This HEPI blog was kindly authored by the Rt Hon. Professor John Denham. John Denham was a Labour MP from 1992 to 2015. As a Cabinet Minister, he served as Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills (2007 to 2009) and Communities and Local Government (2009 to 10). He is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at Southampton University and Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics. John wishes to acknowledge his gratitude to Professor Glen O’Hara, Oxford Brookes, for sources on the different HE funding models across the UK.
This blog is part of series of HEPI publications marking twenty five years of devolution. This includes:
- A blog by HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman Has Devolution Gone to Far?
- A HEPI report Evolution of Devolution: How higher education policy has diverged across the four nations of the UK
Should higher education policy be devolved?
This deceptively simple question raises profound questions about what the United Kingdom represents (or should represent) in the 21st century, the desirability of centralising or decentralising public policy, and the best way of organising what is a key component of society, economy and state in a modern world.
The idea of the UK as a unitary state escaped the imaginations of Scotland and Wales decades ago and was only ever compelling for one community in Northern Ireland. Only in the Anglo-centric imaginations of England did Britain and the UK continue to be regarded as an extension of our own nation. These developing national aspirations were given institutional form via UK devolution 25 years ago. Northern Ireland gained devolved higher education policy under the 1998 Belfast Agreement and higher education was devolved to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly soon after. As the resulting national political communities deepened, the ability to shape higher education policy made an important contribution. It became one of devolution’s defining features, even briefly impinging on England in 2003 when Scottish Labour MPs were whipped to impose fees on English students their constituents would not have to pay.
Given the disparity of size and weight of England within the UK, ending Higher Education devolution would not lead to a genuine UK wide policy but the imposition of English political priorities on the whole of the United Kingdom. This is why neither governments nor electorates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are now demanding to adopt the current English fees, English funding, English regulation or the whole framework of perverse incentives within which English universities operate. Nor did they want to slash overseas student numbers, a policy driven by English political concerns. Though every nation finds university funding challenging, and it is impossible for devolved national policymakers to ignore the policy framework in England – indeed, the Welsh Government have announced plans to raise the undergraduate fee cap to £9,535, mirroring the recent uplift in England – calls for automatic alignment with England are few and far between.
No doubt, the silence reflects an awareness that the UK Government does not and never did make policy based on a balanced assessment of its impact on each nation. When the UK Government trebled English fees for full-time home undergraduates, based as we now know, on a dodgy measure of the impact on public funding, it showed little interest in the consequences for students and institutions in the devolved nations. Most calls to roll back devolution stem from a desire to re-assert the Anglo-centric British Unionism in which policy is made in England by English-based policymakers who conflate English interests with those of the rest of the UK.
The principle of sovereign decision-making should remain, but it should also be recognised that the current devolution settlement is far from ideal, and not only in higher education. For those who want the UK to prosper rather than fracture, devolution is only one step in a wider process of ensuring that the powers and responsibilities are exercised at the most appropriate level of local, national and union government. Crucial to that is finding the best forms of collaboration between those who hold devolved powers. One largely unplanned consequence of UK devolution was the measure of progress by the degree of separation between the devolved nations and the UK Government. Powers were seen as either devolved or not. Some have challenged the idea that Whitehall simply decided to ‘devolve and forget’, but it was rare for discussion of how best to work together to feature in England’s Anglo-centric political debate. The Welsh Government has repeatedly tried to open this debate but has simply been rebuffed.
The system can work better, and the higher education sector could provide crucial leadership. In the past, confidence in a unitary British state deteriorated with the erosion of British unionist communities confident in their shared interests. The changing structure and ownership of the economy have made a coherent British (or Anglo-Scottish) business class a thing of the past. The British trade union movement drawing strength from industry and mining is a shadow of its former self. But in higher education, a UK-wide community of interest remains founded in a common interest in research, education and knowledge exchange, and facing shared challenges of economic viability and sustainability. In my admittedly limited experience, there are no distinct national fractures in the understanding of the purpose or practice of higher education within universities. With a new UK Government taking office, is it too much to hope that both the sector and ministers in the UK Government and the devolved administrations might show how devolution and collaboration can work better together.
We might start with the institutional arrangements for cooperation. England is the largest part of the UK, but its higher education interests are not recognised, nor are clear distinctions drawn with UK-wide interests. The UK Government constantly conflates UK priorities with those of England. Relations across the UK would be strengthened if the English interest were separately identified, and the issues for cross-UK collaboration defined, within the mechanisms for intra-governmental relations. In turn, ministers in the UK Government might be encouraged to be clear when their comments on the sector apply only to England’s universities and when to all of them.
The sector itself could also be clearer about UK-wide and national policy. A recent Universities UK (UUK) report on financial sustainability calls for ‘urgent action by the UK Government’ without exploring the different responsibilities of the different governments. HEPI and London Economics have published valuable comparative research on national funding models. It highlights the wide range of taxpayer support for students across the UK but does not unpick the influence of UK Government policy, how the resources available are reflected in the Barnett formula, and the impact of legitimate national resource allocation decisions. Without this we do not know whether each nation starts on the same level playing field.
Devolution was intended to encourage policy innovation and experimentation, but there is little shared analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the different funding models that might shape the future evolution of all national policies. Each model produces different incentives for institutional and individual behaviours and has different implications for graduate finances and university viability. This, too, is an area where the sector could do far more to lead the discussion.
The distribution of research funding is not devolved, but perhaps more should be. A coherent UK-wide research strategy is important. However, both the nations and the emerging English mayoral combined local authorities – which often cover populations and economies comparable to the devolved nations – cannot influence the research investment they need to foster regional economic growth. Current place-based research UKRI funding rounds mirror the Whitehall obsession with competitive funding rounds in which most lose out. A new balance between UK-wide strategy and allowing greater autonomy to nations and England’s localities is possible.
Attempts to overturn the devolution settlement would cause political pain and widen rifts in the UK’s unions. But there is much we could do to improve it, and it’s a debate the sector should have the confidence to lead.