Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, coming up the escalators at Euston station, you see a number of illuminated signs telling you that sport science at Liverpool John Moores University is first class. I reflect on seeing this advert that John Moores is indeed first class in sport science and that our UK universities are first class and among the best in the world. So why are we potentially threatening our successful UK HE sector with a Bill that was devised before Brexit, when universities now face even greater uncertainties as a result of that referendum? On the other hand, higher education legislation tends to occur only once every dozen years or so—1992, 2004 and 2016—so the Bill does provide an opportunity to debate important issues facing higher education institutions and students.

Judging by the vast number of briefings that have been sent and the number of speakers at this Second Reading, that opportunity needs fulfilling. There is real concern among the university sector about its independence, and the move to transfer oversight from the Privy Council to the Office for Students potentially puts that in jeopardy. The Government are being very reassuring on this, but why do it? We need to ensure that our universities are independent of government, and oversight by the Privy Council provides this.

The teaching excellence framework will ensure quality teaching in our universities. But will it? The TEF will be a highly bureaucratic exercise that will not and cannot measure teaching quality. Its metrics will focus on aspects such as graduate destinations—which are beyond universities’ control—and student satisfaction scores, which research shows are not correlated with educational outcomes and exhibit bias against women and minority-ethnic lecturers. If we really want to develop teaching quality in our universities, providing universities with the skills and opportunities to develop their teaching workforce is more important. Keeping lecturers on zero-hours and fixed-term contracts does not bring out the full teaching potential of a university lecturer.

Deregulation and an influx of new, and possibly low-quality, providers will negatively affect existing universities and local communities. For-profit providers will negatively affect existing universities, because private providers make no money by providing anything surplus to profit: no community outreach, no research, no public engagement, no work with local schools and colleges, no adult education, no student unions, often no libraries, and often with staff employed on insecure and low-wage contracts. These poorly regulated private providers will devalue degrees with subprime qualifications. We already see in private colleges where the degrees are validated by an existing university very high drop-out rates and poor pass rates—not to mention the quality of the faculties and teaching.

Many universities like to hang banners from their estate proclaiming all sorts of positive statements about themselves. Do we really want to see banners which say this is a gold or silver institution? I guess there will not be many proclaiming bronze status. This will be a terrible message for prospective students and create a very divisive HE sector, which will see the gold standard universities prospering even further while the bronze become the poor relations. I can just hear it now: “Oh, you only went to a bronze one?”. Overseas students will view our system as a whole in a very different light. I cannot see many overseas students choosing a bronze-marked university, and more students will choose to bypass the UK. Is this where we really want to go with our first-class, world-beating HE sector?

The Bill does give us the opportunity to consider some important HE issues in areas such as student loan repayment conditions, overseas students, mental health improvement plans, access and participation agreements, and perhaps even informing students how their fees are spent. I am sure that, with the tremendous expertise that exists among your Lordships and a Government who hopefully are in listening mode, we can ensure that we agree a Bill which retains all that is world class about our universities and their research work.