Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Brown of Cambridge Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment for all the good reasons that we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. The Office for Students takes on powerful responsibilities to approve and disband universities and other higher education organisations with speedier timescales and lower thresholds. It is only right that criteria for these new organisations should be clearly set out. One reason given for the legislation has been that it is 25 years since the last Higher Education Bill in 1992. We do not question that some updating is necessary to reflect developments and to ensure that teaching has the same status as research, but we question whether 119 clauses and 12 schedules are necessary for this purpose. Could it be that our universities have flourished and retained world rankings because they have not been subjected to government interference? Within education, schools and colleges have suffered from changes imposed by different Governments and by the churn of Ministers seeking to make their mark, regardless of advice from professionals in the sector. Universities for some years have been relatively free of such assistance, and they have flourished as a result.

The importance of setting out the functions of universities is all the more crucial, given that increasing the numbers of universities and opening up new commercial providers sits oddly with other government policy. The country faces acute skill shortages: we need more builders, engineers, carers and technicians. The Government have ambitious plans to increase the numbers, quality and status of apprenticeships. How can that be achieved if they are also set on increasing provision of degrees, in whatever discipline—probably mainly business and other cheaper-to-run programmes—from an expanding range of organisations whose skills could be better focused on training and reskilling for real jobs in real shortage areas? In the interests of joined-up government, could the Minister say what discussions have taken place with the Skills Minister and his team over the unintended consequences for raising the profile of much-needed skills of implying, through this Bill, that degrees are the only game in town?

Without this clause, the first reference to universities comes in Clause 51. Not long ago, universities were pretty well the only option for higher education. Many of the expansions into higher education by colleges, for instance, have been welcome responses to demand and to opening opportunities for non-traditional students. This Bill brings to mind attempts to create corporate universities in the 1990s. There was British Aerospace’s Virtual University; Unipart U, which is now a virtual U; and the University for Industry—the misnomer of all time—which came into its own only when it abandoned any claims on the title of university and changed its name to learndirect. But those initiatives morphed into closer collaboration between academia and industry, to the benefit of both, and with both contributing their different skills and ethos. Encouraging more such partnerships would surely be better for students, employers and the country than trying to widen and potentially weaken the range of higher education providers.

The criteria in this amendment provide safeguards that the core functions and values of British universities will be protected. It would be sadly ironic if the Bill produced a double whammy of undermining efforts to raise the standing and importance of skills, while damaging the standing and reputation of UK universities. There is much at stake in this Bill. We look forward to working with Ministers to ensure that market forces, competition and red tape are not allowed to damage our world-ranking universities. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope that he feels able to accept the amendment.

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to this important amendment and speak in support of it. I declare my interests in higher education, as indicated in the register, and declare and acknowledge the research support from colleagues at Universities UK and my university, Aston University.

As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, says, UK universities have an exceptional international reputation for teaching and scholarship in many forms. They are places where teaching and research are intimately interwoven. Undergraduate programmes benefit from research-based learning, and graduate students and researchers are beneficially involved in teaching. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Stern, commented very positively on that in his recent review of the research excellence framework. Universities are places where new academic fields grow from interactions between colleagues in different disciplines, and places where the encouragement of independent thought and the challenge to the status quo delivers technological change and innovation. Indeed, that is why so many large companies, such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, engage closely with universities—for example, through their university technology centres—to ensure that academics can challenge the stove-pipe thinking that can develop in large corporations.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has commented, the autonomy of UK universities is recognised by our European colleagues as key to their exceptional positions in the ranking tables. Surely a broad and inclusive definition of the functions of something as important as a university in the UK is to be welcomed. That proposed in the amendment encompasses the key ingredients: autonomy; free speech; academic freedom; interdisciplinarity; teaching, scholarship and research; and, of course, the mission to contribute to society. We must recognise that being a higher education provider, delivering high-quality teaching, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for being a university. I look forward to the Minister’s response in this area.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I made my maiden speech some 12 years ago on the overregulation of universities and I cannot resist returning to that subject. Our worldwide success is now under threat: the Government are risking killing off the goose that lays the golden eggs, instead of cherishing and fostering university autonomy. The autonomy of higher education is not only valuable to the universities and their surroundings; it is the hallmark of a democratic and civilised, progressive society. You can be sure that when the Government interfere in who may teach and who may study at universities and which universities may exist, the entire system of democratic governance is under threat. In the 1930s, thousands—some of whom were future Nobel laureates—fled central Europe to come here. Now they flee from universities in the Middle East, Zimbabwe and China. Our universities’ autonomy is affected by low salaries, short-term employment, lack of tenure and, now, gagging clauses on former employees. The risk inherent in the Bill, which focuses so much on teaching excellence, is that it neglects the very thing that lays the foundation for excellence and established the global dominance of our UK universities, which are a haven for the best threatened academics in the world.

There are some limits in the Bill on ministerial interference in certain respects, but they do not add up to a clear and consistent safeguard for academic autonomy. On the contrary, by protecting that principle only in some cases it is left open to interpretation that other areas are not so protected. If the Secretary of State may issue guidance about particular courses of study, and if a government quango can shut down an existing university, then autonomy is curtailed. The power granted to vary and revoke degree-awarding powers of any university, regardless of its length of establishment, is a dangerous weapon in the hands of the OfS. It could also be used to coerce universities and make them toe the line in the face of, say, pressure by the Government to respond to short-term market forces or perceived national needs.

On uniformity of excellence in teaching, I always say that Isaiah Berlin’s PowerPoint would not have been up to scratch, and Stanley de Smith, the originator of the law of judicial review—in the news every day now—would have been castigated for talking way above the heads of his audience while smoking on the edge of the platform, which was acceptable in those days. Nearly all academics who made a difference did so precisely because they did not conform to the bureaucratic ideal. The culture of box ticking and moving lecturers around as if they were footballers for transfer is already taking hold. The system of research funding has boosted elite universities at the expense of others, as a certainty. The teaching excellence framework will make this worse. Wealth creation and higher salaries for graduates needing to be ready for employment in business and market-driven schemes will, in themselves, do nothing to engender the spirit for which our universities are renowned and which brings—and I hope will continue to bring—to them the most ambitious and creative students from the Far East, Russia, the United States and India.