Response to the Department for Education and Skills White Paper:

The Future of Higher Education                        

Prepared by Stephen Keevil on behalf of Scientists for Labour

 SUMMARY 

1. Scientists for Labour (SfL) is an organisation open to members or supporters of the Labour Party who are interested or involved in UK science and technology. Since its establishment in 1994, it has become a strong political voice for science. In July 2002 the Labour Party admitted SfL as an Affiliated Socialist Society.

2. Many members of SfL are university academics and researchers, key stakeholders in higher education. Our responses to the government’s proposals on the future of higher education are set out in this document.

 3. Our key comments and recommendations may be summarised as follows. 

i.                We applaud the government’s recognition of the quality of British universities and the vital role they play in our economy, society and culture.

ii.               We welcome the government’s recognition that the sector has been under funded and its commitment to increases in funding for both research and teaching.

iii.              We agree that significantly greater funding must be provided for our top research universities if they are to continue to compete at the highest level internationally.

iv.             We welcome the recognition given to university teaching, which has for too long been seen as the poor relation of research.

v.              We welcome the proposal to give universities the freedom to develop distinctive missions, giving differing emphasis to teaching and research. We would wish this to be a matter of choice for the institutions concerned, taking into account their strengths and market conditions, rather than of compulsion. We would wish institutions to have the flexibility to develop their missions over time, rather than becoming fossilised. We would therefore not favour removal of PhD awarding powers from less research-active institutions.

vi.             We are concerned at the degree of research funding selectivity envisaged. A recent HEFCE report [1] found that RAE grade 4 departments provide a valuable ‘platform’ for future development of top-quality research. In the past departments scoring 4 and 5 have had an incentive to improve, driving up the quality of the research base generally. We are disappointed that the damaging under funding of departments graded as 4 and 5 in the 2001 RAE has not been addressed, and indeed has been worsened by the recent HEFCE funding announcement in the wake of the white paper [2] . This increased selectivity will erode the ‘platform’ of grade 4 work further. We are concerned that such selectivity will inhibit the flexibility of mission discussed above and lead to an entrenched hierarchy of universities. At the very least we would wish to see provisions for funding research potential and isolated pockets of excellence that are adequate to prevent this.

vii.            We note the likely establishment of more research-only and teaching-only academic posts. We welcome the establishment of more research posts in particular, which will provide better career opportunities for research staff. However, we would wish to see flexibility rather than totally distinct career tracks for ‘teaching academics’ and ’research academics’.

viii.           In science, research and teaching are inextricably linked. Students who may go on to become tomorrow’s research leaders must be exposed to research-active academics at undergraduate level. This view is supported by the HEFCE report cited in the white paper [3] . It follows that all university science departments should have some active researchers, and that any non research-active universities that continue to teach science should do so in collaboration with more research-intensive partners.

ix.             We are concerned that there may be undue emphasis on collaboration in order to secure the full benefits of the new research funding arrangements, and at the suggestion that eventually only successful research consortia may have the power to award PhDs.

x.              We welcome the recognition that the pay of university staff has been badly eroded in recent years, and that this has resulted in serious recruitment and retention difficulties. We are therefore disappointed that no general uplift in salaries is proposed, especially as the Treasury’s cross-cutting review of science [4] recommended ring-fenced funding for this purpose.

xi.             We accept the need for pay differentiation on a geographical and subject basis, reflecting recruitment and retention difficulties, but in the interests of equality and efficiency we believe that the main element of salary should continue to be determined nationally rather than at local level. We are particularly concerned about the shortcomings of performance related pay in the university environment. We believe that the Agenda for Change pay mechanism recently introduced in the NHS provides a model of local flexibility on objective criteria within a national framework that is worthy of consideration.

xii.            We welcome the call for improved training of university teachers, although there are some potential pitfalls to be avoided.

xiii.           We agree that expansion of higher education should be mainly at sub-degree level, with input from employers to ensure that skills shortages are addressed. We welcome moves to remove the stigma sometimes associated with vocational courses. However, we believe that institutions should have the opportunity to expand degree level programmes as well, as improved access increases the number of students able to benefit from an education at this level.

xiv.          We welcome the recognition of alternative routes through higher education and the provision of extra funding support for such students.

xv.           We welcome the government’s aim to improve equality of access to higher education, with increased funding and improved targeting to support this. We support the development of alternative means of assessment, but feel that poor achievement at A-level is best addressed by improvements at earlier stages of the education system.

xvi.          We caution that increasing student debt is likely to militate against equality of access, since less advantaged groups have been shown to be more debt-adverse [5] .

xvii.         We welcome efforts to increase endowment funding as an additional source of income for universities. However, we doubt whether voluntary contributions from alumni are viable as a major source of funding in the foreseeable future. We are concerned that corporate donations could restrict academic freedom and bias research towards short-term goals. We do not feel that either is an appropriate alternative to proper public funding although we can envisage a situation where appropriate tax concessions could encourage endowment funding.

xviii.        We welcome the move away from up-front tuition fees and towards payment after graduation.

xix.          We reject the notion of ‘differential fees’ based on the average earning potential of a given course and/or institution. We believe that encouraging students to view their education primarily in terms of potential earnings will deter bright students from studying science and science graduates from pursing science as a career. As scientists, we would point out that the use of an average with no indication of the range of salaries within any given group is meaningless, and does not provide a sound basis for determining the appropriate fee to charge to an individual graduate.

xx.           We believe that foundation degrees are likely to attract lower fees, and that together with bursaries targeted at these courses this will discourage very able but disadvantaged and debt-adverse students who are capable of studying at honours degree level from reaching their full potential.

xxi.          Whilst we welcome the reintroduction of grants, we believe that the ceiling is too high and the income threshold too low to low to benefit many families who will face real financial difficulties in sending their children to university.

xxii.         We believe that the salary threshold of £15,000 for repayment of fees is far too low to distinguish graduates who benefit disproportionately from higher education from those who do not. We believe that such a low threshold will discourage graduates from entering the public service or remaining in science.

xxiii.        If graduates are to be expected to contribute directly to the cost of their education, SfL continues to favour a ‘graduate income tax’ model, based on payment of a fixed percentage of salary above a considerably higher threshold. This would be a progressive tax, focussing on those who have benefited the most from their education and are most able to pay without deterring graduates from considering less well-paid careers.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1  The organisation

4. Scientists for Labour (SfL) is an organisation open to members or supporters of the Labour Party who are interested or involved in UK science and technology. Since its establishment in 1994, it has become a strong political voice for science. In July 2002 the Labour Party admitted SfL as an Affiliated Socialist Society.

5. Scientists for Labour aims to improve the understanding both of science and of its importance, within the Labour Party and nationally. It is also involved in advising the Parliamentary Labour Party on technical issues affecting other areas of government policy, and regularly lobbies government ministers on science policy issues. Many of our members are academic scientists working in universities and so are key stakeholders in the higher education sector with first hand experience of the issues affecting research and teaching.

  1.2  The author

6. Stephen Keevil is a physicist and clinical scientist, currently Senior Lecturer in the Division of Imaging Sciences at King’s College London. He has 20 years experience of higher education as a student, researcher and academic. He was co-opted to the Executive Committee of Scientists for Labour in 2002.

Contact:           Dr Stephen Keevil

Division of Imaging Sciences

King’s College London

Guy’s Campus

London

SE1 9RT

stephen.keevil@kcl.ac.uk

1.3 Background to Response

7. We are pleased to have the opportunity to respond to the Department of Education and Skills White Paper The Future of Higher Education. Our aims in making this submission are as follows.

 

i.                To examine how the proposed changes to the higher education system would impact on university science and hence on the science base and on our increasingly technologically-based economy.

ii.               To contribute to the development of the detailed policies required to bring the broad proposals contained in the white paper to fruition.

iii.              We are also concerned that future arrangements should serve the aims of wider social policy and promote equality of opportunity.

 

8. In December 2002, SfL submitted a commentary on the DfES discussion papers on higher education, which were issued for consultation prior to the white paper. We are delighted that many of the proposals the government has brought forward in the white paper accord with our views. In particular, SfL welcomes the government’s acknowledgement of the high quality and crucial role of our universities. The recognition of growing pressures on the sector, including lack of investment in infrastructure and staff and a fall in funding per student, and the commitment of significant extra resources to address these issues is extremely heartening. The white paper contains bold and far-reaching proposals, representing the most important development in higher education policy for a generation. 

 

9. However, there are some proposals in the white paper with which we do not agree, and others where we believe that more detail is needed before it is possible to determine what the impact would be.

 

2. DETAILED RESPONSE

 

2.1 The Need for Reform

 

10. SfL welcomes the government’s recognition of the quality of higher education in the UK and its importance to the economy, society, culture and individual fulfilment. We are delighted that the government has recognised the challenges facing the sector, something that previous administrations over many years have failed to do, and has committed itself to addressing them.

 

11. Most of the points raised in chapter 1 of the white paper relate to specific aspects of the strategy, and are discussed in subsequent sections of this submission under the appropriate chapter heading.

 

2.2 Research Excellence – Building on our Strengths

 

12. The white paper rightly takes a long-term view of the quality of British universities, and particularly of our research record. However, there is a danger in this since measures such as the number of Nobel prize winners over the past 50 years and citation rates over the past 20 do not reflect the impact of more recent underfunding. We believe that the government recognises this (paragraph 1.14), but would stress that increased investment now is starting from a lower baseline than these historic measures would suggest.

 

13. SfL welcomes the commitment to significant extra investment in research announced in the spending review and reinforced in the white paper. We are particularly pleased to see the improvements in research infrastructure funding and in research council overheads, which should reduce the extent to which research is subsidised from income intended for teaching.

 

14. Whilst we accept that in many academic areas the connection between teaching excellence and research may be indirect, we do not agree that this is the case in science, at least not for those who may go on to be the leading scientific researchers of the future. To safeguard the long-term future of the research base, both in universities and in industry, it is essential that potential research scientists continue to be exposed to cutting-edge research at undergraduate level. This is discussed in more detail in paragraph 48 below.

 

15. SfL agrees that universities should be allowed to evolve different missions, playing to their strengths and reflecting the diverse needs of the student population in modern higher education. There are already many institutions with very little research activity, and removing the requirement to do research in order to maintain university title may well result in some of these choosing to cease research completely. However, we would prefer to see these developments as an evolutionary process driven by the institutions themselves rather than being forced on them by excessively funding selectivity. We also believe that institutional missions should be allowed to change over time. We would not favour a funding model that led to entrenched demarcation between different types of university with no opportunity for institutions to change the relative roles of teaching and research at a later date. We also believe that there should be some baseline research funding provision for all universities.(see paragraph 22)

 

16. SfL is therefore cautious about increased selectivity in the allocation of research funding, which is a key element of the white paper’s proposals in this area. We recognise that the best research groups must be funded at internationally competitive levels if the UK is to retain its international standing. We accept also that some universities will prefer to focus on other areas of their mission. The exact degree of selectivity envisaged is not clear, but the implication of paragraph 2.15 is that additional funding will be targeted largely on groups achieving 5* under the present RAE arrangements, foreshadowing the future establishment of ‘Centres of Excellence’ at ‘6*’ level. The 2001 RAE demonstrated a marked improvement in research quality, showing that the exercise is an incentive for improvement. We feel that this beneficial effect will be lost if funding is targeted to this extent.

 

17. We are disappointed at the failure to redress the loss of funding to departments rated 4 in the 2001 RAE. These departments lost 29.2% of their funding in 2002-3 as a result of underfunding of the 2001 RAE. Since the publication of the white paper, HEFCE has announced allocations for 2003-4 that redress the loss of funding to grade 5 departments but further reduce funding for those at grade 4 [6] , representing a loss of 42.44% for these departments since 2001-2. A recent report by Evidence Ltd concluded that ‘sustaining the UK’s pattern of improvement in the face of growing international competition is now threatened… unless research funds are sufficient to make it worthwhile striving for the highest grades.’ [7] The same report highlighted the damaging effects of attrition of RAE grade 4 departments, which represent a ‘platform’ for internationally competitive research in the future. This increases our concern that increased selectivity in the future is likely to starve these ‘platform’ groups of funding. We therefore do not agree that additional resourcing for grade 5, 5* and 6* departments should be at the expense of grade 4 departments.

 

18. The retrospective introduction of a 6* rating raises many questions about how the necessary further assessment should be carried out. The recent HEFCE announcement of allocations for 2003-4 [8] awarded extra funding to departments that had achieved 5* on two consecutive RAEs. This does not appear to us to represent ‘using the results of the latest Research Assessment Exercise, along with international peer review of additional material’ as indicated in paragraph 2.15 of the white paper.

 

19. The nomenclature adopted is inconsistent, since 5* represents a ‘premium’ on top of grade 5 rather than the culmination of a scale of star ratings. A higher category might more properly be referred to as 5** rather than 6*.

 

20. We agree that any future research funding system must be capable of being fully funded from within the resources available to the funding councils. There cannot be a repeat of the situation in 2001, when some departments improved their ratings markedly but suffered a reduction in funding due to the general uplift nationally.

 

21. We are pleased that funding for research potential is envisaged. The operation of this scheme will be crucial in preventing the entrenchment and inflexibility envisaged in paragraph 15 above, so careful consideration is needed to develop detailed policy in this area.

 

22. We also welcome the commitment to preserve the best pockets of isolated research. We believe that there must be opportunities for seedcorn funding of isolated research in non research-active institutions in the future, not simply fossilisation of those pockets that exist now.

 

23. This funding should include provision for subjects (such as systematic biology) that are no longer seen as being at the cutting edge, but are vital to underpin teaching and more fashionable research.

 

24. The emphasis on collaboration in paragraphs 2.9-2.13 suggests that this will be an important element of any future RAE. As is pointed out, collaboration is a way of life for many researchers. However, these beneficial collaborations develop as a result of mutual interests or, as in the case of many promising interdisciplinary collaborations, the synergy between different disciplines applied to a common problem. We would not wish to see a culture in which groups felt compelled to enter into cosmetic collaborations in order to improve their RAE scores. Many individual departments contain multidisciplinary teams equipped to carry out cutting-edge interdisciplinary research without necessarily needing external collaboration and already have the critical mass needed to secure the benefits of described in paragraph 2.9. We are somewhat reassured by the statement in paragraph 2.13 that this is not what is intended, but still we are concerned that it might be an inevitable consequence of the financial incentivisation envisaged.  Care should also be taken that smaller universities are not penalised as a result.

 

25. Paragraph 2.26 proposes minimum standards for public funding of PhD places, which we welcome in principle. However, we are concerned about the final sentence, which states that ‘this might play into a model where postgraduate degree awarding powers are restricted to successful research consortia’. There is a world of difference between institutions choosing not to offer PhD places and having the power to do so removed, which relates again to the difference between evolution and compulsion that we have referred to elsewhere. Also, the implication that only consortia would have the power to award PhDs, rather than individual research-intensive universities, appears to run contrary to the statement in paragraph 2.13 that collaboration will not be forced for the sake of it, and reinforces our concerns that institutions will feel compelled to enter into collaborations to secure the benefits of the new funding arrangements.

 

26. SfL welcomes the establishment of research-only posts to provide stability and career progression for researchers. This must go hand-in-hand with improved rewards for teaching excellence, as envisaged elsewhere in the white paper, so that teaching is not seen as a second-rate career option or as something to be avoided by the best researchers.

 

27. SfL welcomes any increase in pay for university staff, and the proposed pay rise of £4,000 for postdoctoral researchers could do much to improve recruitment and retention. There is clearly much detailed work to be done to determine how this pay rise for researchers will be assimilated into the pay scales they share with academic staff without creating a disincentive to their appointment to permanent academic posts. This is a concern particularly because of the lack of detail on pay for the sector in general elsewhere in the white paper.

 

28. We remain unconvinced that the fixed-term working directive will prove genuinely beneficial to research staff. Although the directive limits the repeated use of fixed-term contracts, the managers of some institutions will address this simply by declining to renew contracts, so that talented researchers will be lost to the institution. Others are continuing to regard short-term project funding as an objective justification for repeated use of fixed-term contracts, even thought this is explicitly contrary to national guidelines issued by JNCHES. The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology has drawn attention to very bad management practices as far as fixed-term staff are concerned [9] . We are not convinced that the provisions of the fixed-term working directive or the white paper are sufficient to bring an end to this. However we believe that it should be possible to use the provisions of the Directive to ensure that specific provision should be made to the Research Councils to provide redundancy payments for those who suffer repeated short-term contracts.

 

2.3 Higher Education and Business – Exchanging and Developing Knowledge and Skills

 

29. SfL welcomes the government’s acknowledgement of the key role played by higher education in the economy and in maintaining the competitive edge of British industry. We welcome initiatives that build on and rationalise existing schemes to promote links between business and higher education. We would wish to adopt a broad definition of the term ‘business’, which includes the public services.

 

30. We wonder whether the emphasis on less research-intensive universities in this context is really appropriate. The more research-active institutions will in many cases wish to work closely with industry, and this would appear to be the best way to ensure that new products based on cutting-edge research are brought to market in a timely manner.

 

31. Universities, particularly the more research-active institutions, naturally wish to engage with companies that provide the best fit for their research expertise, whether multinationals, SMEs or new high-technology start-ups. The ‘best fit’ company may be located anywhere in the country, or in many cases abroad. Whilst the regional role of universities is important, we would not wish to see an emphasis on this militate against the international role of our best universities.

 

32. Our comments on the proposed expansion of foundation degrees are given in section 2.5 below.

 

33. We applaud the government for stressing the importance of training for the public services, even in the leading research universities.

 

2.4 Teaching and Learning – Delivering Excellence

 

34. We welcome the recognition that teaching has for too long been accorded too low a status relative to research, which was a key point in our previous submission. We are cautious about the suggestion that there might be a separate career track for teaching (paragraph 1.18). We are convinced that, at least in science, higher education teaching and research are inextricable linked, even though the relative importance of the two activities may vary between institutions, departments and individual academics, and also over time at any of these levels. We believe that it is crucial to establish a satisfactory career structure for all academic and research staff, within which promotion and other rewards are available for those who excel at teaching, research or both. Consideration must also be given to academic-related and technical staff – such as teaching laboratory technicians and demonstrators - who play an important role in supporting teaching and research.

 

35. We believe that a mechanism will be required to ensure that the teaching role of academics is genuinely accorded equal status with research, particularly in research-intensive institutions that have traditionally emphasised the importance of research over teaching.

 

36. We are concerned at the emphasis to be placed on student feedback in the assessment of teaching quality. Psychological research demonstrates that students are not in a good position to assess teaching in terms of its ability to provide deep learning and creative transfer of knowledge, as opposed to short-term acquisition of more superficial knowledge. Focusing on the needs of the student is not the same as being guided exclusively or even primarily by the short-term, subjective opinion of the student.

 

37. Whilst it is clearly appropriate for university teaching staff to be trained to teach, it is important to bear two points in mind.

 

i.                The market for high calibre higher education staff is international. In drawing up national professional standards, it will be important not to impede the flow of academics of international standing from overseas into our universities.

ii.               Higher education teaching, particularly in vocational disciplines (such as medicine and law), is often provided by professionals who have extensive experience of the relevant employment sector but are not academics. The proposed standards will have to be flexible enough to take account of these arrangements, particularly in view of the importance given elsewhere to the training of public sector professionals.

 

38. Many academics are already engaged in continuing professional development as a requirement of practice or professional registration (e.g. medical doctors and other healthcare professionals, engineers and (increasingly with the imminent introduction of the CSci qualification by the Science Council) scientists). Any new CPD scheme for university teachers will have to be capable of integration with these programmes so as not to generate unnecessary additional work and duplication.

 

39. SfL welcomes the government’s recognition that the pay of university staff has been badly eroded in recent years, and that this has resulted in serious recruitment and retention difficulties. This key element of our response to the discussion papers is supported by overwhelming evidence including several studies commissioned by the government. 

 

40. This situation calls for a significant uplift in academic pay across the board. We are extremely disappointed, therefore, that the white paper does not reflect the recommendation of the government’s own recent cross-cutting review [10] that future funding should include ‘a ring-fenced sum for academic pay… to attract and retain the best academic talent in an international market’, nor the recommendations of the Bett report particularly regarding starting salaries. [11]

 

41. Instead, it is proposed that pay improvements will take the form of ‘market supplements or other differentiated means of recruiting and retaining staff’ (paragraph 4.22) and ‘better pay differentiation for teachers’ (4.23), the latter amounting to performance related pay. In our previous submission we accept the inevitability of differential pay on pragmatic grounds, and we understand the need to target pay improvement in those areas, including many science disciplines, where the threat of the ‘demographic time-bomb’ among academics is greatest. However, pay is too low throughout the sector, and we are not in favour of a situation in which its improvement depends entirely or even primarily on this mechanism. We believe that basic pay should continue to be determined nationally, with any local supplementation and differentiation a secondary consideration.

 

42. At the time of writing, the continuing failure of the London higher education employers to address the issue of London weighting satisfactorily does not bode well for negotiations on market supplements at local level, nor for the willingness of institutions to translate the general uplift in funding into improved salaries for their staff in the absence of ringfencing.

 

43. The concept of performance related pay in university teaching and research is beset with difficulties. Some academic subjects are intrinsically more difficult to teach than others, and in those universities that have the greatest success in widening participation classes are likely to contain students with a wider range of abilities. Both of these factors could impact on the apparent ‘performance’ of a teacher. In research, such an approach could militate against high-risk, blue-skies research and in favour of less ambitious work with a better guarantee of success.

 

44. In our previous submission we drew attention to the new NHS ‘Agenda for Change’ pay mechanism as offering a possible way forward in some respects. It is worth noting that this new settlement involves a reduction in local discretion, with assignment to national pay scales following job evaluation according to nationally agreed criteria and limited scope for local recruitment and retention premia where there is objective evidence of a problem [12] .

 

45. We would challenge the comparison with academic salaries in the US in paragraph 1.17. There is much greater diversity of mission and quality in the US college system, inevitably so in a system with 1600 institutions (paragraph 1.14) as against around 100 in the UK, and we do not believe that direct comparison of average salaries is meaningful. Whilst recognising the value of allowing UK universities to evolve different missions, we would hope to see all continuing to deliver excellence in their chosen combination of teaching and research and attracting staff of the high calibre required to do this.

 

46. Relaxation of the criteria for the award of university title will allow institutions that wish to do so to focus entirely on teaching. As discussed elsewhere, we feel that this should be a decision taken by individual institutions and not a matter of compulsion, and that seedcorn funding should continue to be available to all universities that wish to carry out research.

 

47. As we have emphasised in our previous submission and elsewhere in this paper, we are strongly of the view that if the best science students are to become tomorrow’s leading research scientists they must be exposed to research and have contact with research-active academics at undergraduate level. This does not necessarily mean that all academics teaching science at university level must be at the cutting edge of research in their subjects: given the increasing diversity of higher education provision that is not a realistic aim. The recognition of teaching as a valid academic career option alongside research might lead to a situation in which some but not all academics within a department are research-active. Alternatively, it might be that partnerships between universities are needed to ensure that students in less research-active institutions have the opportunity to experience a more research-intensive environment elsewhere. However, we believe that failing to provide such opportunities by one means or another would be detrimental to the future of the science base.

 

48. The white paper, at paragraph 4.32, draws on a recent HEFCE report [13] for evidence that “not every teacher needs to be engaged in ‘research’ as a narrowly defined activity”. It is worth examining this claim, because whilst this is the general finding of the HEFCE report, as far as research-dependent subjects such as science are concerned it actually comes to the opposite conclusion. The report finds that ‘in certain institutions and disciplines, and at certain levels within HE, it is important for students to experience being ‘at the cutting edge’ of their subject.’ (paragraph 4.22 of HEFCE report). The report also states, ‘we find that this relationship is generally much closer, in the science-based subjects’ (report paragraph 4.24). This leads the report’s authors to conclude that ‘for students in some disciplines and years of study, some of the staff at least do need to be involved with research’ (report paragraph 4.33 a). It is conceded that institutions with little or no research activity may be involved in ‘underpinning the student learning experience by various forms of scholarly activity other than research’ but that ‘it might… be difficult for such institutions to teach very research-dependent subjects’ (paragraph 4.33 b).

 

49. The white paper advocates scholarship as an alternative to research to underpin excellent teaching, defining scholarship as ‘remaining aware of the latest research and thinking within a subject’ (paragraph 4.31). Whilst we welcome the recognition of other forms of scholarly activity as valid academic activities, we find this a deeply unsatisfactory definition of scholarship, since it lacks any sense of critical engagement, analysis or synthesis. The nature and definition of scholarship is discussed at some length in the HEFCE report previously cited, which concludes that the crucial point is ‘a culture of enquiry and integration’ (report paragraph 4.38) and gives examples going well beyond mere awareness – for example consultancy, professional activity and authoritative commentary.

 

2.5 Expanding Higher Education to Meet Our Needs

 

50. We welcome the particular focus on expanding sub-degree provision and the desire to improve the status of vocational courses. As explained in our previous submission, we believe that this is the best way of increasing participation whilst maintaining the quality of the honours degree. At the same time, the involvement of employers in the development of foundation degrees should ensure that they address the most pressing skills shortages in both the private and public sectors.

 

51. We would wish to see students from all social backgrounds given the opportunity to participate in higher education at the level best suited to their potential. As access improves, this may require some further expansion of provision at the honours and ordinary degree levels. We would not wish to see all expansion at sub-degree level, as paragraph 5.17 appears to imply.

 

52. Following on from the above comment, we would not wish to see the proposed incentivisation of foundation degrees militate against expansion of traditional degree courses, nor encourage students who have the potential to undertake a degree to take a lower level course simply because it is cheaper, shorter and supported by a bursary.

 

53. We welcome the recognition that not all skills shortages are best tackled through higher education, and the commitment to raise the skills of the workforce at all levels.

 

54. HNDs and HNCs provide established qualifications at the sub-degree level that enjoy a high reputation among employers and students but are seen as distinct from traditional degrees. We are not convinced of the case for rebranding all provision at this level as a ‘foundation degree’ – a term that seems inappropriate for a sub-degree programme and, we feel, may have a knock-on effect on the standing of the British degree in general in the international marketplace.

 

55. We welcome the recognition throughout the white paper that many students now study part-time or by distance and e-learning, that there is a marked rise in the number of mature students, and that many students no longer come straight from school. We believe that growth in non-traditional routes through higher education, as advocated in paragraphs 5.25 and 6.14, will help improve diversity and social inclusion. More detailed work is needed to give substance to these aspirations. Similarly, we welcome additional financial support for these students (paragraph 7.44).

 

56. We are cautious about the concept of a compressed two-year honours degree proposed at the end of paragraph 5.25. In science, where the majority of university teachers at honours degree level will be research-active, the increased teaching workload could have a significantly detrimental effect on research. The increased workload for students would also be significant, a particularly important consideration for those entering higher education from non-traditional backgrounds as a result of improved access. For many students the summer vacation provides a vital opportunity to undertake paid work; we would not wish to see this time eroded and students having to undertake more external work during term time.  We would also point out that  honours courses in Scotland and in Europe are significantly longer than two years and that we need to ensure that students from these countries and the UK can readily undertake appropriate modules in any country.

 

2.6 Fair Access

 

57. We agree wholeheartedly, both as socialists and as scientists with an interest in ensuring that those individuals with the greatest aptitude for a career in science are able to pursue it, regardless of background and class, that the opportunities to undertake higher education should be available to all those with the potential to benefit.

 

58. We agree that students entering higher education from non-traditional backgrounds will need enhanced teaching and pastoral support. We welcome additional funding for academic and academic-related staff to provide the intensive support required and work to develop more sensitive measures in order to target this funding more appropriately.

 

59. We welcome the recognition that the most important cause of social class division in higher education is attainment at school. The fact that students with good A-levels from different socio-economic groups are equally likely to go to university demonstrates that the barriers to access do not lie in the university admissions system, as is sometimes supposed.

 

60. We agree that there is a need to raise aspirations among less advantaged groups, such as disabled and ethnic minority students and those from lower socio-economic classes. We note that DfES has commissioned a study of factors affecting ethnic minority students specifically. In this context, we would cite the evidence of the Universities UK Student Debt Project [14] that these very groups are the least willing to take on debt. Thus increasing the degree to which students are required to incur debt is likely to work contrary to the government’s aim of increasing diversity and improving equality of opportunity in higher education. We return to this point in section 1.7 below.

 

61. We welcome improved links between universities and schools, including funding for students to undertake support roles in schools, as a way of raising aspirations and awareness of higher education. This was a specific recommendation in our previous submission.

 

62. We agree that admissions systems should recognize potential as well as achievement, and in our previous submission we drew attention to examples of good practice in this area and called for expansion. However, we reiterate that the problem of poor attainment lies primarily at school level, and whilst alternative admissions schemes have a role in redressing the resulting inequality, the problem must be tackled primarily be improving equality of opportunity at earlier stages of the education system.

 

63. The introduction of an Access Regulator has proved to be one of the most controversial proposals of the white paper. We believe that, if handled correctly, this development could be crucial to the improvement of social equality in higher education. However, we would wish to see access agreements based on genuine assessment of potential, not simply on quotas.

 

2.7 Freedoms and Funding

 

64. We welcome the government’s commitment to remain the principal funder of higher education and its recognition of the contribution that universities make to our economy and society. We applaud the very significant increase in government funding promised over the next few years.

 

65. We welcome proposals to reduce bureaucracy in higher education, including reduction in unnecessary audit and data collection and the proliferation of separate funding streams. We note that many of the proposals in the white paper have the potential to generate new bureaucracy (as is acknowledged in paragraph 7.11), and we hope that they will be implemented in the light of this commitment to an overall reduction.

 

66. We agree that a still greater increase in funding will be needed to ensure that our best universities are on a level playing field with the best in the world.

 

67. The government’s plan to generate substantial endowment funds for universities through voluntary contributions from alumni is ambitious. We continue to believe that such endowments are a valuable source of supplementary funding, and so we welcome proposals to incentivise giving. However, we do not believe that they are a viable or appropriate alternative to proper public funding of universities in the foreseeable future. They are a relatively new concept in the UK, where public funding of social goods is regarded as the norm, whilst the examples quoted are from the US, where this form of charitable giving is much more established. Although promising starts have been made by some institutions, there is a long way to go even for the most prestigious institutions with the most well-off alumni before the levels of funding envisaged could be achieved. We doubt whether substantial income from this source would ever be a realistic goal for less prestigious universities. We are concerned at the viability of such a scheme once alumni are expected to pay back fees after graduation, and also at the possible impact on charitable giving in other areas. However it may be helpful to encourage endowment funding by graduates by relevant tax incentives.

 

68. We similarly welcome incentivisation of corporate giving, but again we feel that this should be supplementary to public funding. Here we are concerned at the possible impact on academic freedom and on the balance of academic activities in a university: corporate donors are more likely to fund activity in production engineering than in, say, medieval history. Within science, they may favour research that could lead to new products in the short term over more speculative, blue skies work. One method of encouraging corporate giving without endangering academic freedom could be to direct such funding into regional HE endowment funds and provide attractive tax concessions to those that use this route.

 

69. One of the most controversial parts of the white paper is that dealing with proposals for financial contributions from graduates. SfL accepts that if universities are not to be paid for entirely from general taxation then graduates are an obvious, and in many ways an appropriate, source of funding. We welcome the move away from up-front fees towards payments made after graduation, moving the emphasis away from a student’s background and family circumstances. We differ with the authors of the white paper as regards the detailed proposals and the basis on which they are made. 

 

70. There has been widespread discussion of the concept of a graduate salary premium. It is important to recognise, as the white paper does at sections 1.7, 1.9, 5.5 and 7.21, that such figures, whether applied to graduates in general or to those who have studied particular subjects or at particular institutions, are averages. An average, by its nature, tells us nothing about the salary of an individual graduate and is not a sound basis for determining the levels of fees to charge to individual graduates.

 

71. Also, as participation in higher education increases and there is greater diversification in the nature, level and content of higher education courses, and as occupations that were not previously regarded as graduate entry become so, figures based on a situation in which participation rates were much lower and programmes more uniform become increasingly unhelpful. Recent work [15] has found some evidence for a decline in the salary premium enjoyed by graduates since the most recent higher education expansion in the 1990s.

 

72. We are therefore very concerned by the suggestion in paragraphs 1.36 and 7.24-7.29 that graduate contributions should reflect the benefits assumed to be associated with a particular course and university, presumably on the basis of an average graduate premium, rather than the actual income of the individual graduate. Paragraph 7.25 states that ‘it is absolutely clear that students get different returns from different courses’, and supports this assertion with a graph (figure 4) showing differential graduate premiums for a range of degree subjects. As scientists we must emphasise again that such a graph, presumably showing average figures (although this is not stated) and with no indication of the range of salaries within any particular group, is absolutely meaningless and fundamentally flawed as a means of determining the appropriate fees to charge individuals. Walker and Zhu¹⁵ have presented much more meaningful data, including 95% confidence intervals and showing the wide variation in salary premium between individuals studying the same subject.

 

73. Similarly, paragraph 7.26 claims that there is ‘a 44 percentage point difference in average returns between graduates from institutions at the two extremes of the graduate pay scale’. This tells us nothing about the benefits enjoyed by individual graduates, and also presupposes that there is a one-to-one relationship between institutions and different parts of the graduate pay scale, which is false.

 

74. With the exception of highly vocational courses, the financial benefits to a student are determined largely by the career that he or she goes on to pursue rather than the course undertaken, and bear no direct relationship to the costs involved in running the course. Science graduates may pursue various lucrative careers, for example in the financial sector, but those who remain in science will generally receive relatively low salaries.

 

75. SfL fears that the assumption that income is determined primarily by institution and course could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with graduates increasingly considering their education largely in terms of future income. Graduates of ‘high premium’ courses and institutions could be driven increasingly towards more lucrative careers and away from further study or work in the public sector. This is of particular concern to us, since in a regime of differential fees science courses, which are expensive to run, will almost certainly be at the higher end of the range. This would drive the best students away from science, and the best science graduates from the best universities away from a career in academic science, with serious consequences for the science base.

 

76. It is important to remember that a higher education course has other benefits – benefits to the student in terms of personal and intellectual development, and benefits to society as a whole that may be cultural, economic or social. It is important to bear this in mind when considering higher fees for, say, medical students.

 

77. In view of the data on debt aversion quoted in paragraph 60 above, we fear that differential fees will have a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged groups. Taken together with bursaries aimed at foundation degree students and the likelihood that these will attract lower fees, we fear that these proposals can only increase social division in higher education. This is made explicit in paragraph 7.34 of the white paper, which makes it clear that students from disadvantaged, debt-adverse backgrounds can avoid debt as long as they chose low-cost courses – likely to be less prestigious courses in less prestigious institutions. This will steer such students away from science as a career, since this is expensive to teach and requires study in a research environment. In our previous submission we advised that there should be a lessening of student debt, so naturally we are disappointed that the white paper proposes a substantial increase.

 

78. We argued in our previous submission that student contributions should be based purely on ability to pay, in other words on the salary actually earned rather than flawed assumptions about the earning power of any particular course or institution. We proposed a pure ‘graduate income tax’ model: a fixed percentage of income payable above a certain earnings threshold. This remains our view, and we would ask the government to look at this question again in view of the numerous flaws and dangerous implications of the scheme currently proposed.

 

79. Early indications are that most if not all institutions will wish to charge the maximum allowed fee for most if not all courses. Our concerns about the impact of differential fees may therefore seem academic. However, the authors of the white paper seek to create a system in which such differentiation would remain an option in the future, and therefore we continue to oppose it now even if it is unlikely to become a reality in the short term.

 

80. There is also a concern about the impact of fees in general, however they are to be repaid, on recruitment of students from elsewhere in the EU. Paragraph 7.53 makes it clear that, under reciprocity arrangements, these students will have to pay the same level of fees as home students. They will therefore have to choose between a university education in their home countries that may be virtually free (for example in France) and an increasingly expensive one in the UK. The importance of overseas students is stressed in paragraph 1.7 of the white paper, and we are concerned that increased fees could impact significantly on this successful export market.

 

81. We welcome the reintroduction of grants in principle, although we feel that the maximum figure of £1,000 a year is too low to make any meaningful difference and the upper earnings threshold of £20,000 too low to benefit many families who will face real financial difficulties in sending their children to university.

 

82. SfL believes that the income threshold of £15,000 for repayment of fees is far too low to separate those graduates who really have derived a disproportionate personal benefit from their education from the others. This will act as a strong disincentive to graduates considering careers in the public sector or in science. Salaries in academic science start at around £18,000 in the pre-92 universities. Payment of 9% of salary would amount to around £1,500 per annum – a very significant figure for staff who are already very poorly paid in terms of their qualifications and skills and have much more modest earning prospects than graduates entering many other careers. The proposed fee repayment would cancel out almost half of the proposed average pay increase of £4,000 for postdoctoral researchers, before other deductions are taken into account.

 

83. We note the comment in paragraph 3.24 that 40% of mathematics graduates are needed to go into teaching in order to meet government targets and so improve school performance (which in turn is a vital element in improving equality of opportunity in higher education). This is a tall order given the pay of teachers relative to other possible career choices for graduate mathematicians, who are much sought after in the financial sector. We believe that the proposed funding regime makes it even less realistic.

 

84. Paragraph 7.47 and box O give examples of support for the training of public sector workers. All of these examples relate to vocational courses, where the student has effectively chosen a career with a monopsony employer (the state) before embarking on the course and so support can logically be given in advance by the future employer. This is not the case in science. If support is to be given to science graduates who chose to remain in science, it would have to take the form of writing off debt once the course is completed. If private sector employers introduce such schemes, they would represent a further disincentive to scientists remaining in the public sector – unless a debt write-off scheme similar to that recently introduced for school teachers was adopted by the universities.