science. It is scant reward for researchers, universities and the country if our science ends up being exploited abroad.

The need to improve technology transfer is widely recognised. Many reports have been produced recently, such as the Wilson report in 2012, the Witty review in 2013 and the latest document from the other place on Bridging the Valley of Death. The challenge now is making things happen on the ground and building really strong technology transfer organisations in all our universities.

One key problem is that universities generally have very limited budgets—for example, for patents—which forces technology transfer offices either to form spin-out companies too early, resulting in a very high rate of failure, or to drop patent applications before any value has been realised through licensing. Moreover, these limited budgets lead to reactive rather than proactive personnel, where the scientist-investor has to approach the understaffed technology transfer office rather than the other way round.

One happy win-win solution could be to engage the entry-level intake of management consultancies to act as talent scouts on campus. The scientist would benefit from exposure to the private sector mindset, perhaps during informal conversations over coffee, while the aspiring young business guru would seize the initiative of taking back potential projects to the tech transfer office. The management consultancy firm might eventually get a modest royalty, although one company, with which I have already discussed this idea, said that the benefit to junior staff of the experience itself would be sufficient compensation.

Another issue is that most universities either do not have budgets or have very limited budgets to carry out market engagement. National and international travel, attendance at exhibitions, dedicated business development resources and purchasing of market research reports can all prove prohibitively costly. But a lack of knowledge of customers and market opportunities has a negative impact on the quality of the licences negotiated and the spin-out companies created, as well as the number of industry-funded collaborative research projects.

That brings us to the appeal of university-based research to investors. Oxford University, for example, prefers to retain the IP and offer instead exclusive licence agreements. While the merit obviously lies in insuring against an investor failing to realise the true potential of the invention, as an opening condition in negotiations it is a disincentive. Moreover, the fees paid to the scientist on such a licensing deal would be fixed at 15%, with an eye-watering 85% retained by the university. This is hardly an attractive incentive to the scientist, any more than the alternative option of starting up a company where, before any investment is made, the university already owns 50% of the equity.

A further component of this translational research bottleneck is the academic mindset. Scientists often view IP as a fifth wheel and prefer to focus their time on publishing as much and as quickly as possible, because they are driven remorselessly by the current audit mentality of the various research assessment exercises of the past decade. It might help if knowledge transfer targets were included within performance in this review process.

More generally still, innovation through translational research is hampered by discrepant agendas between investors and scientists, where the latter have a distrust regarding patents and their intellectual freedom that may be misplaced, as well as a poor understanding of why an investor prioritises a solid management base.

Meanwhile, we lack appropriate funding models to allay the investor’s frequent and understandable concerns that the technology is incomprehensible to them, that the work is too high-risk and at too early a stage, that the funding required is too little to give a good return, that the burn rate is too high and that the exits are not obvious.

One possibility could be to set up a venture capital or angel syndicate giving small, private sector “grants” rather than investments. Relatively small but much needed amounts of money could be awarded, and those sums, along with the risk, would be diluted by the collective membership. In return, however, members of the syndicate would have privileged access to the research as it was developed and therefore first refusal on purchasing the IP and developing a spin-out as and when they saw the work maturing. Each member of the syndicate could operate independently, but other members might receive a small consideration from any future profits of the young company. The notion of private sector grants is not necessarily in the culture of either academics or of venture capitalists, so the Government might be the perfect third-person broker to get such a scheme up and running.

Other possible innovations could be, first, to make someone responsible for tech transfer—not least as it crosses multiple Whitehall departments and ministries—especially for life sciences, which will also include the Department of Health; secondly, to gather and publish statistics on how well each university is doing in proportion to its research strength; thirdly, to tie university funding to universities’ ability to do tech transfer; fourthly, to set up an inspectorate to drive quality; fifthly, to award prizes or grants and run competitions; and, sixthly, to identify a team of tech transfer champions to tour around and support tech transfer offices.

Lord Dearing eloquently stated back in 2002:

“Just as castles provided the source of strength for medieval towns, and factories provided prosperity in the industrial age, universities are the source of strength in the knowledge-based economy of the twenty-first century”.

We need to provide an environment where knowledge itself—ideas—can be disseminated for maximal understanding, can be generated with open and unfettered minds, and can be applied as effectively and comprehensively as possible.