My Lords, I apologise for taking more of the Committee’s time but I feel that we are losing sight of one of the major reasons why my name is attached to this amendment. I believe very strongly that we have to consider, up front, a definition of a university in the Bill. It is a question not of whether we do or do not have a definition but of who controls that definition. Absolutely rightly, the Bill
distinguishes between degree-awarding powers and the title of “university”. So it should and so it must, because we are now in a world where many institutions which are not and will never wish to be universities give degrees. Further education colleges are a very obvious and important sector.
We are also, I am delighted to say, moving into a world with degree apprenticeships. The question is whether the definition of a university is perhaps not super-precise but clear and perfectly workable, like almost every other definition in legislation all over this land, or whether we leave the decisions about what a university is to the bureaucrats of the Office for Students, who will make those decisions but will never actually have to make them public.
So I come back to the purpose of this amendment and why we feel it is so important. If we do not have a definition in the legislation, there will be a definition but we will none of us have any control over it and we will never know what it is.
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