Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe and Lord Bishop of Durham

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Kerslake. I preface my contribution to this debate by reiterating my concerns about the Government’s proposals to make it easier for alternative providers to award degrees and subsequently to achieve university title. I have not been reassured by any of the Minister’s explanations or by the detailed letters he has so courteously sent us during our debates over the last two weeks. The Government want to further diversify the sector. Yes, we need to reach potential students with different offerings and different types of courses, and in parts of the country that are poorly served. Of course, I support that, but not at the risk of selling these students a pig a poke.

There are enough examples from the States in particular which should give us pause for thought. There is one very familiar name, which I will not mention, but the closure of one of the largest for-profit providers, Corinthian Colleges, has left 16,000 students without certificates or degrees. The risk that the same could happen here does not seem even to be acknowledged by the Government. The Government’s commitment to diversifying the sector will be undermined by introducing this additional risk for students, because the loss of reputation will send a very negative ripple across the whole sector and abroad.

Students are at the heart of the Bill, yet it is students who will suffer if private providers that are going to be given the benefit of the doubt with probationary DAPs cannot deliver, or go under. A recent QAA report highlighted the importance of new entrants working closely with existing providers through the well-established validation procedures. On the whole, these validation arrangements have worked very well and we have not been offered any convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Cohen, whose university has successfully gone through this process, said that it worked well and that they learned a lot from it. Of course, if the Bill can improve these validation relationships for the benefit of students, so much the better.

I can understand that potential entrants to the market are frustrated that they have to prove themselves against strict criteria. But it is surely far better for students, and probably in the long term for the providers themselves, that there are high standards for entry which minimise the risk of institutional failure. Why do we need to fast-track? It is not as if we are desperately short of universities. There are around 130 well-established institutions; nor are we short of alternative providers. Nobody seems to know the exact figure, although I hope the Bill’s provisions on registration will correct that. The DfE thinks that there are about 400 which receive some sort of taxpayer funding. A much smaller number has been awarded degree-awarding powers. So far these providers have made a limited contribution to diversity. They are focused largely on law, business and finance, and BPP, we were told, is going into nursing. They are mostly in London and the south-east, rather than in the so-called cold spots, where provision is limited or non-existent. That is scarcely surprising as they need to be in the more lucrative markets to satisfy shareholders of the business’s viability. I do not see that that is changing, even if these new arrangements are introduced.

Finally, who really benefits from probationary DAPs? It is not students, who are essentially paying to be guinea pigs for a new provider; but possibly not even new providers, who may find the label “probationary” more of a challenge when recruiting students and staff than they might as new institutions with robust validation arrangements. I urge the Government to think extremely carefully about this. In doing that I support Amendments 251, 252 and 259.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, my friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth is unable to be in his place this evening, but in his place I bring before your Lordships Amendment 268A. I endorse all the general comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, about the Cathedrals Group of universities. While I am not armed with the expertise, his amendments appear to make sense for the particular purpose.

I am sure that almost all noble Lords in the Committee are aware that the Archbishop of Canterbury has possessed the power to confer degrees since the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533. Certainly the landscape of higher education has changed in the almost 500 years since then, when the only other English degree-awarding institutions were Oxford and Cambridge. The Higher Education and Research Bill that we are rightly considering so carefully is very welcome in recognising that changing landscape and legislating to ensure that the sector continues to evolve as successfully as it has done so far.

Amendment 268A deals with a particular corner of that landscape and it may help to indicate briefly how this power is exercised. Lambeth degrees, as they are often informally called, are now issued in one of two distinct ways. The first is following examination or thesis, under the direction of the Archbishop’s Examination in Theology, usually referred to as the AET. Since 2007, the AET has been offered as an MPhil research degree, with the opportunity to extend to a PhD. These research courses are offered at a level that meets QAA requirements but at a reasonable cost and with user-friendly access. Although allocated research supervisors will be fully qualified to offer guidance and criticism, the emphasis is on individual research, requiring a high level of self-motivation and commitment to study. Students on the AET have access to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator and although, as one document rather charmingly puts it,

“the Archbishop is not a university”,

this provision is included within the current HEFCE register.