My Lords, I shall address the point about part-time and lifelong learning, and speak from my own experience. When I qualified as a chartered accountant, with a degree from India, and with a law degree from Cambridge, I thought that I had had enough education for ever. Then I was introduced to lifelong learning by going to business school and engaging in executive education, which I have since done at Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School and the Harvard Business School. I remember President Clinton saying, “The more you learn, the more you earn”, and one can try to vouch for that.
The encouragement of lifelong learning is so important—it does not stop. Then there is access to lifelong learning for those who missed out on it, for whatever reason. I was the youngest university chancellor in the country when I was made chancellor of Thames Valley University, now the University of West London. At that university, which is one of the modern universities, a huge proportion of the students were mature students and learning part-time. You cannot equate a university such as that with an Oxford or a Cambridge. It is a completely different model, offering access and focusing on—and promoting the concept of—lifelong learning, mature students and part-time learning. Sadly, the funding for part-time learning needs to be looked at, but it is not a matter for this Bill.
At the other extreme, at the traditional universities, we have MBAs—masters in business administration—which are very popular around the world, but nowadays we also have executive MBAs. The executive MBA programme is getting more and more popular at top business schools around the world, including in our country —I am the chair of the Cambridge Judge Business School. It is part-time learning at the highest level.
I hope that the Bill will address this and encourage part-time learning and learning throughout one’s lifetime. Amendment 41 refers to,
“including access to part-time study and lifelong learning”.
In fact, I would encourage it; it is crucial.