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Higher Education: Funding

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for introducing this debate. The Browne report on financing higher education reinforces and accelerates the trend begun with the Dearing report of 1997. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, it is a trend which essentially and eventually leads to the privatisation of tertiary education in the UK. Only today, press reports have said that the LSE, founded by that great bunch of Fabians, is considering going private. That is perhaps a portent. We have moved a long way from the old so-called mixed economy, the partnership between the state and the universities that existed during the four decades after World War II. The terms of reference of both the Dearing and Browne reports meant that proposals were framed very narrowly. It is unfortunate that we have to debate Browne before the White Paper dealing with HE, which is due out in the next few weeks. Neither report could take a wider view about the structure and purpose of third-tier education. That constraint inhibits a full debate on the subject—a debate which has never really been conducted since the Robbins report and which is long overdue. If the Browne proposals are fully implemented, privatisation will become a more overt policy. Of course, a totally free market in higher education can be seen as a coherent model to follow—not that I would follow it—but I urge some caution in leaving the university system to market forces, for there are likely to be many consequences both intended and unintended that flow from that. In the first place, the top-tier institutions will have to further rationalise and restrict the number of research and teaching areas they provide. This has already happened with the closure, for example, of a number of chemistry, language and philosophy departments. Market forces have dictated such closures. The fundamental question is: are universities to be allowed to determine such rationalisation on an individual basis or should some national criteria be applied? To take some specific examples: how many universities should offer subjects like architecture, palaeontology, archaeology, oceanology or nuclear engineering—one, two or half a dozen? We know the answer in the case of nuclear engineering: none. It has long since disappeared. A more systematic approach is needed along the lines of the inquiry conducted in the 1980s by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, which rationalised the number of geology university departments in the country. This is not an exercise which should be left to the three funding councils, as the needs of the UK university system as a whole should be the focus. That includes a consideration of possible institutional mergers. That last point leads on to my second set of consequences. Second-tier higher education institutions will be decimated. Three have already been mentioned in the press as being near bankrupt, and I believe that many more will become unviable in the not too distant future. Too much attrition at this level of tertiary education risks impeding one of the Government’s proposals for introducing two-year, fast-track degrees. Similar to initiating a series of Oxburgh-type reports to secure an optimal range of academic disciplines, we need a parallel set of inquiries into the optimal mix of higher education institutions along the lines of that conducted by Clark Kerr in California nearly half a century ago. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has said, that inquiry provided for California universities at the level of Berkeley, UCLA, Santa Barbara et cetera which could provide the full range of degrees: bachelor, master and doctoral. Then there was the spread of high-quality state colleges that offered bachelor and master degrees in places such as San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles and Bakersfield. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, mentioned, there were also numerous community colleges that provided diplomas and the first two years of an undergraduate degree. I, too, have taught in California. I have suggested before to the House that such a scheme should be applied on a regional basis in the UK. I also suggest that, in much the same way as the newly created academies are seeking to restore what was good about the old grammar schools, such regional schemes should seek to restore what was good about the former CATs and polytechnics: namely, the provision of more vocational training. Finally, I repeat to the House: if this generation of legislators, who benefited from no fees and had maintenance grants during their university careers, seeks to impose swingeing costs on future generations of students it must recognise the intergenerational inequality involved. Two steps should be undertaken. First, there should be a retrospective, hypothecated tax on those who graduated between 1948 and 1998 and, secondly, a graduate tax; that is what I want, rather than loans at high interest as the Browne report advocates. I do not believe it is beyond human ingenuity to devise such a tax. I fear that will not happen and that we will continue to muddle along. In winding I therefore ask, as many previous speakers have done: when are we going to have the coherent debate that is long overdue on the whole future of tertiary education in this country? I ask the Minister to give me the assurance that when those discussions take place, particularly following the White Paper, both vice-chancellors and students’ unions will be fully and frankly involved in discussions about the Browne report and the White Paper.