Higher Education: Funding

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I am grateful to the doughty noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for initiating this debate and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on his thoughtful maiden speech. My interest in these issues is longstanding. I am currently the president of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and was recently elected to serve as the principal of Mansfield College, Oxford—a post that I will take up next year.

In the mid-1990s, I chaired an inquiry—a commission—into widening participation in further education. As a result, a foundation in my name, of which I am president, was established by that sector. It supports further education students from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education. We do that through bursaries, mentoring and work placements. It is those students who face the most serious disadvantage and who triumph against the odds, as well as the many more who have the potential to succeed in higher education but who have never been afforded the opportunity, who are at the forefront of my mind.

The recommendation to remove the cap on tuition fees concerns me greatly. It is said that higher fees and student debt do not deter those from poorer backgrounds from applying to university. I listened with interest to those Members of this House who suggested that. That assertion is supported apparently by the increasing application rates to UK universities, but they are increasing to the point where this summer huge numbers of students were denied a place at university because the outgoing and incoming Governments were unwilling to provide the funding for the number of places necessary to meet that record demand.

However, we must not be too complacent about the issues of equity and access to higher education. I know that first hand from the many students who come through the Kennedy bursary scheme. These include young women who became pregnant at the age of 15 or 16, but who return to education in their 20s, or young men who get into trouble and cannot survive at secondary school, but see the light again in their 20s or later. Many of them are people who are overcoming huge disadvantages and hurdles. They are very easily disincentivised if they think that they will face long-term debt once they go into the workplace.

Taken separately, fees, grants and loans each have an effect on participation in higher education. The Institute for Fiscal Studies—not popular with the current Government, but a substantial body—gave evidence to the Browne review and stated that higher fees in fact have a deterrent effect on participation. My noble friend Lady Morris explained that there was clearly a cut-off point at which it was felt by less well off families that they just could not meet the challenge. When the fees were increased in 2006, the negative impact was outweighed by the positive impact of increasing student support. The Government must be mindful of that evidence as they plan their response to the recommendations of the Browne review and not tip the balance in the wrong direction, giving the disadvantaged the sense that higher education is beyond their reach.

Like other noble Lords, I welcome some of the proposals. The disparities between the treatment of full-time and part-time students have also been one of my longstanding concerns. They have been totally unjustifiable. Part-time study often provides a second chance to those who missed out earlier in their lives, and it is therefore right that they should receive access and the same support as full-time students in the form of loans to cover their tuition fees. It is particularly good that they will not have to pay those fees up-front. I also welcome the rebalancing of levels of grants and loans to those students. However, one thing that I will raise is that there was no mention of London weighting to reflect the higher costs associated with living and studying in our capital city.

I return to the issue of higher fees. I remain to be convinced that allowing universities to charge higher fees, thereby introducing a market in the price of courses, will not leave students, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, choosing courses based on cost rather than suitability. All the evidence is that students from disadvantaged backgrounds choose the university closest to home and choose courses in subjects where they have shown the most talent at school. Often, they are much more anxious about taking on courses of a different kind, such as law and medicine. When so many selective universities continue to struggle to guarantee fair access to those from underrepresented backgrounds in spite of their many efforts to do so, it seems bizarre that the Government should consider adding higher course costs to the catalogue of factors that prevent some of our brightest students from accessing our most academically elite universities. The vista of a fee debt being carried into the future is the stuff of nightmares for many working-class people.

This is all the more concerning given the proposed changes to the arrangements for monitoring the performance of institutions in widening participation and in providing financial support. We have heard about the creation of a new superquango, the higher education council. It is understood that universities will have to agree an access commitment, with what the report describes as tougher scrutiny taking place. This is all remarkably vague and noncommittal. I notice that the requirement that institutions charging the maximum fee must offer a minimum bursary to students from disadvantaged backgrounds—one of the main concessions that Back-Benchers obtained in 2004—has been abandoned by the Browne review. I should like to see an absolute requirement to provide bursaries, particularly for those universities that will charge more. There can be no doubt that the current system of institutional bursaries is far too complex, and I welcome any simplification. Clearly it is true that people receive poor advice and guidance, and any improvement on that front is a benefit. However, what we in the Kennedy Foundation have discovered is that there is a real need for mentoring as well as money if we are going to provide any package of support to those who are disadvantaged.

One impressive element of Mansfield College, Oxford, is that it was the first college to embrace the ideas of widening participation and of students coming from further education to Oxbridge. I should like to see that extended. Grants for students must be the quid pro quo for any lifting of the limit on the charges that universities can make. I am concerned that we will see the arrival of Tina. Noble Lords may wonder who she is. Tina is the mantra that we hear too often nowadays: there is no alternative. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, said it was no longer practicable to leave students without debt. I say to the House that this will have a very damaging effect on the legal profession, in which I have had a very satisfying career. That will not be possible for young people from the kind of background that I came from, because of mounting debt.

I will mention one other area that deeply concerns me. The plan to remove all public subsidy for degree courses in the arts, social sciences and humanities makes no sense, economically or culturally. The Browne proposals would remove nearly all of core funding in some universities. Certainly, this is true for SOAS. This is in effect the privatising of our teaching function. The implication is that there is no benefit to society in students taking degrees in Arabic, history or development studies, which is quite evidently untrue. The other day the Deputy Prime Minister said that the Government had looked carefully at the case for a graduate tax, but had dismissed it as unworkable and unfair. I am disappointed that the report of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, did not consider the alternative put forward by the National Union of Students. It submitted its own fully costed and economically tested proposal, not for a lifetime graduate tax but for a progressive graduate contribution model that would have seen payments linked to earnings for a fixed period of 15 years only—so there would have been an end in view. This would have had the advantage of eliminating the concept of tuition fees—and debt linked to fees—altogether. However, it seems that those proposals have not been examined and I ask the Government to look at them.

I will say finally that education changed my life—something that is true for a number of Members of this House. My parents left school at 14, my older sisters at 15. Having the opportunity to study law in London turned my life around in immeasurable ways—not just in the utilitarian sense of allowing me to become a lawyer and improve my earning capacity. I had a fulfilling and stimulating career, but it also enriched me in many other ways; for example, in the friendships that I had with people from totally different backgrounds from those I would otherwise have known. I learnt about worlds far beyond the one that I grew up in. I learnt about politics, music, literature and art, which I knew nothing about in my own home. I learnt about other cultures and traditions, and I acquired habits of learning and disciplines of mind. That is what education does for people. However, it is not just of value to those who receive it. Education has been a source of social vitality, and the more people we include in the community of learning, the greater the benefit to us all. Education strengthens the ties that bind people. It takes fear out of difference and encourages tolerance. It is the means by which our values and our wisdom as a society are shared and transmitted across generations, and it helps people to see how the world ticks. It turns them into better citizens.

That is why I think that the review of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, is wrong in essence. Universities must not be treated as purveyors of a commodity, with students as consumers. Like the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, I see our universities as part of our nation's common wealth. As such, they deserve investment, and our students deserve support as a government priority. It is the primary responsibility of a civilised state to enable bright young people to surmount dark and difficult beginnings. For the university to remain what our poet Masefield described as a thing of beauty, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, said, it has to be available to the talented, whatever their background. I hope that the Government will think carefully before endorsing this review in full.