CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Top-up tops the agenda
Tony Blair ... double trouble
EARLY in the week after you read this "Cambridge Letter", the British Prime Minister will be facing two difficult parliamentary situations. The first is a vote on the vexed question of university "top-up" fees. The second is the report of Lord Hutton's inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death in the summer of the Ministry of Defence scientist Dr. David Kelly.
As I wrote in December, in both cases Tony Blair's authority is being challenged. On the top-up fees question the criticism of government policy — from its own back benchers — has been based on several issues. The main ones are the likelihood that the fees (which students will have to pay) will deter those from financially poor backgrounds — thereby damaging the Government's own policy of widening access to higher education — and the fact that they contradict what was in the Labour Party's election manifesto. In essence, therefore, the objections to the policy are on grounds of political priority and of probity.
The political battle has been long and acrimonious and it has had the effect of obscuring, or at least of moving onto the sidelines, the basic reason why the policy was formulated, namely, the need to increase the funding of the country's universities.
That need is not just real; it is reaching the point of crisis. It is a reflection of the huge expansion in the number of universities, and of student places, in recent years. The expansion is a reflection of Government policy. It has not, however, been matched by a parallel increase in money.
This has created problems for all universities, but it has a particular significance for that small number of institutions which enjoy high international standing. That, of course, has difficult political overtones, because we are talking of an elite, and there is a — totally understandable and desirable — wish to avoid anything like a kind of "Brideshead revisited" approach to entry to university education.
It is clearly right that anyone with appropriate ability, regardless of social, ethnic and financial background, should be able to attend Cambridge and Oxford, and other universities of high standing. They have made major efforts in recent years to attract people from the widest range of backgrounds. They are undoubtedly elite institutions, but they aim to be academically and intellectually, not socially, elite.
Professor Alison Richard, who has recently assumed office as the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, is strongly committed to this university's wider access policy. She is also conscious of the context in which it is pursued and as a recent Provost of Yale, has a deep knowledge of the situation in the U.S. In a recent article in The Guardian she provided a timely reminder of what universities are for — as "economic drivers" certainly, but also as bodies creating the wealth represented by scholarship and research in the social sciences and humanities. By playing these roles, she added, universities contribute mightily to society. Cambridge, she reminded her readers, is one of the British universities that have a significant international impact. "These universities attract students and scholars from many nations, and have research collaborations that reach around the world. They are a global asset of which this country can be proud."
She then referred to the serious under funding which puts Cambridge's position in the first rank of world universities in peril.
This is not scaremongering. It is clear to anyone who has been involved with universities that their financial position has worsened greatly in the past quarter century.
Top-up fees would undoubtedly go part — but only part — of the way to remedying the situation, though for their opponents the cost, and the disadvantages, would be too high.
In an earlier era the solution would have been different; the money would have been raised through income tax — which is, after all, the archetypal means-tested tax. Realistically, however, it has to be accepted that neither of the two main political parties — Labour and Conservative — is willing to contemplate an increase in income tax. Indeed, the whole concept of paying for public services through direct taxation is out of fashion (though the demand for good public services remains). Only the Liberal Democrats see it as a desirable route, and they are a minority party.
The period leading up to this week's vote in Parliament has been difficult for Tony Blair. Whatever the outcome, there will be an urgent need for the funding difficulties of the universities to be addressed. To allow them to be the victims of a political battle would be a major failure on the part of the politicians, with serious national consequences.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, U.K. E-mail him at: wpk1000@hotmail.com
BILL KIRKMAN
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