Unrevised transcript of evidence taken before
The Select Committee on Science and Technology
Sub-Committee I
Inquiry on
HIGHER EDUCATION IN STEM SUBJECTS
Evidence Session No.15.
Heard in Public.
Questions 434 - 468
TUESDAY 24 APRIL 2012
3.25 pm
Witnesses: Professor David Bogle, Professor Clifford Friend and Professor Andrew George
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Members present
Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Chairman)
Lord Cunningham of Felling
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon
Lord Krebs
Lord Lucas
Lord Patel
Baroness Perry of Southwark
Lord Rees of Ludlow
Lord Winston
________________
Examination of Witnesses
Professor David Bogle, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Head of UCL Graduate
School; Professor Clifford Friend, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Cranfield University; and
Professor Andrew George, Professor of Molecular Immunology and Director of the
Graduate School and the School of Professional Development, Imperial College London.
Q434 The Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome to our three witnesses. I remind the
Committee—no members of the public seem to be present—that we are being webcast.
Therefore, this session is being broadcast around the world, where audiences of millions
eagerly await the words of our witnesses. This is the final oral evidence session of this
inquiry, which is looking at the whole issue of higher education in STEM subjects, so we are
looking specifically at STEM. We particularly wanted a session which looked at postgraduate
education, as throughout this inquiry this area has been raised constantly by oral witnesses
and in written evidence. For the record, will each witness say who you are and where you
are from? If you want to make the briefest of introductory statements, please do so;
otherwise, we will get on with the questions. I will start with Professor Bogle.
Professor Bogle: I am David Bogle. I am head of the graduate school at UCL and have
responsibility for all the postgraduates at UCL. Mostly, the graduate school services support
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the doctoral students. However, there are 4,000 doctoral students and about 7,500 masters
students.
The Chairman: Do you have a doctoral training centre?
Professor Bogle: We have several, yes. However, I particularly welcome this focus on
postgraduate matters, which I do not think have been properly looked at in the past,
particularly as regards the masters areas. Our concerns are about students being able to
support themselves through masters, the lack of any support for them, how that might affect
disadvantaged students from poorer backgrounds with their increased loans and the fact that
so many professions now require a masters degree for entry, which means that there is a
real problem about access to the professions.
The Chairman: I am going to come on to masters in a second, so I am glad that you have
raised that.
Professor Friend: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Clifford Friend. I am the deputy
VC at Cranfield University, which is the UK’s only wholly postgraduate STEM university so
this afternoon’s discussion is absolutely mission critical. We operate right at the interface
with the world of business so this is about not only the core postgraduate T and
postgraduate R skills—on which I shall be interested to share views with you—but its impact
for the economy in particular.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Professor George: My name is Andrew George. I am professor of immunology at Imperial
College. I am also director of the graduate school there. We have about 6,300 students in
our graduate school, of whom 3,000 are masters and roughly 3,300 are doctoral students. I
am also director of the school of professional development, which will soon be charged with
developing professional skills and transferable skills for all students in the college, including
undergraduates. My interest is the funding gap that students need to navigate when they
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finish their undergraduate studies and proceed to study for a masters level qualification that
equips them to do a PhD.
Q435 The Chairman: Thank you for that. I especially thank you for coming at such short
notice, which we appreciate. My question to Professor Bogle concerns masters students.
We have heard a lot about the impact of all sorts of government policies on masters
students. However, we have not been given a clear explanation of the purpose of standalone masters courses. Perhaps you could give us your view.
Professor Bogle: There is no single view, not surprisingly. There is a very wide diversity at
UCL. I think that we have 300 masters programmes. I normally divide them into two groups:
one group comprises professional preparation masters courses, which prepare people for
study beyond the bachelor level and deepen their skills and are particularly aligned to
professions such as engineering, architecture, the built environment and medical areas; the
second group comprises a large number of research preparation masters, which are more
geared, although not always, towards a deeper understanding of the discipline involved in
acquiring a set of research skills. Indeed, I would add a third group: there is a thing called an
MRes programme, which is very much a research masters comprising a series of small-scale
research projects that act as direct pipelines into many of our doctoral training centres, for
example.
Q436 The Chairman: What should be the role of Government in masters and doctoral
programmes?
Professor Bogle: There is a difference between those two. The MRes programme is very
much a pipeline into doctoral study. It is very important for us to maintain that pipeline.
Therefore, there is a clear role for Government in supporting that. As regards the
professional programmes, you could argue that there is a need for upskilling and providing
skills that are needed for the economy. The aim of these programmes is to advance
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individuals’ skills beyond the bachelor level to enable them to enter the employment market.
Many disciplines now have integrated undergraduate masters courses. These professional
programmes are more like those courses.
The Chairman: Would you therefore make that clear distinction between those two?
Professor Bogle: Yes.
Q437 Lord Cunningham of Felling: When you designed these processes that you are
applying to your masters students and your PhD students, was there significant input into
that from outside UCL, from industry, commerce and the professions?
Professor Bogle: In most of the professional masters courses, yes, particularly when they
were set up. When we set up a new programme, we always sought outside advice and
evidence of a market and demand from employers. That was the case in pretty well all the
professional programmes. That was also the case with the research programmes and to
some extent with the MRes programmes and the more traditional research masters in some
of the arts and humanities disciplines, but we are not discussing those here.
The Chairman: Professor Friend, do you have anything to add?
Professor Friend: I hope I will be allowed to add two points, one to the first question and
one to the second. As regards the nuance, the answer from David Bogle about the nature—
The Chairman: You can even disagree if you want to.
Professor Friend: This is too much like the academic meeting from which I have come.
First, we make a clear distinction between the extended undergraduate masters course—a
question was asked about the stand-alone programme—which has historically been driven
by learned professional bodies that wanted to ensure that, when people exit from those
programmes, they have core the competences and discipline base. However, rather like the
Monty Python sketch, I would say that there are not two but four types of masters, which
are about: deepening discipline; translating to discipline, where there is a vocational element;
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those that have—we have a very specific focus here because of how my institution chooses
to operate—a multidisciplinary thematic or sector focus, where things start to get very
clearly focused on economic development and the economy; and then a related set of
programmes that are much more closed and that are for the world of business.
To pick up the question about who should fund, the funding should come from learners for
those courses that are about developing or deepening discipline. If a programme seeks to
enhance skills in the economy, there should be the traditional partial subsidy from the state.
As regards translating to discipline, we believe passionately that that is a strong driver that is
doing something for the economy. There should be a mixed economy involving
Government, the learner and business for this third dimension of general thematic sectorfocused activity, which is not focused on the needs of a particular company or the supply
chain of a company. For the fourth category, the business should pay.
The Chairman: With the greatest of respect, I do not see any of that in the current
funding models. Do you?
Professor Friend: I certainly see that in our programmes—
The Chairman: I mean in the government programmes.
Professor Friend: By “government”, do you mean the Higher Education Funding Council for
England?
The Chairman: In the funding for masters and doctoral programmes, do you think that
current government policy underpins the vision that you have outlined?
Professor Friend: I have not commented on the quantum—the size—of that government
subsidy, but we do receive an element of funding from HEFCE for those sorts of
programmes.
To pick up the question about business, in our programme we were rather thrown by an
invitation from HEFCE, when it asked us one day, “Would you like to tell us what
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proportion of your programmes have industrial input into shaping the programme and in
educating?” We thought that was a trick question of some kind by which we were being led
down the path into failing, because every programme or suite of related programmes has
very strong engagement because of our particular position in the higher education market.
The Chairman: Professor George?
Professor George: I would nuance in a slightly different way, but I would be in broad
agreement with that. For the vocational type of masters, I would also differentiate between
two sorts: those taken by recent graduates, which are often discipline hopping or deepening,
and those taken by people who are already in work—for example, a lot of our medical
colleagues often come back as mature students and are in work—which is a slightly different
category.
In our case, I guess that I would say that our differentiation between some of our vocational
qualifications and the integrated masters programme is perhaps not as clear-cut as at other
universities. For example, in engineering, where all our undergraduates in effect do a fouryear integrated masters and walk out with an MEng, there is obviously considerable overlap
there with our masters programme, which is often taken more by overseas students or
external students who are coming to Imperial to get the extra spin or educational whatever
that Imperial gives them. There is perhaps a grey area there between our integrated masters
and our stand-alone masters. Obviously, for funding streams, that is going to cause us issues
going forward, because the integrated masters is funded as an undergraduate programme
rather than a postgraduate programme and there are immense dangers of inequity and so on
there.
On the question of input from industry, similar to my colleagues, I think that all our masters
courses when they are first set up have to go to two academic reviewers and two
stakeholder reviewers, who are normally drawn from industry or from the NHS if that is
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appropriate. All our courses will go through that. All our CDTs that have 1+3s have an
industrial panel that oversees them. Many of our departments that are industry facing would
have an industrial advisory panel. To us, that is absolutely core, but you would expect that
from our mission.
Q438 Lord Krebs: I want to make a couple of short points. The first follows up Professor
George’s comment about masters degrees for overseas students. There is a perception—
which may be incorrect, so I would be interested in your view—that some universities have
set up masters degrees basically as cash generators, whereby they can charge overseas
students full fees to come and do a masters degree. Is that a significant component of
masters provision in universities, or is the perception that some people have a
misconception about what is going on?
Professor George: Speaking for Imperial, I would say that there is no doubt that, when we
set up a new masters course and do our market research, we obviously take into account
the overseas market as part of that. I think that we would not be looking to set up a masters
course at Imperial that was aimed only at overseas students. There are courses that have a
lot of international students on them, but often those courses will be allied with an MEng or
a four-year integrated masters course. So, although those look like they are predominantly
for overseas or international students, in actual fact that slightly belies that point. In our case,
obviously we are cognisant of the overseas market and we do market research in the
overseas market, but I do not think that we would set up a course that was aimed only at
overseas students. However, it is an important part of our financial planning. At the moment,
we do not get the full costs of the masters from the home students, so if you are going to
plan a course, you have to plan it to have a proportion of overseas students for financial
reasons—although there are also other good reasons for having a good proportion of
overseas students.
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Q439 Lord Patel: The question that I want to ask is of a similar nature, so let me follow
up on the same theme. We have heard that, on certain masters courses, the number of
overseas students is quite high—sometimes as high as 70%. Is that not detrimental?
Professor George: Speaking from Imperial’s point of view, I know that we have some
courses where the overseas component would appear at first glance to be of that order of
magnitude, but, as I said, those courses are often paired with an integrated masters on which
more of our home students would be taught at the same level. It is really important to
remember that overseas students also bring to the college a vibrancy and international
expertise for our home students, so I think that we need to be careful to welcome our
overseas students for what they bring—they are very good students. If a masters course had
70% of students from overseas and was overdependent on one country, there would
obviously be a fear about resilience and about the ability to cope with changing funding
patterns overseas. That is a concern that we need to look out for to ensure that no
individual masters course is over-reliant on one country or one funder. But the fact that we
have a lot of overseas students brings a lot both to our home students and to our overseas
students, and I would support that.
Professor Bogle: I would support that in the sense that we have a very strong educational
system and a very advanced research base in this country, and it is rather to our credit that
we are very attractive to overseas students. I do not recognise the figure of 70%, but I think
that there probably are some courses with that size and, as Andrew George has said, that is
a problem if you become very reliant on single markets. However, masters-level courses are
a very globalised, international activity. What we do need to do is to ensure that such
students are properly inducted and properly integrated with the British system, and perhaps
we could be better at that.
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Q440 The Chairman: With the agreement of Committee colleagues, I am going to jump
into questions on funding. We seem to have started on funding and I would rather follow
that theme. Lord Winston has a question on this.
Q441 Lord Winston: The Lord Chairman tries to throw me as much and as often as he
possibly can.
Obviously, the issue has been the constant erosion of public funding for postgraduate
courses such as masters courses. What impact do you think this lack of funding will have on
postgraduate STEM masters courses? Where do we go?
Professor Friend: I will have a first go at that one.
We are deeply concerned about the erosion of the funding council subsidy supporting STEM
subjects, counterbalanced with—if that situation persists and the requirement to cover the
cost of the programme shifts to the learner—the non-availability of finance for the learner,
who is supposed to step in. There just seems to be a vacuum around the funding. We are
grateful to the funding council for at least identifying the issue and putting in place some
short-term provision to see us through the interregnum, but we are deeply concerned about
what that will mean in two to three years’ time. We do not know what the impact will be of
students carrying that debt. I am deeply concerned that we will lose capacity in the sector
while we are waiting to collect the data.
Q442 Lord Winston: I was wondering also, given that the three of you represent fairly
technical universities, what you thought the cost of a masters course in your subject might
be. What would happen if you reduced the fees, which has been suggested?
Professor Friend: I shall have a go at that, although it might surprise these gentlemen.
When we speak with the funding council—I should put on the table the fact that Cranfield
University is in receipt of exceptional funding in addition to its core funding—we kind of sit
in a rather interesting situation. Lord Winston will understand this from his Royal College of
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Music background, but we are almost conservatoire-like in our educational offering, which
carries a cost with it. We would estimate that there is no differential between what we
charge an international student on a mainstream STEM programme—about £16,000 per
annum at the moment—and the real cost of the UK/EU student. How then do we charge
the sticker price that we charge to the learner? We do that by a combination of: the HEFCE
subsidy, or government subsidy, to our STEM programmes; what the learner will pay, which
is unregulated by the funding council but is regulated by the student market; and, on many of
our programmes, we will fill the gap using industrial funding.
Q443 Lord Winston: In the long term, who do you feel will fund UK students doing
stand-alone masters courses? Sorry, the acoustics in this Room are dreadful, so let me
repeat the question. Who is going to be responsible for funding UK students doing standalone masters courses?
Professor Bogle: I think that we are going to see this coming much more towards the
student, and that is what concerns us. If students do not have access to decent financial
support, particularly if they come from poorer backgrounds, they just will not have access to
these courses. This is a particular problem for home students. Indeed, I hear that this year
we have had a significant drop in home student applications, even if the number of
applications from overseas is still going up. It concerns me also that we have many
continental competitors. There is a lot of talk about undergraduates going overseas—I do
not see that happening so much—but at the masters level, where the student might need to
go away for only a year, when people are in their early 20s that is a much more attractive
proposition. We could then be losing them forever, and that is a real matter of concern.
Q444 Lord Cunningham of Felling: Is it your view that Britain and the British economy
are suffering because we do not produce sufficient students with qualifications in STEM
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subjects? My supplementary to that is: are the present funding arrangements going to
improve that situation or make it worse?
The Chairman: This is about masters and postgraduate level courses.
Professor Friend: I sit on the CBI’s east of England regional council and whenever we get
into any discussion that gets close to the issue of high-level skills and universities, the
challenge that is bowled back to us is that there is a major problem with the STEM skills of
people coming out of both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. In fact, probably
the currency is increasingly moving towards M level through the integrated undergraduate
masters programme—or extended undergraduate programme, or whatever language you
want to use—or the stand-alone masters. I was at an event last night where a major vicepresident from BT was saying the same thing. So this is everywhere.
Professor George: Absolutely, I totally agree with that. We also need to say that it is not
just a question of affording but of attracting the very best students to do M-level subjects
and postgraduate studies. If, on coming out of even a three-year undergraduate course with
£60,000-worth of debt of various sorts, your options are either to spend £15,000 on course
costs plus £11,000 in living costs in order to do an M-level subject and then go on to do a
PhD with an uncertain future or to go into the banking industry, there is a major worry that
we will start losing students in that way. Also, while we talk about widening access and
things like that, the students that we will keep are probably the students who can either rely
on the bank of mum and dad or those who already have a history in their family of going to
do these courses, but we are going to miss out on bright students and good students.
Q445 Lord Winston: Do you lose out on good students for MSc courses?
Professor George: At the moment the issue already comes up—even though we are not
charging these very high fees, which we will likely have to charge now—because of living
costs. How are the students going to get the money to live? At the moment, the issue comes
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up with the fact that it costs, let us say, £11,000 to live in London, which is already quite
painful for them. We lose students because they try to raise funding for that but they cannot
make it.
The Chairman: I am trying to get in as many Members as I can. We will take a question
from Baroness Perry and then Lord Lucas and then go back to Lord Winston.
Q446 Baroness Perry of Southwark: I want to concentrate on the question of what
Professor
George
called
the
gap
between the funding arrangements—or loan
arrangements—that are in place for the undergraduates and, with any luck, the research
council funding for the PhD. On the gap in the middle, is there a possibility of restructuring
postgraduate education so that people could somehow move straight on to something called
a PhD programme. Clearly, the MPhil to DPhil route used to exist and some American
universities have that, where the first year is a research training year but is still part of the
PhD programme. I would have thought that the research councils would have been fairly
sympathetic to that.
Professor George: Through the doctoral training centres, the research councils already fund
1+3 courses, which provide, if you like, that sort of route and are very attractive to
students. We are able to recruit the very best home students on those. In a way, the trouble
with that as a total model—you could argue that, as a total model, you should accept all such
students on to a masters-level programme that then runs through to a PhD programme,
which would remove that gap—is that you would need to be able to spot those students
right at the very beginning, whereas there will be, and there has to be, a tail-off of students.
Therefore, one would need to be slightly more imaginative about the way in which you did
that. However, for those going straight through to research, as Professor Bogle said, you
could imagine having a system whereby a level of funding was provided for certain MRes
courses that would then take you through to PhD funding for appropriate numbers.
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Baroness Perry of Southwark: I should have thought that spotting the potential
doctorate student would be less difficult in the STEM subjects than perhaps in some of the
humanities.
Professor George: I think that it is less difficult, but all of us have had students coming to us
with glowing CVs from very good universities who have not fulfilled that potential when
pursuing their first level of extended research. However, I agree that the relevant
proportion would be less than half.
Professor Bogle: Again, with humanities students in our institution the situation is very
different. I am thinking about people coming in. However, we have already got to the four
plus four point quite often—that is, a four-year undergraduate programme followed by fouryear doctoral programmes through these doctoral training centres, with, typically, an MRes
1+3 in that doctoral programme. Sometimes we take them straight on to a doctoral
programme after four years. Therefore, this process is already happening. It is a helpful
process and aligns us better with European norms. Interestingly, there is a perverse problem
with HEFCE in that it will fund only three years of fees for research degrees, so if you have
the 1+3 scenario you actually get only three years, which is completely contrary to what the
research councils are encouraged to do, so that is a problem.
Q447 Lord Lucas: For the pupils coming through who do not have the resources to
provide £25,000-worth of finance, what is going to be the crucial answer? Is it a matter of
extending student finance or of looking in other directions that require more of a decision
by you as to whether the students really ought to be doing a masters because there is
industrial sponsorship or they are in a 1+3 scenario rather than just letting them run up their
debt when the masters will not contribute to their future?
Professor Bogle: I think that those days have passed. The expectation of many employers,
certainly at the professional level, is for employees to have a masters degree. We have had
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various discussions about the erosion of standards at different levels which I shall not
rehearse here, but I think the consequence of that is that a masters degree is required for
employment at the professional level. It is mandatory for chartered engineering and
necessary for architecture, although medicine is slightly different. All the blue chips are
looking to employ M-level people. The masters degree has become the differentiator.
Therefore, I am afraid that means that this matter is down to the individual to address.
Q448 Lord Lucas: In a lot of areas this has caused totally unnecessary inflation. We are
now demanding undergraduate degrees for jobs for which they are really not needed. Part of
the response of industry to the imposition of fees has been to look at this again and to go
for apprenticeships and other ways of getting people in that do not put this high step in their
way. Is that not perhaps the answer to the masters problem?
Professor Bogle: I do not believe so because at the masters level we are talking about
advanced and professional disciplines and sophisticated people. You could argue that many
other jobs should not be graduate-level jobs. However, the horse has bolted and the stable
door is shut in that regard. Employers all expect graduate-level qualifications nowadays on
the part of their employees. That process was all about raising skill levels across the whole
economy. I think that was the rationale behind it in the first place.
Professor Friend: I wish to refer to a nuance around the edges of this matter. We feel
strongly that the undergraduate level is predominantly about discipline formation that will
become embedded for life. As we move towards wanting a knowledge-based economy—that
is a rather hackneyed phrase—where we need more of the skills we are discussing, which
will translate over time as we build different sectors, the delivery of that skills development
needs to become embedded. That is what we hear. You might challenge business to pay for
that. Our experience is that business does pay when there is a very clear gain for a business
and its supply chain. Business will contribute as one of the triumvirate of funders where that
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is appropriate and where the relevant skills are being translated and developed for the
broader economy. There is an expectation that business, the state in some form and the
learner should contribute to funding, thereby providing an appropriate balance underpinning
the skills needed to develop the broader future of the economy.
Q449 The Chairman: Before I come back to Lord Winston, I should say that people are
telling us what the problem is as regards a funding model for the future. I think there is a
general acceptance that no Government of any political persuasion in the near future will
come up with big pots of money to support students, so how are we going to deal with this
issue, particularly as regards what I call taught masters, which is the point that I started with?
We have established that there is a glimmer of hope of getting some funding for research
masters through the research councils. However, are we saying that students will have to
fund taught masters, in which case can you come up with a golden idea as to how we can
deal with this? We will put it to the Government.
Professor George: If we accept that the research masters point is a slightly separate one, as
we have discussed, and we are talking about the professional masters point, some form of
loans system equivalent to the undergraduate loans system seems to me an equitable way
forward. It seems to be a way of sharing the cost. If industry and sponsors contributed to
that loan, some sort of payback could be possible. If that is not the case, we will set up some
inequitable drivers within the integrated masters system whereby students undertaking a
four-year programme that includes an M-level qualification have access to a loans system but
those who do stand-alone masters do not. I think such a process will dissuade some people
and cut down the volume of applicants, but that is an inevitable consequence of shifting the
funding away from the Government, which seems to me to be the realistic starting point
according to what you are telling me.
The Chairman: Unless you disagree with where I think the starting point is.
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Professor George: I wish I could, but I think that I do not.
The Chairman: If you agree, do you have any other ideas?
Professor Bogle: What is missing is the idea of differentiating between different types of
masters courses to see whether the balance that Professor Friend was talking about could
be modulated in some way through the funding mechanisms and the loans system.
The Chairman: Professor Bogle, it is difficult enough with just two models. If you have
these variations and what have you, given that you guys are brilliant at manipulating the
system—I was going to say fiddling the system—we will have a difficult situation. Do you
want to come in very briefly, Lord Cunningham?
Q450 Lord Cunningham of Felling: I want to ask Professor Friend a question in
respect of what he said a few moments ago about good people in business and industry
contributing to funding models. Does this apply just at your institution, or is it spreading out
across higher institutions generally? Is it getting easier? Is there a good learning curve among
industrialists and people in the private sector, or is it hitting the buffers?
Professor Friend: I sought permission from the group director of finance and resources to
reveal a figure to the Committee, which I revealed to the gentlemen sitting at either side of
me just before we came in. This concerns predominantly the UK as we are deeply
concerned about the UK STEM pipeline going through the masters. As an institution we are
already putting £5 million-worth of bursaries into these career men and women. We find
that resource from the business sector.
Q451 Lord Cunningham of Felling: Is it getting easier to find it?
Professor Friend: I am surprised that we have managed to maintain the level of income.
However, as we start to look forward, given that we are all in budget formation period, the
income is softening dramatically as we sit at the bottom of this U-shaped recession. We
17
thought that it would soften earlier. It has not done so, but the signs are that it is beginning
to soften. This is not philanthropic giving—
Lord Cunningham of Felling: No, of course not. Why should it be?
Professor Friend: In our system, if you have a research intensive masters programme that is
thematic and sectoral, it is possible to sell the project resource provided the students
understand that that is the basis of the programme. Our experience is that that is our
attraction for these men and women. Of course, the programme of work must be attractive
to the sector from which you are trying to draw down the funding. It is a distinctive model,
although I would not wish to mislead the Committee that it is a panacea for the funding gap
across the sector.
The Chairman: I am going to leave that there and come back to Lord Winston, who has
been very patient.
Q452 Lord Winston: Briefly, as regards HEFCE’s funding of strategically important and
vulnerable subjects, do you think that the funding for postgraduates is sufficient?
Professor George: For home and EU students it does not cover the costs that we incur in
teaching them.
Professor Bogle: All that the funding is doing at the moment is helping us to keep the fees
down to a little bit less than what they might otherwise be, but it is a long way from
covering the cost of delivery. We need to discuss who should be paying and what the
balance should be. At the moment, the balance is becoming heavily skewed towards the
individual.
Professor Friend: Given our tuition fee analysis, I estimate that the change that has been
introduced for the year that we are moving into, with the alteration in the STEM price
bands, automatically creates for the learner probably a £2,000 or £3,000 instant increase just
to stand still.
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Q453 Lord Winston: The other issue is the definition of what a SIVS should be. Do you
think that we have the right things in the box? In its submission to HEFCE, the British
Academy—I have this on the web—says, “This is not straightforward”, which I think is
rather a nice understatement. Do you think that certain subjects should be included which
are not?
Professor Bogle: Undoubtedly, and they could potentially change as we see different needs
and different demands from students. However, the last thing that we want is uncertainty, so
this is quite difficult. A lot of this concerns the hard-science subjects anyway and they are the
ones we really want to see developed, so I think in that sense the balance is broadly right.
The Chairman: I am going to leave that there. A lot of the responses so far are opinions
rather than hard facts, though we were interested in the £5 million that you spend on
bursaries. Baroness Hilton is going to try to get some hard facts.
Q454 Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: Possibly. Part of what we are looking at is the
mismatch between the qualifications from universities and what employers are looking for.
To some extent, at undergraduate level data is collected about the destination of students
and about whether their employers are satisfied with what they are getting. To what extent
do your institutions collect data on postgraduates? We have a dearth on information as to
whether institutions know where their students are going and whether their employers are
happy about what they are getting.
Professor George: We collect data, but it is not very good data because the HESA rules for
collecting data on postgraduate students make no sense at all. Therefore, the data that we
have had to collect up until now has not been good-quality data. The rules are now changing,
so going forward I think that it is vital that we now collect good-quality data. I guess that I
would make a plea that quality data be differentiated not just between masters and PGR
courses but also between the different types of course that we do—we are broadly talking
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about vocational and research orientated. I think that we need to be careful to do that.
Especially for PGR data, we also need to look at data that covers more than six months after
leaving, which is a particularly useless piece of data. For PGR more than for undergraduate
courses, I think that we need to be looking more at longitudinal and longer-term data. But
the data is very poor at the moment.
The Chairman: Do you agree?
Professor Friend: I absolutely agree. The only additional thing that I would add, which I am
sure my colleagues would do as well, is that we are very interested in this from the point of
view of managing our alumni. We work very hard to get this data to know where they go
and how useful they might be to us, but that is also a challenge. The only other point that I
would add, given the area in which we operate—I have shared our particular part of this
market with Members of the Committee—is that we actually go out and sound out the
employers. We know that there are significant UK global players that take significant
proportions of our PGT graduates, so we go out and survey them directly.
Professor Bogle: We also have very patchy data. We attempt to get more on the masterslevel students particularly around destinations, but I think that this is really important and
really does need to be collected much more comprehensively. For us, it is all part of the
same process that we have for undergraduates. However, I would very much like to support
what Andrew George was saying, because the PGR thing is something completely different
but we are always being pushed into taking this data as if it was the same as the others, when
it is completely different. There is a particular perversity in the six-month data point for
PGR, which for some reason has to be taken right in the middle of when people are writing
up, so of course they are not properly working. That gives a completely wrong picture.
Q455 Lord Lucas: But you could collect a lot of this data yourselves if you got together
and decided to do it. You do not really need to wait for HESA.
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Professor George: For the HESA data, we are meant to follow its protocols for collecting
the data and it does not approve if we collect the data otherwise.
The Chairman: But you run HESA.
Professor George: It is changing, and HESA is now changing its rules.
The Chairman: Sorry, Lord Lucas, I got excited there.
Q456 Lord Rees of Ludlow: I would like to shift the discussion towards PhD doctoral
training. Given the trend towards concentration, with the development of the doctoral
training centres, what does that imply for the distribution of post-docs, PhDs and so on?
Professor George: I am sure that we all have things to say on this one. On the DTCs—or
CTDs, depending on which research council you are talking about—we welcome them
because they have proved a very good way for us to invest in research either in developing
areas or in interdisciplinary areas, as has been the case with most of our doctoral training
centres that have been EPSRC funded. With the extra money involved in them, the doctoral
training centres have also been very good at allowing us to experiment with new modes of
delivery, new ways of providing transferable skills and new ways of cohort building, which we
are now, where appropriate, rolling out to our wider PhD students. I think that they are a
very vibrant part of the environment for PhD students. Like a lot of universities, we are
moving towards the situation of learning from these centres about cohort building for, if you
like, unfunded doctoral training centres—we will probably call them something different—
and that is what we are moving to.
However, I would be chary—and I think that it would be unfortunate—if a very much larger
proportion of the funding were to go into the doctoral training centres as the mode for
funding. The reason why I say that is that, while being inside one of these means that you are
well funded and you have a lot of studentships, it does worry me that if you are working on
research that is not sexy at the moment or if your face does not fit, it will be difficult to be
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innovative and get new research. Certainly looking back at my career, I know that I have had
doctoral or PhD students who would have fit right into a doctoral training centre, but some
of my best research has been done on things that have been outside those sorts of remits.
While I think that there is an awful lot that is good about them, I would be wary about
concentrating much more funding in them compared to the freer funding that a department
or an individual can use.
Professor Friend: We are in exactly the same situation from our viewpoint. We have moved
completely to doctoral training centres—we call them DTCs—many of which are unfunded.
We recognise the value of the funded DTCs, particularly where they are multi-institution. I
think that we all have multi-institution doctoral training centres.
I, too, have concerns. When you operate a stand-alone doctoral training centre that is not
linked to a particular funding council, you see fantastic value. You see the ability to take the
individual funded students, who would operate under an individual academic, and embed
them in this peer-support network that deals with the whole question of transferable skills. I
would be very concerned if there was more and more concentration on funded doctoral
training centres.
Another dimension to doctoral training centres, from our particular positioning in the
marketplace, is that there is a recognition that doctoral training is about filling the pipeline
not only for future academic researchers and future R&D researchers within the business
world but, from our viewpoint, for this interesting third category—we often use this North
American term—of the catchers. These are not the people who will go into a business R&D
department but the ones who will be out there scouting for innovation in companies. If we
are moving forward into this knowledge-based economy, it seems to us that those sorts of
people are very under-represented in UK businesses. The skills set is rather different from
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that of the R&D-focused doctoral student, and DTCs are just the right environment in which
to develop those skills.
Professor Bogle: Our view is not dissimilar, but we have been putting lots into doctoral
training centres and we seem to have been very successful in the EPSRC competitions for
them. What doctoral training centres have really been able to do is disrupt the rather
disciplinary-based concentration of doctoral study, when doctoral study is by its very nature
moving towards the edge of boundaries of disciplines. In that sense, I think that doctoral
training centres have been very successful and they have also allowed a bigger concentration
around a very strong research environment. The way that they work for us is that they bring
in a very different collection or pool of potential supervisors from a much broader range of
disciplines, so I think that they have been very successful.
However, there needs to be a balance. Doctoral training centres need to be drawn not too
tightly, because if they are very focused they lose that benefit—there has been some
evidence of that—but there still need to be ways of supporting those new growth areas in
the interstices that could otherwise be lost. Research councils such as the EPSRC have a
doctoral training grant, but the balance between the two is quite important. Interestingly,
some of the other research councils, such as the ESRC, do not have that mechanism.
Professor George: Just picking up on what Professor Friend said, I might add that some of
these doctoral training centres can also be more for EngDs, which can be a very specific
form of training for a specific type of person. We have found that to be very valuable—
surprisingly so.
Professor Friend: On the EngD environment, which is a fantastic doctoral experience for
the business world, I would just add that our experience is that, if the funded part of the
doctoral centre is not there, being able to deliver EngD is a big, big challenge.
Professor George: Yes, we only do it on a funded basis.
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Q457 Lord Rees of Ludlow: Is it your view that we ought to move towards the
American graduate school model, where getting a PhD requires not only a thesis but
exposure to a range of high-level courses? That has not always happened in a traditional PhD
in this country.
Professor Bogle: In this new 1+3 model, the first year provides some more advanced skills,
but the real strength of the 1+3 is that it gives exposure to a range of different research
problems so that we make a more informed choice about the right project for the individual.
Actually, I think that is potentially an even stronger model than the American model, where
there are perhaps too many taught courses, which leads to very long completion times.
Q458 Lord Rees of Ludlow: I have just one more question. What do you think that we
should say to, for example, the outstanding mathematician working in a very small
department in a university who cannot get his graduate studentship? Should such students
get involved in a network?
Professor Bogle: I think that is the answer. There needs to be some sort of similar based
network that is not institutional based. That could be a doctoral training centre that crosses
a wide range of institutions in the way that the AHRC ones increasingly do.
Professor George: In a well-being survey of our students, we found out that most of our
students are happy but we have some students who are unhappy and are failing, and those
are the students who are isolated. Those are the very students that we need to get into
some sort of network. If you are an isolated person in mathematics or biochemistry or
anywhere else, you have to get involved in a network. That is what rescues them.
Lord Rees of Ludlow: I ask the question because the three of you are all from fairly large
institutions, but I expect that it is slightly different for someone in a very small university.
Professor George: However, we share some of our doctoral training centres with other
institutions. Again, it is amazing that, if early on you include some residential courses, people
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then keep up on networking with each other—through Facebook, Twitter and all these
things that I do not fully understand—and they are always interacting with each other.
Q459 Lord Krebs: If I may, Lord Chairman, I want to refer back to the earlier discussion
about MRes courses that Professor Bogle brought up. The one thing that is not clear in my
mind, and on which I would like guidance from the professor, concerns the DTC model
where students spend the first year basically in lab rotations and then go on to their PhD
research. Does that obviate the need for an MRes?
Professor Bogle: That is an MRes. That is what I would see as being an MRes.
Q460 Lord Krebs: Can you see an MRes as being part of the DTC programme?
Professor Bogle: Yes, that is what happens. Those rotations occur. In my opinion an MRes
comprises wet subjects, dry subjects, a series of different projects plus some taught courses.
Some of the four-year programmes tackle those separately. Personally, I prefer there to be
an exit at the end of the relevant year with the potential to get an MRes so that if somebody
decides it is not for them they can make a graceful exit. However, the Wellcome Trust does
not do it that way.
The Chairman: Lord Winston, do you want to come in here?
Lord Winston: Professor Bogle has answered my question.
Q461 Lord Krebs: How useful is Vitae’s researcher development framework for doctoral
students in the professors’ institutions?
Professor Bogle: We have a development programme for our doctoral students. We have a
personal development tool and the researcher development framework is right at the centre
of that. It is much better than what was on offer previously. I welcome the fact that it was
developed at a national level to produce something that is useful and fit for purpose. Our
whole training programme is based around the taxonomy within the researcher
development framework.
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Professor George: We are slightly different. We are totally compliant with the researcher
development framework and have mapped all our courses based on it—it informs things
back-room, if you like—but we do not use it front of house with the students; our people
who are delivering it do not find it a useful tool to that extent. Over the past couple of years
we have been keen to develop, with Professor Bogle’s help, a series of what we call the
Imperial attributes and we have thought about what we want an Imperial student to look
like. This is still work in development and is compliant with the researcher development
framework. We want that work to concentrate on the front end in terms of what we
expect from our students, and for the students to be aware of what we expect from them as
Imperial students and what we will give to them to help them achieve those expectations.
However, it is a question of degree rather than anything else.
Professor Friend: We are in an identical position to that described by Professor George.
The measure fits our corporate mission, which is not to run a lot of parallel initiatives but to
embed into the core of the activity delivered for doctoral students through the DTC.
Q462 Lord Krebs: How is the framework relevant to students who go into employment
outside research?
Professor Bogle: It comprises a very broadly drawn taxonomy. The relevant skills can be
applied generally across a range of areas, although some are specific. We seek to develop
researchers with a set of research skills. Indeed, we seek to develop creative, critical and
autonomous intellectual risk takers. The League of European Research Universities
produced a report on doctoral training and I chaired the body which produced that report.
We want researchers to have that range of skills. Those creative, critical skills are just as
applicable in government and the charitable sector as they are in research activities.
Rigorous, evidence-based judgments need to be produced to solve difficult problems, and
that is what the PhD does par excellence.
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The Chairman: Do you want to come in, Lord Lucas?
Q463 Lord Lucas: What do you think of Vitae itself? Its website is a mess of
impenetrable, meaningless guff. I was delighted to hear you say that you find it useful, but I
would never have guessed that from trying to read up about it.
Professor Bogle: It is probably more useful for people within the community than for those
outside it. I was talking particularly about its framework, which we find useful. I would not
like to comment on the website. All websites are a bit iffy sometimes, are they not?
The Chairman: Leaving that compliment about the website, we move on to quality. Before
Lady Perry asks her question, I should say that we are desperately running out of time so I
hope that the witnesses will answer as briefly as possible.
Q464 Baroness Perry of Southwark: I have a brief question about the metrics of
quality research supervision. Is the quality of the research output of a supervisor the best
metric, or are there other issues which would be more appropriate or at least additional?
Professor Bogle: That is a very interesting question. A strong research environment has to
be the primary consideration but, as always, it is not the only one. The quality of supervisors’
training has to be a consideration, as do the average time for completion and the
destinations. All those things ought to be seen as parts of that metric.
Professor George: The problem that we have is being aware that the product of the PhD is
the student, not the research. It has taken a number of years for universities to appreciate
that. However, the research output is the easiest thing to measure and it must be measured.
We ought first to consider destination data. We need to appreciate that, although we are
trying to produce good researchers, only a minority of our students will be superstars and
there has to be a leaky pipe leading up to that. That leaky pipe is okay because the things
that are leaking out of it are achieving good outcomes in other places. Therefore, we need
to look at destination data as well as research output. The one thing I would add to what
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Professor Bogle has said is something about critical mass. It is important to have critical
mass. If one does not have it at the institution, it ought to be established through a network.
Professor Friend: I thought you had hit on a moment of divergence between us but it has
turned to be convergence. I wish to offer a personal view from my institution on an
alternative or proxy for this consideration. Some of these measures are captured within a
sub-part of the research excellence framework, but academic output is not. I am talking
about the research environment available to a PhD student. My other concern is that we
should not measure only a part of academic output. I am going to sound a little repetitive
here, but we may be interested in looking at the output of researchers in terms of industrial
or business environments. However, certain areas of research may not be captured in
conventional RAE or REF terms. There is a proxy for that at the moment and it is called
business QR. It may be good or it may not be, but it is an alternative.
Q465 Baroness Perry of Southwark: We have all experienced brilliant researchers who
are not necessarily very interested in training the next generation of PhD students and,
indeed, in whose labs the new student sometimes has a pretty lonely time. Do you think that
there is a mechanism for involving industry more? You have suggested that the student’s
destination would be part of that, but could industry be more involved in setting the
standards for postgraduate STEM provision?
Professor Bogle: Are you talking about PGR degrees?
Baroness Perry of Southwark: Yes, I am talking about PhDs, not the stand-alone
masters.
Professor Bogle: We have to remember that right at the core of what we do is developing
these creative individuals who will take a difficult new idea right the way through to
completion. I think that there is a role for involving industry—it is involved in a lot of
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doctoral training centres—but, as an academic community, we have to have a view that this
is the pinnacle of our qualifications and we need to own it.
Professor George: I think that is absolutely right. All of us in our departments know who
the good supervisors are and who the less good supervisors are—of course we do—but
one of the advantages of the doctoral training centres system is that your peers can make a
judgment on you as to whether you can or cannot supervise a student. Some non-academic
input into that from stakeholders is good, but I agree with David Bogle that, in a way, the job
of the academics is to ensure the excellence of the education.
Professor Friend: However keen I am to interact with the world of business and to have the
world of business funding even PGR, I am with these gentlemen in saying that we have to
maintain the standard.
Q466 Baroness Perry of Southwark: What about QAA? Is its way of operating useful
in the postgraduate world? Be honest.
Professor Bogle: It is pretty hands off, actually. We were instrumental in devising the quality
code. I think that it is helpful—perhaps I should not say this—that we get inspected
periodically so that we can make sure that our house is in order, but I think that, particularly
in the big research-intensive institutions with lots of doctoral students, our house is pretty
good, actually.
Professor Friend: I have nothing to add.
Professor George: I find that there is an interesting divide between the research-intensive
universities, which always want the QAA to be less prescriptive, and the less researchintensive institutions, which often want more guidance. There are times when I think that
there is an attempt to micromanage through guidance. I think that the overall principles are
fine, but I find that there is a degree of frustration about that, which I share.
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Baroness Perry of Southwark: If I may say so, that is a great contrast to saying that it is
hands off.
The Chairman: Finally, we come to Lord Patel.
Q467 Lord Patel: Half of my question—about the number of overseas students—was
asked earlier on, but the other half relates to immigration policy. It has been suggested to us
that the new immigration visa policy is detrimental to our ability to recruit overseas
students. Is that the case?
Professor Friend: I thought that this question might be asked, so I went through the stats,
which provide a very interesting picture.
Lord Patel: I have another question, for which you might not have the stats.
Professor Friend: On the number of students coming from the rest of the world, there is no
doubt that there has been a modest impact, but, given that we are discussing STEM, the
impact has not been in the STEM area, where in our experience recruitment is buoyant.
Indeed, when I and my colleagues were sharing our thoughts about this outside, they were
saying much the same thing. Year on year, there is buoyant growth, which seems to have
swept through the visa issues other than, in our experience, in India, where there seemed to
be publicity about us being closed for business, which played very strongly according to the
messages that we are getting, and—this is not in the STEM area, but I hope that you will not
mind my sharing this with you—in the MBA area, where I hear the same story from all the
business schools that we interact with. There has been a bit of a toxic combination of:
exposure in India of the story about us being closed for business; a change in the funding for
these students because banks have withdrawn from providing funding; and the issue of the
one-year post-graduation opportunity to work within the UK. For us, that has hit that one
relatively small segment of the university, which accounts for about 2% to 3% of our head
count—that is the scale of the problem. Everywhere else, we are forging ahead, with the
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statistics for applications and acceptances being better than last year, so there is growth,
growth, growth.
Professor Bogle: We certainly seem to be strong, but we must not be complacent. Other
countries are trying to portray themselves as much more open for business than us, so we
have to be careful about that, but our very strong reputation for the quality of our education
must be the reason why our performance has been so strong. However, changes in midsession such as the withdrawal of the post-study visa are causing a lot of concern at the
moment, particularly among current students, and that sort of thing is very unhelpful. It is
much better if such changes are made in a staged way.
Professor Friend: Let me just add, as we sweep by, that our performance has been
maintained only by greater focus and effort. There are some very strange moments that we
have had with the Border Agency, and it just takes very careful management.
Professor George: In our case, similarly we have not seen a decline, although we are aware
that other universities have seen a decline so it might be that we are relatively buffered.
Having talked to our overseas recruitment people this morning, I know that they are
concerned about the future and are concerned that, especially in India and other countries,
there is a perception that we are closed for business and that it is difficult to get in. Some of
that is compounded by the fact that there are still long delays for visa applications in some
countries, in particular from India at the moment, and increased bureaucracy. I cannot swear
that this is true, but it was told to me this morning that the 73-page instruction on how to
fill in the form is one issue. There is also an increased burden on the universities in
supporting and monitoring matters. That is a very real issue.
However, the thing that is very much worrying us is the withdrawal of the post-study work
visa. There is a lot of anger among the current generation of students, who feel betrayed by
the United Kingdom because the rules have changed after they paid the fees to come for
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one thing but also wanted to come for another. That is very real. It sends out a very bad
message, especially in the engineering sector, to the students, whom we need if we are to
support our engineering industry. I would strongly argue that we need to find a way to
support these students, even if it is only at postgraduate level or was restricted to science
and engineering, because the perception of us is very negative as a result of that.
Q468 The Chairman: I have one question to finish with. On the funding for students
who are doing research masters and PhDs, given that a significant amount of the resource is
coming from the state through the research councils and through HEFCE, what should the
balance be between funding the students and funding the research? Should we be taking
more out of the research pot to fund the students doing the research, or do we have that
balance about right?
Professor George: Sorry, can you define the research pot?
Professor Bogle: I think that we are talking about the EPSRC budget, as we are talking just
about STEM here.
The situation is changing a lot at the moment as well—next year, there is going to be a lot
more on training—so perhaps smoother and more consistent funding streams would be
better. However, I think that the balance is pretty good, actually.
The Chairman: We could have fewer students but fund them more. That is really the
issue.
Professor Bogle: I would like to see—as head of the graduate school, I suppose that I would
say this—more researchers, for which there is a desire within Europe because the value of
the PhD is being seen more broadly. A lot of people still see the PhD just as an academic
pipeline, but we are managing to change that view. I think that we are drawing in more
doctoral students—I have had 30 doctoral students in my time in engineering, of which only
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three became academics—so we are developing skills for the broader community. I think
that there is perhaps an argument for increasing the numbers at doctoral level.
The Chairman: On that note, I will leave it there. Let me just say that we were absolutely
right to have a major session on postgraduate education, for which I thank all three of you.
This is our last evidence session, and you have done us absolutely proud. On behalf of the
whole Committee, I thank you very much indeed.
Professor Friend: Thank you for thinking about postgraduates.
The Chairman: We never stop doing so.