Does university freedom matter? Universities in the UK have, in theory, freedom – or more precisely, autonomy - from political interference to decide which students to enrol, what to teach, what degrees to award, and what to research. Closely linked is the concept of academic freedom - the freedom under law for academics to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions.
University freedom is not unfettered. Universities receive large amounts of public funding , and rightly have to be accountable for this: around two-thirds of the income of higher education institutions comes, on average, from public sources, in one form or another, including recurrent grants and fees.
The terms of reference for the review of top-up fees, announced this week, include examining ‘the balance of contributions to higher education funding by taxpayers, students, graduates and employers'. The political sensitivity of this issue is such that the fees review is expected to report by autumn 2010, safely clear of next spring’s general election.
The UK higher education funding bodies are intended to act as a buffer between universities and government, keeping politicians from direct intervention in the sector. The government supports this position. In the government’s blueprint for the next decade in higher education, Higher ambitions, published last week, Lord Mandelson’s department says: ‘Our success in higher education is rooted in a commitment to institutional autonomy within a framework of shared values and goals.’
But what universities do must fit in with the government’s agenda. They are, says the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, ‘freed to define their own strategies for achieving core national priorities’. So what universities do must be in line with what the state wants.
And what does the state want?
Lord Mandelson wants wider social class access to higher education. But what about universities’ freedom to recruit? Higher ambitions says: ‘While the principle of university autonomy means that government does not interfere with any university’s admission procedures, we believe that the use of appropriate contextual criteria could help to ensure that high-potential candidates are not missed by the system.’
There are to be new types of higher education programmes that ‘reflect the reality of the modern working lives [sic]’, says BIS, and that ‘deliver the higher level skills needed’. BIS will use the lever of competition between universities for funding to implement this policy. ‘All universities should be expected to demonstrate how their institution prepares its students for employment…’, BIS warns, along with publishing ‘a standard set of information setting out what students can expect in terms of the nature and quality of their programme'.
Businesses are to play a greater role in higher education. ‘Businesses have a crucial role in the funding and design of programmes, in the sponsorship of students, and in offering work placements and practical experience for students,’ it says.
And how about research freedom? The new framework for assessing research quality will ‘for the first time explicitly assess the impact of past research on the economy and society’. Funding will be linked to assessment of impact.
Andrew Hamilton, the new vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said last month that ‘diversification and reduction of reliance on any single source of income is going to be a key part of the future’.
But in case universities think greater diversity in funding sources – not least from greater top-up fees and from private companies – means freedom from interference, they should think again. Fee-paying students have become increasingly, and rightly, demanding. And private companies are likely to want greater say in course content - and greater control over publication of research results - than government sponsors.
