We are falling further and further behind

The essay below is taken from "Can The Prizes Still Glitter? The Future of British Universities in a Changing World", the first book by the new higher education think tank Agora which aspires to promote serious discussions about higher education and its role in our society.

It's a thought provoking extract though a bit long, but highly relevant to the goal that we are trying to achieve through this blog which explores the effects of increasing government interference and lack of funding options in strangling the development of British Universities.




Universities in the UK face two problems:


First, in almost all walks of life there has been excessive centralisation over the last few years, and universities have not escaped. In particular, any increase in spending or any new grant is laden like a Christmas tree with controls and reporting requirements. Universities are not simply given the authority to get on with what they are here to do. They are constantly under pressure to meet government requirements.



The two most obvious and damaging constraints are institutions being expected to make up for the deficiencies of secondary education, and the push for social inclusion.

Let me be clear about this. I am very strongly in favour of social inclusion as an objective of higher education policy. But I am not in favour of social inclusion at the expense of academic standards. At its crudest the widening participation agenda has been reckless in its impact on standards.

Secondly - and this is the most crucial element - universities here (and indeed in most of Europe) are left in a no man's land, in which they neither get enough funding from the state nor are they allowed to raise money themselves beyond the ridiculously low limits of the tuition fee. Universities today get 1.1% of GDP in this country, compared with America's 2.6%.


This is not something we can simply blame on Labour governments. Until the 1970s, universities were pretty well funded, but the expansion of higher education since then has been paid for by squeezing the amount of government money available per student. In the last two decades of the twentieth century we doubled the number of students and halved the amount of money given to them. And resources were squeezed particularly hard in the Conservative years, although this was a trend that was continued in the early Blair-Brown years too. I don't think the Conservatives can look back on their stewardship of universities with any great pride.

The problem was that we didn't have the courage of our convictions. We squeezed public spending on universities, but we didn't then say to universities: "You must go out and raise money yourselves".


At the root of all the problems facing universities in the UK and across Europe, there is a resource issue that we cannot go on ducking. If America spends roughly two-and-a-half times what we do on higher education - and moreover if they are spending two-and-a-half times what we do on a limited number of elite universities - we shouldn't be surprised if we fall further and further behind. And while we are resting on our laurels we must remember that China and India are coming up on the outside.


TOP-UP FEES:
Universities have three main sources of revenue:

• The taxpayer
• Private endowments
• Tuition fees

If you decide the government can't afford to spend any more of the taxpayers' money, and if at the same time you conclude that private endowment requires a major sea-change in public attitudes that will not happen overnight, that only leaves tuition fees.

Top-up fees have become a very emotive issue in this country, but really the answer is very simple. The main determinant of people's lifetime earnings is whether they go to university or not. Therefore, it does not seem unreasonable to me for some investment to be made by the students who will benefit. University is a middle class ramp-up, after all. It is perfectly crazy that parents are prepared to pay £10,000 or even £12,000 a year for private day school, but then they groan in horror about paying a few thousand pounds for tuition fees.

The most common argument levelled against tuition fees is that they put people from poorer backgrounds off going to university. Yet there is absolutely no evidence at all that this is the case.

It hasn't been the case in New Zealand, so why should it be so here? If you look at the social composition of the student population over the last 50 years the proportion of children from blue-collar families and the proportion of children from white-collar families has remained static. The proportion was exactly the same at the end of the last century as it was in the 1960s. The huge expansion of higher education simply has not drawn in a higher proportion of kids from working-class backgrounds.

THE WAY FORWARD:

Yet, is there the political appetite to face up to this problem and drive universities forward?

Gordon Brown is clearly genuinely interested in higher education. While Mr Blair can take some credit for having been converted to the principle of top-up fees by Roy Jenkins, I don't think he is really very concerned with the university sector. Probably the best thing Tony Blair has done for research was to leave Lord Sainsbury in the science minister's job for as long as he did.

Mr Brown is dogged by three factors:

• First is the sort of knee-jerk class war socialism that was discredited in the very public Laura Spence case at Oxford.
• Secondly, I think he is excessively enthusiastic about the management competence of American universities in comparison with ours. True, they may achieve a lot, but they are achieving a lot with vastly greater funds.
• Finally, I think Mr Brown is always inclined to exaggerate how much new money he has actually put into the system.

Sooner or later we will have to face up to the fact that we have to ask students to pay for their higher education. I would like to see universities set their own individual caps on tuition fees. The principal government interest should be in ensuring that universities who raise fees for different subjects - because there is no reason why different subjects should have to cost the same - have in place adequate bursary schemes to ensure that admission is needs blind.

Of course, this would put a particular pressure on universities like Oxford and Cambridge to raise a large amount of money through endowment for generous bursary schemes. The battle that has been rumbling in the background at Oxford for years over governance is not irrelevant here. If we can demonstrate to alumni and benefactors that we are interested in their intellectual contribution to what we are trying to do, and that we are open to their advice, then it makes it much easier for us to encourage people to give money.

It is extremely difficult if we are effectively saying, "We don't want your opinions, we just want your cheques". It is frankly offensive to assume that any alumnus of Oxford who might donate has a secret yearning to transform the institution into Asda.

It is important for the Conservative party to avoid, under pressure, blocking off any options on top-up fees before the general election. I would be inclined to keep my options open, and then after an election I would want to establish a commission to explore the issue and look at real evidence.

That said, we don't have much time. Top-up fees will be reviewed again in 2009. I think it is very likely that a Brown government will either kick the ball into touch, or make a modest adjustment. Fees of £5,000 would be better than £3,000, but it still would not be enough revenue to support our cash-starved universities.

One of the most popular courses at Oxford - engineering and management - could be filled twice over with students, and there are lots of potentially exciting options for expansion, but it costs £15,000 a student to teach and we only get £5,000. We could subsidise it from other courses, but where does one stop with such an approach? The problem is the same for physics and management, and chemistry and management, to name just a couple.

We can no longer afford to bury our heads in the sand. We must loosen the red tape that binds British universities and allow them to raise the money they need to truly compete.