HC Deb 07 December 1962 vol 668 cc1722-34

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. M. Hamilton.]

4.10 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Mulley (Sheffield, Park)

I want to draw the attention of the House to the recruitment problems of the universities. At the outset, I should like to thank the Financial Secretary to the Treasury for his readiness to be here to reply to a debate on a Friday, and for his courtesy in assisting me to keep the subject within the bounds of Treasury responsibility. I hope that the debate will serve as an occasion for him to express the sympathy which I know he has with the problems of the universities.

University expansion against the background of staff wastage, due largely but not entirely to dissatisfaction with the salary structure, is a large and general problem. There is no argument between the two sides of the House about the need for university expansion, but there may be a difference between us about the rate. We would like to go further than the Government plan which the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced last March—targets of 150,000 students in 1966–67 and 170,000 by 1973–74. We know that the whole matter has been put before the Robbins Committee, and we shall no doubt soon be having its report. Perhaps the Financial Secretary can say when that report is likely to be received. However, the setting up of a committee is no substitute for action in circumstances which demand urgent action now. We know that after many of these committees any action taken usually comes long after the committee has reported.

The problems of the universities are well set out in the recent Report of the University Grants Committee, which, in paragraph 17 says: The returns from the existing universities indicate that they could increase their student numbers from 111,000 in October, 1961, to 144,500 by 1966–67, the last year of the coming quinquennium, an increase of 30 per cent.; they emphasised, however, that such an expansion was dependent on the recruitment of staff and on the provision of adequate recurrent grants. In paragraph 21, the Committee goes on to quote what the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals said last March: The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals feels bound to state its opinion that this target (about 150,000 students by 1966–67) cannot be reached by the date specified with the limited provision which the Government proposes to make …". For bodies like the University Grants Committee and the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, the language used during the past year is extremely strong, but when one considers the staffing problems of some of the universities, one understands that there is support for the use of strong language.

I understand that King's College, Newcastle, has 10 posts which it is unable to fill. In Hull, there are two vacancies in the physics department and three in the mathematics department which the university has been trying to fill for a long time. The Registrar at Hull said that not only in the sciences, but in the social sciences, they were finding it difficult to get suitable applicants.

I understand that there have been about 40 resignations from Leeds since last April, 24 people leaving to take up posts outside British universities. The distinguished Vice-Chancellor, Sir Charles Morris, said that the situation would get worse unless the Government soon gave a clear indication that they wanted able people to enter university work.

In the University of Sheffield, in which I have a special interest as I am privileged to represent part of the city there are very great difficulties. The department of civil engineering has three lecturers out of an establishment of eight and the first year's structures course the drawing office tutorial has to be conducted by one lecturer, although there are 56 students. In the applied mathematics department there is a seminar on economic statistics for 80 students, taught by one lecturer. When we talk about getting classes in primary schools down below 40, and then realise that in universities we have classes of this size, one wonders what is happening in university education.

Sheffield opened a new physics block, which cost £800,000 to build. Almost at the same time the professor and the senior lecturer resigned and have taken posts in the United States. Next year, it is understood, the whole of the staff, professor and lecturers, of one science department will be leaving to take up jobs in the United States.

When we survey the general field of the universities at present it seems increasingly doubtful that they will be able at the end of the year to have adequate staff, particularly in science and social sciences departments, to maintain the current numbers. Certainly, they will be in no position to expand. The probability seems to be that they will have to reduce the intake next year.

The major question is that of university salaries, which were last reviewed in January, 1960. The Financial Secretary will know that the Association of University Teachers has put forward a new scale in anticipation of the Government undertaking of a new review early next year. I do not know whether, when he replies, he will be able to say anything about a statement to be issued on the salaries review promised by his right hon. Friend last March.

The House will know the facts of the university salaries situation. Last year, although their discussions with the Treasury rain parallel with the Burnham discussions on teachers' salaries and the University Grants Committee made recommendations to the Chancellor on the eve of the pay pause in July, 1961, the Government nevertheless took the view that they were caught by the pay pause. As a result, university teachers, unlike teachers in training colleges, technical colleges and schools, wore not permitted to benefit by a salary increase.

In March this year university pay was increased by 3 per cent. In order that it might have some beneficial effect the increase was confined to the assistant lecturer and lecturer scales. Since 1960, when university scales were last reviewed, I understand, salaries in colleges of advanced technology and teacher training colleges have been increased by 17 per cent., salaries of the scientific civil servants have been increased by 21 per cent. and salaries in the administrative Civil Service have been increased by 24 per cent. That is the background against which we have to judge the present university salaries position.

Teachers in universities are certainly of the opinion that they have been extremely unfairly dealt with, not only as to amount but in the way in which the whole pay pause was operated against them. To some extent there is a loss to the United States. I would not suggest that we could possibly compete on salaries there, but over and above the draw of salaries to academic scientists there is the draw of equipment. One reason why so many leading scientists have been persuaded out of the universities very often to universities abroad has been the lack of provision of the kind of equipment—expensive as it is—that they need in this country.

On the present level of university grants, I see no likelihood of British universities being able to reverse the trend. I understand that in recent years as many as 70 of the top 250 physicists in this country have taken jobs outside Britain. It has been said that the Civil Service and the Atomic Energy Commission have been successful in recent months in reversing this trend and in getting some scientists back. That may be so. Perhaps the Financial Secretary will tell us about it.

So far as I am advised, there is no sign of this trend being reversed in the universities. While no one would want to see that interchange of academic personnel between ourselves, the United States and the Commonwealth universities come to a stop, there is a point, which I think has already been reached, when it holds great dangers for the future of our British universities.

The same broad principle applies, of course, to the numbers who are leaving the universities to go to colleges of advanced technology and technical colleges. Obviously, it is a matter of public interest that these colleges should be well staffed, but the question is whether they should be staffed wholly at the expense, as now seems to be the case, of the universities.

It may well be that mistakes have been made in the past in setting up colleges of advanced technology, as it were outside the university circle. There may well be a case, which no doubt we can develop when the Robbins Report is published, for colleges of advanced technology to be treated as universities with power to give degrees and so on. But, on the face of it, it seems that the first priority of the Government is to prefer the colleges of advanced technology to the universities.

In 1961–62, taking the average for all universities, the student-staff ratio was 10.4. The University Grants Committee, commenting on this, says: The greater part of the gain in Arts and Social Sciences which was evident in the immediate post-war years has been lost since 1954–55 while the ratio in Science and Applied Science has worsened throughout the whole post-war period. Against that figure of 10.4, I was told in answer to a Question this week that the average in colleges of advanced technology varies from 4.5 to 7.0 for full-time students and, allowing for the work of part-time students, it is between 6.3 and 8—much better than the university ratio.

The C.A.T.s, as I understand, are also able to give many more senior posts as well as pay greater salaries for the same grade of lecturer. The problem has been put simply by a Sheffield lecturer to me when he said that the same grade can move to a college of advanced technology and make £400 extra a year. Almost certainly he would get £500 because he would become a senior lecturer. He has a good chance of becoming a principal lecturer with a salary increase of £650, and, if he "goes to it" he may well become a reader with a salary increase of £900.

This kind of increment is such that a man has to be very dedicated to a university not to be persuaded to leave it. The only difference in the work that he would do for C.A.T.s compared with what he does in the university is that he would have rather less of it because of the higher staff ratio in the college of advanced technology. He would in fact, do for an external degree the same kind of course that he does at present for an internal degree within the university. Another instance is of a lecturer in Sheffield, who has been teaching in that university for 13 years, and has two higher degrees, and yet at the present time has not reached the starting scale for a technical college lecturer.

The universities have reached a point of crisis, and unless the Government do something in the next months, I fear the outcome will be extremely serious. The amount of money that is necessary to put the matter right is small in proportion to the general scale of Government expenditure. After all, the total cost of universities in a year to the Government is around £70 million less than they propose to spend on developing a supersonic airliner.

In conclusion I would put the point to the Government in the way in which it has been put to me by one of my constituents. He says: Many staff are regarding this next salary review by the Treasury as one which will end the chronic uncertainty which has affected university staff for such a long period. Unless substantial increases are forthcoming, with an undertaking from the Treasury that it will in future act responsibly towards university staff, there will be a fresh spate of resignations, and recruitment will dry up. This is as certain as anything can be. There is beyond any doubt, and this cannot be refuted by the Treasury, a much-decreased commitment among university people to university work They have passed the stage of exasperation, to the point where a deep malaise is noticeable. This is the very worst sort of basis from which to expect wholehearted co-operation in a massive expansion programme. The Treasury should understand that their review of university salary scales next war is no ordinary review—the outcome will determine the quality of British higher education for many years ahead. It may be that many are coming to the conclusion which was quoted in a latter to The Times on 31st October, quoting a British lecturer who had gone to the United States: Sometimes I wonder why we don't all come over here and leave the Treasury and the U.G.C. to sit and wonder where they went wrong. Perhaps the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will tell us this afternoon where they are going wrong.

4.26 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Anthony Barber)

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) raised a matter of great importance. This autumn the universities of this country embarked on the first year of a new quinquennium, which promises to be one of the most significant periods in the history of university development. The Government's plans provide for an increase in the number of university places of some 35 per cent. in that five-year period. During this period the level of public expenditure on universities is expected to rise to over £160 million a year, more than three times the cost to public funds only five years ago.

The hon. Member rightly emphasised the great importance of the recruitment of university staff in sufficient numbers and of the right quality to support a university programme of this size. On this, the hon. Member and I are at one. He suggested, however, that there are already serious deficiencies in the present staffing of the universities, and other people have also painted a gloomy picture of the large-scale flight from the universities to jobs overseas and to other forms of academic teaching in this country. The hon. Member referred, in particular, to the colleges of advanced technology.

It is proper that all this should be considered, but I do not think that it is an accurate representation of the position. Of course, there are particular difficulties at particular universities and in particular faculties. It might be convenient if I first of all referred to the various fields of responsibility in this matter. The Government decide in advance, after advice from the University Grants Committee, the total amount of grant for general running expenses to be made available to universities for each year of a quinquennial period. The University Grants Committee is entirely responsible for the allocation of that grant between individual universities, and in order to ensure that academic freedom is safeguarded it is the rule that the way in which these funds are distributed between universities and the way in which the universities themselves spend their money shall not be the subject of detailed control by the Treasury. I am sure that the hon. Member agrees that this is right.

It has also become the convention that because academic salaries represent such a large portion of university current spending—now as much as 44 per cent.—the cost of increases in teaching salary scales is met as to 100 per cent. by supplementary grant from the Exchequer. Of course, it follows as a corollary to this that university salary scales on which the amount of such grant is calculated are subject to Government approval. But I must emphasise that it remains the responsibility of the individual university authorities to decide the number of their academic staff, and they are also responsible for all their own recruitment.

Mr. Mulley

The Financial Secretary indicated that the Government had agreed with the University Grants Committee on the amount for the next quinquennium. Is that so? Did the University Grants Committee ask for no Mare than they were given for this year?

Mr. Barber

On an occasion like this, I do not think that we can go into the history of the negotiations between the University Grants Committee and the Government. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Committee gives us its advice bat, in the end, the overall responsibility must be with the Government, I was trying to point out how this is arranged and I am sure that it is right that the allocation as between individual universities, and the way in which they spend their money, is left to the University Grants Committee and to the universities themselves.

The terms of reference of the University Grants Committee are, of course, very wide. Among other things, the Committee is charged with the task of collecting, examining and making available information relating to university education throughout the United Kingdom, and it has to assist, in consultation with the universities and other bodies concerned, in the preparation and execution of such plans for the development of universities as may from time to time be required in order to ensure that they are fully adequate to national needs.

Naturally, in discharge of those responsibilities, the Committee keeps under review, amongst other things, the adequacy of staffing of the universities and, for this purpose, it collects and lays before this House statistics of the numbers and grading of staff at the univensities. It also calculates the ratio of staff to students.

I shall not weary the House by quoting from the most recent Report, which is Command 1885, laid before the House only last month, but at present, barely two months after the beginning of the new academic year, the latest staffing figures are necessarily provisional. Nevertheless, they are sufficiently reliable to give a reasonably clear idea of the university staffing position at the beginning of the autumn term, 1962, compared with the position at the same time last year. The total number of staff has grown from 12,921 in 1961—the latest figure so far published—to 13,824 in 1962. That is an increase of 7 per cent. Incidentally, the increase in the number of staff in 1961 over 1960 was only 4 per cent.

The hon. Gentleman referred in particular to the University of Sheffield, of which he has considerable special knowledge, and went into some detail. It is the case that at Sheffield, despite the difficulties to which he referred, and which I accept, with which the university has had to contend, it has increased its total staff by an overall 11 per cent.—considerably more than the national average. Moreover, the increase has not been restricted to a few faculties. According to the information that I sought before replying to this debate, there were, apparently, more staff in each of the main faculties at Sheffield at the beginning of this term than there were at that time last year, although I recognise that in individual faculties—the hon. Gentleman mentioned one branch of engineering—the university is faced with difficulties.

The need for these increases in staff is obvious, and one has only to consider two facts to realise that. This year, the first year of the new quinquennium, the University of Sheffield has admitted 1,134 new students--nearly 16 per cent. more than were admitted in the autumn term of 1961.

The hon. Gentleman referred to student-staff ratios, and made some comparisons between the universities and other forms of education. I certainly agree that this is a very important matter, but it is one in which comparisons must be made with considerable caution. For example, the figures quoted of the position in the colleges of advanced technology are not calculated on the same basis as the U.G.C. uses in assessing the university ratio. The colleges of advanced technology figures are derived by straight division of the numbers of students by the numbers of staff, and the ratios reached on that ratio vary—I think these were the hon. Gentleman's figures—from 4.5 students to 1 staff at Brunel College to 7.4 to 1 at Loughborough.

The U.G.C., however, on expert and independent statistical advice, does not consider that that basis of calculation accurately reflects the position at universities. The Committee's method is described in detail in Command 1855. In particular, the U.G.C. feels that it is necessary to take account of the greater demands made on the time of university teaching staff by post-graduate students, and of the number of staffs who have no direct teaching or research functions. So in arriving at the student-staff ratios in the universities the U.G.C. give postgraduate students a weighting which varies from faculty to faculty, and it also excludes from the staff numbers those members with no close teaching or research association with the students.

On this basis, which the Committee used for the first time this year, the overall ratio in the universities in 1961–62 was 10.4 to 1, again a figure which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. This concealed considerable variation between different faculties. In their latest returns the U.G.C. drew attention to the fact that the figure of 10.4 to 1 is rather less favourable than the figure in 1954–55, for a variety of reasons, and the U.G.C. is concerned that there should be no deterioration in the existing position.

This is, of course, a most important aspect, and it was, indeed, on the assumption that the present student-staff ratios would be maintained during the enormous university development of the next five years that the Government based the programme of recurrent grants for this presen quinquennium. It has been argued that the level of recurrent grant is inadequate, that it will not support the university development programme and that, in particular the universifies will be unable to find the money to pay he staff they need.

I do not think that this is really so, but I am not for one moment implying that there is any ground for complacency on this particular and most important aspect. It is essential that the universities should obtain additional staff somewhat in advance of their needs if the momentum of the expansion on which we have embarked is not to be interrupted.

Recruitment this year has been less satisfactory in some universities and in some faculties but overall, there is no reason to believe that the number recruited in 1962 falls short of that needed to support the university development programme, and, in particular, although the increased number of post-graduates at universities in the present academic year makes it unlikely that there will be an improvement on the 1961–62 student-staff ratio, the available figures do not suggest any worsening of the present position. But it is certainly a matter which the Government will watch very carefully indeed, and it will certainly figure largely in the review which the Government have undertaken to make in 1964 of the university financial situation. This will take into account how the University Grants Committee thinks that expansion is going forward, how prices and so forth have been moving, and how the long-term economic outlook has developed.

I had hoped that I might have had an opportunity to say a brief word about the movement of university teachers from one country to another, particularly North America, but I should like to say a brief word, while I have the opportunity, about the question of salaries for academic staff. This was mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. It certainly is, I agree with him, very relevant to the subject of staffing, although perhaps I may say, having spent some time with the hon. Gentleman at the same university, where he had a much more distinguished career than I had, that I think he would be the first to agree that there are other attractions about university life, apart from pay. However, the question of university salaries is, of course, a most important one.

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman or other hon. Members in the House today would expect me to make any pronouncement now. It has been discussed on more than one occasion, and a claim by the Association of University Teachers is now being considered. The Government are under a pledge to review the scales, and that pledge I can reaffirm. My right hon. Friend is well aware of the present position on salaries, and of the views which have been urged.

Although the hon. Gentleman had particularly in mind the University of Sheffield on this occasion, the issues which we have been discussing during this short debate are of vital concern to all universities, and I am sure that those who have the cause of the universities at heart will take account of the views which have been expressed in the debate and will—

The Question having been proposed after Four o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty minutes to Five o'clock.