Higher Education

My Lords, I speak from the experience of being president of the council of the University of Chester. Although it received its charter only in 2005, it has a long history as an Anglican teacher training college, stretching back to 1839. We take pride in maintaining a splendid school of education, but this now comprises only a small proportion of our activity. Our founding charter speaks of preparing people for ““careers of service””, originally teaching in the church schools that were being founded. We have developed this vision in various directions, from extensive training for healthcare professions to recent developments, such as a course to train youth workers for the Muslim communities of the north-west, alongside our established courses in Christian and general youth work. We have taken a particular interest in seeking to promote community cohesion. We are keen to be part of the sponsorship arrangements for new academies. We also have a very active programme of student volunteers, who put no fewer than 15,000 hours of voluntary service into the community. That is just one university’s contribution. Our emphases are typical of other universities, which have maintained a Christian foundation amid the proper cut and thrust of a modern university. Another feature of the university’s life is a commitment to engage with employers, to ensure that the professional and business needs of a diverse range of companies and public employers are met. This includes innovative programmes of work-based learning and close partnership with FE colleges, a number of which go back 20 years or more. The Government’s decision to end funding for equivalent-level qualifications posed a challenge. More broadly, it posed a challenge for the church’s approach to ministerial education and training. We are grateful for the willingness of the Government to listen to us over these issues. Indeed, we are grateful that they will help the various training establishments, including the University of Chester, to adjust our portfolios in the light of the new structures. Like most of the newer universities, Chester is a teaching-led university, although we have growing centres of research excellence. As we have expanded by a factor of no fewer than three or four over the past 10 years—a remarkable rate of expansion—many of the new staff whom we have appointed have come with doctorates and research experience. They understand the applied and teaching focus of the university as a whole. There is, however, something in what Newman called, "““The Idea of a University””," which necessarily includes a place for research and for the joy of pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge. When the Minister replies, I hope that she will say something about this spread of research funding and expectations across the whole sector, along with an understandable concentration where there is a particular centre of excellence, or where the capital investment needed is very large. The university sector provides a diverse picture, and rightly so. The Government can take a good deal of credit for presiding over the recent period of expansion and diversification. There is, however, ongoing work required to maintain quality across such a diverse range of institutions. This needs to recognise the essential independence and autonomy of the institutions themselves—a point emphasised by other noble Lords. This has been vital to the development of the university sector in our country and its position in international comparisons. My final point is that this independence and diversity needs to be held within an overall frame of government funding policy, which does not allow recent gains to be eroded. Against general reports that social mobility has dropped in our society since the 1970s, we do not need a wrong emergence of a new elite within our universities. That would be a danger. Any structure, society or organisation which supports freedom always tends to produce its winners and losers. One of the jobs of government is to provide a playing field and a support system which keeps that to a minimum. Whatever the future may hold, we need to promote excellence across the sector; that is, at the universities and the diverse range of institutions. That should be a prime aim of government in the years to come.