Higher Education

My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as vice-chancellor of the University of Ulster from 1991 to 1999. Other noble Lords have invoked the name of John Henry Newman. Today, we need a new John Henry Newman to imagine and define what is now required. The basic principle guiding future policy must be to strive for excellence in both teaching and research in the context of a mass tertiary education system. The question is how best that may be achieved, for it is a daunting challenge. Higher education institutions need to be redefined in their core purposes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, implied. It is clear that they are no longer just vehicles for delivering third-level teaching and research. They are also major players in sustaining and promoting economic generation in the employment that they provide, increasing consumer spending power in their environs and the spin-off activity that stems from their research. Those beneficial effects have been recognised for some time now and have been further endorsed by the Government's announcement last March that they intend to create about 20 new campuses in England. The aim is to increase the participation rate, to improve the nation’s skills base and to promote economic development. I applaud that new policy initiative, but how is excellence and quality to be preserved in both teaching and research? Secondly, how can cost be minimised and the economies of scale maximised? The answer to both questions lies in much more higher education institution collaboration and co-operation, preferably organised on a regional, federal or confederal basis. HEIs, especially the established universities, have been notoriously parochial and turf-protecting in outlook. Happily, there are signs of a welcome change. Regional federations—particularly in England, because in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland there is much greater collaboration—and confederations should be formally established. As I have said in your Lordships’ House before, the tertiary system in California, developed by Clark Kerr, affords a very good guide as to how we should proceed. Centres of real excellence in research and postgraduate teaching can be identified for each region. This is especially needed in science and engineering at the moment. Student numbers in these crucial subjects are falling and departments have been closed down. Unfortunately, these closures have been made by individual universities with scant regard to the wider needs of region and nation. A regional framework would facilitate a more strategic context for the allocation of academic resources. Other HEIs in a region would be able to make their own dispositions in the light of the designated hub university. This would doubtless include greater liaison and collaboration with further education colleges, which is vital. This is already going on spontaneously in many areas of the country and across many disciplines. The trouble is that it is altogether too ad hoc. Hub universities need to be identified for each English region, and of course there can be more than one. Other HEIs in the region would thus be better enabled to make their own dispositions regarding future developments, including, as I have said, a more worked out and coherent approach to collaboration with the further education sector. This is a policy that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills needs now to articulate in England and to promote if it is to live up to its title.