Universities: Funding

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, universities are not taking a disproportionate cut. One has to remember that direct public funding is not the only source of university funding in this country. It will be tough for all those receiving public spending in the next few years, but we are conscious that the science budget has to be protected as an essential part of rebuilding our manufacturing base, and that university education and technical education feed directly into regaining economic growth.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the United Kingdom has four or five of the top 10 universities in the world, despite our spending as a proportion of GDP on higher education being less than half that of the United States and less than 13 OECD countries? Surely, to cut funding to universities would be shooting ourselves in the foot.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We have a highly diverse university sector in the United Kingdom. There are now some 150 higher education institutions, which range from Oxford University, Cambridge University and Imperial College, all of which are world-class and within the top 10 Shanghai rankings, to Cumbria University, Northampton University and others, which provide equally valuable but very different education foundation degrees and part-time education for others. We are conscious that we are dealing with a complex sector, which has expanded by 25 per cent in terms of the number of students in the past 15 years.