Funding Higher Education

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute with you in the Chair, Mr Hosie. I had not intended to speak today, but I was interested to hear what the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) had to say, and I have obviously been inspired by his contribution.

I want to make a few, probably disjointed points, the first of which is about the sustainability of the sector. As has been pointed out, we have one of the best higher education sectors in the world. At a time of uncertainty for the country, we ought to build on our strengths, and not do anything to undermine them. When the Minister winds up, I hope that he will assure us on how the review will maintain, or indeed strengthen, the sustainability of the sector.

There is a fear that, because of the way that the debate has opened up, the Government may intend simply to mitigate the costs by constraining fees without replacing them with teaching grants, rather than looking ambitiously at how the system works, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. Clearly, a move to reduce fees in certain subjects could have the perverse consequence of leading people in a contrary direction to the one suggested by the hon. Gentleman. Likewise, a fee cut that is not replaced by teaching grants across the board, or in any other way, could really bring into question the sustainability of the sector.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a really important point, which I hope the Minister can address. There is real concern among universities that the review could result in a huge loss of income. As I said earlier, the whole of the sector is not making a huge surplus. We want our university sector to thrive, compete globally, and give our young people and others the skills that they need to compete in the workforce. My hon. Friend has raised an important point, and it is one that the Minister needs to address.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman is right. As I said, those of us on this side of the House who were on the Bill Committee, such as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), argued that a focus on teaching quality was right, but we needed to get the way that we measured that experience right.

The other metric that is problematic is employment outcomes. The current Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), acknowledged that they were crude and, in a sense, unreliable metrics, but they were being used because they were the numbers that were available. I pointed out to the Minister at the time that there is not necessarily a relationship between teaching quality and employment outcomes. If a student had been to Eton and Oxford, like he had, and were from the right family and knew the right people, that person’s employment outcome was likely to be fairly good, irrespective of teaching quality. So when looking at the funding review, my warning is that we should make sure that we look at the educational experience of universities in the round. We argued that there should have been a statement in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 about what universities were for.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised the discussion we had in that Bill Committee about what universities contribute to our society in addition to teaching and education. They contribute to sports development, cultural development and social outcomes in our communities. They do a lot of voluntary work. Students from my own university, Durham, do a lot of voluntary work in the local community. If we are going to look at value for money, which I agree we should, we felt that the additional benefits that universities deliver to society should somehow be brought into the equation as well, and there was certainly a danger under that legislation of the wider benefits of universities being completely discarded in the Government’s TEF measures.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Clearly, we are at one on that issue.