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Postgraduate Education

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I appreciate Mr Speaker's recognition of my efforts to be called today. It is a delight to contribute to the debate under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this debate. There is concern across the sector, which, I think, has been shared by the Minister, over the lack of attention that has been given to postgraduate education in the whole debate about the future of our universities and our higher education system and in the higher education reforms. I am not sure where those reforms stand now in the light of the announcement in The Daily Telegraph yesterday of the Government's new position, to which the Minister has not added much clarity, but I am sure that he will come back to it later in the debate. Postgraduate education issues and the failure of the Browne review to look at them were matters that I raised with Lord Browne when he appeared before the Business, Innovations and Skills Committee. It was clear that he did not have the inclination to examine postgraduate study, despite recognising in his earlier evidence that what happened in one area of the sector was important to the other areas. In one of those bizarre moments in our fairly long discussion with Lord Browne, he said that we had to understand the interdependence in the sector. What we do in one part of the sector has an impact on another part, he said. He told the Select Committee that he did not look at postgraduate education in anything other than in the most cursory way. Instead, he pointed to the postgraduate review chaired by Sir Adrian Smith and said that it would tackle the issues, and indeed it did in many ways. When the Smith panel published its report in March 2010, it identified four significant challenges: promoting the value of postgraduate study to both potential students and employers; ensuring that sufficient emphasis is placed on skills, development and employability; crucially, considering barriers to the access and availability of financial support; and, finally, providing key information better to inform student choice, which has been at the heart of the Government's narrative. Not unreasonably, there was an expectation that those issues would be addressed in the White Paper on higher education. Surprisingly, though, they were not addressed, and the White Paper declares an intention to revisit postgraduate funding as the new system of undergraduate funding beds in. Universities UK said that that approach"““does not address some of the challenges the sector faces in maintaining postgraduate provision in the meantime, not least because of the withdrawal of elements of HEFCE teaching funding from as early as 2012/13.””" My hon. Friend has convincingly made the case for postgraduate education. It is an important part of the higher education sector. We have some of the top universities in the world, and our postgraduate education has an international reputation. It makes a vital contribution to the economy and is a major foreign export earner. Over the past decade, the number of taught postgraduate students has grown significantly—around 40% since 1999. Taught postgraduate students now make up around 20% of the total student population, rising from 17% a decade ago. Much of that growth is attributable to international student recruitment—it certainly was before the visa changes—and to a growing number of young, under 25-year-old, UK students. There was nearly a 16% increase in the number of under-25-year-olds going on to postgraduate taught study between 2008-09 and 2009-10. One of the key reasons for that, which was confirmed by the postgraduate taught experience survey in 2010, was that they wanted to distinguish themselves in an increasingly competitive employment market and to improve their employment prospects. In advance of today's debate, I talked to academic and student leaders at the two fine universities in my constituency—the university of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam university. I spoke to the vice-chancellor of Sheffield, Professor Keith Burnett, who the Minister knows and, like me, respects as one of our outstanding academic leaders. I asked him, ““What would be the key points that you would want us to focus on in our discussions this afternoon?”” He said that his concerns were twofold, and that they were both about access. First, professions that require postgraduate work, such as law and architecture, will have an increasingly more biased social mix, as the effect of undergraduate loans bears down on applicants from a widening participation background. Secondly, many areas in arts and humanities rely on self-funded students for department income and for training future university teachers. He said that that will lead to universities being staffed by those from more privileged backgrounds. Professor Keith Burnett's concerns were echoed by Thom Arnold, student president at Sheffield university. He said that his main concern relating to postgraduate education"““is funding and widening participation, in particular related to the impact of rising prices for postgraduate courses without a funding system in place””—" I hope the Minister will talk about that issue—"““and what impact this will have, particularly on people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. We are concerned that people will be priced out of postgraduate study, and as a result will also be unable to access professions where a masters is a prerequisite. We see a clear need for a review of funding and support arrangements for postgraduates with a view that this review will lead to the development of income contingent loans for postgraduates.””" Reflecting on a point in the Smith review, which I hope the Minister will also address, he said:"““Another area is access to information and guidance. The White Paper aims to put students at the heart of the system by providing more information to undergraduates with the key information sets. However, potential postgraduate students still remain largely in the dark when applying. Despite the limitations of key information sets, an attempt to roll out a KIS style for postgraduate taught students would be positive.””" Jake Kitchener is student president at Sheffield Hallam university and represents students drawn from a different demographic. He had the same concerns but raised an additional point. He said:"““We think it's disgraceful that there is still no financial provision for those wishing to take up postgraduate study. I have spoken with students who have saved in excess of £10,000 just so that they can afford to go to university. The alternative is a graduate development loan, but it isn't available to prospective students with a low credit rating, and when the student finishes it is a huge burden.””" Importantly, he said that mature students, who are a significant component of Hallam's demographic mix, are not taken into account. He said:"““Those returning to study may have families, mortgages to pay and a reduction in income as they dedicate time to their studies. However, currently there are no systems in place to aid postgraduate study. Returning to education is a positive, but currently there is no student funding support to anyone that wants it. It's a regressive system and our postgraduate students feel disregarded and hard done by.””" Those views are confirmed by a survey undertaken by the National Union of Students, which said that 60% of those whom they surveyed—a large sample—claimed that accessibility of finance or funding was a major factor on deciding whether to undertake postgraduate study. Some 67% of those whom it spoke to were entirely self-funded through a combination of savings, earnings, family loans and, in 15% of cases, overdrafts or credit cards. It also found out that self-funded students, who had often made the greatest effort to undertake that programme, were more likely than funded students to consider leaving or suspending their studies because of the financial pressures. There is a crisis in postgraduate education funding. If it is not effectively addressed, we can expect to see mounting costs leading to decreased demand, closure of courses and increased reliance on international postgraduate income, which, however welcome in itself, should not be a substitute for the opportunities for UK students. Crucially, the UK population's skill levels could decline, when we need higher-level skills to support growth and the knowledge economy, as the Minister will agree. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield said, the crisis that we face in postgraduate education funding is due to two key factors: the impact of undergraduate higher education funding reforms, with which the Minister will not necessarily agree, but on which I would welcome his comments; and the impact of international student visa changes, with which I guess that he would agree, although he probably will not admit it. It is certainly true, as my hon. Friend said, that those changes were pushed through clumsily, and they could have been finessed better. We should have sought to deal with the issue not on the demand side, by discouraging applications, but on the supply side, by cracking down on the bogus colleges that have been mentioned. The debate is not, however, just about postgraduate taught-course funding. Postgraduate taught courses, in particular, are a critical route to undertaking research programmes. As the million+ group of modern universities points out, students undertaking postgraduate qualifications not only provide future staff potential, but add significant value to our universities and the academic communities of which they are a part. As I said in an intervention, we need to recognise the concern that Research Councils UK has expressed about the demographic time bomb in our ageing academic population. If our universities are to play the role that my hon. Friend rightly talked about, that issue must be addressed. Like my hon. Friend, I feel passionately about the role our universities can play in our economic future. Sheffield is a city with a fine industrial and manufacturing history, but it is seeking to identify a new way forward in a changing economy. The critical way that it can do that is by combining the innovation and research expertise of our universities with the traditional manufacturing skills in our city. As the Minister will agree, there is no finer example of that than the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at Waverley. That initiative was the work of the university of Sheffield and its key partners, Boeing and Rolls-Royce, and it has led to extraordinary innovation in manufacturing, but it came about only because of the sort of research capacity that we need to cherish. In conclusion, I hope the Minister will spell out how the Government plan to address the four issues identified by the Smith review: promoting the value of postgraduate study; emphasising skills development and employability; critically, overcoming the barriers to financial support; and providing key information to enable student choice.