HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman, spent Friday at a conference organised by SKOPE (the Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance), part of the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. It was overseen by James Robson, Professor of Tertiary Education Systems, and featured the Minister for Skills, Baroness (Jacqui) Smith, among many others.
In his opening address, Professor Robson articulated the growing consensus that, when it comes to post-school education, the time has come:
- to replace competition with coordination;
- to allow place-based approaches to flourish; and
- to unlock new opportunities for the benefit of students and employers.
In her remarks, Jacqui Smith agreed, arguing for an end to ‘town / gown’ splits. The Minister emphasised she thinks higher education must reach out to other parts of the education sector: while she recognises the majority of future skills needs will be at a higher level, she wants to bring down the ‘artificial’ barriers between FE and HE in a ‘coordinated’ and ‘facilitated’ way.
Some people in the audience interpreted this as meaning universities’ only hope of more money is to do the Government’s bidding and, either way, the higher education sector clearly needs to get ready for a more directive approach from a more active state. The basic idea seems to be to have everyone work together to raise productivity, level up the regions outside London and deliver more social mobility.
It may sound lovely but these issues are as old as houses and, whenever I think of them, I think of those paragraphs from the Robbins committee – which was designed ‘to review the pattern of full-time higher education’ – that wrestle with freedom versus direction. The Robbins report struggled with the right level of co-ordination and, while much of what it said reflected Lionel Robbins’s liberal views, it also envisaged a role for oversight and direction:
Will it be possible to secure the advantages of co-ordination while preserving the advantages of liberty? The question is of critical importance. Freedom of institutions as well as individual freedom is an essential constituent of a free society and the tradition of academic freedom in this country has deep roots in the whole history of our people. We are convinced also that such freedom is a necessary condition of the highest efficiency and the proper progress of academic institutions, and that encroachments upon their liberty, in the supposed interests of greater efficiency, would in fact diminish their efficiency and stultify their development. …
We believe that a system that aims at the maximum of independence compatible with the necessary degree of public control is good in itself, as reflecting the ultimate values of a free society. We believe that a multiplicity of centres of initiative safeguards spontaneity and variety, and therefore provides the surest guarantee of intellectual progress and moral responsibility. We do not regard such freedom as a privilege but rather as a necessary condition for the proper discharge of the higher academic functions as we conceive them. …
The difficulties are greatest when it is a question whether institutions of higher education should have the ultimate right to determine their own size. … if funds are available, refusal to co-operate in national policies or to meet national emergencies is an unsympathetic attitude, and it would be easy to think of reasons why it should be overruled. … If, when all the reasons for change have been explained, the institution still prefers not to co-operate it is better that it should be allowed to follow its own path. This being so, it must not complain if various benefits going to co-operating institutions do not come its way. … [My emphasis]
it is unlikely that separate consideration by independent institutions of their own affairs in their own circumstances will always result in a pattern that is comprehensive and appropriate in relation to the needs of society and the demands of the national economy. There is no guarantee of the emergence of any coherent policy. And this being so, it is not reasonable to expect that the Government, which is the source of finance, should be content with an absence of co-ordination or should be without influence thereon. …
It all goes to show, yet again, that there is no such thing as a new education policy question.
There are a number of tests we should perhaps apply to the let’s-coordinate-everything-to-elevate-skills approach that is likely to form the core of the forthcoming post-16 strategy / white paper that is due ‘soon’ – very soon if some of those attending the conference are to be believed and not at all soon if others there are to be believed.
First, if we can’t even build a high-speed speed trainline on budget and on time, why are we so confident we can easily build an integrated skills and education system (and without a material increase in spending)? It is surely right to at least ask whether public authorities really do know so much about the future economy’s needs that individuals should cede control over who should study what and where. Clearly, Skills England could be important here, but it is an untested beast. (I note in passing that the Smiths, Jacqui and Phil [Chair of Skills England], are getting back together to do a webinar this week.)
Secondly, the broken model that tends to be held up in contrast to the coming smooth one is a market in which there is lots of wasteful competition, excessive homogeneity and a lack of focus on the country’s needs. But the idea that the only alternative to a coordinated system is a pure and chaotic market is bunkum. We’ve not had a pure market in higher education and I’ve never met anyone who wants one. Neither the political centre nor the Far-byn (or is it Cor-age?) axis want one. Perhaps we are letting ourselves be blinded by the idea that there are only two options: a pure red-in-tooth-and-claw market, which is a caricature of what we have, and a cuddly coordinated system, which will be harder to deliver than we pretend.
Thirdly, where is the space for education for education’s sake? As one member of the audience pointed out at the SKOPE conference, current discussions are so focused on ‘skills’ and the economy that education is sometimes becoming lost. Yet FE and HE collaboration is difficult at a practical and day-to-day level. Kath Mitchell, the Vice-Chancellor of Derby University, pointed out the challenges of running an FE college and a university together – for example pointing out that Buxton and Leek College is (absurdly) barred from receiving FE capital funding because it counts as part of the University of Derby.
Fourthly, we should question the assumption underlying current critiques that our universities are much too homogeneous. They do have some things in common, though one might just as well point out that all education institutions that share a legally-protected title controlled by strict criteria, such as ‘university’, are always going to have some things in common. But I’ve visited pretty much every UK university, and many of them multiple times, and I would urge anyone who thinks they’re all the same to do something similar. Just compare the two universities I know best (as I’m on their boards), Manchester and Buckingham: the former is a research-intensive institution with a turnover of £1.4 billion, 12,000 staff and 47,000 students while the other is a teaching-intensive place (‘the home of two-year degrees’) with a turnover of £50 million, 500 staff and 3,500 students as well as the only private medical school in the UK. Or compare the LSE and UCA (the University of the Creative Arts). Or Falmouth University and Newcastle University. These things are not the same.
Finally / fifthly, as Andy Westwood pointed out in his remarks at the SKOPE conference, devolution is ‘non-existent’ in large parts of the country. So what does ‘a coordinated place-based approach’ really mean there? It’s one thing if you’re in Greater Manchester; it’s quite another if you’re in a rural area far from the nearest town or city, college or university. Moreover, while it is true that the old Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) had a regional aspect to its work which we could well copy today, it was a big funder as well as a regulator and it had a substantial regional presence.