The higher education stand-off of 2017: an assessment – Prof David Midgley

There was much rejoicing back in January when the government was defeated over the first amendment to the Higher Education and Research Bill to be put to the vote in the House of Lords. That amendment introduced a definition of the functions of UK universities into the text of the bill which included their freedom “to act as critics of government and the conscience of society”. Its effects were dispersed and diffused in subsequent re-wordings, but it was the first of several major amendments to command support in the Lords.

At the end of April, however, in the “wash-up” before parliament was dissolved on May 3rd, the bill became law, and much of the effect of those amendments was lost. What should we note about that process, and where does it leave us?

It is worth recalling that the bill was always intended as a consolidation on the new system for funding university teaching, based primarily on tuition fees and loans, that was introduced in 2012. It was widely recognised during the parliamentary debates that some adjustment to the regulation of the higher education sector was needed in the light of that, and that students who were being required to invest financially in the courses they took needed access to adequate information about those courses and an appropriate regime of consumer protection. But the bill that had been brooded over in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) for five years before it was presented to parliament in May 2016 was much more ambitious than that. It sought to make it easier to establish new institutions that would provide training in particular specialised skills considered necessary to drive the economy forward, and it included measures to incorporate the research councils into a new overarching funding body, along with the agency that acts as a facilitator for the practical application of research outcomes, Innovate UK.

Where next after the HE Bill? – Sean Wallis and Lee Jones

For a week or so it appeared as if the Conservatives had pulled the plug on the Higher Education and Research Bill (HE Bill) by calling a Brexit General Election on June 8th. Only negotiations with the Labour front bench could allow the Bill to become an Act in time for the enforced closure of Parliament.

The earlier ‘debate’ in the Commons had been lamentable. No notable amendments were accepted in the Committee stages in the Commons. The Conservatives simply kept to the party whip and refused any amendment.

Then the Lords set to work. Through a series of 240 amendments, voted on and accepted in the House of Lords, their Lordships took apart key elements of the legislation.

The position taken by the Conservatives in the Commons differed sharply from the position taken by a variety of Lords – Liberal, Labour, Conservative and cross-bencher.

The official Tory position on the Bill was expressed in the infamous Green and White Papers. Higher Education ‘reform’ was required to permit private providers to ‘access’ undergraduate students and full fees in competition with universities of long-standing. The UK Government should allow Group 4 or Pearson to compete with Cambridge or Liverpool. The market is king. Private companies must be allowed to enter this market, charge £9,000+ a year, and reap the rewards. As a result ‘standards’ would, miraculously, be raised.

To create ‘a level playing field’, the existing regulatory framework, including the Quality Assurance Agency and other bodies, must be disbanded. The standard of academic environment and the inspection regime required by the QAA were too onerous for precious new private providers. Hence the TEF. University teaching was to be evaluated not in terms of whether students were challenged and their minds expanded to the frontiers of human knowledge, but whether the experience of attending university was personally satisfying.

The ideas were so poorly constructed that most staff and students who actually read these Papers were perplexed at how little knowledge of education was on display. Absent from the Papers were any notion that education might be about teaching students difficult and challenging ideas, or encouraging them to develop their own ideas. At most, the implied conceptualisation was instrumentalist: spoon-feeding and teaching-to-the-test.

Indeed, what is striking about the so-called ‘debate’ about the HE Bill, is that – beyond the ideologues of the DfE and the direct beneficiaries of the Bill busy lobbying them behind the scenes and a few self-interested, renegade Vice Chancellors – the proposals gained no public support.

Lords amend HE Bill to limit impact of TEF – March 6

On Monday, March 6,  the Lords voted 263 to 211 for Amendment 19 to the HE Bill.

Amendment 12 in the House of Commons List of Amendments

“Regulated course fees etc: use in relation to section 26

(1) The scheme established under section 26 must not be used to rank English higher education providers as to the regulated course fees they charge to a qualifying person; or the unregulated course fees they charge to an international student; or the number of fee paying students they recruit, whether they are qualifying persons or international students.

(2) In this section “regulated course fees”, “qualifying person” and “international student” have the same meaning as in section 11.”

This would have the effect of prohibiting the use of the TEF ranking:

1.  in either the setting of the student fee cap or
2. the number of students that a university can recruit.

As Lord Kerslake explained in the debate, the latter would apply to both national and international students, so preventing the possibility that the TEF ranking might be linked to the issuing of student visas.

The first of these has been a key debate of the NUS’ campaign against the TEF. The second arises in relation to Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s call at the Conservative Party Conference to use the TEF to remove the right of universities to sponsor overseas students. It would also prevent the Government of the day using TEF scores to cap student numbers by subject or institution, something that future governments may wish to do in the face of rising student loan deficit.

Why the NSS is garbage – Lord Lipsey

The National Students Survey results matter. First, they are used by students to evaluate institutions by comparison with rival institutions. Secondly, they are one of the metrics to be used in the TEF, in awarding gold, silver or bronze markings to institutions which apply to take part. These ratings will decide if an institution can or cannot raise its fees beyond £9K.

The idea that student satisfaction should play a major role in the rating of universities is controversial. Research shows that there is no correlation between student satisfaction and student results in terms of degree grade. However the government has opted to increase the importance of student choice, competition and satisfaction in the higher education landscape; and this short note does not seek to address the rights and wrongs of that.

Rather it focusses on a narrow point: whether the National Student Survey (NSS), the chosen instrument to measure student satisfaction, is fit for purpose or not. Here the evidence is unequivocal: the NSS is statistical garbage. The reasons are widely understood by the statistical community and were set out inter alia by the Royal Statistical Society in its response to the government’s technical consultation about the TEF.

Press release 9/1/2017

Students and staff speak out as the Lords prepare to challenge Jo Johnson over his Higher Education and Research Bill

Universities return to teaching this week, but lecturers, students and researchers face an uncertain future. The Government is pushing ahead with its Higher Education and Research Bill, currently in the House of Lords. A cross-bench alliance of Lords are organising a major revolt over the bill.

What is going on? Why does this matter?

Professor John Holmwood, a sociologist at the University of Nottingham who set up the Campaign for the Public University and is a founding member of the Convention for Higher Education, explained:

“The HE Bill is a deliberate attempt to remove all the checks and balances that protect university teaching standards – and thus the quality of student degrees – in the Higher Education sector.

“A student at a UK university knows that their degree programme is being carried out at a university that is strictly quality-controlled by subject experts among staff and by the Government, through their Quality Assurance Agency, the Higher Education Funding councils, and other bodies. When they graduate, their degree will be worth something.

“But if the Bill goes through unamended, this strict regulation will be scrapped, and we are likely to see quality of degrees in the UK go down. We know of the risks from the US and Australia, countries which have gone down this path before us. We don’t need a Trump University or a Corinthian Colleges [New Yorker report] scandal in the UK. With every such scandal, students suffer and proper universities are immensely damaged.”

In the autumn, across the UK, academics and students piled in to large meetings on university campuses, from Bristol to Liverpool and Oxford. Campaigners from the HE Convention and the University Colleges Union (UCU) and the National Union of Students (NUS) have organised meetings in Parliament as well as Stormont and the Scottish Parliament. Although this is an ‘English’ Bill, the joined-up nature of higher education in the UK means that it will inevitably affect the devolved nations.

Students and staff point out that the Bill has other negative consequences, many of which are also being challenged in the House of Lords.