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Higher Education

My Lords, I must declare great enthusiasm for what my noble friend said. Some of us tried to run universities under the previous regime and this is a pleasant improvement. It is worth pointing out that some of the Government’s other policies have also assisted higher education. I am thinking particularly of devolution and our higher links with Europe, bearing in mind what my noble friend said about the need for promoting regional development and extending higher research collaboration with other universities. There is a possible mismatch between two of the excellent objectives that my noble friend mentioned—namely, the existence of high-level institutions and clusters of people working at that level and the need for developing professional skills. Our best institutions and departments seem to me to be concerned with something else: developing the intellectual resources of students. For example, you train students in the principles of jurisprudence, not how to be lawyers. It is important that the work of universities is not diminished or cheapened in that respect. The point about part-time students is extremely important, given the Government’s commitment to lifelong learning. I should like to hear from my noble friend a further affirmation of the need to resource that, bearing in mind the trouble that we had earlier with ELQs and their diminishing effect on, for example, the Open University. One hopes that that will be overridden. Perhaps I may make a final plea as one who was once a vice-chancellor. Universities would get on very much better if they had to grapple with less bureaucracy, which has been a managerial constraint. Mankind is in paper chains in our universities, but it would be nice to be free.