Speech by The Bishop of Lincoln in the House of Lords on
December 14th, 2010
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln: My Lords, I should declare my interests: I am the
Visitor of King's College, Cambridge, and of Lincoln and Brasenose Colleges, Oxford,
and I am on the governing body of the Bishop Grosseteste University College.
However, I speak principally as the chair of the Church of England's
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board of education, which, of course, has a significant responsibility for the affairs of
higher and further education in this country.
It is clear that there are no doubt many ways by which higher education can be
funded-direct funding, grants, loans, public/private partnerships and so on-and the
Government are largely following the recommendations of the review of the noble
Lord, Lord Browne. They have opted for the principle of loans, as promoted by the
previous Government. As we have heard, the task of the noble Lord, Lord Browne,
was to trim the burgeoning financial commitment of central government to higher
education while at the same time maintaining and improving current levels of
participation in higher education across all socioeconomic groups, including those
from the most deprived backgrounds. It remains to be seen whether the trick can be
done using the means now before us.
Will the public purse be relieved of higher education costs? Only if loans are repaid
and the recent financial crisis teaches us that policies predicated on debt and its
repayment are speculative to say the least. As for maintaining and improving
participation in higher education, it is surely counterintuitive to believe that students
will commit to this size of future debt in anticipation of a benefit which is by no
means guaranteed. Surely, even if they are prepared to so commit, we must ask
whether the normalising of debt in this way is morally defensible or socially
sustainable.
Even if the policy delivers on those objectives, it is still legitimate to challenge aspects
of the reasoning advanced in support of it and to expose the extent to which
fundamental principles in relation to education in general and higher education in
particular are being compromised. Let me try to lay to rest oft repeated arguments
which really should not be allowed credibility in your Lordships' House. One can by
all means argue that a high price must be paid for any recovery in the health of public
finances so that even the commitment of the state to deliver an enhanced quality of
education to the next generations is put on hold, or even that the prevailing
government ideology is for low taxation and small government so that the state must
be rolled back in relation to higher education as in relation to so much else. I
personally would struggle to sign up to those arguments, but at least they have the
merit of being honest when it comes to motives driving the measures promoted by
the Motion before us today.
But, by and large, these are not the reasons most commonly advanced in support of
this policy over recent days and weeks. Those reasons offered indicate an attitude to
higher education which is radically different-the phrase "game-changer" has been
used-from anything that we have known before and is deeply troubling to those of us
who see education as a key component in human flourishing; that life in all its fullness
which Jesus came to bring.
We hear it argued that it is the individual student who benefits from higher
education, so it is reasonable for the student to pay, albeit not up front-thank
goodness-but eventually, through a repayment of loans. But that flies in the face of
everything that we believe and cherish when it comes to what higher
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education is all about and why it matters. Surely it is for the sake of the common
good that the state uses taxpayers' money to fund higher education, because that is
precisely what a progressive taxation system is designed to deliver. It is the
mechanism whereby the common purse funds what is for the common good. Even
John Stuart Mill in his distinctly small- government manifesto, Principles of Political
Economy, asserts that education,
"is one of those things which it is admissible in principle that a government
should provide for the people".
It is a masterly understatement if ever there was one. So let us hear no more of this
idea that higher education is a privatised commodity to be bought and sold on the
open market.
That leads on to a further point. John Stuart Mill also said:
"In the matter of education, the intervention of government is justifiable, because the
case is not one which the interest and judgment of the consumer are a sufficient
security for the goodness of the commodity".
So let us hear no more about the choices of the student determining which courses
will and will not be on offer in the higher education sector. No Government can
abdicate their responsibility to plan for the development of such knowledge, skills
and aptitudes as will be necessary for the future well-being of the nation and its
people. Students can certainly exercise influence to drive up standards by having a
choice as to which courses on offer they are minded to pursue and where. But the
free-market model cannot extend to them determining by their choices whether
certain subjects or courses will continue to be taught at all. I may well derive some
satisfaction from all students opting to study theology, but I rather think that
sufficient numbers of students studying engineering, medicine, English literature,
foreign languages and so on to a high standard would be a good and necessary thing,
and only Governments governing can ensure that balance for the common good.
6.15 pm
Here, a further fallacious argument needs to be examined: the idea that certain
subjects should attract government funding while others, especially those associated
with the humanities and social sciences, should not. It is argued that all subjects will
be funded equally from tuition fees, and then additional funding will be available for
those courses utilising expensive laboratory and other infrastructure facilities. But, as
I understand it, it has already been conceded that study of foreign languages should
be grant-aided over and above the tuition fee. So what about the humanities and
social sciences, which are vital to the development of rounded human beings rather
than mere economic units? Surely the Government do not subscribe to the view that
higher education is essentially about economic rather than human development-that
most crass form of instrumentalism which I have to say to the dismay of some
others in the House seemed to lurk around the corridors of power during the dying
days of the previous Administration. But reasoning advanced in support of current
policies seems by implication to reinforce that instrumentalist approach to higher
education, so it needs to be said yet again that human development is about history,
geography, philosophy
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and theology as much as it is about physics, chemistry and applied mathematics. Can
we hear no more about the state needing to fund only courses which are believed to
prepare people for work and serve the economy? Joanna Bourke of Birkbeck
College recently referred to this stance as,
"vulnerable to the swaggering philistinism of management science".
Perhaps I would not put it quite that way myself-although on further thought,
perhaps I would.
What we need to challenge in relation to this legislation is, first, the elevation of
individual benefit over the claims of the common good; secondly, education as a
commodity subject to the vagaries of market forces, when it is truly to be for the
common good-in relation to higher education, the individual student may not always
know what is best for the good of all; and, thirdly, the need for higher education to
celebrate and resource the widest range of subjects if graduates are to emerge as
fully rounded human beings. That was precisely why our forefathers endowed
universities and, in this regard at least, their wisdom has not been eroded by the
passage of time.
If we are all in it together, it would appear that this and subsequent generations of
students will be in it more than most. It is an issue of justice when some of the
poorest young people in our society are deterred from contributing through further
and higher education to the common good of all by withdrawal of, as has been
referred to, the education maintenance allowances for further education and, as is
the subject of this debate, the hiking of tuition fees to pay for a higher education. For
all these reasons, this proposed way forward for the funding of higher education in
this country is deeply flawed. The long-term costs of such a short-term gain are
hardly to be countenanced, even in the most straitened of financial circumstances.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/101214-0002.htm