Image: UK Parliament [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via Flickr
Bridget Phillipson emphasises importance of regulation and again rules out income boost for universities
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has promised a “sharper focus” on the work of the Office for Students as the Department for Education prepares to announce an interim chair for England’s higher education regulator.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme on 22 July, Phillipson reiterated that the Labour government currently has “no plans” to increase tuition fee levels or offer universities more public funding, instead focusing on the role of the OfS and international students in securing higher education’s finances.
“The initial steps that we’ll be setting out later this week…[are] around regulation, where it comes to the OfS, because we need to see a sharper focus on the regulation of our sector to make sure that universities are on a firm footing,” she said, adding that the government intends to appoint an interim OfS chair imminently.
Tory peer James Wharton resigned as OfS chair earlier this month after Labour came to power.
International students and fees
Phillipson also said that the new government wants to ensure that international students—an increasingly essential source of significant income for universities—are made to feel welcome. Under the Conservative government, the graduate route visa allowing students to remain in the UK after their studies for a limited time was placed under review, and reforms to restrict students’ dependants from accessing visas were also introduced, leading to a steep decline in the number of international applicants.
“Universities are independent institutions that have responsibilities in terms of how they manage their budgets,” Phillipson said.
“In terms of international students, they have an important role to play in our country. They drive opportunities in terms of the contribution [they make] to the economy…and under this Labour government, we want to welcome international students to our country [because of] the soft power [they give to the UK and] the reach they give us around the world as they return home after their studies, and ensure that the graduate route is maintained so that students can come here and study with certainty and with confidence.”
Vivienne Stern, chief executive of the vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK, also appeared on the programme to appeal for an increase in tuition fee levels in order to boost university income.
She said: “The obvious thing is that you have to restore the link between the tuition fee and inflation; if you don’t, the value of it just goes down year after year after year. Inflation affects all of us…If you linked the undergraduate fee to inflation on current inflation figures, it would add a couple of hundred pounds to it.
“It’s not going to fix the whole problem…I personally also believe the government needs to, over time, put more public funding in.”
Skills England
The comments were made as the government announced the launch of Skills England, a new body being established to oversee skills education in England.
A Skills England bill is to be introduced to parliament this week, with the new body set to be established in phases over the next 9 to 12 months.
Richard Pennycook, former chief executive of the Co-operative Group and current lead non-executive director at the Department for Education, has been named as its interim chair.