Higher Education: Funding

Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, as the pattern of introductions to this House and subsequent maiden speeches has unfolded since the summer, two things have emerged that I have identified and very much welcomed. First, there is our genuine gratitude for the welcome we have received here from all parts of the House. If I may say so, for those coming from another place there is a strong personal preference for its lack of tribalism. There is also the very strong support and advice we have had from all members of the staff at all levels. Secondly, there is a theme which is perhaps appropriate for the difficult times for our economy and our country: a sense of obligation arising from the honour we now enjoy to those of our citizens in need of help or encouragement in difficult times.

Looking further ahead, I now feel that it is not just the passing of the years in my own case which makes me want to look forward beyond my own children’s generation to that of our grandchildren as well. This is highly relevant to tonight’s debate on the excellent report of the independent review led by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, because I firmly believe that our universities—not just the household names which have established themselves over the years, generations and centuries—remain one of this country’s glories. We know that their reputation is high in international terms; that has been done on relatively limited resources. At the same time, over the two generations which have now passed since the Robbins report, we have effected a rather British kind of painless but radical change from elite student involvement to popular involvement, and exposed many young people and adults, too—they are often forgotten—to the social and educational benefits of higher education, as well as its income and instrumental benefits, without destroying the quality of the system. More did not mean worse, though it did mean different and more diversified.

At this point, I should properly declare an interest as vice-chair of the governors of the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, which of course gives me an exposure to a different funding council. Perhaps I might mention in passing on the report that there are some rough edges in the proposed changes in connection with institutions in the devolved Administrations; I leave that now. I also declare an interest as a recently co-opted governor of the University of Northampton, although on that we greatly look forward to my noble friend Lady Falkner’s contribution because she is chancellor of that university. Both of those are post-1992 universities. I have another good reason for remembering that particular year, as in its dying days—after the Act had already passed through into law—I was privileged to be asked to serve as higher education Minister.

My later experiences as a governor convinced me that the complexity of the sector makes it wholly unsuited for centralised control. Fortunately, the self-restraint of successive Ministers of differing parties has at least broadly maintained the concept of autonomy, on which indeed the success of the sector has been founded. However, it strikes me that the constraints and developing policy problems of that time, almost 20 years ago, are still very much alive. I used to call that some kind of bizarre, sequential slow-bicycle operation, punctuated by occasional official reports led by Members of this noble House—the winner being the Minister who stayed upright the longest, without falling off and occasionally changing policy.

We still need, as we did then, to balance student numbers and aspirations against Exchequer cost both for tuition and for maintenance; to reconcile quality and unit cost; to secure access and social justice; to balance the vocational with the quite non-vocational; to tune research and teaching activities; and, of course, to lever in external funding wherever practicable. The Browne review exposes that, in our present arrangements, something has to give, and if it is not to be—and I do not wish it to be—either quality or student numbers, then those students who are participating must be prepared to contribute in due course out of their future earnings streams, and they will increasingly feature as consumers of the system. I therefore welcome and endorse the strategic approach of the review. It will, however, need very close attention to the detailed impact on all the multiple types of students, and, of course, on institutional stability itself.

I am particularly glad that we are beginning indirectly to unpick the traditional and increasingly costly straitjacket of the full-time student award which has applied all the way back to my own undergraduate days and has led to a kind of two-tier system, regulated and unregulated, with part-timers, until now, excluded from support. However, we need to ensure—I am sure the Minister will have regard to this—that all students of ability and their families need not feel deterred by the weight or threat of future debts. I believe that we can secure this on the broad basis of the review's proposals.

On wider university funding issues, the current spending review is, of course, even more directly relevant. At this stage I simply put down a marker for the broad area of humanities and the social sciences as well as the physical sciences, as by definition universities need to have at least a spread of competence and excellence.

We have generally, so far, done well by students and their universities. We have expanded the system without compromising it. We recognise, as the review does, the compelling constraints of today's economic situation, but we need not despair, and it is our duty to find a way through them.