Higher Education: Funding

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, the Browne report makes a significant contribution to the debate about the future of higher education in this country, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, and the others who were involved in producing it. It is right to say that universities need further funding to sustain their pre-eminence and that students should make a significant contribution to their education. As the Minister said, that education confers distinct career advantages and monetary gains. It is right to reject a graduate tax for several reasons, one being that it would take some 20 years before there was any return.

These things having been said, I find myself in fundamental disagreement with the underlying philosophy of the report and, therefore, with some of its emphasis. It treats higher education as a market in which students are consumers, but higher education is not a market, at least in any orthodox sense. Universities are a public good and are recognised as such everywhere in the world, including in the United States. In other words, they provide benefits from which all citizens gain. These benefits go far beyond utilitarian benefits, which are pointed up in the report. They are far more than just the training of doctors, scientists, engineers and so forth. Universities educate for citizenship. They help create the cosmopolitan outlook that is so fundamental in a diverse, globalising world. This impact stretches well beyond those who receive a university education. It is vital to stress that the arts, humanities and social sciences play an essential role in fostering such a cosmopolitan outlook.

If the report is implemented as it stands, we risk ending up with the worst aspects of the American university system without its redeeming features. I would point out to noble Lords that these redeeming features are substantial. I will list four of them. First, top universities in the United States can operate a “needs-blind” admission system because of the large endowments that they have. British universities will never approach those endowments, certainly in anything like the near future, and will not be able to operate such a system, which is of direct and immediate help to students from poorer backgrounds.

Secondly, in the United States, students can work their way through university because of the credit system, which makes it easy for students to drop in and drop out of university and later resume their university courses. We have kind of analogues here, but we do not have the same system, especially as affects the top universities. This favours students from poorer backgrounds in the United States. I welcome the stress on part-time degrees, but it does not make up for this difference, which is quite fundamental in the nature of university courses in this country.

Thirdly, the state university system is very prominent in the United States. It plays an important part in the university system as a whole. The state university system is in some part, and in some states in large part, publicly funded. Home students pay relatively low fees. This also helps students from poorer backgrounds.

Finally, states such as California have a wonderful system of community colleges. Their FE colleges have some similarities to ours, but they are not a direct analogue. The community colleges allow students from poorer backgrounds to get in and to work their way through their degrees, but they also act as feeder institutions for the top universities. I used to teach at the University of California, which has such a system, at UCLA, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. It was terrific to see students who started right at the bottom of the system get into the elite universities. This included students from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds and underprivileged backgrounds.

These factors by and large do not apply in the United Kingdom. We therefore have to look for other safeguards. Lacking these mitigating factors, the reforms proposed in the report would unquestionably accentuate inequalities and deter poorer students. Richer parents will pay their children’s fees up front, consolidating a track of privilege that already links private schools and the elite universities.

Just as important—and this worries me a lot, given what I have said about the public nature of higher education—the arts and humanities could go into steep decline if we have simply a student finance driven system, with leading departments having to close. According to the QS rankings, we have the number one university in the world—Cambridge. We have four other universities in the top 10. We do not really need as radical a market-driven approach to support and expand the system that we already have. I look to the Liberal Democratic segment of the coalition to try to ensure that social justice remains as important as excellence in whatever emerges from the debate on this report.

It seems relatively easy to see what kind of system you could have which could reconcile these things. It would have three components. First, the massive cuts that universities are going to be asked to take could be reduced. They probably would have to be if there was going to be a net benefit to universities. Secondly, fees should be capped—at around £7,000. That will ensure that quite a lot of money goes into the system, but would also prevent some of the inegalitarian consequences which otherwise will ensue.

Thirdly, the Government should consider introducing specific support for the arts, humanities and social sciences, which are an elemental part of university education. We cannot allow those subjects simply to decline or diminish on the basis of a simple market-driven system. We need some way of reconciling that with support for these essential subjects which contribute so much to citizenship.

In conclusion, it is possible to preserve and enhance excellence in a system that also preserves the essential public benefits which universities offer and which protects the interests of those from deprived backgrounds.