Higher Education: Funding

Lord Bishop of Wakefield Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Wakefield]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for his report and for his words today.

I would like to reflect particularly on the raison d’être of universities and the impact of this report upon it. Throughout Europe, the origins of university education in Christian culture are abundantly obvious. Salamanca, Florence, Krakow, St Andrew’s, Oxbridge and elsewhere: even the buildings tell of Benedictine or similar origins, rooted not only in the church but in a broader Christian humanism underpinned by a belief in a liberal education. Universities old and new have been founded upon a commitment to human well-being, holistic development and a pursuit of truth for the common good. That commitment is resonant with that earlier European humanistic tradition.

For the church, that understanding is rooted in Christian faith but not unique to it. The church has a continuing commitment to people in the lower socio-economic groups, the poor and the marginalised. It is concerned that, even in the days of austerity, steps are taken to maximise the opportunities for all people to fulfil their potential, whatever their background. In the context of this debate, that would mean ensuring that people traditionally underrepresented in higher education had the opportunity to study at this level. We have been much encouraged about progress in that direction in recent years, and believe that everything possible should be done to maintain that momentum.

In the light of that, there is much within the noble Lord’s report that we would welcome. Here we include, first, the fact that no student will need to pay for their university education up front, as we have heard, and the increase in the salary threshold at which graduates start repaying their loans. Secondly, we welcome the requirement on universities to develop access commitments indicating how they intend to widen participation. This dovetails with the commitment to raise aspiration among those from lower socio-economic groups, encouraging them to apply to the most selective universities. Thirdly, we welcome the increased government support for part-time students.

There are, however, issues that concern us. Student debt is a major concern, not only its size but its common acceptance as standard. At some point debt must discourage applications, especially from within materially poorer sectors of society. Of course, this report comes as a ray of light to some universities in the light of the proposed cuts outlined in the comprehensive spending review. Without the support of student fees, many, if not most, universities simply would not now be able to continue. However, this is a risky wager. Increasing fees will be the answer only if students decide that they are prepared to incur serious debt.

Implicit in the understanding of the European humanistic ideal of education was a continuing commitment to a liberal education. In the report, there seems to be a largely unexamined premise that the primary role of universities is to prepare people for work and to serve the economy. Worryingly, this feels part of a recent trend, seen for example in the previous Government’s framework document for higher education of 2009, Higher Ambitions: The Future of Universities in a Knowledge Economy. This trend goes back significantly further—more than three decades—to James Callaghan’s speech at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1978, which heralded the development of a core curriculum. This was seen to be the foundation for a more instrumental and utilitarian approach to education at all levels.

Of course, the desire for people to find employment and service the economy are clearly goods to be welcomed. Unemployment and poverty are a blight on the lives of individuals and whole communities. My experience over nearly eight years in west and South Yorkshire has made this abundantly obvious. We are nevertheless profoundly concerned that the economic function of universities is emphasised to the detriment of their wider educational role, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, suggested. Indeed, there is a danger that they are seen simply as one more set of businesses aimed at encouraging appropriate skills for commerce and industry. The present report appears to encourage such a view, seeing some disciplines—mainly science, technology, language skills and medically related courses—as strategically more important than others.

Universities should certainly continue to receive direct funding from the public purse to teach those disciplines. Our concern is that other disciplines such as the humanities in general—including the arts, social sciences, and most languages—should also receive such support, otherwise departments will inevitably close and the insights of such disciplines will no longer be a part of our public vocabulary. The humanities, far from being strategically less important, contribute an essential understanding of what it is to be human and how we can best live together in creative unity. Witness, for example, the continuing debates on how to create societies where people of different cultures and faiths live together in peace and justice. Such debates require us to engage with several of the humanities—including sociology, philosophy, theology, history and others—to underpin our understanding of our own culture and to work effectively for its future. I would go so far as to say that society needs a soul; I use that term in the way that it has been used concerning a developing Europe and not in a narrowly Christian idiom.

Indeed, Her Majesty's Government have drawn attention to our corporate responsibility in creating a big society. To do so, I would argue, we need tools to describe and analyse our society and culture. Moreover, these tools can be transformative of society. Laying hold of the treasures of human wisdom will stimulate the imagination of this and future generations and direct their passion for the common good. Indeed, the present report notes at one point:

“Higher education matters. It helps to create the knowledge, skills and values that underpin a civilized society”.

That quotation is reminiscent of the last major government-requested report, mentioned by the noble Baroness in her introduction to the debate—the 1997 report, chaired by Lord Dearing. The Dearing report, Higher Education in the Learning Society, argued that universities are,

“to play a major role in shaping a democratic, civilized, inclusive society”,

and to be,

“part of the conscience of a democratic society”.

Still earlier—in my early youth—the Robbins report, which gave birth to the new universities of the 1960s, talked of transmitting a common culture.

There is a noble educational tradition, rooted in the origins of western European culture, that has affirmed the central role of universities in shaping society. A good and broad university education will shape both individuals and the community of which they are part. Human beings are neither simply economic agents in a marketplace nor individuals isolated from one another. We are—body, mind and spirit—creatures of the soul as well as the physical, fed by music, art and worship as well as by science. All of these are important to the holistic development of culture and society.

A man who is a treasury of quotations, GK Chesterton, noted that:

“The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity... is often untruthful”.

For the sake of the individual and the common good, our universities must remain places of free-ranging inquiry into what it is to be human and what it means to live together in a civilised way. To neglect those disciplines that enable us to do that would be a serious failure indeed. The novelist and scholar David Lodge wrote:

“Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria”.