Higher Education: Affordability and Quality

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of King’s College London and as an honorary fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. At this stage of the debate, I will just draw out a few of the salient points that we have heard so far and pose one or two related questions.

The first is that I particularly commend the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, which drew attention to the latest data published by the IFS. Indeed, although he did not mention it, we have seen new data from the Department for Education this month which demonstrates that graduates go on to earn higher average salaries even when compared with those who have similar GCSEs but did not go to university. That is clearly encouraging.

It is also encouraging that on 11 June we saw revealed that the number of students who view their university course as “good value for money” has risen to its highest level in more than a decade, and in fact, only 7% of students now say that, with hindsight, they would have preferred not to go into higher education. Interestingly, in contrast with that, when you ask the general public what they think the student response would be, they say that about 40% of students probably have regret, although it is only 7%. That is the good news.

However, as we have heard extensively, there is absolutely no grounds for complacency. For students, living costs are an increasing burden, such that more than two-thirds of full-time undergraduates now have paid jobs in term time. Teaching is under stress. The figures from Universities UK suggest that English universities now get £6.4 billion less for teaching, in real terms, than they did a decade ago. With tuition fees going up with inflation—in other words, staying flat in real terms—that £6.4 billion pressure is now baked in. So for students and teaching there are significant grounds for concern, as there are for research.

This week, the political headlines have been dominated by the £5 billion black hole in the defence investment plan, but there is a £5.4 billion black hole in the full economic costs of research recovery, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out. On average, for every £1 of research that universities undertake, they can recover only 66p. This combination of pressures on students, teaching and research means that something will have to give.

While we tell ourselves about the brilliance of British universities—which I entirely endorse—these measures are based on the rear-view mirror to some extent, and if we are not careful, they are resting on past glories. The proportion of field-weighted citations in top decile publications in which UK researchers have participated worldwide has fallen from 11.5% a decade ago to 8% now. We may pat ourselves on the back, because it is only 6% in Germany and 3.2% in France, but in India it has grown over that decade from 3% to 9.6%; and in China, from 13.5% to 35%. So we have no grounds for complacency; we need a step change in teaching and research.

In that context, we need to avoid acts of self-harm as we do so. Had the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, spoken, he might have referred to the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which proposed reductions of up to 30% in the funding for some areas of astronomy, and particle and nuclear physics, which is set to be extremely damaging for those disciplines.

One question I want to pose to the Minister is about a further potential act of self-harm that the Daily Telegraph reported on this week, which the Government have apparently been contemplating. I hope she confirms that that is not the case. It is, as part of a new reset deal with the EU, to offer EU students the automatic ability to access English universities at home tuition rates. If that were the case, it would be a hit of another £580 million to British universities. The consequences would be home students displaced by EU students, a further deterioration in the teaching experience and a further hit for research. In response to that piece in the Telegraph, the government spokesperson said:

“We do not recognise these claims”—


a classic non-denial denial. I invite the Minister to say, on the record, that the Government will not put this on the table and sell British students down the river, as part of an EU reset to the tune of £580 million.