John Denham - UUK Annual Conference
Cambridge - 11 September 2008
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INTRO/LAST YEAR
It's good to be back in Cambridge and a special pleasure to be here at Churchill College in its 50th anniversary year.
DIUS is just over a year old.
This is the second chance I have had to speak to the UUK conference. Last year's conference did not begin on the most comfortable footing because we had had to move quickly to implement the hard, but I believe right, decision to switch some ELQ funding to first time students.
But despite this difficult start, I promised you that the new department would give you a more powerful profile in government.
I hope in the last year we've begun to deliver.
I think this last year has seen the central importance of higher education to our national life accepted more clearly and more widely across government than ever before.
We have been able to ensure that universities and colleges are valued in their local, regional, national and international roles. In their role in fundamental research and in innovation, as set out in our Innovation Nation white paper.
We have underpinned our research base by ringfencing the science budget. And of course yesterday, we celebrated the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, in which British universities and British science played such a crucial role.
We have understood the value of getting the research excellence framework right. It must take into account the whole range of indicators of excellence, including the broader contribution which academics make to policy development. With HEFCE, I took the decision to delay the implementation of the REF to ensure this.
The dual support system is the foundation of the UK's excellent international standing in research - something that can only be more important in the future. We have consistently underlined its importance. But, I should say, we have not had to defend it, because at no stage, either within DIUS or from any other part of government, has a question been raised about its role.
We have promoted together closer links between employers and higher education, which has been met with enthusiasm. We set HEFCE a target of 5000 co-funded places in 2008-09. I'm delighted that HEFCE has approved funding for over 7,700 places, standing us in good stead for our ambition of 20,000 places in 10-11.
The tremendous initial response to the New University Challenge demonstrates that higher education and the university experience is now seen as central to the future prosperity and vibrancy of communities in every part of the country.
We've recognised and promoted the huge cultural influence of universities and colleges, not least working with you to stress the importance of universities, as institutions which promote shared values and defend academic freedom, as cornerstones in the fight against violent extremism.
I hope we have shown our ability to fight your corner in the smaller but significant decisions which are an inevitable part of modern government.
We recognise the importance of overseas students to higher education institutions. So, as Government is implementing the points based system of migration, we as DIUS ministers are working to ensure that the UK remains one of the most attractive places for overseas students to study, teach and research. We have increased the length of time an overseas student is able to stay in the UK after graduating from 1 to 2 years. I am working with Jacqui Smith to ensure that the new points-based system balances maintaining strong borders with competing for international talent.
Our other priorities have received high levels of support. In August we launched our voluntary giving scheme, with £200m to leverage in funding. 140 institutions have chosen to participate in our scheme, many of them doing so with plans to transform their existing levels of performance.
The past year has also seen continued work on widening participation. Steve Smith's work for the National Council for Educational Excellence has shown how much work is already being done by the higher education sector to shape young peoples' aspirations before they start considering applying to university.
Universities are now engaged with academies. A further 85 are closely involved with Trust schools. I believe the approach we have taken in government has been the right one. We continue to argue the case that in no modern society should the talent of young or older people be neglected. Highly selective institutions that draw from a narrow social base will ultimately lose out if they deny themselves access to talented students from all backgrounds. That is the fundamental case for both widening participation and fair access.
We have maintained funding for Aimhigher.
We have argued that admissions processes and procedures should be open and transparent and that universities should implement them effectively and fairly.
We have agreed with HEFCE and OFFA that the time is right to bring together higher education institutions' widening participation and fair access policies, including transparent admissions systems, into a single document.
But what we have not done, and what we will not do, is instruct universities and colleges about how to run their admissions procedures.
It has been suggested that universities, and by extension, education, is not an engine for social justice. I have to say I profoundly disagree. Education is the most powerful tool we have in achieving social justice. From that recognition, the responsibility arises - not to lower standards - but to seek out, support and nurture talent, wherever it exists.
It must allow the most talented and hard working of our young people to achieve their full potential, irrespective of what kind of social background they came from, or the school they went to.
This does not mean imposing admissions policies on universities. But it does mean universities recognising their full responsibilities in helping to seek out and develop the best of talents, wherever they are in our society.
I welcome not only the progress that has been made in widening participation, but also the changes that individual institutions have made to their admissions processes to break down barriers to attracting the most talented students. I am keen, with those institutions which wish to go further, to make more progress.
Finally, I do think that even in the past year, the respect for - and indeed pride in - the diversity of the higher education system, both in and outside the sector, has increased immensely. I hope that the work I and other ministers have done has contributed to this.
QUALITY/MORE MEANS WORSE
But I do want to raise one problem that is on the horizon. There has been, from time to time, both national and international concern stemming from isolated reports which raise questions about our hard-won and well-deserved reputation for excellence. Let me make it absolutely clear that I do believe that reputation is deserved and that these incidents do not represent any systemic problem.
In fact, the latest National Student Survey, published today, shows the overall satisfaction rate in England is 82 per cent - a percentage point up on last year and the highest it's been since the Survey began.
But such events, perhaps publicised around the world, can be very damaging. They can also be seized on by those whose agenda is to question our commitment to expanding higher education and to widening participation.
So I do want to see QAA in a position where it is able to respond much more proactively and quickly to reports that give rise to such concerns.
This is the best way to show that the higher education system not only has its house in order, but can show its house is in order.
Don't underestimate either, the malign influence of the more means worse brigade.
They're to be found not just in parts of the commentariat, but in prominent positions in the Conservative Party. Their views are reflected in the absence of any unambiguous commitments to university expansion. And the report from their economic competitiveness group implied that no further public money should be made available for higher education. Today's remarks from their Higher Education spokesman suggest they are going back to their old damaging ways of making universities expand higher education on the cheap.
10-15 YEAR FRAMEWORK
When I spoke to you at the Wellcome Collection in February I talked about the challenges Britain faces, and the key role for higher education in responding. I set out my department's ambition to work with you to develop a 10-15 year framework for the expansion and development of higher education in Britain.
A framework to help us ensure that Higher Education in this country meets the growing demands upon it for research, teaching, international cooperation, economic development and cultural influence in the 21st century.
A framework that provides a reference point for future policy decisions, including decisions about funding and other priorities.
And a framework that enables progress to be measured in an objective and transparent way.
As you know, I asked a number of people from around the sector to take forward strands.
My ministerial colleagues and I have been impressed not only by the quality of input, but also by the scale of consultation each contributor has managed. I imagine there are few in this room who have not fed into a strand of work. This method has achieved far broader and deeper engagement from our stakeholders than if we had taken a more traditional approach, with all our stakeholders submitting papers to us. I'd like to take the opportunity to put on record my gratitude to the contributors for their hard work.
In addition, UUK and individual universities, alongside Guild HE and its members, have been partners. I think I have had dinner with almost all of you and I have heard your hopes, fears and aspirations for the sector first-hand. This has been enormously useful and stimulating way to spend many a Monday evening.
Students too, through the newly established National Student Forum, our student listening programme and other channels, have given frank and insightful feedback to myself and my team.
I won't discuss the contributions at length now because I am not receiving them in final draft until the end of the month. UUK and its members have been very closely engaged with this work from the start, and you will be familiar with the strands. Today, I do want to offer a few thoughts on some emerging themes.
First, it is apparent that the power to affect change in the HE system is dispersed. I've said before that much of the sector's strength lies in its independence and autonomy, so much of the future success of our HE system lies in your hands. But of course, Government has a responsibility for setting the strategic framework in which you operate.
With this in mind, I have asked all the contributors, in drawing up recommendations, to distinguish between issues for institutions themselves, the Government, and HEFCE.
I want to say a word here about HEFCE's importance.
David Eastwood's strong leadership and extensive knowledge of the higher education sector has made him a very successful chief executive. The benefit of his time at HEFCE has been felt in the higher education sector as a whole. And of course, David is going to be leading HEFCE for much of the crucial time during the development of the framework. I know the sector rightly expects a successor of comparable stature and ability.
HEFCE performs an essential role in the system, maintaining the proper separation between government policy, the strategic management of the system and the autonomy of universities, and will continue to do so. Its leadership will be as important in the future to universities and to government as it has been to date
Second, diversity in the system will increase.
Paul Wellings' work on intellectual property recognises this. In order that the UK gets the most out of its intellectual property, he suggests that specialist capacity in commercialisation and IP management may be focused into a few institutions, and that many institutions may choose not to dabble themselves but draw on the expertise of others.
UUK's work on demographic change shows how the numbers of home students aged 18-21 may decline significantly in the next 10-15 years. Different institutions will respond differently, increasing diversity. One solution is to increase the number of learners from under-represented groups, with part-time study becoming increasingly important, and working more closely with employers to realise this market's full potential. Others may aim for a greater share of the more traditional full time undergraduates. Others may specialise in niche markets. UUK also recommend that funding systems could do more to facilitate the flexibility to adapt to changing markets.
Within this context of increasing diversity, HEFCE's work on institutional performance will become even more relevant and important. It recommends that information on institutions be collated and presented in ways that will give a more rounded and sophisticated view of performance than at present.
The flexibility needed to deal with the increasing diversity of the system will also be needed to deal with the second key theme: that there is no typical 'university experience'. Christine King's work suggests doing away with the demarcation between part-time and full-time students, instead developing flexibility in the system to benefit all students. This will require new approaches, so that students can fit studies in with their lives and work and acquire and transfer academic credit over time.
Paul Ramsden's work reaches some similar conclusions. Since students will have increasingly disparate experiences institutions will need to work ever more closely to cater for students studying in non-traditional ways. To do this, he suggests that institutions should be prepared to contemplate remodelling their curriculum, perhaps radically.
Third, the boundaries between universities, their communities and other organisations, are being eroded. Our new university challenge builds on the role the sector already plays in driving the cultural and economic life of their towns and regions. There is lots of enthusiasm at a local level to develop this role further.
And our high-level skills strategy will help institutions offer employers more and more employable graduates. It will provide the mechanisms for employers and universities to be much more closely associated.
Similarly, the Council for Science and Technology's work suggests breaking down and blurring boundaries so that academics and universities can support high-quality government policy making. Again, their work recommends a more flexible exchange of people and ideas between higher education and government.
Nigel Thrift's work on research careers recommends more movement of people and ideas between higher education and industry, particularly movement for young researchers. It includes ideas for commercial sources of funding for those in the early stages of their research careers.
And it will become ever more important to break down international boundaries. Drummond Bone's work advocates a broad approach to internationalisation. This will increasingly involve more than just recruiting overseas students - though that will undoubtedly continue. Some institutions may build campuses overseas, or find other ways to deliver courses abroad. More will develop a range of partnerships with universities or other providers abroad. And institutions will need to develop networks overseas so they have long-term presence in countries.
One more thing is also clear: in fifteen years time the global market for higher education will expand. And a significant proportion of that will be down to students who do not want to carry out their studies entirely on site, at university campuses, but by distance, online and by using the opportunities that the rapid development of technology gives us.
It will be the university system that grasps and responds to this fact that will maintain its world class status over the years and decades ahead.
So a key question for universities in Britain is this: How can we be one of the leading - if not the leading - centres of online higher education learning in the world. I am convinced if we want to achieve this aim, it cannot be achieved by a rush to dump more course material onto the internet than other higher education systems.
Our aim should be to be the best by showing that online learning can offer those features of higher education which make our university world class today: Our challenge is to support students in developing their skills of evaluation, critical analysis and reflection, synthesis, problem-solving, creativity and thinking across discipline boundaries, as well as giving them any extra skills they needed to make their use of IT fully effective.
We have to ask how we should bring the elements of good learning and good teaching that are characteristic of our current system to a new and often global student population.
Pursing this aim would complement, not compete with, the other ways in which universities offer higher education to the world. It will help us take the excellence of British higher education to other parts of the globe. To further develop our higher education sector's world class brand. Giving it an international prestige comparable - perhaps - to the BBC World Service.
Of course we must learn the lessons from the E-university project. But past mistakes - acknowledged openly as such - must not prevent us from making progress in future.
This is why I have asked Sir Ron Cooke, who, as the former Chair of the Joint Information Systems Committee, is extremely well placed to consider this question, to provide us with advice and recommendations on how we can achieve our world-leading ambitions.
Nearly 50 years ago, also under a Labour Government, this country set the world standard for distance learning by establishing the Open University. With ambition and vision we can do the same again.
USERS
The debate that has been started by these strands of work underlines the ability of the higher education sector itself to think radically and creatively about the future. But many other people too have a huge interest in the success of our universities and colleges.
Many people whose cultural activities, businesses, public services depend on the success of our universities. Even those in other governments in other countries who look to our HE sector and want it to succeed. So I thought we should complement the work being done within the sector with what I hope will be equally challenging and provocative work from outside the sector.
They will be invited to articulate their perspective on what a world class higher education sector would look like to in 10-15 years' time to support their needs. They will also provide challenges and responses to the recommendations that the original contributors put forward.
I am pleased to say that a tremendously strong group of people have agreed to contribute to this work.
Nick Hytner , director of the National Theatre, willl respond reflecting views from arts and culture.
John Chisholm, Chairman of both Qinetiq and the MRC will give an external view of universities' and colleges' role in both research and technology transfer.
John Griffith-Jones, joint chariman and UK senior partner of KPMG will respond from another part of the business community.
Dame Marjorie Scardino, a member of the Prime Minister's Business Council of Britain, and, as Chief Executive of Pearson, someone with experience of the higher education publishing world, will contribute. Tom Russell, the head of the LDA's Olympic Legacy Directorate will give a public sector viewpoint.
Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern - a small business in the creative sector - will respond.
The National Student Forum will make a contribution from the student angle.
And I am delighted that Dr Ramasami, the Secretary to the Indian Department for Science and Technology, has agreed to offer an overseas perspective.
PROCESS
As with earlier contributions, the work should be constructive but as provocative as the contributor wishes. We have not asked contributors them to write government policy. There will plenty of scope for people to respond to them and engage further.
The initial contributions will be published in early October. We shall publish the further user Contributions in early December.
Of course at the same time, we have our own policy development processes in place, and are keenly watching the ongoing work of our stakeholders.
In the New Year we shall be consulting further as we move towards our final conclusions.
During 2009 we shall be publishing our framework for the development of higher education over the next ten to fifteen years. This will set the context for the work of the independent review of the first three years of variable fees which will follow.
If one of the achievements of the last year has been to establish higher education firmly at the centre of how Britain responds to the challenges of the future, the test for next year must be to show that the higher education system can deliver on the very high expectations that now fall on your shoulders.
