Universities: Impact of Government Policy

Lord Bew Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, for securing this important debate. I declare my interests as a working professor at a Russell group university and an honorary fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. When my noble friend Lord Luce secured a debate on higher education in June 2008, it was before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the serious world economic crisis, which is obviously still with us. Even at that date, it was clear that the relatively golden era of higher education financing was coming to an end.

In the early summer of 2008, Professor Geoff Crossick, chairman of the long-term strategy group of Universities UK, had already said that a much bumpier ride was on the horizon. He drew attention to the significant underlying demographic and financial trends that were already in play. Although that was true, we do not speak at the moment of crisis in the success of our higher education system. In figures for the past week in the Times Higher Education Supplement, there is no evidence of a decline in UK standings. We can see, for example, that the UK has almost three times as many universities in the top 200 as Germany; more than four times as many as Australia; and more than six times as many as Japan. All that is while spending only 1.2 per cent of GDP on higher education, which is less than the 1.5 per cent average across the OECD.

I had a private bet with myself that before I would speak today at least one noble Lord would make the comparison not with the countries that I have mentioned but with the United States. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Krebs made the point admirably that if you control for population and expenditure, there is a case for saying not that we are second to the United States but that we have a stronger system in higher education. People in the higher education sector want to make that point about America due to a perception of government policy. To use the words of the Minister, Mr David Willetts, in a brave letter in the London Review of Books earlier this year, it is a “crude caricature” that the Government’s approach to higher education is dominated by market fundamentalism plus an infatuation with the US. The fact is that that is how it is perceived within the higher education world.

To add a personal note, about a year ago, the Department for Education asked me to take on an independent review of a very controversial issue in our schools system—SATs testing. I was told that our teachers are very angry about SATs; that it is a very fraught topic; and that I would find it very hard. I accept that there was much tough debate. But my guess is that our university senior common rooms are probably angrier than I found our schoolteachers to be during that long year of reviewing policy in that area. Let there be no doubt that SATs testing was and is a very controversial issue among many teachers. There is a mood of exasperation in common rooms.

Perhaps I may offer some help to the Government in this matter. In this economic context, there is relatively little to be done. We face a serious crisis in higher education. However, there is a question of mode of address. On one area, which is not dominated by the economic question and has already been dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs—immigration of talent into our country and into our academic system—I have nothing to add to what he so eloquently said.

Let me take another issue: the research assessment exercise, now the REF. It is vital to the competitiveness of our system. The Government are quite right to have such a system in place. I know I speak on these Benches on which we have a number of distinguished philosophers, the impact of whose work is in the public domain. However, to ask, for example, certain branches of philosophy to deliver an impact assessment and to demonstrate a broader public impact is fundamentally unreasonable. What it leads to is meretricious behaviour, the puffing out of CVs and bogus claims by academics—all types of things that the Government quite rightly are very sceptical and critical of. These areas of policy are not determined by the economic crisis. Sensitivity to the particular position of academics would do a great deal to improve the quality of debate because frankly I am concerned about the quality of debate that is flowing between academe, universities and the Government at the present time.