Higher Education (Fee Limits for Accelerated Courses) (England) Regulations 2018

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 29 November 2018 be approved.

My Lords, during the passage of the then Higher Education and Research Bill two years ago this month, I noted that, following our call for evidence, the Government were considering how best to support accelerated degrees. During those two years, we have conducted a detailed assessment of the literature review of global accelerated degree provision, published a consultation on our proposed fee changes, evaluated the detailed and quite varied responses and published the Government’s response to the consultation late last November. I am therefore delighted to bring these regulations before you today.

The regulations should be read alongside the wider fee limits regulations, which set tuition fee limits for standard degree courses from August 2019, and which were approved by Parliament last summer. The Higher Education and Research Act 2017—known as HERA—enabled regulations to set different fee limits specifically for accelerated courses. The regulations before you today set out various fee limits in respect of accelerated degree courses starting from August 2019.

I believe we share the same fundamental aspirations for higher education in this country: it must remain autonomous; quality of provision must be safeguarded and strengthened; it must offer genuine benefits, including value for money, to students, graduates and, indeed, our wider society. These aspirations underpin the Government’s overall ambitions for diverse and flexible post-18 education, embodied in the wide range of measures set out in HERA, which were debated here in considerable depth. Those debates included the amendment enabling these very regulations, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. The Government’s ambitions are being further developed through the ongoing review of post-18 education and funding.

I want to pause a moment to set out the details of these regulations, and the impact they will have on higher education. For the first time, public universities will be able to set a higher annual fee specifically for accelerated degree courses. This will allow providers to charge up to a maximum of 1.2 times the equivalent annual fee cap for standard, non-accelerated courses which, as the House will be aware, currently comprise the vast majority of all undergraduate provision in this country. Without these regulations, accelerated degree providers can only charge for each year of accelerated tuition at the standard fee rate, regardless of the actual volume of teaching delivered in the year. For example, they can charge only 67%, or two years of fees, for delivering the same teaching modules and content that are delivered over three years with a standard degree. With these regulations, public universities will be able to secure up to 80% of the total standard degree fee income for each accelerated degree that they deliver.

It is worth noting that accelerated degree courses are already offered by a handful of public and private universities. This form of degree teaching offers clear and unique benefits to many. When surveyed by the Student Loans Company in summer 2018, accelerated degree undergraduates were emphatically positive, with 92% saying that they were glad they had chosen to study an accelerated rather than a standard degree. In their own words, students responding to the survey make it clear why they are glad. For example:

It is true that some young people need more time to develop the academic skills necessary for graduation. But individuals, as this House knows, learn at different rates. Some students thrive on the more consistent pace of accelerated degree study. Some current providers of accelerated degrees interview applicants to ensure they understand the specific characteristics of these degrees, such as the need to maintain a steady pace of work. Universities considering accelerated provision may feel this is a mutually beneficial step, especially in the early stages when cohort sizes are critical in making the best use of available budgets.

Our proposals have also faced the challenge that there is no evidence of real demand for accelerated degrees. Although current accelerated provision is still barely visible—as I mentioned earlier—our findings actually contradict this: 73% of providers that responded to the 2016 call for evidence on accelerated degrees reported seeing a demand for accelerated courses from students or employers. There is also evidence of a lack of student awareness: 55% of non-accelerated current students surveyed by the SLC in 2018 had never even heard of accelerated degrees. Clearly, we have important work here to bring accelerated degrees fully into public awareness, especially for young people on the point of considering their higher education choices, and for the young mature individuals keen to improve their employable skills but unsure how they will ever find the time or money to do so.

Employers are starting to understand the potential of accelerated degrees. For example, the consultation response from the EEF—the manufacturers’ organisation—noted:

“Employers want to see more flexibility from the higher education sector and for higher education institutions to be more responsive to their needs. Accelerated degrees are one means of achieving this flexibility and responsiveness … A quicker, more flexible, pathway for employers to recruit engineering graduates is welcomed, therefore, manufacturers support the principle of accelerated degrees”.

I am confident that the positive experiences of current providers and students, and the potential benefits and optional nature of these measures, will substantively mitigate these concerns.

Perhaps the most important next step is for government to work closely to share the basic facts, the real challenges, but above all the unique benefits, of accelerated degrees. We will continue to develop wider communication strategies to raise awareness with students, providers, employers, schools, parents and the wider public. In particular, we want to ensure that accelerated courses are understood and included in the information given by careers advisers to their young students.

We are working with the SLC, the Office for Students and other bodies to ensure that accelerated degrees offered under these regulations are identified and recorded in HE data. We can then track their impact on enrolment, graduation and longer outcomes for accelerated degrees, compared with their standard equivalents—including for all protected characteristics. Statistics such as the invaluable LEO data take time to emerge, even for accelerated degrees. If these regulations are approved, we will conduct a three-year review to assess the immediate impact of higher annual fee caps on accelerated provision and uptake.

In spite of their benefits, accelerated degree courses are not for every student or every provider. They will not remedy every concern that exists in relation to higher education. Our job is to offer providers a real and lasting incentive to deliver more accelerated courses and to make every potential student aware of the pros and cons of all the possible higher education choices available to them, including accelerated degrees. We also need to be mindful that some individuals simply cannot or will not enrol on any degree course other than an accelerated one.

These regulations will create a genuine incentive for public degree providers who want to innovate and diversify further. We have a responsibility to do all we can to help many more future students have the widest possible range of learning opportunities after school. We want them to experience the many benefits of tertiary education, to help them realise their optimum potential. We need to support the resilience of our domestic industries by helping higher education to innovate in its provision, and deliver a highly skilled, homegrown workforce, whose skills can flex and grow at a pace that will keep up with the speed of technological development. I see accelerated degrees becoming an essential part of making higher education more flexible and more accessible. I commend these regulations to the House. I beg to move.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining these regulations and setting out the Government’s thinking on accelerated degrees. They were, as he said, the subject of much discussion during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act. As he also said, currently the provision is tiny, and we wonder how much demand there will be for these degrees. How many universities do the Government anticipate will offer accelerated degrees? At the moment they are largely in the humanities; does he envisage their extension to science and engineering?

We know that the University of Buckingham has been at the forefront of two-year degrees, with considerable success and customer satisfaction. The Minister said that these have been evaluated and that the quality and academic rigour of the courses has already been looked at, but are they as robust as traditional three-year courses? I wonder how the international community will view them, given that many overseas universities have four-year courses and already express reservations about our three-year programmes, particularly in disciplines such as engineering. Will our students be at a disadvantage in that respect?

Given the concerns we have long expressed about the dire decline in adult and part-time education, will accelerated degrees do anything to stem that tide? What research has been done regarding mature students and those from deprived backgrounds and lower socioeconomic groups? The fee rates in the regulations would not seem encouraging to those of limited means. Also, students who have taken accelerated degrees are not always recognised by the student loans system as studying during the summer, which leaves them short on their maintenance loan funding. Again, that would not seem to be an incentive to those of limited means.

We recognise the need for more flexibility in the system, given the growth in online learning, although sadly, that has not been to the advantage of the Open University, which has seen a worrying drop in student numbers. Will these degrees present further competition, or do the Government anticipate a completely different student body from the OU’s?

My Lords, I would like to focus on the two-year degree, of which I have considerable experience. I declare an interest as the chancellor of the University of Gibraltar, but more relevant to this discussion is my five years as vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham in the 1990s. As everybody now knows, as an independent university it has pioneered the two-year degree over the last 43 years. Started, with inspiration, by the late Lord Beloff, it is run today under the determined and courageous leadership of vice-chancellor Sir Anthony Seldon, and by a very committed team.

When I look back on my own education, I feel particularly privileged that I had three years at Cambridge and one extra year at Oxford. When I became vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham in 1992, I had an open mind about the value of the two-year degree. But, by the time I had finished, after five years, I was deeply impressed by the motivation of the students. Many of them, naturally, were mature students or overseas students, and both those groups benefit in particular from short courses of this type. I realised that it was possible after two years to reach the same standard of degree as after three years. One only has to look at the list of alumni of the University of Buckingham to see what they have achieved in life.

When I left, I was convinced that the two-year degree would expand rapidly elsewhere, but today, only 0.2% of all students are doing two-year degrees, and only a few universities have taken it up. When I think more fully about why this is the case, I realise that it is not surprising. Until the introduction of these regulations, there was no incentive for traditional universities to set up two-year degrees, which involve major adjustments in teaching commitments, research, the use of facilities and many other areas. Therefore, I fully support the objective of these regulations to establish fee structures that are an incentive for diversification and a wider range of choice.

I do, however, have reservations about whether the current fee structure will be sufficient to provide the parity of esteem that is needed between two-year degrees and other degrees. The facts are these. In a two-year degree, students pay one year less for accommodation and living costs and they start work or further study one year earlier. At Buckingham, they do this by having four terms a year, one of which, I should stress, is set aside for research for teachers. In the two years, they spend 80 weeks studying and 24 weeks on holiday—the traditional university degree involves 18 months’ holiday and the equivalent amount working—and they achieve the same standards.

My Lords, I very much support the notion of accelerated degrees. Most of the criticisms that the noble Lord speaking on behalf of the Government went through do not stand much scrutiny. I accept his argument that the criticisms do not merit abandoning the idea of accelerated degrees. I also accept that the cost of providing them will be somewhat higher for universities than would be the case if they were simply teaching all their degrees on a normal three-year pattern—although I suspect that there may be some exaggeration of how much greater the costs will be. Imaginative universities will find ways in which to provide some of their courses in combination with students on three-year degrees, so they will not be taught entirely separately from those students.

However, my concern is different. While I accept that one has to incentivise universities—I heard the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that the additional funding may not be enough to do so, and there are of course very few such courses—my concern relates to the demand for them. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, that the demand is already small. It will be even smaller if we put the fees up. Surely the Government are aware that mature students are more debt averse than any other category of student. Most students who are likely to join these programmes will be mature students.

My view, as a former vice-chancellor and head of an institution that took many mature students, as well as being vice-chancellor of a conventional university, is that these degrees are unlikely to be suitable for most 18 to 22 year-olds, who will want to spend a little longer as undergraduates. They will benefit from doing so and from all the other things that one can do. Of course there will be mature students who want to go through faster and are able to do so. However, why put the fees up again when one knows that many people have decided not to become undergraduate students—or master’s students, for that matter—because the fees are so high and they do not want to take on the additional debt?