Higher Education and Research Bill (Second sitting)

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We have only 10 more minutes for this session.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Q I would like to know whether the changes we are making will provide our businesses with more qualified people with the right qualifications to enable our economy to grow. Mr Carberry, is the CBI satisfied that the Bill does that?

Neil Carberry: We are broadly supportive of the Bill. Our members feel that—

[Mark Pawsey]

Q What else would you like? What is not there that you would like to see?

Neil Carberry: Higher education is a critical part of our industrial strategy. We support the TEF. As Chris has just said, we favour an element of narrative alongside the metrics to allow for acknowledgement of things such as student entrepreneurship and engagement with careers. These are really important things for universities to be thinking of alongside pure teaching and student experience.

I come back to the point I made earlier. We need to make sure that the Bill works for students on all parts of the life span and not just those who go at 18. We need to make sure that the office for students is looking at making sure that part-time and later life learners—

[Mark Pawsey]

Q Do your members think that once the Bill is implemented, they are more likely to get the kind of graduates that they need than they would have had previously?

Neil Carberry: I think broadly that is the case. We would like to see a move on part-time. We would also like to make sure that the development of the TEF is an inclusive process that includes business throughout its development. As Chris has just said, it is a long path. I think broadly business feels we have got to a very positive place on the REF now. We would like to go in the same direction on this.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Q Returning to the TEF, do you think it is going to raise teaching standards or is it going to provide a mechanism to increase fees? Could we end up with a very complicated system of fees, where the levels are changing from one course to another or from one year to another, leaving quite a difficult situation for students to comprehend?

Professor Chris Husbands: The policy intention is to provide clearer information for students. The question some way down the track—I do not think the sector has begun to think this one through—is whether once you move to discipline level TEF you end up with discipline variability in fees. There is experience on this. If you look at the postgraduate or international market, which are unregulated in terms of fees, there tends not to be, with one or two exceptions, institutional differentiation—intra-institutional differentiation—on fees, so I think that is unlikely.

As I said earlier, at some point, the reality of higher education economics is that we have to have a framework for increasing the fee basis. We cannot be here in 30 or 40 years’ time on £9,000 fees when prices are considerably higher. The challenge for me and the panel is to make sure that as those fees increase, the institutions are appropriately focused on developing and further enhancing teaching quality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q I wonder if it is entirely accurate to categorise universities as boarding schools, having no links with business and not having employability as part of their agenda. The picture of HE is actually quite diverse, and that is creating a bit of a problem for the TEF. I wonder whether some of the issues that you are raising could be addressed by making employability, for example, central to the TEF.

Dame Ruth Silver: It depends which part of the UK you look at. I know you have got colleagues coming from Scotland where the third highest number of graduates come through the FE sector and come through a relationship jointly with universities called articulation at high-level skills qualifications. Wales is different as well. It varies; there are national variations in what is going on.

What has happened with all the reforms in universities is that today it is easier to take more and more bachelor degree, full-time younger people. There is an impact. It depends where you are looking for impact. I am very focused on access and social mobility and those are the things that universities are not strong at, certainly in England. They are very closely connected to employers in postgraduate roles and in research.

[Mark Pawsey]

Q I want to ask the representatives of the independent sector here today how representative are you of the sector? How much bigger could the independent sector be once the Bill is enacted? Are you the tip of the iceberg, or are you just going to be able to grow a little bigger and do a little bit more than you used to be able to do?

Professor Philip Wilson: The majority of the independent sector are specialist in a narrow field, in which case there is a glass ceiling of how many people want to work in a certain industry, whether it be in the arts or within our degree portfolio. I think there will be a natural point where, because employability will be everything, we as an institution have to be very careful of market saturation.

We have actually self-imposed a cap for the number of students we will take in the UK because of that. The majority of the independent sector have no ambition to become the University of Manchester with 30,000 students. With an independent HE hat on, anyone who says different to that is maybe not representative of what the independent sector feels.

[Mark Pawsey]

Q Why is this Bill so important to you?

Professor Philip Wilson: It is about a level playing field, absolutely. We want to be considered and judged and monitored the same as everybody else. That then leads through to more informed student choice. I get frustrated at open days talking to parents who spend more time researching their summer holiday on TripAdvisor and look for more information than they will do on their university of choice. We need to educate the parents and the families on how they choose their institutions. It is not just based on longevity—how long an institution has been around.

Angela Jones: For us it is about a change in emphasis away from research and into teaching quality and excellence because that is what we do and do well. We are providing an excellent environment for students to learn in and that is our focus. Higher education has always traditionally been judged on research output. If we are being judged against people based on research output, essentially we have to compete on a different level and the TEF is better.

Professor Philip Wilson: I also think the QAA need to expand and broaden their assessment when they come into an institution. We have had some very successful QAA reviews but when they do not actually go into a classroom it beggars belief—I just do not get it, because that is what the student interaction point is; that is where the customer service interaction is. I really would support the QAA getting into the classroom, sitting at the back of the room and understanding what the teaching quality is like, so that students are not having PhD students doing the majority of their teaching. Institutions must be held to account of qualified people standing at the front of every room.

[Mr Marsden]

Q Both our colleagues from the FE sector have laid stress on the way that higher degrees can be delivered through very strong local connectivity. To be fair to the Government, the Government have banged on in the Bill all the time about higher skills but there are issues at the moment, I would suggest, around the implications of Brexit for funding. The figure that I had from the Government just before the referendum was in the region of £725 million of ESF funding.

We have heard from colleagues this morning about the support that the Government are giving to the university sector in terms of research. Are you concerned that a lot of that money that fuels the sort of work that you do will go west if there is not a renewed effort on that part by the Government?

Dame Ruth Silver: It is a growing concern certainly in colleges, where European social funds come through local authorities and through universities. A lot of partnership work is funded by that, so it is a great concern. What will be removed would be those new initiatives that seem to have an impact on bringing people in, dealing with individuals but helping employers as well. Diversity of employers in Lewisham has certainly been helped by that. It is the loss of the layer below that will infect and affect progression for those communities. There is a concern that that money will be lost at the same time.