Higher Education

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, last year, as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, I spoke at the QS world university rankings conference in India. I spoke with pride as, with less than 1% of the world’s population, the UK has four of the top 10 universities in the world. The latest QS rankings show Cambridge and Oxford second and third. I declare my interests as an honorary fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; an ambassador for the Cambridge Judge Business School, where I am conducting research as we speak; and a Bynum Tudor fellow at Kellogg College of the University of Oxford. His Majesty the King is a Bynum Tudor fellow, as was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I am also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation at Saïd Business School in Oxford.

The QS rankings go further: 17 of the top 100 universities in the world—including the University of Birmingham, where I am proud to be chancellor—are British. This is fantastic, yet this Government have frozen fees at £9,250 for many years, so the real value of those fees is about £6,000. Inflation has meant that costs have gone up, but we are still meant to produce the best universities in the world with our hands tied behind our backs.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for his brilliant opening speech and for initiating this debate. Universities UK states very clearly that:

“The higher education sector creates enormous economic impact across the country… contributing over £130 billion”,


that universities “support more than … 768,000” jobs, and that

“UK higher education providers … educated approximately 2.9 million students”.

This is a really important part of our economy. In October 2023, there was a report written as part of the Economy 2030 inquiry by the Resolution Foundation and Nuffield Foundation—the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, was also involved. It set out how higher education can improve productivity and drive economic growth, with four groups of benefits that higher education can offer individuals and society, including longer life expectancy, better health, higher earnings, less likelihood to be unemployed, lower crime rate, being more likely to volunteer and vote, more tax receipts and increased exporting. This is music to my ears.

Some 24% of students enrolling in higher education institutions in 2021-22 were non-UK. We now have over 600,000 international students—which I will come back to. Business and management is the popular subject, with 19% of all students studying it. I am patron of the Small Business Charter—I took over from the noble Lord, Lord Young—and we accredit business schools around the country with the Chartered Association of Business Schools to be able to teach SMEs. I am also on the council of the Help to Grow management scheme, which provides mini MBAs for businesses where they pay only £750. This is the value of our business schools.

The British Academy, in a report, said in relation to higher education entrepreneurship that many higher education institutions are incubating future economic disruptors across all disciplines. I came up with the idea for Cobra Beer when I was studying law at Cambridge University. The innovation mindset is foundational to UK higher education. Some 80% of UK higher education research is assessed as world-leading and internationally excellent. The return on investment for public and private R&D is estimated at 20%; the sector was responsible for 25% of UK R&D. This is amazing, yet we as a country spend only 1.7% of GDP on R&D and innovation, versus America’s 3.2%—just imagine if we spent more.

Just a week ago, Bhaskar Vira, the pro-vice-chancellor for education at the University of Cambridge, showed me the brilliant report The Economic Impact of the University of Cambridge, which sets out how the university contributes nearly £30 billion to the UK economy and supports more than 86,000 jobs across the economy.

Before I conclude, as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Students, president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs—UKCISA—and a former international student myself, I must touch on international students. HEPI pointed out last year that international students bring in £42 billion to our economy. I remember fighting in this House in 2007 to bring in the two-year post-graduation work visa. It was brought in in 2008 by a Labour Government, taken away in 2012 by Theresa May as Home Secretary, and brought back in by Boris Johnson in 2021. Just look at how the number of international students has rocketed; yet this Government seem to have an anti-international student attitude—an anti-immigration attitude. We need to take international students out of the net migration figures. It would almost halve that figure.

This is the strongest element of soft power that we have in this country: 25% of world leaders have been educated at UK universities, 25% at US universities, and the other 50% across all the other countries in the world put together. Let us celebrate international students and celebrate our universities. Our universities are the jewel in this nation’s crown.