Higher Education

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that my speech dovetails neatly with that just given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, whose emphases I very much appreciated and agreed with. I begin by declaring an interest as former director of the London School of Economics and a current life fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. I can also own up to having been the tutor mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, in his inspiring speech. I hope that my impact on him was moderately positive; I much appreciated his speech.

Many noble Lords with experience of working in universities, myself included, were very critical of the Browne report when it came out, and even more so of government policy developed on the basis of it. When I heard the Minister giving his introduction, as someone who has worked in universities all my life, I found it really hard to relate to the glossy version of government policy which he presented. The Browne report was commissioned under Labour, but I would like to think that, had the party still been in power, a more critical and balanced response to it would have been made. Instead, the current Government radicalised it further—to me, in some of its most unfortunate emphases.

The result is a university system more thoroughly privatised than any other in the world, as far as I know, as though university education were a purely private good and students motivated simply by self-interest and job prospects. Those who devised it might have been looking to the US, but in fact in the United States the public presence is very strong. The US has a robust system of state universities with significant levels of public funding. The top private universities have had many years of being able to raise money through philanthropic support, allowing them also to sustain a public purpose—for example, in providing generous support for students from poorer backgrounds.

The Government’s reforms severed higher education in England from the rest of the UK—Scotland in particular, but also Wales and Northern Ireland, which, to the limits of their local powers, kept their distance. To me, they were right to do so. Just as in the case of the NHS, the Government are carrying out a radical real-life experiment which is in many respects a shot in the dark rather than drawn from best clinical practice elsewhere. I am pleased that some noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches have deviated from official party policy, because the volte face which the Liberal Democrats carried out still astonishes me.

The impact of reforms on universities has been worsened by the consequence of the Government’s policies concerning visa requirements for overseas students. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, spoke powerfully about that. I stress that attracting overseas students is not just a matter of generating revenue, although that revenue is in fact large. It is again bound up with the public and cosmopolitan role of universities. In my role as director of the LSE, I can attest at first hand to how important overseas students are in spreading British influence, ideals and culture around the world. I have seen that in a detailed way in many countries during my tenure as director.

Will the Minister comment on the report published yesterday by the Wellcome Trust, which shows that there is a perception among scientists that the country is unwelcoming and that we are directly losing notable scientific researchers, who we should surely be trying to attract here? As a result of the recent report by the Higher Education Policy Institute and other sources, it is clear that the Government’s policies are in serious trouble—again, the opposite of what the Minister portrayed in his introduction. A major rethink is needed which, if it does not come from this Government, will surely have to be taken on by an incoming one.

I have three main questions for the Minister about that. First, if there is one thing that we have learnt over the past few years, it is that private debt can be even more lethal than public debt, as the state has to pick up the consequences. Is that not exactly what is happening with student debt repayments, where the RAB charge, originally estimated at 28%, has risen to an estimated 45% which, as has been much discussed recently, is close to subverting the whole enterprise? I do not think that it is an appropriate response to say simply that that is a long way down the line and there are uncertainties, because that looks dangerous for the core policies of student funding undertaken by the Government.

Secondly, I think that we all agree that universities should constantly strive to improve the student experience, but the idea that superficial surveys of student satisfaction should determine overall policy is surely wrong. Does not the Minister accept that one of the core concerns of university teaching should be to challenge and provoke, even if some or even most students find that process uncomfortable? Anyone who has worked in universities will recognise that teachers who are quite unpopular turn out to have a massive impact on the students following their lectures, and that that is seen only later, not at the time by those who are challenged in that way. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, said, the purpose of universities is to pursue knowledge, not simply provide it on some sort of conveyor belt according to the results of superficial surveys.

Thirdly, does the Minister accept that private/public partnerships will also be necessary in one of the most transformative things likely to affect higher education in the next few years—the emergence of new forms of online learning? They have not been discussed much in this debate, but they are potentially truly transformative in both a positive and dangerous sense for campus-based universities. They go by very peculiar names, given their massive potential importance: MOOCs, which are massive open online courses, and what is to me their likely successor, the one which is likely to have more impact, SOOCS—an even worse name—which are selective open online courses. They are potentially deeply transformative and it would be good to hear the Minister’s assessment of their likely impact on universities: what the positive and negative consequences could be. I hope, although I suppose that it is unlikely, that he will agree that those courses will succeed only where there is combined public and private involvement. I very much endorse the point made strongly by the right reverend Prelate, who is not in his place, and stressed by other noble Lords, that the public role of universities locally, nationally and internationally is a pre-eminent part of what universities stand for and represent.