Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I too very strongly support this group of amendments. I share the very great concern expressed around the House, particularly at the thought of blackening the names of a number of our universities, on which we depend so very much for all sorts of reasons. The criticisms made around the House are compelling as to the obvious deficiencies of the present scheme.

One hopes that this is not the case, but if at the end of this debate the Government remain disinclined to change the approach of using gold and silver stars, ratings and that sort of thing, I urge that universities at least—there are a group of clauses in the Bill which specify what an institution has to do to justify that title—should be spared from the nonsense involved in the scheme as presently envisaged. They should not have to do this. They are already assessed through more sophisticated, nuanced approaches, and they should not have to be ranked in the way that this absurd scheme proposes.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for listening and in some respects changing some of the issues. I was pleased to receive the briefing pack before coming into the Chamber, which was emailed to me as well. I want to talk about two issues: teaching and information.

I do not really get it. Quite simply, if you want to improve the quality of teaching, you do that not through ranking but through the individual who is teaching. We certainly expect a lecturer, professor or other member of staff at a university to have the academic ability and qualifications, or the renown, but we also expect them to be able to teach the subject. How do you do that? Presumably, it is not beyond the wit of universities to perhaps devise their own crash course in teaching. It was considered for FE—City & Guilds—so why could it not happen in universities? Why are we suggesting that a TEF will make an individual lecturer or professor a good teacher? It will not. Teaching skills, and the ability to teach, are not the same as having academic capabilities. This has to be about both, and if we want to improve teaching—which we need to do in our universities—then it will be through some form of teaching qualification.

Of course information should be available: the more information, the better, because in this day and age, particularly with social media, students look at the information to decide which university they go to. They also visit those universities, often with their parents, to decide which is the place for them. Your Lordships would be surprised by some of the considerations that they decide on—I have to say that whether the accommodation has en-suite facilities ranks very highly. I guess that it is increasingly through social media that students tell other prospective students what the place is like: whether the lectures are suddenly cancelled; whether assignments and dissertations are handed in on time and marked correctly; the numbers in lectures; the numbers in tutorials; and how competent and supportive personal tutors are.

Then we come to the issue of ranking. I like the analogy the noble Lord, Lord Smith, made with theatre and cinema stars. The difference is that there are different stars in different publications: one might give it three stars and one might give it one star. We cannot do that with these rankings: once you are a bronze, you are a bronze. I want the Government to understand why we oppose this. It is for a number of reasons. University teachers—lecturers—will want to teach at gold universities. That is human nature. They will not want to say, “I am at a bronze university”. It will affect social mobility. Students do not want to say, “My university was a bronze university”. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who said that praise is far better than wielding a stick.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I reiterate my support for the government amendment to which I have put my name because this is actually a big move forward in clarifying in the Bill what is needed to ensure that, as the sector grows, we have really high quality. However, something more is needed. The Bill sets forth the whole environment for the sector, possibly for decades to come. Over the years we have moved to a situation where most people do not understand what is going on. I know that this sounds very strange but it is true. People do not understand—and I include myself in this much of the time—how degree-awarding powers can be given, where powers lie, and what can and cannot be varied.

My Amendment 116A is intended to complement and add to the improvements that the Government are proposing by modifying somewhat and clarifying the process by which new institutions may receive degree-awarding powers, ensuring that these are clearly understood—because they are in the Bill—and to further reduce, to a very low level indeed, any remaining risk that students may end up with degrees from institutions that failed early in their existence and are therefore effectively devalued in the labour market. I do not think that a degree awarded by the Office for Students is likely to be understood or valued, and we should be thinking about two clear alternatives, which are set out in my amendment. These are that,

“the provider has been established for a minimum of four years with satisfactory validation arrangements in place, or … the Quality Assessment Committee is assured that the provider is fully able to maintain”—

from day one—

“the required standard expected for the granting of a United Kingdom degree … and may therefore be authorised to grant taught awards or research awards … and has reported to the Secretary of State”.

I will come back to why I think that is important. The OfS should also be assured,

“that the provider operated in the public interest and in the interest of students”.

There are a few points that I want to underline. First, thinking in terms of four years is really quite important. I would like to see that in the Bill for institutions that come through the validating requirements. The reason for that is, as the Government have frequently said, we want to know whether or not an institution works and is deserving of degree-awarding powers. That means that it needs to have gone through the process of educating people and giving them degrees and those people need to go out into the labour market. We need to see whether their degrees are robust and still stand up and bring them labour market recognition and labour market power. My sense is that four years is actually a pretty good number and that is why we have had it up to now. We should recognise that it is a number that has worked and put it in the legislation and have done with it. One thing I have discovered is that there is an extraordinary ability to vary things through guidance, and my sense is that the four-year figure really matters.

The other change is in giving degree-awarding powers without a validation period. There are cases where this is clear and important, but it should involve the Secretary of State. The reason is that, again, having degree-awarding powers is a really valuable thing. That is why private companies buy and sell universities; they think that they can do very well out of them. If you move to being able to do this straightaway, then you need to be quite secure that it can be done. I would not argue that everybody should have to have a validation process. That is not the case in the statute at the moment and certainly was not the case when many of our best younger universities moved straight to being universities, as many people including the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, pointed out in Committee.

One of the more informal questions that often comes up is: supposing that MIT wanted to set up here? I do not think that MIT probably would want to, but one day, if my dreams come true, the Government might want to create the equivalent of Caltech here—something really new, exciting and very different, which could become a university straightaway. If we were asked whether we wanted to validate anybody like that who came along, there would be a competitive, fighting queue around the block. If future Governments realise that their higher education policy needs to be more active and in some ways more interventionist about meeting the needs of the future, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, pointed out on Monday, then they will need to be able to do that.

Why do I also suggest that the Secretary of State has to come into this? As I said, creating something which can go straight out and give degrees to students is a big thing. The Secretary of State is the accountable one. A regulator is not accountable, or the same thing as an elected politician. If you made sure that this was happening, most of the time it will be fine—of course it will—but the reality is that, a few years from now, the caravan will have moved on and people will not be looking at things with the same clarity. If there is this possibility, any new institution coming about in this way must be of very high quality. We need to be absolutely sure of that, and it seems not unreasonable to suggest that the elected, accountable Secretary of State should be involved in some way in that decision.

I have added my amendment to the government amendments, which are excellent, as I said, because this is an opportunity to have a clear set of rules and possibilities for the next few decades, and we still need to tidy some of this up. I also consider that the deletion of Clause 48, which suggests that the OfS can put itself on the register and award degrees, is consequential to this amendment. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether this is the case.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I too thank the Government for their amendments, which are much needed and beneficial. I have put my name to Amendment 116A because the four-year period is absolutely right. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has said, it would enable students to go through a cycle of university education and into the labour market. There would then be feedback and we could see clearly whether any issues needed ironing out before that awarding status is given. Feedback should also include things such as facilities: for example, the quality of the library and, dare I say it, perhaps the quality of teaching as well.

I apologise for just throwing this out—it may be that I have missed it—but perhaps I may take the liberty of asking the Minister this. If a private provider gets degree-awarding status and, goodness forbid, that provider goes into liquidation, what happens to the student loans that have been taken out? Will the Government guarantee that they can get those loans back, so that they can pay for the course somewhere else?

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly intervene in this debate to welcome the proposals that the Government have now brought before us. There is, as we recognised in debates at earlier stages, always a balance to be struck. On the one hand is protecting the interests of students, which must be paramount, and the reputation of British higher education as a whole. On the other hand, the fact is that most of the innovation and advances in higher education in England have occurred as a result of new providers coming in and doing things differently. The history of the growth in, and success of, higher education in our country has been that doing things differently from the start is easier than changing an existing body. The arrangements in the new clause today get that balance right.

If anything, the process will now be more rigorous and defined than the kind of process that we had when decisions on degree-awarding powers and university title were taken by, among other bodies, the Privy Council on advice. This is superior to what went before. I feel a bit wary of referring to the 1960s now that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has referred to them. But the fact is that one of the most exciting experiments in the growth of higher education in this country in the 1960s was when universities got their title and degree-awarding powers from the very beginning. We should not be far more restrictive than we were then.