Smith: Time to move Higher Education debate forward

Speaking at the Scottish Conservative Conference today on Higher Education, Liz Smith MSP, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education & Lifelong Learning, said:

Today is all about exploring a radical agenda for our university sector as it seeks to find a sustainable future which will allow it to face up to the very considerable challenges of maintaining academic excellence within Scotland in the 21st century. As we all know, that is no mean task and is one which could hardly be more urgent when one considers the ambitions for the sector set against the constraints of an exceptionally difficult economic environment.

Just as was the case with the schools conference which we ran this time last year, the Scottish Conservatives, believe that we need to be very bold in our approach; prepared to answer, head on, some very difficult questions and to engage not only with those who run our university sector, but also with other stakeholder groups such as business and industry, schools, trade unions and students - something we believe has largely been missing from the Scottish Government's approach. That is why today, we have invited a wide range of speakers who come from different political backgrounds and who have vast experience both within and outwith the university sector.

Ladies and Gentlemen, as the Shadow Education Spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, I was not prepared to sit back and let the current situation drift nor did I think it was appropriate not to put at least some of our cards on the table prior to the publication of the Browne Review, given that I firmly believe there must be a Scottish solution to the predicament in which our universities north of the border find themselves.

And while I know we must wait for Lord Browne's findings before we can refine the details of our policy, we can at this stage set out the broad parameters. We start from the premise that the status quo for funding in Scotland is no longer tenable and that the decision taken by the Scottish Government to return to "free" higher education was the wrong one. If we are to preserve and enhance the international reputation of which we are naturally very proud, the case for change is overwhelming.

So too, we believe, is the case for some form of student contribution, and I want, if I may, to outline what has driven our thinking about whether that contribution should be in the form of up-front tuition fees or a graduate tax or some form of deferred fee.

Before making our choice from these three policy options we first had to set out the key principles which we felt should underpin any sustainable funding mechanism for the future. There are, we believe, four such principles;

Firstly, that the funding mechanism must be "needs blind" so that it is academic merit and not either personal wealth or privilege that is the driver for a university place; an ethos which we believe has always been central to what is best in Scottish education.

Secondly, we must do everything possible to enhance the very important autonomy of our university system; something which Sir Andrew Cubie has always rightly argued must never be undermined by government or by commercial enterprise.

The third principle which has driven our thinking, is that of income contingency, which is a very important part of ensuring that the less affluent students are not dissuaded from applying to university. Income contingent systems are based on loans which are repaid by the student once a given threshold of earnings has been reached and at a rate which makes the repayment manageable ie a graduate who finds him or herself on relative high earnings not long after completing his or her course will be in a position to repay the loan more quickly than a graduate who takes a longer time to reach the threshold. The key advantage of income contingent loans is that the individual repays at a rate he/she can afford, unlike a set mortgage rate or a commercial loan.

The fourth principle derives from the need to recognise that there are both marginal social benefits and marginal private benefit from education; that is to say, both society and the student benefit from university education and if that is the accepted economic principle, then it is right that the individual as well as the government should also contribute to the cost of their degree. And that in turn means that there should be scope for universities to set variable fee rates rather than those which are a flat rate irrespective of either the length or the marginal cost of providing one particular course - in other words, some undergraduate courses will be more expensive than others.

So these are the four key principles. Put them together with the need to combine maximum fairness within the system and the provision of a flexible, additional source of income which is so much needed by our universities, and we have what we consider to be a fairly compelling case in favour of some form of deferred fee system rather than up front tuition fees or a graduate tax. And, while we will hear more later today about how deferred fees work in other countries, a further attraction of examining the deferred fee option is the possibility that it might include a "package deal" - a system whereby students could combine the repayments for both the costs of their educational tuition and their living costs at the same time.

But before I finish Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to argue that any policy recommendations we make in the area of higher education must work in tandem with those which promote schools reform and those within the qualifications network. And let me specific on this point, because if there is one elephant in the room, it is the problem caused by the fact that for too many people, university is often seen as the only acceptable means of post school education.

In Scotland today, too many young people feel far too pressurised to go to university because we persist in our schools in channelling too many of our young people through a traditional academic curriculum which sets university and college on a higher and more socially acceptable level than any other non college or non university based education. That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is wrong, and that is why we need to accelerate the pace of developing top quality, formal vocational training and apprenticeships at an earlier age, and why we need much greater flexibility within the examination system.

For example, why should we assume that pupils with a group of top class Advanced Highers necessarily must begin a university course in the first year rather than go in to second year and why should we not allow greater variation in the length of degree courses in Scotland? Not only is this flexibility educationally the right thing to do, but it could, we believe, also be more financially efficient.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have, I hope set the scene. We are enormously grateful to all our speakers today and to all of you for joining on us on a day when hopefully we can move this debate forward.

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