Higher Education (Fee Limits for Accelerated Courses) (England) Regulations 2018

Lord Winston Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the proposals brought to us today by the Minister. I am sure that he is right that this adds an extra element to the options available to prospective students, and it certainly therefore brings more diversity into the system. I should draw noble Lords’ attention to my interests as set out in the register as chancellor of the University of Leicester, an adviser to 2U and a visiting professor at King’s College, London.

I am sure that the Minister was right that there will be some mature students—I was fascinated by what the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, just said—for whom the prospect of studying so briskly in two years will make this an attractive option. However, for many 18 year-olds, the prospect of three years away from home studying a course at that length will remain very attractive. In fact, I would be so bold as to make a modest bet with the Minister or anyone else who will take me on that in the coming years the increase in the number of students studying for four years will be greater than the increase in the number of students studying for two years.

Believe it or not, quite a lot of students enjoy being at university. The Minister quoted a student as saying that the advantage of this would be that it would minimise the time at university. There may be some students who think like that but, in my experience, many students enjoy their three years, and the biggest single surge in demand in higher education at the moment is for master’s degrees—adding an extra year to the time at university. So if we look at where the growth in higher education is coming from, I think we are very likely to see it in master’s degrees rather than in two-year courses.

I have two questions for the Minister. First, for those of a suspicious cast of mind, when we see that this full degree is to be delivered for a total fee cost of £22,000 over two years, we wonder what would happen if £22,000 were divided by three and became a new fee total for a three-year course—something slightly over £7,000. Can the Minister assure us that it would be a serious mistake for us to worry about such calculations? Will he assure us that he will take to heart the very interesting intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Luce, who made a point about the costs that an exceptionally efficient and well-respected university, the University of Buckingham, encountered? The argument was that £11,000 times two was insufficient resource for the University of Buckingham, so we can presume that any such reduction in fees would not provide the resource that even an efficient and well-regarded university such as Buckingham would require in order to educate its students.

As we are straying into this territory, will the Minister say whether there is any information that he can share with noble Lords about the current likely timetable for the publication of the Augar review?

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I must be forgiven, but I have some misgivings about the way the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, rather glossed over the possible disadvantages of an accelerated degree. I shall speak very briefly about this. I am an employee of a Russell group university which has a minimum three-year course. Some courses are longer. One of our great difficulties, particularly with scientists, is to understand and recognise that, increasingly from the age of 15, young people are learning more and more about less and less. Knowledge is expanding exponentially, and there is a huge amount of extra learning involved. One of the problems for our society is that increasingly we have become so specialised that we forget many of the societal values, the ethical issues and the other problems that a graduate has to recognise. Universities are not just about learning to do a job better; they are also about learning more about our humanity and what makes us human.

When I was at university, I did not learn how to become a doctor—in fact, it would have been useless to try to become a doctor from my course—and I did not learn anything about molecular biology, but I am now both a doctor and a scientist. I had time to read Chaucer and Thomas Hardy, for example. I looked at a whole range of things; I learned film as an art form. That makes a very big difference to a student’s general experience at university. For me, the point of being at university was to widen my horizons, not to narrow them.

Therefore, when the Minister comes to measure the impact of these accelerated courses, which I think he has somewhat glossed over, how does he intend to ensure that the kind of metrics that we apply are not based simply on results or the number of people in employment, but also on how these students, when they graduate, see themselves as part of society so that they act in an effective way to support society; they actually understand how to communicate with people and they understand the ethics of what they are doing, whether they are in the humanities or the sciences? It seems to be something that is easily forgotten as we learn more and more about less and less.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome the development of accelerated degrees but, of course, academic integrity and excellence has to be the hallmark of any degree, and it certainly must be the same for accelerated degrees. I was interested in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and his bet. More and more young people who go to university realise that getting a degree is good, but they think that if they want to do that particular job they have to get a first. Now they are saying that if they want to get that job, it is not just about getting a first: it is about getting a master’s, a distinction definitely and maybe a merit. I see a pattern that students might well go and do three years at university: two years doing their accelerated degree and a year doing the master’s. It would be a three-year package to get their first degree and a master’s.

I have always been slightly bemused about the student experience that we have heard about. Students usually finish at the beginning of June and go back in mid-September. Many students would want to carry on with that sort of student experience and do all the things that being a student implies. It is not just about academic work and rigour: it is about socialising, discovering yourself and so on. That will continue and long may it continue.

I have two concerns that other noble Lords have mentioned. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that accelerated degrees tend to be limited to certain subjects, particularly business studies and languages. We need to hear from the Minister how we can ensure that universities are properly funded so that they are able to offer courses for the subjects that he mentioned, such as engineering or the sciences, to increase student choice.

My second concern, which a number of people have mentioned, is the whole business of mature students. We see a decline in their numbers and a decline in the number of people doing Open University courses. What does the Minister have to say about this, because the finances do not really work for mature students and we need to ensure that they have those opportunities? I heard the suggestion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. I am not convinced that the Government would actually do that, but we need to be inventive to ensure that those mature students are actually returning to higher education.