Higher Education

My Lords, like others, I warmly thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for introducing the debate so well today. I declare an interest as a member of court at the LSE and Lancaster and Newcastle Universities. I am also involved professionally in De Montfort University. The immense challenges of the 21st century mean that we desperately need a high-quality, comprehensive matrix of higher education, with different institutions playing different roles. The developing diversity is already exciting. Universities such as De Montfort or TVU are developing productive relationships with business and local employers. They are also building strong links with key professions such as nursing, pharmacy, social, community and youth work, the police and probation services, and they often provide a success story of effective multiculturalism. Others such as Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool are well positioned to accelerate the trend, specifically and firmly embraced by Newcastle, to regenerate the concept of the civic university, rooted in the community but dedicated to world-class teaching and research and at the centre of the knowledge economy. For the UK to flourish, we can leave none of our human potential untapped, but, as a civilised society, we surely cannot still accept millions of people going to their grave never having begun to recognise their potential, let alone fulfil it. Further education often gives the lead in this. Most sectors make a growing contribution to widening access and to enabling the United Kingdom to be a convincing player in globalised communities, not least by their work abroad and by their overseas students here. Both of these contributions are essential in their own right, but they are also vital to the quality of learning and research within any community of scholars. I fervently hope that we do not pursue the misguided notion of having totally separate teaching and research-based universities. The quality of each discipline is enhanced by interplay with the other, whatever form the research takes. In our evaluation of research, we must look to its special value when based on practical engagement in the dynamics of society. Of course we must nurture our older universities with their pace-setting role of established, high-quality research and teaching, and we must never lose our commitment to the imperative for ensuring the strength of original, free-standing research. That research is indispensable to the future of humanity. But I can think of no better shortcut to falling standards and lowered morale than fostering the concept of a teaching institution with no involvement in research, however it is organised. Amid the quantitative preoccupations of modern society, the imperative of values, reflection and intellectual originality becomes more significant than ever. Will we suffocate ourselves as a species in a surfeit of information because we have neglected the vital disciplines of properly digesting and analysing that information? Cleverness must never be allowed to squeeze out wisdom. Good management is important, but good management for what? Who is on the bridge and what is the destination? The classics, arts, humanities, ethics and philosophy are as critical as ever to the creative quality of life, but they are also critical to the very survival of the species. We simply cannot afford not to give high priority and public expenditure and taxation to the generous funding of higher and further education. The state must remain central to guaranteeing it. To pretend we cannot afford it is nonsense. As in other spheres, the danger is that we give in to the priority of private affluence as against the necessity for collective expenditure, and we do so at our peril.