Charles Clarke vs the universities

Charles Clarke, the new Education Secretary, is on a collision course with the universities. He is squaring up for a fight over the arcane matter of whether all universities – or only some – have the power to award PhDs. To the amazement of the university world, he has pasted his thoughts on to the Department for Education and Skills website.

Should some universities specialise in teaching and others in research, he asks? Should every university be funded to do research – or should we emulate America where only a minority of universities offer postgraduate research studies? These are controversial questions which have made the universities extremely angry – an anger that was visible at a meeting last month of the all-party parliamentary group on higher education attended by the minister, Margaret Hodge.

The new universities – the former polytechnics – fear that the clock will be turned back and that they will be relegated formally again to second division status and be banned from taking part in the research assessment exercise. Some institutions receive proportionately very little research money. Among them are Anglia, Derby, Lincoln, London Metropolitan and Thames Valley. Luton is another university with a low research profile. All must be afraid that they will suffer in any move to differentiate institutions into research and teaching.

"What we have is a diverse system," says Dr Roger Brown, principal of the Southampton Institute. "But all this banging on about our leading universities suggests a narrow view of what higher education is about. Research isn't only done in the great research universities. A large number of institutions now get 5s and 5* [the top grades] in the research assessment exercise [RAE]."

Some vice-chancellors are angry that the USA is being held up as the model. It contains wide variations in standards of provision, they point out. "In a city like Boston you have more of a range between institutions than you would in the whole of the British system," says Dr Brown.

The example with which British universities are being contrasted is the state university model of California or Wisconsin. In these you have a flagship university which does research and awards research degrees and is internationally excellent, such as Berkeley in California; one tier down is the state university which teaches bachelors' degrees but does not award PhDs or do research; at the third tier are community colleges where students take two-year degrees and can move on to other institutions if they qualify. Is the idea to force places like Luton and Thames Valley to become community colleges?

Before he became boss of the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce), Sir Howard Newby used to extol the virtues of the Wisconsin model. Some vice-chancellors suspect that he is behind Clarke's thinking. Certainly, Newby has mooted the idea of removing the power of low-rated departments to award PhDs, the reform on which the Education Secretary seems to be set.

But Clarke is receiving scant support. Geoffrey Copland, vice chancellor of Westminster University and chairman of the Coalition of Modern Universities, calls it a disaster. "I don't understand why anybody thinks the American system is so wonderful," he says. "There are some very good universities – places like the University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley, but the state universities in California are underfunded."

Westminster has four 5* departments – media and communication, law, linguistics and Asian studies. "The UK higher education system is performing very well against its OECD competitors," he adds. "It ain't broke so what are they trying to fix?"

The umbrella group Universities UK is also anti the idea, and Baroness Warwick, its chief executive, has spoken out against it. Professor Roderick Floud, vice chancellor of London Metropolitan University, says: "It's based on an oversimplified comparison with the US and ignores the fact that we are a European country signed up to the principles of the Bologna Declaration which clearly states the role of universities in terms of research and defines a university by its ability to award research degrees."

The Council for Industry and Higher Education criticises the American model, saying that it can lead to ossification. Instead it favours institutions being able to react to changing circumstances. "We should not say some people should not engage in research because that could be where the future lies," says Richard Brown, the council's director.

Professor Alan Smithers, of Liverpool University, is another critic. "I don't think that teaching unsupported by research can be called university teaching," he says. "The function of universities is to advance our understanding of the world and to pass it on to the students. If you don't have that engine of inquiry, teaching will be derivative, not first hand."

Although Smithers is a traditionalist on many subjects he does not favour preventing new universities from carrying out research. "If there are people in the former polytechnics who because of their ideas are able to win bids for research, I would not want to cut them out of the system," he says.

According to the new universities, students and the local economy would suffer if they were forced to become teaching-only. Professor Mike Brown, vice-chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, says that staff would leave if they weren't able to do research. "You won't get staff staying on the salaries that we're paying unless they're committed to what they're doing," he says. "As soon as you take away their scholarship and research you will lose them. They will go off and become schoolteachers." Liverpool John Moores has one 5* department (sports science) and one with a grade 5 (engineering). And its reputation is growing in physics, history and English.

The way that research funding is distributed is highly concentrated as it is. Russell Group universities get 63 per cent of the money with much of it going to the four top-rated research universities: Cambridge, Imperial College, Oxford and University College London. Clarke would like that to continue.

The Independent found that he had one supporter: Professor Alasdair Smith, vice chancellor of Sussex University. "There are a number of institutions that receive very little in research funding and I think it would be good if we could find a mechanism that takes them out of the research assessment exercise and funds them for scholarship and research in a different way – in a way appropriate to their mission," he says. "But I don't see that the Department for Education and Skills or Hefce have come up with a mechanism that would persuade them to pull out of the RAE."

Some of Clarke's critics believe that the Government has a secret agenda – it wants to rationalise higher education further. Certainly, the Education Secretary will have a tough job carrying the sector with him if he persists with it. In fact, he will have a major revolt on his hands.

l.hodges@independent.co.uk