Higher Education Policy

Rob Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), who spoke passionately in defence of students in her constituency. I do not intend to speak for long—I hope to keep to five or six minutes.

I make no apology for continuing to support and vote for the policies of the Government, because I am in no doubt that the medium and long-term strengths of our higher education sector will be substantially improved by the measures we have taken so far—and, I hope, will continue to take. It is true, however, that over time we will need to make further changes in some areas. Nevertheless, the Opposition and the shadow Secretary of State have got this one wrong. As Lord Mandelson has shown, even many members of the Labour party believe that mistakes are being made. In particular, the analysis of the role of the Office for Fair Access is wrong. But I will come to that later.

My first observation concerns student numbers. One of the fundamental strengths of the new system is that it empowers students by making money follow their choices, so that universities are incentivised to raise the quality of their courses and of the student experience in order to attract students and generate income. Professor David Eastwood, vice-chancellor of the university of Birmingham and a member of the Browne review, recently emphasised that the

“key policy imperative is to say that numbers will follow informed student choice”.

He has argued that expanding higher education places to meet demand would force down fees at less popular universities and cost the taxpayer less. I believe that he is probably right.

[Mr Denham]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but does he accept that the Government have not told us how they intend to allocate student numbers—or indeed whether we will have a model in which the money follows the student or whether numbers will be centrally allocated, as they are at the moment? The Opposition called for that information before December, so does he share my regret that Ministers have completely failed to answer that question? Indeed, the lack of an answer means that we do not know whether the hon. Gentleman’s point is valid or not.

[Mr Wilson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point, because there are certainly questions still to be answered, which is something I will come to.

I am concerned that the restrictions on student numbers will mean that we fail to realise the full benefits of competition in the higher education sector, which would have encouraged universities to achieve greater efficiency and offer more value for money. As a recent report by Tim Leunig for the think-tank CentreForum put it,

“because government restricts the number of students that each university can take, this is not real competition”—

and indeed, it is not. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will agree that the Government must devise a system in which universities and courses that are popular and economically important can expand, if necessary at the expense of unpopular courses and institutions. Does he therefore share my concern that capping student numbers will threaten one of the key benefits offered by the Government’s reforms? What further action does he propose to take to ensure that courses that students want to take, at a price that they want to pay, can expand at the expense of courses that they do not want to take, at prices that they do not want to pay? In these difficult times the Treasury is keen not to spend more on subsidies for students than it absolutely has to, which provides the Secretary of State and the Minister with a big challenge if they want real competition in the higher education sector. If the Minister cannot convince the Treasury that removing the cap on student numbers will reduce overall HE costs, there will be no genuine market in HE.

However, I hope that the Government are thinking creatively about seeking micro-solutions to the problem. In particular, I would recommend that they look at three areas that are perhaps worthy of further consideration. The first is how we encourage private sector institutions to enter the HE sector and offer degree courses. There is no reason why they should not be allowed to enter the sector and overcome any real or perceived barriers to entry, which can easily be removed. Secondly, the further education sector needs to be encouraged to offer more degree and higher education courses. The changes that we have made in the HE sector offer huge opportunities for FE colleges to offer high quality, affordable, specialist courses. Once again, we can look across the Atlantic at what is happening in the US community college system as an example of the model that we need to strive to follow in this country.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, the content of which I agree with. Does he agree that many FE colleges are now delivering the quality that should enable them to confer degrees, rather than being dependent on universities, which in times of financial uncertainty tend to reduce what they allow FE colleges to do? We need to give them freedom if they are to compete properly in the market.

[Mr Wilson]

Indeed I do agree with that. There are some fabulous FE colleges that could easily deliver high quality higher education degrees.

Thirdly, if we are to have a Treasury-imposed affordability limit on student numbers, we need to think more creatively about how we tease the best out of a more limited market system. As I have said, we need to encourage the best high-quality, sought-after courses that students actually want to take. We have to design a system that allows good universities with good courses to expand, and poorly performing universities with poor quality courses to decline, or at least take action to improve their offering.

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is focusing on the crucial issues of how we get more competition and choice into the system. I assure him that these are absolutely the issues that we will focus on in the White Paper.

[Mr Wilson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reassurance.

Let me turn quickly to my other point about the Office for Fair Access. As Professor Eastwood rightly argued, more higher education places should mean more social mobility. Although I welcome any constructive suggestion to increase social mobility and opportunities in this country, I am concerned that a heavy-handed attempt to do so would risk another cornerstone of our university system, which is academic freedom.

In a commendable feature of the Higher Education Act 2004, OFFA was given a legal duty

“to protect academic freedom including, in particular, the freedom of institutions…to determine the criteria for the admission of students and apply those criteria in particular cases.”

The first guidance letter issued by the Labour Secretary of State in October 2004 confirmed that the Government’s priority was financial support for the poorest students, and noted that

“institutions that generally attract a narrower range of students may want to put more money into outreach activity to raise aspirations”.

The guidance also made it clear that institutions’ admissions policies and procedures were outside OFFA’s remit.

This Government’s new guidance to the director of fair access is much more aggressive, and I believe that it has clear and serious implications for universities’ admissions policies. It instructs OFFA that it

“will want to ensure that each institution is making sustained and meaningful progress towards a more balanced and representative student body, reflected year on year in its own benchmarks, measures and targets.”

Under the February 2011 guidance letter, if an institution is deemed to have seriously or wilfully breached its access agreement, OFFA can decide not to approve or renew the agreement. That would remove the institution’s right to charge its students above a basic fee level. I understand that a fine of up to £500,000 is also available.

The message to universities, via OFFA, appears to be that unless they make progress each year towards achieving a “more balanced and representative” student body, they can expect OFFA to set much more onerous obligations and require them to devote more of their resources to outreach and financial support. In addition, they could be fined. So, while the Opposition call for new powers for OFFA, will the Minister confirm that the Government remain committed to protecting the academic freedom of universities, and that they have no plans to interfere with university admissions policies through access agreements?

[Mr Willetts]

I can give that assurance. We have no plans to change the legal framework guaranteeing the freedom of universities to run their own admissions procedures.

[Mr Wilson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that assurance, but the legal framework is slightly different from the access agreement. I do not have time to go into that now, however.

I agree with the Russell group when it argues that too few poorer pupils are getting the right grades and that the achievement gap according to socio-economic background is getting even wider. It also argues that the most effective way to get low income students into the best universities is to help them to improve their academic performance at an early stage. It is in the schools that we should be looking to change things, not in the universities. As I have said, I am passionately committed to raising aspirations and spreading opportunities more widely in our society, but it would be far better to tackle the real cause of unfair access to higher education—too few poorer children achieving the right grades at school—than to bring the Government into conflict with the legal duty to protect university independence and academic freedom.