The UK must not neglect its universities

Lord Browne is a candidate in the forthcoming election for the Chancellorship of Cambridge University.

The Government’s spending review sent a clear message about its priorities.  Defence and the Health Service are the immediate winners with substantial increases in real term spending.  By contrast, the Universities – often proclaimed as one of the UK’s preeminent success stories – went almost unmentioned.  There is some funding for research concentrated on the development and application of Artificial Intelligence.  That is important and welcome but leaves unaddressed the serious financial, reputational and political challenges being faced across the University sector.

The neglect of universities is both regrettable and instructive. It indicates a deep misunderstanding among policy makers of the crucial role which universities play in developing the skills and ideas necessary to achieve economic growth and to contribute to the delivery of the Government’s key missions.  Universities provide the seed bed of innovation through spin outs from scientific breakthroughs and act as a major source of regional development.  They are said to add over £70 billion each year to our economy. Across the country many universities are one of the top two or three employers in their town or city. In the Northeast more people are employed in universities than in the automobile industry.

In 2009 Gordon Brown asked me to lead a review into the funding of higher education, which came to be known as the “Browne Review”. It recommended a new system of funding, designed to deliver participation, quality and sustainability. The key word being “system”: when the new Coalition Government treated the recommendations as a menu from which to choose the most politically acceptable options, the system inevitably started to creak under the strain of the resultant contradictions.

The UK urgently needs to reach a “new settlement” with its universities, one which addresses not just the financial challenges facing the sector, but its position and role in society. This has been at the top of my mind as I stand in the forthcoming election for the Chancellorship of my alma mater, Cambridge University – and the need is as urgent for Cambridge as it is for the entire sector. To my mind, a new settlement should be based around four pillars.

The first is excellence. Quite simply, you cannot deliver excellence on the cheap. Tuition fees have not kept pace with inflation, cutting universities’ income from fees by a third since 2012.  The limited rise announced earlier this year will be eaten up by the increases in employers’ national insurance contributions.  The number of international students has fallen from its peak in the early 2020’s, partly because of Brexit but also because of ever tightening restrictions on inward migration.  Maintenance grants remain minimal and more than half of all university students are being forced to take part time paid jobs while studying. Academic pay often pales in comparison to that which is available in other countries, and provides little incentive for those who can choose better paying jobs.

It should therefore come as no surprise that three quarters of UK universities face a deficit in their finances. Many are laying off academic staff, increasing the workload of those who remain.  Departments are closing, in some cases cutting off the flow of skilled workers needed to fill key jobs. And unsurprisingly, fewer people are applying to university. This is all starting to be reflected in global rankings, with most UK universities dropping down the latest QS list when it was updated earlier this month.

In the years ahead, the UK must make a simple choice: invest to maintain and advance excellence in higher education or let it slide. I know which option I would pick. Increased investment must be intelligently targeted at the areas in which it can make the most difference, and it must come from a variety of sources – including philanthropy, where the UK has always lagged other leading countries. But there is no hiding the fact that the sector is being starved of resources, and that this poses an existential threat to the UK’s reputation as a home for excellence in higher education.

The second pillar of a new settlement should be service, and the role that universities play in service of society. Survey data indicates that the public has a mixed view about the value of universities. Eighty per cent support universities, but barely half think that that the degrees they provide deliver any value. The sector is an easy target for caricatures: the privileged and lazy world of Brideshead Revisited, the greedy bosses, the ivory towers, and the ever-present debate about the relative value of “academic” and “vocational” courses.

These caricatures mould the thinking of policy makers and no doubt contribute to the neglect of the sector. But none of these perceptions match the reality of the Universities I know.  No institution is perfect and there is no doubt that mistakes have been made, but I believe that most universities are better run than many private sector companies. To reset perceptions of their role in society, universities need encouragement and incentives to be different and diverse in the way they work, creating room  across the sector for both traditional intellectual education and for training in essential practical skills; and they need to better connect their activity to the great challenges and opportunities facing society. There is no shortage of these – from climate change to AI, and from biotechnology to modern defence, universities have a central role to play.

Third, we must reaffirm the role that universities play in defending, nurturing and expressing our shared values. This starts with free speech, intellectual freedom, and fact-based analysis. Claims of a “free speech problem” in UK universities are undoubtedly overblown, but high-profile cases of genuine wrongdoing serve to undermine the reputation of the whole sector. When I led BP, the company’s success was built on its people’s ability to debate and evaluate different points of view without prejudice. We could only do this thanks to the foundational training provided by universities.

Any discussion about values should also include social mobility, a key attribute of a civilised open society. This must be encouraged by the provision of adequate maintenance support. To our collective shame, we have lost sight of this.

The fourth pillar of a new settlement should be the restoration of universities as valued contributors to the UK’s role on the world stage. If we are to be a great trading nation, the network of links and friendships established as people of ability come to study here should be understood as a valuable source of competitive advantage which can be developed further if the US closes its doors. A pragmatic immigration policy should encourage the brightest and the best to study here – not just because the fees they pay help universities stay afloat, but as a rational act of long-term economic policy and consistent with the pursuit of excellence. In Cambridge, for example, some of the finest minds associated with the university have been outsiders, refuges, and challengers of conventional wisdom – from Keynes, Darwin and Turing to Millicent Fawcett, Salman Rushdie and Rosamund Franklin.

The one substantive mention of universities in the Spending Review was a reiteration of the idea that the income from overseas students should be more heavily taxed. This would be wrong and dangerous.

These are dangerous times for universities, beset on one side of the Atlantic by political interference and a battle for continued freedom of expression, on the other by financial and reputational neglect. But universities are one of the UK’s great achievements and great strengths. They are agents of social as well as scientific progress.  They should stand for freedom of speech within the law, for dissent and challenge, and the development of ideas and solutions to the world’s urgent challenges.

A new settlement is needed, because we have never needed universities more. We must not neglect them.