My Lords, I was present at Second Reading, when I did not speak, and I was not going to speak on the amendment, but I would like to make some contrary observations to what has been said so far. The first time I saw students rating teachers was in 1961, when I was at the University of Pennsylvania. The anger of teachers then was more or less the same as the anger being expressed now: “How dare anybody judge us, especially our students? They are so stupid that they will not like difficult courses. They are so stupid that they will always go for the soft option”. I do not want to comment on the quality of the National Student Survey, but we ought to reflect on whether we are not respecting our students enough if we think that they are stupid and likely to hurt themselves by grading soft courses higher than hard ones.
Several problems are getting mixed up here. First, can teaching be evaluated at all? Some people think it cannot. I was involved in the first round of the research assessment exercise, and virtually the same arguments were made by academics: “You cannot grade research or compare it; it is very difficult”, and so on. This was being evaluated by their peer group but, by and large, we academics are rather conservative people when it comes to being judged by others. Ultimately, I think that the research assessment exercise performed a very good function. It mattered that some universities were five star and others were three or two: if they were three star or two star, they had to get their act together and improve. There is no reason to believe that something as important as teaching cannot be judged and therefore that there can be no competition because it is such a pure product that it is impossible to find a methodology to judge it.
6.15 pm
First, let us see whether there is a better methodology for ranking teaching, because I think it can be ranked like anything else; there is no mystery about it. Of course people will game it, but I have great confidence in students. Applicants look at the websites of different universities and know who is gaming. They are not stupid. If they are going to pay £9,000, or whatever, they will not be stupid about this. So let us have a bit more faith in our students and less protectiveness for ourselves as academics. Let us say that if we are going to improve the quality of teaching, somebody will have to find a way of judging it.
The second question, which I do not want to comment on, is whether the ranking—gold, silver or bronze, one to 10, or whatever—should be connected to the fees being charged. Perhaps, as someone said, those who are ranked lower should be allowed to charge higher fees—and let us see the consumer reaction.
I was an academic for 38 years. Luckily, I am not a vice-chancellor or a chancellor or anywhere, so I do not have to defend my university, but we cannot go on thinking that universities are beyond judgment and should be left alone to do whatever they do. Those days are gone.