Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Smith of Finsbury Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. As so many contributors to this excellent debate have said, we should be celebrating the enormous importance and success of our higher education institutions. They are places of learning; they are institutions of academic success; they have genuine global quality, respect and significance; they include many areas of research excellence; they are the source of ideas that help to boost our economy; and they are one of the bulwarks on which the stability of civilised democracy depends. This record of success faces unprecedented threat and turmoil, especially from the impact of Brexit and from the Government’s foolish proposed assault on the status of international students.

The Bill does little to address those challenges. It does a few useful things but I also have some grave concerns. I welcome among other things the recognition of the importance of teaching excellence—although not, I have to say, the specifics of the measures to encourage its achievement. I welcome the explicit encouragement of widening access and participation for students from less advantaged backgrounds, though that is of course fatally undermined by the removal of maintenance grants. I welcome the formal recognition of dual funding for research.

There are, however, many serious problems with the Bill. Linking teaching excellence assessment under TEF explicitly to fees is a retrograde step. Giving probationary degree-awarding powers to new commercial HE providers from day one is, frankly, alarming. Even in relation to the recognition of dual funding, there is no guarantee that the two streams of funding—from the research councils and from Research England—will remain separate, distinctive and allocated under their own evaluation. A guarantee of this kind should be built in.

I will concentrate on three things. First, the interrelationship of teaching and research is central to the success and standing of our universities. Engagement in research makes for better teachers, and the opportunity to participate in research is invaluable for undergraduates. The coexistence of postgraduate and undergraduate students in the same academic community is of huge benefit to both. The Bill fails to give proper recognition to this fundamental fact. It threatens to create a new binary divide between teaching and research. The Government’s recent framework document helpfully said that the Office for Students and UKRI would be expected to work together. The Bill must go much further by requiring collaboration and unequivocally asserting its importance.

Secondly, the position of postgraduate students, both in taught courses and in research degrees, needs to be clarified and supported. It would seem from the Bill that UKRI will have responsibility for research degree funding and the OfS for its regulation. Surely there is a danger in placing postgraduate degree-awarding power in the hands of the OfS when it is UKRI that will have the expertise, knowledge and ability to ensure its rational informed assessment. There is a welcome general provision now inserted in Clause 87, but the Bill needs to go much further. It should explicitly provide for the involvement of UKRI in any decisions relating to research degree-awarding powers.

Thirdly, as has been said by many noble Lords, there is the issue of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. There is a fundamental point here about academic quality, diversity and range of choice, and the encouragement of debate, challenge, inquiry and the rigour of thought that comes from the robust independence of our academic communities and institutions. This must never be put at risk of political interference or dictation.

The Bill makes various perfunctory references to academic freedom, but it goes nowhere near far enough. It should make much clearer the difference between threshold standards for students—rightly the purview of government—and academic standards beyond that, which must be the province of the university to determine. It should make explicit the separation between the assessment of standards and the assessment of quality by an independent body. It should ensure, at the very least, full parliamentary scrutiny and decision in relation to any powers exercised by the OfS or the Secretary of State over degree-awarding powers or university titles. The success, standing and independence of our universities must not be put at risk. This Bill could do just that unless it is substantially and explicitly amended in this House over the weeks ahead.