A man with “Two Brains”: UK minister

The new UK minister with responsibility for universities is an undisputed intellectual, but more funding cuts seem inevitable. With an emergency budget to be delivered by the end of June, and projected government spending cuts this year alone of £6 billion ($A10 billion), UK universities are bracing themselves for the worst. The sector is already reeling from its budget being slashed by $745 million in February for the 2010-11 financial year, with a further $1 billion to be cut between 2011 and 2013. News that the new minister with responsibility for universities and further education is David “Two Brains” Willetts has been broadly welcomed. Willetts is considered one of the Conservative Party’s “big thinkers”. However, development of a fully fledged higher education policy will be delayed until an independent report into higher education funding and student finance by Lord Browne is tabled. Given the review only got under way in March, it could be some way off. The new coalition government’s initial agreed principles are to increase social mobility, take into account the impact on student debt, ensure a properly funded university sector, improve the quality of teaching, advance scholarship, and attract a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. And, if the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats disagree on the response to Lord Browne’s report, the Liberal Democrats have the right to abstain in any vote. While the coalition policy will direct education resources at those most in need – a policy supported by Willetts when shadow secretary for universities and skills – it’s not known how other Liberal Democrat policies will fare in the coalition party room. In the lead-up to the election, they promised to “scrap the arbitrary target of 50 per cent of young people attending university, focusing effort instead on a balance of college education, vocational training and apprenticeships”. They also promised to create a national bursary system, so each “each university [would get] a bursary budget suited to the needs of its students”. Given the gloomy economic climate, the party did not commit to growth in spending, but said that it recognised that “investment in science was the road to recovery and the reshaping of the economy”. A Liberal Democrat policy that is unlikely to see the light of day, given Conservative opposition to it, is their promise to phase out tuition fees over a six-year period. Willetts, an Oxford graduate and a former Treasury public servant, worked in policy for the Thatcher government, later becoming director of research for the Centre for Policy Studies. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1992, where he rose quickly through the ranks, serving as whip and then paymaster-general in his first term. However, he was forced to resign from that post after being found to have “dissembled” information to a government committee over a “cash for comment” scandal in which former MP Neil Hamilton was accused of accepting cash in brown envelopes from Harrods owner Mohammed Al-Fayed in return for asking questions in Parliament. Willets did, however, later return to the front bench under William Hague. In Opposition, he served as shadow education and employment secretary before taking on the work and pensions portfolio. While Willetts is an undisputed intellectual and the number of MPs who have a university-level education is at an all time high, many of the higher education sector’s key parliamentary supporters and advocates have either stepped down or lost their seats, potentially leaving the sector “vulnerable when crucial decisions about the sector’s future are made” according to Times Higher Education. THE reported a survey by communications consultancy the Madano Partnership which found that one in 20 of the new MPs – or 13 in total – had previously worked in higher education, as an academic or student officer, while one in 10 had financial services experience and one in five a professional background in politics. Five have PhDs. “Ninety per cent of MPs in the Commons are university graduates, a rise from 72 per cent in the 2005 parliament and the highest proportion of graduates in the Commons’ history. According to figures from the Sutton Trust, 69 per cent of the new MPs graduated from research-intensive universities, including 28 per cent from Oxbridge,” THE reported. That’s left some vice-chancellors wondering about how newer, teaching-intensive universities will fare in the years ahead.