Who shall regulate the regulators?

The appointment process for the new Office for Students has been heavily criticised in a new report, writes Professor David Midgley – and it hasn’t even launched yet

When the membership of the Board of the Office for Students (Ofs) was announced on 1 January 2018, a furious public controversy ensued over the appointment of Toby Young as a non-executive director. He subsequently resigned but has so far not been replaced. Now, the commissioner for public appointments, Peter Riddell, has published a report that is deeply critical of other aspects of the appointment process as well.

The shortcomings identified in the report include the fact that the panel interviewing for the post of non-executive director was all male and the length of time it took both the OfS and the Department for Education (DfE) to provide the commissioner with some of the paperwork relating to the appointment process. But by far his greatest criticism concerns the handling of the appointment of a board member with student experience.

While the commissioner considers that the interviewing of candidates was appropriately conducted, he finds that the due diligence exercised was neither adequate nor consistent. As he says in an annex to his report, that process “failed to provide sufficient information about Mr Young”, while on the other hand “extensive research was carried out into the background and opinions of certain candidates for the student experience role”. Moreover, the candidate initially selected for this role by the chair of the OfS and officials from the DfE was ruled out by the prime minister’s special advisers on the grounds of “public statements and student union activity”.

Serious concerns about inconsistencies

More specifically, the report reveals that ministers had objected to the preferred candidate because of statements made about the government’s Prevent strategy and on free speech. The commissioner challenges this decision explicitly, commenting that “non-executive boards are intended to bring effective challenge to the organisations they serve, and that can only be achieved by having a diverse range of views, background, skills and experience. This independence is put at risk by taking too partisan an approach to candidates’ views.”

In the event, an interim appointment was made to the post with the student experience role, although there was no indication in the DfE’s announcement that this appointment was only temporary. According to the report, the process for appointing a permanent board member to this post will now run in June 2018. But the commissioner expresses serious concerns about inconsistencies in making the temporary appointment and in explaining the situation to the person appointed, stating that “the Department did not manage the expectations of the candidates applying for the student experience role satisfactorily and the public was misinformed”.

The DfE’s retrospective attempts to justify its handling of the student appointment by arguing that “matters might be taken into account above and beyond the specific criteria in the job advert” also fail to convince the commissioner, who concludes that the competition had serious shortcomings in terms of fairness and transparency under the government’s Governance Code. The issues raised in the report have also been subjected to vigorous discussion under the urgent question procedure in parliament.

This has been an extremely inauspicious beginning for the OfS, which is due to be officially launched in April.

 

 

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Yes, tuition fees in England are among the highest in the world

It turns out the CDBU were right about tuition fees

Prime minister Theresa May has admitted that tuition fees in England are among the highest in the world.

It’s good to see an acknowledgement from government of something that we first drew attention to three years ago.

The general election of 2015 was the since the decision to treble tuition fees to £9k a year in 2010. At that point, no one – Conservatives, Lib-Dems or Labour – were calling for a reversal of this policy. When the CDBU made the argument that our tuition fees were, on average, the highest in the world, there was some scepticism, especially given the astronomical level of US private university fees.

So we produced an infographic to demonstrate it.

In November 2015, the OECD confirmed that tuition fees in England were indeed higher than any other country. The story was reported extensively in the UK press, and even went international.

By that time, Jeremy Corbyn had already begun campaigning to abolish tuition fees. After he was elected leader, abolition of tuition fees has been adopted as Labour policy.

The knowledge that students pay more in England for their higher education than in any other country in the world is perhaps the single most compelling reason for reversing the constant escalation of tuition fees. And it all began with a piece of research by the CDBU back in April 2015.

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CDBU says review of university funding must be “radical”

Press release: 18 February, 2018

The Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) welcomes the government announcement of a review into university funding. We hope the review will be far-ranging and go back to first principles rather than just tinker with the current model. Poorer students have been damaged by the decision to abolish the maintenance grant, and increasingly as academics we see two tiers of full-time students: those whose living costs are met by their parents, and those who have to work part-time to fund their way through university.

Professor Anne Sheppard, a CDBU spokesperson, said: “The government review of higher education must be a radical one, unafraid to look at different options. We know that young people from the most disadvantaged areas of the UK are four times less likely to apply to university than those who are more socially advantaged. High tuition fees, combined with having to pay living costs for three years, act to deter poorer students from applying. Interest rates of up to 6.1% on loans are a further barrier. We hope that the review will look at fairer ways of managing student finance while recognising the need to protect the income of universities, which make a vital contribution to the British economy.”

Notes to editors:

The CDBU was founded in 2012 by a wide range of concerned academics and public figures to campaign for the independence of UK universities and to resist the creeping marketisation of higher education.

For more information, or to speak to Professor Anne Sheppard, please contact Kim Thomas at kimthomas@ntlworld.com or 01707 332574.

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News round-up: universities face an uncertain financial future

Vice-chancellors have been sharing their concerns that some universities may face insolvency, while Robert Halfon MP says too many students are studying academic degrees

Opportunity and risk: universities prepare for an uncertain future

The Guardian, 07/02/2018, Harriet Swain

Research with vice-chancellors by the Guardian shows some hope amongst the gloom about Brexit, funding changes and the fallout from controversies like senior managers’ pay.

Many graduates earn ‘paltry returns’ for their degree

BBC News online, 05/02/2018, Hannah Richardson

Many graduates receive ‘paltry returns’ for their degrees despite racking up £50,000 in debt, says the chairman of the Education Select Committee.

Robert Halfon will say in a speech on Monday that between a fifth and a third of graduates take non-graduate jobs, and that any extra returns for having a degree ‘vary wildly’. He will also suggest that too many people are studying academic degrees. University leaders maintain that a degree remains an excellent investment.

His comments come as the latest UCAS figures show a small drop in the number of people applying to higher education in the UK. Last year 559,030 people, including foreign students, applied to UK universities. This is the lowest number since 2014. A breakdown shows that there were 12,420 fewer UK applicants, a 2.6% drop compared with last year. It is the second annual drop in a row.

UK universities report rise in applications from EU students

The Guardian, 05/02/2018, Richard Adams

A last-minute rush to study at British universities before Brexit closes the door may be behind a rise in applications from EU students, according to the latest figures for courses starting in the autumn. The rise in international applications, including a record number from students outside the EU, helped disguise modest domestic figures showing a 3% fall in applications, the second successive decline following a 4% drop last year.

University admissions officers said the government’s guarantee for EU students starting in 2018 was viewed by some as a last chance to study in the UK on the same terms as UK students for the duration of their degree.

The figures from Ucas, the applications clearing house, show that 43,500 EU students applied for places as undergraduates, a 3% rise from the same point in 2017 and the second highest number recorded, reversing last year’s sharp fall.

Fears that Brexit could harm applications from outside the EU were also allayed, with the Ucas data showing a rising number of applications from countries such as China and India.

‘A policy change away from collapse’: universities’ fears for 2018

The Guardian, 01/02/2018, Rachel Hall

New research sheds light on the different fortunes facing UK universities, as some find themselves on the brink of insolvency.

Prioritise students or face more regulation, says ex-Ucas head

Times Higher Education, 01/02/2018, Sophie Inge

UK universities risk being subjected to further government control and regulation if they do not prioritise teaching quality and embrace initiatives such as two-year degrees, a former Ucas chief executive has warned. Addressing the annual meeting of the Council for the Defence of British Universities, Mary Curnock Cook said that although many attendees would regard universities ‘primarily as places for research’, for the ‘man on the street’ nowadays they were places of ‘mass higher education’.

The article notes that the speech provoked a lively response from audience members. One, Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford, told Times Higher Education that Ms Curnock Cook was labouring under a ‘terrific misapprehension’ if she thought that people in the room did not care about students.

Vice-chancellors fearful about financial outlook for UK higher education

The Guardian, 31/01/2018, Richard Adams and Rachel Hall

Vice-chancellors are increasingly fearful about the financial outlook for UK higher education, after a survey of university leaders found many worried that ‘febrile’ cuts in tuition fees could push some institutions towards insolvency. While a majority of universities said they were financially stable, many of the leaders surveyed said even relatively small cuts in fees would cause severe problems for several institutions.

The confidential survey comes as the government has confirmed its desire for a major review of higher education funding in England, following a cabinet reshuffle that saw Justine Greening deposed as education secretary because of her opposition to a review.

Theresa May is said to favour allowing universities to charge variable fees – above or below the current £9,250 per year – based on graduates’ income, but opinion inside the government remains split over how to impose the policy. Four out of five people surveyed disagreed with variable fees based on graduate earnings, while two out of three said they opposed making some universities charge less than others.

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We must fight the attack on pensions: the future of British universities is at stake

Academic pensions may seem like a niche interest. But, argues Dr Rowan Cerys Tomlinson, proposals to change the current pension scheme represent an assault on the entire sector

I became an academic for many reasons: because of my intellectual curiosity, because I wanted to contribute to society by teaching, because academia offered the heady mixture of solitary writing and intense socialization on which I thrive. I did not enter academia because of its promise of a decent pension. Or so I thought until recently when I have found myself waking at 4am worrying about my old age.

CDBU is fighting vital battles on a number of fronts and has not so far made comment on the dramatic attack on academic pensions, which will see the guarantee of a ‘defined benefit’ pension swapped for the uncertainties of a ‘defined-contribution’ pension dependent on the market. To take my own example, and using a modeller based on the official Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) valuation document, if I keep paying into my pension for the next 30 years then I am set to move from a pension worth £22,000 a year to one that might, if investments work out, be worth £10,000 a year. By comparison, a teacher, and all academics working in newer universities, who are part of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, will receive a pension whose total value will be worth hundreds of thousands more. I should add that my situation, after working for some years, is not quite as bad as those younger academics just starting out now. And it will be harder still for those who were hoping to enter academia in the next few years, already lumbered with the full whack of tuition fees, suffering from reduced funding opportunities for postgraduate work, moving from pillar to post in temporary jobs, and now set to have no guaranteed pension.

Academics are being fobbed off with glib platitudes

This is not the place to enter into the nuances of arguments taking place between the University and College Union (UCU) and the USS negotiators and vice-chancellors who have made repeated, dubious claims about the impossibility of continuing a defined-benefit pension, only to throw in passing sops to the academic masses through pipe-dream promises of a return to that system if/when finances look healthier. The more hawkish vice-chancellors on the UUK Employers Pension Forum, whose no-discussions approach is so far winning out, have, in chorus with USS, used glib and vapid platitudes to try to fob off a community used to stripping bare and analysing language and supposed ‘facts’; they have also fed staff overly (and cynically) conservative estimates of the impact on pensions, citing estimates from insurance firm AON that ignore the role of longevity and divestment. There is, what’s more, a glaring inconsistency in the methods that underpin the claims made by USS and UUK about the proposals: forecasts about the proposed scheme are based on optimistic assumptions, while the evaluation of USS, which provides the excuse for the removal of any defined-benefit scheme, is based on wholly pessimistic assumptions: https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/uuks-actuary-s-best-estimates-eliminate-the-uss-deficit-33dad2afc24b.

The shock and anger produced by this dishonest presentation of the situation has pushed academics to vote in unprecedented numbers to strike and to do so dramatically: we are readying ourselves to lose a large chunk of our monthly salary by refusing to work for 14 scheduled strike days across February and March. This was not an easy decision. Some colleagues told me that they have never voted to strike before and we naturally feel anxious and guilty about the effect that it will have on our students, whose interests, as a recent blogpost on this site confirmed, are precious to us. But removing our labour visibly and actively is the only way, we hope, to make the universities – and what a world we are in when the university means the management and not the academics! – listen to us. Happily, the National Union of Students has voted to support the strikes and we hope, through ‘teach-outs’ on strike days, to get the message across to students that we are acting not just for our but very much for their good and the good of future generations. The support of academics who have already retired, or are close to retirement, has also been vocal and I urge you to speak out on our behalf.

Not just about salaries

This isn’t the first battle that I have found myself in. I marched against tuition fees and then, when first working as an academic, found myself speaking at a No Confidence Vote at Oxford as a group of academics sought to temper the worst aspects of the move from final salary to a career-average pension. That battle looks like a luxury now as any guaranteed pension is removed and future retirees’ welfare is thrown to the market. This move also exposes previous reassurances as so many meretricious promises, if not downright lies. Tuition fees were introduced, we were told, so that universities would be placed on a permanently secure footing. Yet pensions must now be sacrificed, so the official communications from USS, Universities UK, and my own vice-chancellor and chief financial officer say, due to the ‘difficult circumstances’ that universities find themselves in, which leads to the need to make ‘difficult decisions about how to invest limited resources’; the pension system is, they say (with the favourite lexis of management speak), ‘simply not affordable going forward’, though this claim, it turns out, is simply not true: the USS valuation on which the attack on pensions is based is strongly disputed and there is much evidence that the academic pension pot is in a considerably healthier state than many others: in a given year it currently reaps more revenue than it pays out and has £60 billion in reserves according to UCU. Perhaps the ‘difficult circumstances’ that justify the attack also justify the bloated VC salaries on which the media has excitedly reported, though these headlines hide a whole series of iniquities in academic pay, from the inflated salaries of the management ranks who increasingly outnumber teachers and researchers to the continuing gender pay-gaps in the academe, not to mention the pitiful situation young, hourly-paid academics find themselves in, tied to nine-month contracts so that they cannot use the summer to make progress in the research that might allow them to escape this trap and secure a longer-term or even a tenured post.

This isn’t just about salaries, though. University towns and cities are filled with glossy billboards behind which lavish new buildings are being constructed, all with the promise of enhancing the ‘student experience’. Meanwhile, at my university there is now no staff canteen, the space given over to high-backed Mad-Men-style armchairs that populate what has become a ‘study hub’. How can universities claim not to be able to afford pensions and yet endlessly devise expensive expansion plans, spending freely and enthusiastically on sports centres or business centres while asserting that there are no funds to pay for the badly needed extra lectureships that could go some way to addressing the dramatic rise in students since the cap on numbers was lifted? The obsessively-sought ‘student satisfaction’ is not being met through paying academic staff properly, now or in retirement, but through the expansion of real estate whose charms, it is hoped, will distract the students from the fact that their lecturers are not only exhausted from meeting the demands of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) but anxious about their future. Is it any coincidence that not having pensions on the finance books will lower the cost of the massive borrowing needed to fund the new innovation hubs and student-experience venues?

Academic careers are already fragile

We can suspect the sincerity of the explanations for the supposed current crisis in USS. But the demolition of defined-benefit pensions also fails to recognize the particular character of the academic vocation. Those of us who choose to enter academia opt for what we might call a ‘front-loaded’ job, in the sense that the qualifications take a long time, during which we are likely to accrue debt, and many of us do not start earning until our late 20s, if we’re lucky. Compared to our peers, we’re in a kind of arrested development: we qualify later, which means we start paying NI contributions later, and even then we’re likely to occupy jobs whose security is fragile, making such important steps as getting a mortgage very difficult. The good pension package has until now represented a reward for these years of not earning, or of earning precariously, or of earning a salary that’s by national standards decent, certainly, but which isn’t enough to allow a young academic to rent in the extortionate housing market of many university cities, let alone to buy a place of her own. Removing this benefit would not only be detrimental to existing members but could well deter people from pursuing a career in academia. I have already learned of promising Phd students dropping out, or considering doing so, because of the removal of the decent, defined-benefit pension.

Academia is hardly a bastion of social mobility as it is. The risk of returning to the days when it was the prerogative or privilege of those from wealthier backgrounds, who can afford to pay tuition fees, to fund themselves through postgrad work, and not to worry overly about having a decent and secure pension, is all too real. The effect of this would be an impoverishment of the intellectual range and diversity of research produced by our universities and of the voices to whom generations of students would (and should) be exposed. Meanwhile, there have been whispers of some wealthier universities setting up their own pension consortia. This would only exacerbate the hierarchies, and iniquities, that are already an unfortunate characteristic of our university system.

In other words, pensions matter to the very future of our university system. And we must work together as an academic community, young, older, and retired, to save them.

 

from CDBU http://cdbu.org.uk/we-must-fight-the-attack-on-pensions-the-future-of-british-universities-is-at-stake/
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