Higher Education: Funding

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for his report. Having left school at 15 and never having run a university or worked in any form of university, I am honoured to be the chancellor of Teesside University, and declare an interest. I am very proud of the achievements of Teesside University, which is the current holder of the Times Higher Education’s University of the Year and the Outstanding Employer Engagement Initiative awards. I am also very pleased to see my university shortlisted in the category of the most entrepreneurial university in the country. All this success takes place in the year that my university celebrates its 80th birthday and I look forward to the continued success of my institution in the coming years. It is from that background of success that I look at the recommendations of the independent review of higher education funding and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for initiating this important debate.

My starting point is that the last 20 years have seen us make outstanding strides in providing individuals and employers within the UK with the higher level skills and knowledge necessary to allow us to compete effectively with the increasingly knowledge-led global economy. Any revised system of student funding and financial support must recognise the importance of continuing to provide opportunities for people from all parts of society to fulfil their potential in order that they can make the maximum possible contribution to our future economic, social, environmental and cultural success. The progress that we have made in recent years has been significantly enhanced by the way in which we have evolved a university sector, in which institutions of different types have been encouraged to pursue diverse missions, playing to their unique strengths, and making complementary contributions to the overall success of the system. For example, in the case of my own university, that contribution has included supporting new business start up and knowledge transfer, activity underpinned by an outstanding working partnership with employers across all business sectors; facilitating over 18,000 students per year to undertake higher education on a part-time basis, predominantly alongside work; and achieving a record, virtually second to none, in facilitating the progression of students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds who are, in many cases, the first generation of their family to participate in higher education. In addition, we have developed an outstanding working partnership with local further education colleges that is widely recognised as one of the strongest in the country, and has included the development of effective progression routes for both academic and vocational learners, supported by the development of Teesside University-funded higher education centres on each college campus in the Tees Valley. Most importantly, we have underpinned all this with the pursuit of improved levels of quality, retention and student attainment.

So I speak from a perspective based on success, inclusion, partnership and excellence. It is on that basis that I particularly welcome the recognition of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, of the importance of maintaining and, indeed, expanding the provision of higher education opportunities, and the crucial recognition of the importance of it being both free at the point of entry and subject to a progressive system of loan repayment. This will, I believe, enable individuals from all parts of society to take full advantage of the opportunities that higher education can offer.

I also welcome the proposals for a simplified system of student financial support, which would enable students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds to receive a combination of loans and grant income to meet their living costs during their period as a student. That is very important. However, I am against creating a completely unregulated market for university fees because this would have a damaging impact on our ability to deliver on the Government’s commitment to enable the brightest people from all parts of society to attend the most selective universities as it is unlikely that students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds would be willing to contemplate the levels of fees and living-costs debt that would be incurred by attending a university charging at the top of the price range. Although it is good to see that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, proposes to raise the threshold for loan repayment to £21,000 a year, and to restrict the interest payable on the amount owing until graduates are in receipt of an income at that level, it is very important to note that the overall level of debt owed by a graduate is likely to continue to rise on a year-by-year basis until such time as their annual earnings reach £40,000 a year—a fact that will be a cause of great concern to many potential students and their families. That is the area to which the Government need to give greatest consideration. They need to look at imaginative solutions for tackling this debt issue. They particularly need to ensure that they talk to students, student unions and young people as they will be faced with these problems, not the people involved in this debate tonight.

Further, it is important to recognise that in some parts of the United Kingdom, such as the north-east of England, there is still a lot of work to do in correcting the major higher skills deficit arising from a historical lack of higher education opportunities in that region. This results in a number of talented individuals with little record of prior educational attainment returning to higher education at a later stage in their career. Therefore, it is important to recognise that the proportion of students without the traditional qualifications to meet such a threshold varies dramatically throughout the country. We will need to reflect that fact in any allocation system that is introduced to cater for these non-standard entrants into our universities.

I also warmly welcome the proposal to begin levelling the playing field between part-time and full-time study by allowing part-time students to access fee loans on the same basis as full-time students. However, I stress that for many students, particularly those studying in professional areas, the part-time student experience is fundamentally different from that of the full-time student. I ask Ministers to think carefully about making any assumption, implicit or explicit, that part-time students are simply following by a different mode the same course as full-time undergraduates. The reality of the diversity of our higher education provision is much more complex than that, as institutions with extensive experience of part-time vocational and professional higher education seek increasingly to utilise the workplace; as the needs of the economy emerge; and as the current and previous experience of students become fundamental elements in their part-time learning experience. I urge Ministers to develop a very flexible approach to support part-time students which recognises the uniqueness of their circumstances.

I am pleased to note that the review of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, recognises the importance of widening participation funding for those students for whom higher education is not part of their heritage, and who are drawn from the disadvantaged communities which can most benefit from the transformational power of higher education. I encourage Ministers to ensure that that crucial funding reaches the universities that do the most to transform such individuals and their communities. In recognising the broader social, cultural and community benefits of higher education, it is important to ensure that the proposal within the noble Lord’s review to utilise the additional revenue generated from student fees to substitute for government funding does not lead to a position where universities are unable to afford to offer humanities, social sciences and arts-based programmes that underpin so much of what is good about our universities and our society, as has been said many times in tonight’s debate.

In conclusion, I hope that I can persuade the Minister to share some of my views and perhaps to visit Teesside University, which has won the University of the Year award, to see what a great place it is, because it truly is a great place. I perhaps sound the wrong note in the House of Lords in saying that in many ways universities are the workplaces of today. People no longer work in the steelworks or in ICI; they work in the university, which is very important to the town. Indeed, the whole town revolves round the university. Everybody appreciates the contribution that it makes to the economy. I urge the Minister to come and see what the University of the Year does and what can be achieved in an area of very high unemployment with poor educational opportunities, where people are striving to make the university successful to benefit the community and its students. I welcome the Browne review as something that we need to debate going forward. I hope that it will bring long-term, sustainable benefit to our excellent higher education system.