Higher and Further Education

HL Deb 14 March 1984 vol 449 cc732-41

3.3 p.m.

Lord Annan rose to call attention to the need for change in universities, polytechnics and colleges in higher and further education; and to move for Papers.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, 20 years have passed since the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, published his report, and perhaps the House would agree that the time has come to look at what has happened. That report was entirely right in urging that places in higher education should be available for all those qualified. I am still totally unrepentent at having welcomed mass higher education as I did at that time, because our wealth as a nation and our potentiality to be better-informed and more civilised depend upon it.

But the report was wrong—and I and others in my generation were wrong—in not recognising that you cannot have both mass higher education and Rolls-Royce education. The report never considered cost effectiveness. It never considered changing the scale and the system of financial support. It never urged ways, for instance, of inducing more students to live at home—instead, it recommended building more halls of residence. It recommended the transformation of colleges of advanced technology into universities, and I was wrong to support that. Of course, like many others, I wanted some universities to have a strong vocational bias. But what we in fact did was to add, at a stroke, millions of pounds to the estimates without adding a single additional student.

In order to remedy the bias in the report towards universities, Mr. Crosland created 32 polytechnics; and later the teacher training and other colleges were upgraded. But again the same mistake was made. Instead of creating cheap institutions, the polys were put on the same footing as universities. They too were to give three-year degree courses and they often dropped diploma work. Even the further education colleges were permitted to offer degree courses—and no wonder because those who taught them were better paid as a result.

If I had to say in one sentence what the strategy for higher education should be in the next 20 years, it is this. Make it less costly and make access to it easier. How can one do this and maintain standards? You cannot, unless you acknowledge that there are different kinds of institutions and they do different things. I am unrepentant in wanting easier access, but I am also an unrepentant elitist. We should formally acknowledge that eight of our universities contain so many top departments that they are acknowledged internationally as centres of excellence; and, if challenged, I am perfectly ready to name them. In America, for example, there are 4,000 colleges and they range from Berkeley, Cal Tech, MIT, Harvard, Yale and Chicago to what the profession in America calls "Academic Siberia". France has her Grandes Ecôles, Germany has her Aachen technische Hochschule, and Clausthal-Sellerfeld and the Max-Planck Institutes. But it is recognised on the Continent that the large majority of institutions will teach those with modest attainments on entry and for the attainment of modest qualifications. We on the contrary run a monolithic university and polytechnic system. We cannot afford to do this any longer from public funds. In future, research in many of our universities will have to be funded from private funds. Again I look forward to the day when the polytechnics are no longer, in Lord Vaizey's phrase "Artytechnics". All their courses should be strictly vocational. Should there really be a department of philosophy in Middlesex Polytechnic? Should there be anthropology taught in Oxford Polytechnic? Should a single further education college teach for a degree? Surely not.

How are such changes to be brought about? Such changes will never occur by begging institutions to reform themselves. The rationalisation induced during the past three years would never have taken place without the Government imposing drastic cuts. A fortnight ago I was in Toronto talking to the distinguished climatologist Dr. Kenneth Hare. We were recalling how in 1967 we began to hold informal meetings with other heads of schools in London University to discuss rationalisation of resources. Every initiative we proposed was turned down, and it is only now that Dr. Hare and I can see Birkbeck College and University College, which are next door to each other, uniting their departments. Lord Todd's recommendations for rationalising London medical schools and, a decade later, those of Lord Flowers, were both rubbished. Only now are mergers taking place.

In 1969, after the devaluation of the pound, Mrs Shirley Williams put her 13 points to the universities. Everyone knows what happened. They were not well received. When the Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, the late Sir Hugh Robson, and myself as his Vice-Chairman, tried to take one of those points, the green seas of academic bureaucracy closed over us and we sank without a trace. The polytechnics even more than the universities for years refused Government's request to reduce the numbers of overseas students. In the end Government lost patience. They imposed a ham- handed scheme which later had to be modified. The universities and polytechnics received a great deal of help, notably from the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, and especially from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, when he was Foreign Secretary. But what help did they ever give to Government on this particular problem?

It is now two years since the Secretary of State asked the universities to consider academic tenure. Except at Cambridge, a young lecturer will be appointed at about the age of 25. The decision to grant him or her an unshakable contract of employment until he is 65 years old will taken two and a half years later. That has for long been a scandal. There is a rumour—and it is only a rumour—that the universities might now put forward the daring scheme of extending the probationary period from three to five years. I would not expect that to satisfy the Secretary of State, who believes that redundancy should be a fit cause for dismissal at any time. I think that he is wrong.

A university, like the Civil Service, is a different sort of institution from a business. Last Monday I was glad to see The Times reminding us that it was concerned with matters which cannot be measured in monetary terms, such as cultivating a critical intellect, transmitting culture, innovating and civilising. Those are the jobs of a university. However, one can hardly blame the Secretary of State for being impatient. Should not the universities be told that there will be difficulty in granting money for new blood posts or for amendments proposed to charter and statutes, unless in two years' time major changes in job security are introduced to the satisfaction of Parliament?

Why is it that in higher education people are so unwilling to respond to the hints and initiatives which come from Whitehall? I believe that the reason lies in their system of governance. Initiatives and proposals arise in departments; then senates and academic boards put them in order; governing bodies rubber-stamp them, and the University Grants Committee, the National Advisory Body and local authorities hold Government at arm's length. To describe this, academic staff use a phrase with which some who have been punished in days long gone by at their schools will certainly concur; it is the principle which is called "bottom up, hands off". Paradoxically, this Government, which are dedicated to rolling back the frontiers of state control, are being forced to adopt a policy of "top down, intervene".

The trouble is that governing bodies do not govern. The governance of the polytechnics is sometimes subject to disgraceful political bias, and requires investigation. In the case of the Polytechnic of North London, I think that it would have been more revealing if the Secretary of State had investigated its governing body rather than its department of sociology, so scandalous has been its mismanagement of the polytechnic's affairs over the years. It makes me ask whether we really need eight—or is it nine?—polytechnics in Greater London?

But let me leave the iniquities of the Polytechnic of North London to the tender mercies of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. Rather than govern, what governing bodies do is to ratify the deals which are made on senate and academic boards. These deals are not discreditable, but they inevitably represent what gives least pain to academic staff, and not the most effective use of resources. In my judgment, the administrative staff of universities are wonderfully efficient and far fewer in number than they are abroad. But what hampers them is the committee system organised by academic staff. For instance, the committee system of the University of Sussex is renowned for being Byzantine in its complexity and benighted in its interminability. Could the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor confirm that the body that the Secretary of State intends to set up to examine the efficiency of universities will report on their method of reaching decisions and on their committee structure?

There is, however, one committee which every university and polytechic should have—a small planning committee composed of lay members from the governing body and academic staff. Before it comes to any decision, the governing body would naturally receive the comments of the senate or academic board on the proposals this committee makes. But the governing body alone should decide what is to be done. The lay members should be in a substantial majority on that governing body. Therefore, may I ask whether the Secretary of State will be studying the instrument of governance in each institution to see whether the lay membership needs reinforcing?

There are, of course, several bodies crucial to change in higher education. It is too early to judge the performance of the National Advisory Body in relation to the polytechnics, and I can only say what good furtune it is for the universities that Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer is chairman of the University Grants Committee and the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals. Both of them, as I well remember, gave the University of London signal service in identifying its problems and suggesting models for change. Both of them understand the difficulites and the need for change.

Someone at the Department of Edcuation and Science paid a tribute to Sir Edward Parkes, when he retired as chairman of the UGC, after he had made a controversial allocation discriminating in favour of one institution and some subjects and disciplines against others. The official said, "Excellent, but we could never have done it here. We would have cut across the board". Cutting across the board—or as Lord Keynes used to say, "Equal misery for all"—is the coward's way out.

No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, whose maiden speech we are all looking forward to this afternoon, will make the case out for preferential treatment for the Open University much better than I can. But the Open University is one of those cheap forms of higher education for adults that I have been advocating. I sometimes ask myself whether the Department of Education and Science discriminates sufficiently in its allocations.

This afternoon, I am sure that we shall hear many accounts of the misery now being experienced in universities and polytechnics. I hope that no one supposes that I do not have sympathy for my former colleagues. For them it is a time of withered hope and fears for their own future. The fact that millions of others suffer in this way is not much comfort. The universities have been being cut ever since the oil crisis. The cuts of the last three years, though more intense, are nothing new. A vice-chancellor said to me the other day that the new set of projected cuts will force him to tell his council that sometime soon his university will cease to be what has been understood by that term. The answer to that is this: rationalise resources with other universities; transfer staff and departments; reduce the ludicrous number of courses and options in each place; rethink the curriculum. When the present consultations which Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer has initiated are completed, the UGC and the NAB should intervene and declare that a grant to a university, a poly or a college will be at risk unless some activity or department is phased out, or transferred elsewhere to make it stronger.

What alarms me is that in 1972 we were in sight of mass higher education, and by that I mean when 15 per cent. or more of adolescents are educated after the age of 18. Today, the intake is declining at a time when it is rising among our competitors. The trouble starts in the sixth forms. Between 1970 and 1980 the number of boys and girls staying on at school at the age of 18 increased in France by 7 and 14 per cent., and in Germany by 20 and 25 per cent. respectively. In Britain it fell in each sex by 1 per cent.

Why, today, do fewer sons and daughters of manual workers try to obtain some qualification after the age of 16 than they did before 1977? Why do our academic staff and students display a reluctance to respond to the demands of the market place? Of course it is natural for all of us here to be proud that the £700 millon spent from public funds on fees and maintenance enables students from poorer homes to study. But is it possible that this system of support frees students too much from the obligation to choose a course of study which might be relevant to their future careers? If I have appeared this afternoon over-dogmatic, let me admit that on this and on many other matters I am as puzzled as anyone.

Speaking from these Benches, I cannot believe that anyone, monetarist or welfare economist, élitist or égalitarian, wants to see our centres of excellence decay, or is willing to see our student numbers be prevented from rising to at least 15 per cent. of the age group. I ask the Front Benches to declare that this is so. If it is so, and if we admit that an aging population and a struggling economy are bound to reduce resources, then surely the strategy for the next 20 years is clear. In the long term we must cut costs in higher education, and differentiate sharply between different kinds of institutions and what they do. We must enable the quality which matters most in life, leadership from the top down, to operate and make the necessary changes. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.22 p.m.

The Earl of Swinton

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Annan, for giving this House the opportunity to debate this most important topic of the nature and development of higher education. I think its importance is emphasised by the phenomenally long list of speakers that we have this afternoon. Like other Members of your Lordships' House I look forward with great enthusiasm to hearing the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx. I am afraid that, being a North Yorkshireman born and bred and knowing that lovely abbey and village, nothing will persuade me to pronounce it anything other than "Rievo" for the rest of my life.

Among the many honours that the noble Lord has received over the years is his honorary fellowship of University College, Oxford. My only contact with that august body was to fail to get into it! Instead, I went to a well-known agricultural college from where I imagine—as in my day—most of the students are assembled, together with certain Members of your Lordships' House of a less academic bent, at Cheltenham Racecourse to observe that great festival of National Hunt racing. In view of the fact that I had an agricultural rather than an academic education, I am particularly grateful to my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack for undertaking the winding up of the debate. It is very good of my noble and learned friend, particularly in view of the time at which this debate may finish.

The noble Lord cites in his Motion the need for change in institutions. While unashamedly seeking to restrain public expenditure on higher education, this Government have sought to provide change and improvement across the sectors, with the aim of encouraging institutions to become more efficient, and more flexible and responsive to the economic and social needs of the country.

Despite the increasing size of the 18-year-old population, the Government have preserved access to higher education. There has been some stiffening of competition for university places. But intakes to the local authority sector have been expanded and there are now some 50,000 more full-time home students in higher education than there were in 1979. The higher education age participation rate has accordingly risen from 12 per cent. to 13 per cent. The available evidence suggests that there continues to be available sufficient places for qualified candidates who want a place in higher education even although the percentage of those qualifying who wish to enter is relatively high—about 87 per cent. in 1982–83. The Government's expenditure plans envisage that with increased institutional economy it should be possible to continue to satisfy qualified demand for higher education at least at the lower bound of the current demand projections. We have said that we will review the position if it appears that qualified applicants are unable to find places somewhere in higher education.

The Government acknowledge that institutions have had to face difficult and painful decisions about how best to adjust to changes in their budgets and what their priorities should be. But such a process of review is necessary across all public spending, and there are many academics who will admit that there was some room for a tightening up across the system, and that institutions have emerged from the process stronger and more ready to face the challenges of the future.

Where specific needs have been identified, the Government have made additional resources available to help meet them. For example, in the universities, to assist with unavoidable increased costs (such as employers' superannuation contributions) and with the costs of redundancy and early retirement. We have also introduced a programme to assist universities in recruiting bright young researchers and teachers into departments of excellence, mostly in the sciences and technology, where because of age structure opportunities for new appointments would otherwise be severely limited. Two hundred and forty two of these "new blood" posts have so far been allocated to universities by the UGC in consultation with the research councils, and the distribution of a further 349 posts for the academic year 1984–85 will be announced shortly.

In the local authority sector of higher education, the National Advisory Body, and its Welsh counterpart the Welsh Advisory Body, were established in 1982 in response to the general view that the local authority sector needed a central focus, not only to advise on the distribution of increasingly scarce resources, but also to act as a national voice, equivalent to that of the UGC for the university sector. The NAB and WAB have made an impressive start in seeking to fill this role—and although the NAB is still formally an interim body, it is not generally expected that major changes will be made in present arrangements before it takes on a more permanent role. In October 1983 the Government increased by £20 million the amount provisionally allocated to the sector for 1984–85 following representations from NAB that this sum would assist in the essential long-term rationalisation of provision.

The NAB has already carried out a major planning exercise for the whole sector, focused on intakes for September 1984, which reflects many of the Government's central concerns as expressed in my right honourable friend's general guidance early last year. The NA B's plans, which have been accepted in full and embodied in resource allocations for 1984–85, entail a shift in provision towards sub-degree courses, as well as a switch to vocationally relevant subjects, which I shall deal with in more detail later. It has always been recognised as one of the strengths of the local authority sector that it is close to, and can be responsive to, the needs of commerce and industry. It can also offer flexible regimes of entrance and attendance to mature and other students unable or unwilling to undertake full-time study on leaving school—and courses at sub-degree level in vocational and technical subjects for those wanting a more focused alternative to 3-year degree courses.

The Government are promoting a change in the balance of higher education whereby there is greater emphasis on subjects of direct relevance to the country's industrial and commercial development, particularly in science and engineering. Institutions and industry are being encouraged to collaborate more closely for their mutual benefit. We have introduced a special 3-year programme to enhance teaching and research in subjects related to the important area of information technology. This will provide for about 5,000 extra student places at all levels across higher education and for associated staff posts. About £25 million a year is being committed through the research councils to fundamental and applied work in IT areas. Graduate output in science and engineering from universities in 1983 was about 25,000 compared with 21,500 in 1979. In 1986–87 it will be about 26,500 and nearly 40,000 across higher education as a whole.

The National Advisory Body's plans for 1984–85, which we have accepted as the basis for funding in the local authority sector, provide for the intake of first-year students to full-time and sandwich courses in engineering to rise by 15 per cent. relative to 1982; in science and applied science by 7 per cent. and in mathematics and computing by around 50 per cent. Emphasis is also being given to other vocational subjects such as management and business studies. We believe this shift in emphasis is desirable and long overdue, but I would like to make it quite clear that the Government also recognise the value of the rigorous pursuit of scholarship in the humanities. I know that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor intends to say more about this later in the debate—I hope not too much later.

It is vital that higher education institutions and industry should draw closer together if the wealth of expertise and the facilities that exist in institutions are to make the fullest possible contribution to industrial growth. There has been progress in this area, but there is scope for a great deal more activity. We have welcomed the report of the Advisory Council for Applied Research Councils on improving research links between higher education and industry. The recommendations of this report, which include proposals for two schemes involving additional resources, and for removing the technical barriers to the exploitation of research in the local authority higher educational sector, are under consideration. But meanwhile the Government have taken action on various aspects of collaboration referred to in the report. For example, new guidelines are being prepared, in consultation with the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals and other interested parties, on the exploitation of research council funded research following the ending of the British Technology Group's monopoly in this area. The Government have also announced an inquiry into pensions matters, including the issue of personal portable pensions, which many argue can bear on the ease of staff interchange between industry and higher education institutions. On 15th February the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals announced the establishment of an advisory committee on university and industrial links. The new committee includes several eminent industrialists. I welcome their willingness to give their time.

All this is movement towards change for the better; but the Government wish above all to ensure that standards in teaching and research in institutions are maintained and. where possible, enhanced. The quality of our higher education is deservedly held in high regard both at home and abroad, but questions have been raised about the overall effectiveness of the methods for monitoring quality and for validation. We therefore welcome the initiative taken by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals in setting up a working group under the chairmanship of the vice-chancellor of Lancaster to study universities' methods and procedures for monitoring academic quality. I understand that the group will start by looking at activities related to undergraduates and at methods and procedures of external examining, but will also go on to look at postgraduate supervision; research evaluation; the validation of college degrees and the accreditation procedures of professional bodies. The Government are considering whether a parallel initiative is required, in respect of the local authority and voluntary sectors of higher education.

On the critical subject of the funding of research activities, noble Lords had a comprehensive and weighty debate on 10th February, thanks to the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, in the context of the First Joint Report by the chairman of the Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development and the Advisory Board for the Research Councils. My noble friends Lord Lucas and Lord Whitelaw spoke for the Government on that occasion. I am not going to cover that ground again, but hope it will suffice to say that we recognise the great importance of this function of our higher education institutions. The noble Lord, Lord Annan, raised specifically some points about tenure in universities. This issue will be dealt with by my noble and learned friend when he speaks later in this debate.

I should like to say a few words about adult and continuing education. That education is a process which continues throughout adult life is becoming increasingly recognised. This is true for vocational education as well as study undertaken for personal intellectual satisfaction. Almost every area of working life is today subject to rapid change, and the pace is unlikely to slow. Employees at all levels of the workforce need to be updated simply to cope efficiently with their existing jobs. Industry's success—and ultimately therefore the nation's wellbeing—depends on its being abreast of the latest technology, the newest scientific developments and the most effective management techniques. Our universities, polytechnics and colleges are well-placed and uniquely qualified to identify and meet this updating need. They have the knowledge and the teaching experience to mount successful provision; they have a long tradition of vocational education and have the local contacts necessary to establish what industry needs.

Much is being done already in the field of vocational updating, but for it to become an integral and mainstream part of an institution's work there needs to be a change of attitude within the education service and the will and ability to enter the market place. Since 1982, the Department of Education and Science has been working through the PICKUP (professional, industrial and commercial updating) programme to emphasise the importance of this work and the need for changes within the present organisations—nationally and locally—to enable our institutions to respond quickly and effectively. In a series of regional workshops and seminars the department has been encouraging institutions and local education authorities to promote themselves as suppliers of this service and to organise themselves effectively to ensure that the demand is met. Institutions are responding to these challenges and are bringing forward imaginative and exciting programmes to meet the needs of employers. There is a new emphasis on the collaboration and co-operation which must exist between provider and client if relevant provision is to be made. But there is no room for complacency.

The recent White paper Training for Jobs endorses the Manpower Services Commission's proposals for a comprehensive adult training strategy to ensure an adequate supply of people with up-to-date skills to meet the demands of new technologies upon which economic growth must be based. Our institutions of further and higher education have an important part to play. The recent report by the UGC Continuing Education Working Party and the work of the NAB Continuing Education Group underline this point.

Looking towards the future of higher education generally, the Government have initiated a wide-ranging public debate on how higher education should be developed into the 1990s, given the continuing need for economy and the demographic trend. There have been published exchanges of correspondence between the Secretary of State and the chairmen of the UGC and the NAB Committee setting out some of the issues on which the Government are looking for advice. These two bodies have initiated a comprehensive public consultation exercise and are hoping to let my right honourable friend have their views in the summer. The Government will be considering how best to proceed in the light of that advice. We are convinced of the need to encourage the greatest possible exchange of views between all interested parties. I look forward to the rest of the afternoon's debate. I shall be listening with interest to the points raised by noble Lords.