Master’s Degrees (Minimum Standards) Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) on driving the House to focus on an interesting curiosity in our higher education system. I declare a kind of interest as one of the people who did indeed shell out—eventually—to buy my MA, in order to vote in the elections for the chancellor of the University of Oxford and for the professor of poetry. I declare that interest.

Let me describe briefly exactly what the Oxford and Cambridge MAs are. The Oxford regulations set out clearly their understanding of the degree of master of arts: in essence, the holder of the degree of bachelor of arts or bachelor of fine art may with the approval of their college apply for the degree of master of arts after the 21st term from his or her matriculation. The current fee for admission at Oxford is £10, and the qualification confers membership of convocation and the right to vote for the chancellor and the professor of poetry.

Membership of convocation is part of the argument. As Oxford’s regulations suggest, it is a means whereby all graduates of the university

“have an opportunity for some continued formal involvement in the life of the university, supplementing…the links that colleges develop with their old members.”

[Chris Leslie]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister at the beginning of his speech. Is there a particular reason why use of the title master of arts is needed to confer those rights? Surely, he must admit that the university could confer the rights without the confusing mark of master of arts.

[Mr Willetts]

I will turn later in my remarks to the challenge, which the hon. Gentleman has raised again, of whether the arrangement is confusing, but, historically, the way in which membership of the convocation has been conferred is through the MA. Obviously, it provides those rights to vote that I mentioned. Of course, it has been considered from time to time, both in Oxford and Cambridge, whether that arrangement should continue. For example, in the Franks review of Oxford, its anomalous nature was noted, but it was decided that it was overall a feature of the system that should be preserved.

The Government of course attach great importance to rigorous national academic standards, and I agree with what the hon. Member for Nottingham East said and with the remarks by the shadow Minister, whom I welcome to his new post and to the debate. We share pride in the world-class reputation of higher education in the UK, and we have a shared recognition that that international reputation depends on confidence in the standards of our universities and confidence that they are properly regulated through independent quality audit. Higher education councils have a statutory responsibility to ensure the quality of the higher education provision that they fund, but primary responsibility for academic standards and quality rests with individual universities and colleges, each of which is self-governing and has its own internal quality assurance procedures, complemented by the external quality assurance carried out by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. The QAA is the key agency in ensuring that quality control, and we support and value its work.

The QAA has itself tried to engage with the issue from time to time. Its 2008 framework for higher education qualifications includes the following statement:

“The Master of Arts (MA) granted by the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge are not academic qualifications. The MA is normally granted, on application, to graduates of these universities with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). No further study or assessment is required, but the recipient may be required to pay a fee.

At the University of Oxford, the MA may be granted during or after the twenty-first term from matriculation and at the University of Cambridge the MA may be granted six years after the end of the first term.”

So that is the position, which the QAA has set out very explicitly.

The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have been clear themselves about the status of the MA. I quote from a letter from the University of Cambridge that was actually sent to the hon. Member for Nottingham East:

“It has always been well recognised that our M.A. is not a qualification obtained by postgraduate study but, rather, is a mark of status and experience which gives its holders certain rights within Cambridge, particularly in their participation in our democratic governance structures”.

[Chris Leslie]

It might have been well recognised by the closed circle within Oxford and Cambridge themselves, but the rest of the world does not recognise that, so surely the Minister would have to acknowledge that clinging to the pretence of the title Master of Arts degree is a complete and utter nonsense.

[Mr Willetts]

Perhaps this is the moment to engage that point. The hon. Gentleman has to offer evidence that the arrangements are causing widespread confusion. We have seen no such evidence. All the material that is available on the websites of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge makes it absolutely clear that their MAs are not qualifications obtained by postgraduate study. The QAA’s documents make clear the status of these qualifications, and we are not aware of the widespread confusion and misunderstanding that the hon. Gentleman claims to have identified.

[Chris Leslie]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he has been extremely generous. On the evidence point, in 2000, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education undertook an opinion poll survey of recruiters. It reported that 62% of employers thought that MA Oxon. or MA Cantab. was a genuine, hard-earned postgraduate award. Surely that is sufficient evidence.

[Mr Willetts]

The hon. Gentleman has cited that evidence in the past, but the evidence from 2000 predates the work that I have described. It was because of that point that the QAA engaged with the subject. It has made explicit in its publications what the Oxford and Cambridge MAs are, and Oxford and Cambridge prospectuses and websites are now very explicit on that point. He needs new evidence; he cannot simply rest on evidence from 2000, given that so much more is now done to be explicit about the unusual characteristics of these MAs.

The challenge set by that research in 2000 has been addressed by Oxford and Cambridge, and it is hard to imagine that anyone who had done a minimal level of research could be in any doubt about the nature of the MA from Oxford and Cambridge. It is not an academic qualification; it replaces the BA as the holder of the BA develops a longer relationship with those universities. The hon. Gentleman has to provide further information than he has so far been able on the argument that there is confusion for employers.

A related argument is that somehow the system undermines the value and standing of MAs awarded by other universities. Is it therefore the case that the victims are not employers, but people who have MAs from other universities? I freely accept that those MAs are genuine academic qualifications for which further work is required after a BA has been secured. Again, I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that we do not have any evidence. I have letters on a wide range of issues in higher education, but in my 18 months as Minister responsible for these issues I have not had a single letter that I can recall saying, “I got my MA from some other British university and I find that it is not respected, because people think that I got it only because I was trying to elect the chancellor of the university, or the professor of poetry.” The hon. Gentleman has a theoretical argument that is not borne out by the practical evidence on confusion for employers or for people who receive their MAs from elsewhere. I commend to him the formulations now explicitly used by the QAA and set out in statements from the universities in question: the MAs that we are talking about are “not academic qualifications.”

For us to act, we would not only have to be persuaded of the problem of confusion, but would have to take a significant step towards intervening in the internal arrangements of the universities in question. That is where the position of the shadow Minister rather surprises me, because my view is that intervening in such a way in the autonomous decisions of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge would go contrary to what I thought was the shared view of both Front-Bench teams—the view that the autonomy of our universities was one of the reasons for their success.

The shadow Minister may have thought that it would be easy to turn up and attack this apparently anomalous situation, but if he wishes the matter to go further, he has to explain why he would be so willing to interfere with the autonomy of the institutions that we are talking about, including autonomy over their academic awards, which was most recently protected and laid out explicitly in legislation that his party passed when in government in 2005. That protects universities’ powers to award their own qualifications. In many of my exchanges with the shadow Minister’s predecessors, they have gone out of their way to say that they value the autonomy of our institutions. Government Members believe that trying to intervene in well-established practices at Oxford and Cambridge would be an interference with their independence that would undermine the Government’s wider approach to their autonomy, and would be inconsistent with the principle of institutional autonomy enshrined not just in the legislation that his Government passed, but in section 63(3) of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.

[Chris Leslie]

The Minister is very generous in giving way. The whole point of a quality assurance agency is to have some level of quality assurance across the university network. He would not allow universities to confer any old title—perhaps PhD or MP—on a smaller or unworthy qualification. There must be some quality assurance across all higher education degrees.

[Mr Willetts]

That is the role of the QAA. I will be frank with the hon. Gentleman. This is where I have to reveal myself to the House as a Conservative. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I welcome the support from my hon. Friends. If Oxford and Cambridge came to us today and said, “We’ve got a smart idea. We wish to invent MAs for Oxford and Cambridge that can be secured with no further academic study and will be different from the established conventions for creating an MA,” the QAA would be wary of that approach. However, those MAs have been around for hundreds of years, and they are a well-established pattern. They are well understood, and they are an established part of the history of these institutions.

Autonomy comes partly from historical experience. The autonomy of those institutions is not simply a result of the rational assessment of what they do today but, in the case of Oxford and Cambridge, it has partly been secured by their history and traditions. Part of respecting their autonomy is about respecting their history and traditions. The MAs at Oxford and Cambridge go back to the mediaeval universities where, after a time securing a BA, people then secured an MA. Perhaps the Opposition’s rootless rationalism means that they have no taste or love for those conventions and traditions that have developed over centuries, but we rather like ancient traditions. The hon. Gentleman has not established that they actively do any damage, because his argument about confusion is not supported by the evidence, so I see no reason for interfering with the autonomy of those institutions simply to remove an historical feature that they have enjoyed for centuries. I rather like the fact that we have centuries-old traditions.

[Chris Leslie]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Will you confirm that, under the rules of the House, if the Minister is still speaking at 2.30 pm, the Bill will fall and will not complete its Second Reading? If he wants to explore the issues in more detail in Committee, he must stop speaking before then. I want to clarify exactly what his intention is.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I think that the hon. Gentleman has been here long enough—indeed he is a former Minister—to know exactly how the rules work. At 2.30 pm, I shall ask on what day debate on the Bill is to be resumed.

[Mr Willetts]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for making clear what we all understand on both sides of the House. I have accepted many interventions from the hon. Member for Nottingham East, and perhaps if I had not done so I might have been able to get even further in my remarks, but I wanted to ensure that at least I engaged with the points that he made.

He has enabled me to set out my beliefs as a Tory in protecting those institutions and traditions when they do not do anyone any damage. It is clearly the Oxford and Cambridge connection that excites Opposition Members, and they have not focused on the fact that MAs are a widespread feature of Scottish universities. We have heard very little about Scotland’s ancient universities.

St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, as well as Dundee and Heriot Watt, award a master of arts as a first degree as a consequence of their history. The proposal would have to be introduced on a consistent basis, applying also to Scotland, but some people would note that to attack an ancient tradition that is enjoyed by some universities in England, and at the same time to ignore a similar tradition that has developed in the ancient universities of Scotland, would be an example of the hon. Gentleman attacking the traditions of some English institutions but not showing a similar degree—