Secretary of State, colleagues and friends.
Firstly may I formally welcome you all here and particularly you, Dr Cable. It is very important to us that our Secretary of State attends this conference and speaks to us. It validates the importance you and the Government give universities.
Since our last annual meeting we have had the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review. We understood that there was a national imperative to address the deficit, that cutting public spending was a part of that but did, of course, make the case for the importance of universities in our future economic and social success.
We must, therefore, thank the Government for listening to our case and acknowledge that, in these challenging times, you have significantly supported universities in comparison to other public bodies and parts of the public sector. Firstly you have created a mechanism whereby our income for support of education and research including capital spending will, broadly across the sector, either remain the same or increase slightly by 2015. There are those both in this room and in society who philosophically disagree with that mechanism and also some in this room who will face challenges to sustain that income. However, as we have consistently shown at the ballot box over the last 30 years that we want lower direct taxation, it is difficult to see what other options there were. Certainly coming to terms with a 25% decrease in income would have meant we would be holding our conference in a very different mood to the one we are experiencing this week.
Secondly, thank you for protecting the research budgets. This is a massive statement of belief in the importance of research to the future of the UK and a statement of faith in universities’ ability to deliver for you - we will not disappoint.
We are in the middle of a consultation over the White Paper. This White Paper and the current financial changes mean that we are going to have a challenging few years ahead. This speech could simply be a collection of views and opinions about the detail of those changes but Universities UK, representative organisations and the universities individually will be currently feeding those back to you and your staff. As we are in the middle of that exercise, I personally thought it more appropriate that we should look at fundamental issues about the purpose of universities.
Before moving on, however, I did want to state that universities always have been and remain unequivocally committed to delivering the title of the White Paper, Students at the Heart of the System. Two important messages have come from discussions at this conference. Firstly Universities UK argued for more deregulation of student numbers. However, we are anxious that deregulation by academic achievement will have consequences for social mobility, student choice and for the sustainability of some STEM course. We cannot predict that which brings me to the second message. We urge you not to further accelerate the pace of change quickly and that we and you allow thoughtful analysis and monitoring of the outcomes of the current changes before moving on to more.
I wanted this annual meeting to revisit broader issues about Universities and Society. There are three main reasons for that.
Firstly, I wanted us to re-iterate to ourselves and to the country how much universities have done and will continue do in interacting with and supporting civil society. This is an ideological and public duty as well as an instrumental one.
Secondly I wanted to underline that such a successful interaction depends on each university operating in an integrated way. A single university is not just the sum of education, research and enterprise as three separate activities. They are all inextricably integrated; each activity is inseparable from the other.
Finally I wanted to highlight that the diversity of the sector is crucial to us succeeding to the best advantage of society. A sector of monochrome, monocultural, indistinguishable universities is not in society’s interest.
Respecting that diversity is crucial to our success as a sector. It was Sir Howard Newby who said that a very singular skill of the British was to turn diversity into a hierarchy – I would like universities and their partners to be the first to disprove that insightful supposition. Whilst we embrace that diversity, I also felt it was important that we acknowledged to ourselves and to society how much unites us particularly around our values and purpose. In times of challenge, differences get exaggerated and we can easily lose sight of our common purpose and journey.
I and some other Vice-Chancellors in this room were recently challenged to come up with a vision for universities in the future. The implication was that we neither had nor were developing a vision. It won’t surprise you to hear, Dr Cable, that I will argue that universities have had a clear vision for a long time, have profoundly flexed that vision to deal with society’s changes and are further developing that vision to address future challenges and changes.
To my knowledge, the only event that came out of nowhere was the Big Bang – everything else has a past. For universities a significant part of today’s vision is derived from our historical development. I recently visited the University of Bologna including its oldest surviving building. There you can see the shields on the walls with the hometown addresses of the students who had come from all over Europe to study there. The university’s main street was full of students arguing and discussing on steps and in cafes – notices about this event and that event, political and non-political, proliferated. Bologna is the oldest university in Europe founded in 1088 and you felt that, whilst today’s clothes may be different and the freedoms more obvious, this university and its people were doing today what they have done for centuries – learn, teach, explore, challenge, create and grow. And, of course, in nearly 1000 years the University has been a major engine in the development of the city.
Compare that with our universities today. Do the people inside them learn, teach, explore, challenge, create and grow – they certainly do. Do people come from many countries and metaphorically leave their addresses at our universities – they certainly do. Are our universities crucial to the future of their cities and regions – they certainly are. The fundamental purpose and operation of a university has remained the same over centuries in spite of an infinite variety of political and social environments and in spite of the exigencies and unpredictability of history. Why? – is this an inherent complacency that needs challenging or is it something more basic, something about what society needs from a university and how that need is crucial to the continued success of society over long tracts of time.
I believe that it is a great strength that the fundamental purpose and operation of our universities remain as they have been over the centuries. They are a very important part of the DNA of society – one of the crucial genes, if I can stretch the analogy. In evolutionary biology the more important the gene, the less it mutates between generations and species because those mutations prove threatening to the survival of the organism. The scientific name for that phenomenon is conservation and it is the very opposite of resistance to change – it is about protecting something that is profoundly valuable.
In summary, a significant part of our vision today is that we must continue to put the pursuit of educational excellence and the generation of new knowledge as absolutely central to our role as a public good. Some commentators say that we have lost that vision already. I simply disagree. Everyone in this room is absolutely clear that universities will only continue to become stronger if we keep that vision and those ambitions firmly in focus. Amongst all of our other myriad important duties we must always maintain an absolute commitment to blue skies education and thinking and to our staff and students being able to intellectually wander freely and to challenge.
Furthermore, in these troubled times, it is important to repeat that education is, in and of itself, both a private and a public good. The more educated an individual is, the more they are likely to actualize their ambitions, to experience good health, to access less social support and to make a contribution to local and national economies They are also more likely to contribute positively to civil society. Perhaps those who are arguing for fewer people going to universities may wish to reconsider in the light of recent events.
However this commitment does not mean that universities are not prepared to change and adapt. This meeting is 20 years on from the decision to broaden university status. It is enlightening to compare and contrast the university sector then to that now. Then there were fewer universities and they were more like each other. All of those individual universities were doing research across quite a broad spectrum of subjects and we had no real handle on the quality of that research. Many of them would have been hard put to articulate their role in their local society or their economic impact. There would have been little discussion about knowledge and technology transfer and commercialization. Finally the words internationalization and globalization would have remained unspoken.
Let’s analyze some of the changes in education since then. In 1991 there were around 990000 undergraduates and 170000 postgraduate in universities; in 2011 there will be 1.9 million undergraduates and 600000 postgraduates. In 1991 the majority of undergraduate students would have been under 24, full time and residential. Now those students are a minority and we have a myriad of different modes of study including part-time and distance. We are the bedrock of re-skilling as individuals progress through their professional lives. We train all of the country’s health care workers. We have initiated huge numbers of new courses that meet expressed needs of employers, especially those local to our universities. Our curricula have changed to meet the needs of today’s graduate. Such change is inevitable in huge parts of our universities because the knowledge base in those disciplines changes so rapidly. But even in the more abstract disciplines there is a clear acknowledgement that the curriculum has had to be reshaped to meet the needs of entrants who are educated completely differently and have new needs in the work place.
So we now have universities that are offering very diverse educational experiences – not just more of the same. Our universities are still committed to education that ensures we produce individuals who will go on to become self directed, lifelong learners; individuals who are able to access data, assimilate and analyze it, synthesize that information and construct new opinions or knowledge from that analysis and finally present them competently either orally or in written form.
However we have combined that with much more sensitivity about the needs of the modern workplace. I did an exercise whereby I compared the course offerings of the older university in a number of cities with those of the university chartered in 1992 in the same city. On average the older universities had about 30% of their courses that were explicitly facing towards a particular work place and which taught skills specific for that workplace. In the comparable post-92 universities on average the figure exceeded 60%. In other words all universities combine more general abstract education with education directed to the workplace but they do it in different combinations and thus are providing exactly the diversity of education that modern society needs.
Let’s compare research. All objective data show that the volume and quality of research in the UK has increased dramatically in the last two decades. The University research base is one of the country’s most valuable assets. We usually describe it as the second best in the world after the United States but actually, in bang for your buck, in output per £ invested, it is the first in the world
What the current research landscape isn’t, is more of the same. I compared the submission to the RAE in 1992 with the one in 2008. 67 universities submitted in Chemistry in 1992, 31 in 2008; 62 in Physics in 1992 had dropped to 42 by 2008, 80 in Biosciences had dropped to 48, Pure and Applied Maths from a combination of 112 to 81, Mechanical, Civil and Electrical Engineering from 168 to 86. Most of Arts and Humanities were about the same number or some small decreases; Social Sciences had shown some significant decreases especially in Economics although other disciplines were stable. Nursing and Subjects Allied to Health had both increased.
The picture is quite clear – there has been a huge concentration and selectivity in the expensive subjects. No surprise there; only some universities can afford the infrastructure investment to keep such research activities going. Other universities have sought to sustain their research excellence in those subjects that they can support financially and sit with their mission. In other words we have a very successful diversity in research excellence, as RAE 2008 showed, just as we in do in education.
Whilst we recognize that certain political imperatives meant the White Paper only concentrated on education, I must stress that education cannot be isolated from research and scholarship. The two are inextricably linked. We are constantly challenged over why education is better in an environment of research and scholarship. Let me try again to explain why.
Firstly research and scholarship are about enquiry, challenge, risk taking and dealing with uncertainty – exactly the qualities employers are looking for and that are an essential part of our graduates’ development. Secondly if we wish our undergraduates to have a project as part of their education, which all educationalists strongly support, that will inevitably happen best in a research environment. Finally our undergraduates will be taught by the people who are generating the new knowledge – a different experience than one in which the teaching is derived from simple published information. There is a tendency for those teachers to be portrayed as the Lecturers and Professors but the students are also exposed to the PhD students and post-docs, many of who are at the very height of their powers of enquiry and the most passionate about their subject. These younger teachers act as role models, much nearer the age of our undergraduates and really do inspire our students.
Some commentators argue that it possible to have outstanding undergraduate education without a research environment and go on to use the US liberal arts colleges as their example. All that shows to me is that they haven’t been to a liberal arts college. I visited three such colleges in Philadelphia earlier this year. Crucially their names, liberal arts colleges, belie their purpose; they actually educate in both Arts and Science. They have many outstanding research active scholars on their staff and their scientists continue to research, more in collaboration with bigger universities now rather than as standalone entities.
So it is essential that we and all of our partners explicitly acknowledge the interdependencies of our academic activities. Such interdependencies also exist in the physical and human infrastructure needed to support them. It is vital to plan the future of universities acknowledging them as complex and integrated systems.
In 1991 the concept of Enterprise could have been described as nascent. The engagement of industry in the universities would have been present but only in very demarcated areas. The duty that we have to society to transfer our knowledge and technology as rapidly and as effectively as possible would have been barely acknowledged. In 2011 the difference is breathtaking. Every university has an active Enterprise division. Active management of knowledge and technology transfer is the norm. Engagement with business is flourishing. Many companies have out-sourced much of their R & D to universities. Enterprise networks linking local SME’s to universities are commonplace. Such activity is not only the preserve of research-intensive universities – Cambridge has a flourishing enterprise network; so does Teesside. The term business facing has been used to describe universities that work closely with their local business to help develop the technologies and skills that they need.
All universities now recognize their importance to their localities and cities and actively operate to maximize that. In many places the universities are the largest independent employer. Their impact on the local economy, culture and society is enormous. Any analysis of a successful modern city, of an ideas generating city, invariably puts excellent local universities right at the heart of the endeavor. Other examples are the leadership of our universities in the Beacons for Public Engagement initiative and of the charitable work of our students. One large university reported that their students did over 100,000 hours of volunteering in their city in a year.
Whilst there would have been many international connections between universities in 1991, the concepts of internationalisation or globalisation would not have been commonly discussed. In 2011 our universities are globalized entities with links all over the world, exporting their education through numerous mechanisms, engaging in multi-disciplinary trans-national research and interacting with numerous global agencies and companies. In fact we are rather good at this. Maybe it’s because we live on a crowded, rain soaked island off the north European coast that has meant we had to develop merchant venturing skills but we have certainly employed those skills very successfully in internationalizing our universities.
So two decades of unprecedented change in universities yet as entities they are still recognizable with what they were in 1991. As I wrote this speech describing the vibrant, diverse and innovative sector we are, I pondered whether we would have been so successful if John Major had not expanded university status in 1992. Some populist commentators tend to deride that initiative arguing that we have too many universities, failing to acknowledge that our higher education provision is still substantially lower per head of population than many of our peer countries including the USA. Actually what that expansion did was open up diversity, allow institutions to take risks and become more self determining and provided stimulating competition both at home and abroad.
As a result, we have become an even more successful and diverse ecosystem. 20 years on it is clear that expanding the university sector was a positive and successful initiative – and perhaps that should make us reflect on what further success may occur with the increased diversity and competition signaled in the White Paper. In the midst of all this change core business has remained the same – the organisations have explored new areas within that business and profoundly changed their methods of operating and their technologies to meet new challenges successfully. We have shown how robust we are – we can rise to any challenge.
Now we look forward. Do we have a future vision? First, I hope I have persuaded you that we are not currently a vision free zone. We have a very well developed and long established vision. However my personal answer is that our future vision is this:
“Universities will combine their traditional strength of scholarship with their proven capacity to develop and change in order to meet society’s needs. Working with our students and staff, we will provide the most effective and diverse education and research so that the technologies and the people are developed to meet our future known and unknown challenges. We will also provide the intellectual and moral leadership to overcome those challenges.”
Colleagues will debate the exact content and syntax of that vision but for me it sums up where we are going.
The immediate future holds some of those challenges already.
Over the next two years, Universities UK will be working hard to ensure that students are as well informed as possible about all aspects of the new environment so that they can make the best choices possible.
We will support all universities as they analyse and address the challenges the changes in funding and the White Paper will bring. Those changes mean different things to each individual institution and those differences are not yet necessarily predictable. It is inevitable that there will be unintended consequences, there always are in the midst of such change, and we will work with you and colleagues to try and spot these early and work through solutions.
We will work with you and the team at BIS to ensure that the White Paper and subsequent policy initiatives best serve the purpose of the country and the universities. It won’t surprise you to hear that colleagues have already suggested changes in the proposed White Paper that, we believe, will give you the end result you want but will also ensure that our universities can adapt successfully and in a timely way to the new environment.
As I have said already, in these times of uncertainty, I and Universities UK will continue to remind ourselves and all our partners how much unites us as universities and how we are all on a common journey. In the medium to long-term we will want to discuss with you where any additional public funding, should it be forthcoming, may be targeted. We accept that the days of an increase in general funding are past but there will be powerful reasons for supporting particular areas of education or research.
Deregulation of the market means that we will have to look to different forms of delivery whilst still ensuring the educational strengths remain. We will continue to put the student at the heart of all our activity; we always have so done. You don’t get a National Student Survey showing greater than 80% satisfaction by not being student centered.
We are committed to running our businesses even more efficiently.
We will diversify and grow our income streams. I have a particular interest in growing philanthropy which now brings in over £500 million per year.
We will have to be increasingly sensitive to the needs of the workplace. Recent reports from Universities UK and others highlight the social transformation of our undergraduates who exist in a much more virtual and immediate world than we did. This means we will have to engender skills that previously we would have taken for granted.
We must ensure that everybody who could benefit from university has the opportunity to attend. This is one of the great challenges of our age. Universities have a major responsibility for this and we must find innovative ways of working with all the other agencies to fulfill that ambition. A long haul but a vitally important one
Research presents challenges over the overall level of funding and how does society continue to increase that. Argument rages about selectivity but I have shown that concentration and selectivity have happened already. The issue is how do we sustain enquiry and scholarship in all our universities firstly for its own sake and secondly so that we provide the best educational experience for our students.
Enterprise presents us with the challenge of how much of our knowledge and technology should we protect and how much should we allow society to use as quickly as possible. There is no bonanza here for universities – even MIT gets less than 2% of its income from technology transfer.
That’s just to highlight a few of the challenges.
So we stand before you today as a sector with a very clear vision of itself. That vision is rooted in our history and values but has demonstrated that it can be flexed and developed to produce a diverse group of universities well founded to meet the current challenges. We are prepared to use our successful experience of change to further develop our vision to meet the new challenges both known and unknown. We will be as different in 2031 compared to 2011 as we are in 2011 compared to 1991. But we will still be educational establishments generating knowledge and skilled people as a public good, working with our students, our staff and our partners to be right at the heart of the success of civil society and this country. That, Secretary of State, we can guarantee to you.