Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

Perhaps I may add to my earlier remarks. This proposed new clause is absolute anathema to those of us who are chancellors of substantial private universities set up under the 2004 legislation and regulated to the hilt. My organisation, BPP, has 20,000 students, we have 5,000 to 6,000 undergraduates and we make a profit. We charge £5,000 a year, which is very much less than £9,000 a year, for a three-year degree, and £6,000 a year for a two-year degree. We have part-time degrees all over the place and we offer degree-awarding apprenticeships. We are fairly specialised. We stick within the general field of law and business, although we have just branched out into nursing and medicine—so tomorrow the world.

However, none of that is envisaged in the clause produced by my noble friend Lord Stevenson. I cannot believe that this House intends to outlaw this kind of university. Indeed, you can hardly do so because BPP was granted university status in 2013 after four heavy-duty years of regulation—and we are still heavily regulated, which we do not mind at all.

We would all be perfectly happy with the autonomy clause. For BPP, autonomy is guaranteed by a very tough academic council. You try telling the academic council what to do. That is just impossible—and occasionally it frustrates things that the management would like to do.

Therefore, we really do have to rethink this and, as my noble friend said, bottom out what we mean by “for-profit universities”. I cannot believe that BPP is the only organisation that would be affected by this proposal, yet it is the only one of any size that I can describe. Further on in the debate I will want to emphasise that we went through four years of heavy-duty regulation to get there. To be honest, that is about what it took to convert us from a first-class, long-established training establishment to something that had proper academic qualifications and worked as a university. Therefore, I suggest that we look very carefully at probationary degree-awarding powers. I feel equally strongly about the idea of outlawing private sector universities. There would be one set of things called UK universities, which would be the gold standard, and then there would be the rest of us. What would that say about the 2004 legislation—or indeed about the future of universities in this country? We will have to think about this rather carefully.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment on the basis that it seemed to contain some things that were very worthy of discussion. As we have heard, this is obviously a rather controversial area, but it gives us another chance to look closely at what we understand by universities and at what characteristics in them we value.

There is much to support the ongoing role of the Privy Council in the establishment of universities, providing as it does impartiality, expertise and universal standing in the awarding of royal charters. This clause would also allow for Acts of Parliament—but, again, it is open to debate as to whether there should be other sources of authority. There is a general anxiety that there should be authoritative powers to set up new universities because there is a concern that the Bill as it stands seems to give a fairly free hand for new universities to be set up without necessarily the standards that we have all grown accustomed to.

The other amendments in this group to which I have added my name are all to do with autonomy, which we discussed at great length in the debate on Amendment 1. The success of universities depends on their ability to take their own decisions, so that they can be flexible and responsible to the environment in which they are working and decide for themselves on courses, staffing and admissions. The Bill as drafted includes a number of areas where a future regime could seek to intervene in matters that are for individual institutions. Autonomy has been recognised as providing a key competitive advantage and, indeed, has been identified as a critical factor in making the UK the top performer in the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending in tertiary education. These amendments would enshrine university autonomy in the Bill.

We welcome the Government’s amendment that states:

“Guidance framed by reference to a particular course of study must not guide the OfS to perform a function in a way which prohibits or requires the provision of a particular course of study”.

This addresses concerns about the Government directing individual institutions on which courses they can open or close. However, autonomy is such a fundamental principle of the UK higher education system that we would want the Bill to go further. The amendments in this group enshrine that.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 65 and give my general support to the other amendments in the group. I first declare my interest as chair of Sheffield Hallam University’s board of governors.

Free institutions are a fundamental part of a truly democratic society. We sadly know that simply having the power to vote is not in itself a guarantee of a democratic and free society—you need only to look at Russia to see an example of that. For me, the issue of free institutions is not simply about the benefit to the institution itself but is fundamental to an open society. That is true of a free press but, in my view, it is equally true of free universities. This has been a fundamental tenet of thinking for a long time. Indeed, there is unanimous agreement across all parties about the issue of institutional autonomy.

The question therefore is: why does the issue arise now? I am afraid that it arises precisely because of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, put it well when he said that the Bill itself has raised concerns and questions about institutional autonomy. Yet we would all sign up to the freedom of universities to decide which courses they run, which staff they employ and which students they choose to admit or not admit.

The very particular concern goes to the powers given to the Secretary of State and to the new Office for Students. Others have spoken on this at length and I will not repeat that. However, I will cite three examples that concern me. First, the threshold for the OfS to undertake action against a university is if it appears to the OfS—I emphasise “appears”—that it has breached the conditions of its registration. Surely that is too broad a basis on which to intervene. Secondly, the Bill gives the OfS the power to search and enter the premises of an HE provider registered with it, subject to a court order. Surely that should be limited to situations where there is a concern about fraud or severe financial mismanagement. It is too open at the moment.

Thirdly, the Bill allows the Secretary of State to frame the guidance given to the OfS by reference to particular courses. As this House will know, that contrasts sharply with the current legislation—the 1992 Act—in which the Secretary of State is specifically forbidden from setting guidance to HEFCE in this way. Those are three very specific examples of why this Bill causes concern.