Higher Education: EUC Report

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and her committee on producing a useful and timely report.

It takes its rather grandiose title from the Commission paper issued a year ago, which refers in its title to, An Agenda for the Modernisation of Europe’s Higher Education Systems. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, pointed out, this modernisation process has been going on for some time and was initiated by the moves towards creating the Bologna process in 1998, when she was the UK Minister responsible for participating in it. She also stressed that this is an intergovernmental, not an EU, initiative, and what has preceded it is a matter for agreement between Governments, rather than something that has been imposed by the European Union. Nevertheless, the Bologna process itself built upon the Erasmus exchange programme, which had existed since the 1980s and had gradually been built upon.

Of course, the students who participated in the exchange programmes under Erasmus needed to have the work that they did during their year abroad recognised in a standardised way. The Bologna process has therefore put particular emphasis on two things. The first is the standardisation of the degree process and the introduction of what is called the three-cycle pattern—the three-year bachelor’s degree, the two-year master’s degree and the three to four-year PhD doctoral programme. The second is the introduction of the European credit transfer system, which enables those who participated in the programme to gain credit for the work that they have done and for a degree of equivalence to be recognised between universities participating in the programme.

Last year’s initiatives were stimulated by the increasing concern on the part of the Commission that Europe was not holding its own in the higher education league tables at a time when the knowledge economy was becoming more and more important—a trend reinforced by last week’s publication of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, which saw the top institutions in China, Taiwan, South Korea and, notably, Singapore all moving up the rankings, while generally European institutions, with the exception, interestingly, of those in the Netherlands, were tending to lose rank. The Commission noted that by 2020 35% of the jobs in the EU would require graduate-level training, whereas only 26% of the workforce currently had higher education qualifications. It therefore set the target that 40% of the workforce should have completed the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree by 2020.

To this effect, the Commission is now proposing to strengthen the Bologna process in a number of ways. Some of these strike me as being somewhat aspirational—for example, the aim to put higher education,

“at the centre of innovation, job creation and employability”,

by, among other things, encouraging the convertibility of academic innovation into business enterprise. How many times have we wished that to be the case? We continue wishing it. Nevertheless, it still strikes me that it is aspirational in its aim. Another is supporting the internationalisation of higher education, strengthening the synergies, or joined-up thinking, between the EU and the intergovernmental processes.

Perhaps more to the point in terms of joined-up government, the Commission is also proposing to develop the complementarity between the European Union’s funding instruments—for example, the structural and cohesion funds—and the framework programme, now renamed Horizon 2020, as well as Erasmus for All, the new training and education programme. I shall come back to that in a moment because I have some comments on those proposals.

However, the Commission’s most substantive proposal is the launching of yet another set of league tables ranking universities within the European Union—the U-Multirank, a “ranking and information tool”, as it is called. I have to say that I fully endorse the scepticism shown by the committee and the Government about whether this will serve any useful purpose.

The second substantive proposal by the Commission is the introduction of a new EU-level loan facility to boost mobility at master’s level. I have much more sympathy with this particular proposal. The Government’s White Paper on higher education, published last year, completely ignored the question of postgraduate funding and the knock-on effect of the new fee regime on postgraduate training. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has made clear, there are huge problems facing postgraduates now.

I have been a member of an all-party commission of the two Houses looking at postgraduate education and we shall be publishing our report at the end of October. In it we note the need for a proper loan scheme for the master’s-level students. The present commercial scheme is not working at all well. In our report, we argue that the Government need to take cognisance of that and make sure that a proper scheme is introduced. It could be a government-backed scheme or perhaps they should work with the banks to produce a commercial scheme that is much more workable.

As I understand it, the proposed European scheme from the Commission would apply only to help Erasmus students; in other words, those who are on an exchange with other European universities. Nevertheless, I think it would have the effect of both helping those students to undertake master’s work and encouraging the interchange between different universities within Europe, which, like other noble Lords, I think is something that we need to encourage.

As the committee’s report makes clear, the UK’s higher education establishment has, from the start, been slightly disconnected from the Bologna process. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, mentioned that the three-cycle model—the bachelor, master’s and doctorate, which is sometimes called the Anglo-Saxon model—was essentially the US model, which became standardised in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore, we can justifiably claim to have moved closer to the Bologna process than other countries because we had already started it. It is a much more difficult option for other countries and there is much more opposition in other countries; in particular, many German universities feel that the process short-changes what they regard as being a proper university education. This is where the problems of the one-year master’s come in; they feel that a one-year master’s is quite inadequate training for those who wish to go on to do a PhD.

The second factor in the British attitudes towards Bologna has been the fact that many British students who go abroad at postgraduate level have chosen to go to the United States rather than to European universities. The European programmes, the Erasmus programme, and for the postgraduates the Marie Curie exchange programmes, have done a great deal to change attitudes and I endorse entirely those who argue that there is great value to be gained by students who have that experience. It is very much my experience from teaching at the University of Sussex in the early days of Erasmus that students who, in that case, went abroad for a year came back with very much wider horizons and a much better attitude to studying than those who did not have that experience.

However, it is notable that in spite of that, UK universities have not really adopted and adapted to the European credit transfer system. We keep our own. We keep the old CNAA system which had 120 credits for a four-year programme as compared with the European one that looks to 60 credits. Many universities, in particular the Russell Group universities, have never really adapted to any form of credit unit framework and it is a matter for us, as I have many times lamented in this House in my championing of part-time education, because if we are to get part-timers and full-timers at FE and HE on to a par with each other, we need a proper credit transfer scheme.

Last, but by no means least, is the issue of language training. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, quoted the quite shameful statistics of the inward and outward comparison with something like 230,000 students coming in and only 13,000 going out.

There has been a lot of discussion about whether there should not be better information. The report suggests that more should be done for those leaving school and going on to university at the time when they apply to the universities. Universities could do far more to promote the Erasmus schemes by giving publicity to the possibility of going abroad for a year and by making it much easier for students to take language courses as a supplementary to their other studies. All the time I was at the University of Sussex, I taught a course in which science students, and subsequently management students, could do a language side by side with their studies and then have a year abroad to study their subject at a European university. The opportunity of doing a language at university in addition to other things is something that would benefit students and help promote this.

My experience in the early days of the Framework programme was very much in relation to scientific and project collaboration. In the early 1990s the programme was worth something like £15 billion over five years—roughly £3 billion a year spread out between 25 countries. Today, Horizon 2020 is looking at something like £80 billion over five years—£16 billion a year spread out between some 30 countries. I very much endorse the notion of pulling in funds from the structural funds and cohesion funds, and making use of them in relation to student exchanges on the one hand and promoting R and D on the other. I was involved in a study that looked at a number of European countries. One feature that emerged was the very good use made by Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s of money that it secured from the structural funds and put to training a new generation of technical students. It gave Ireland a very good infrastructure on which to build the multinational participation that marked the early, “tiger” phase of its expansion and industrialisation. Sadly, this phase was overtaken, and completely upset, by the banks.

I will end by endorsing a statement made by Imran Khan, the director-general of the Campaign for Science and Engineering. He said that in opposing the increase in Horizon 2020 funding, the UK Government were scoring an own goal. This issue was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. The Framework and Erasmus science and technology programmes are among the very few programmes in which the UK does disproportionately well. Our universities are extremely successful in attracting these funds and making good use of them. By encouraging the increase in the budget we are bringing money into the UK for research and development. Our record in funding R and D is miserable. We hover along at about 1.8% of GDP. The target is 3%. Germany is up to that level, Japan is above it and the United States is almost up to it, but we are falling below it. This is one way in which more funding can be attracted, and it is scoring an own goal to oppose it.