I am grateful to the noble Lords for the opportunity to speak to this important group of amendments. Once again, I acknowledge the experience of noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate, including my noble friend Lord Norton, who has chaired the Higher Education Commission.
It is vital that the OfS and UKRI are empowered to work together. Hence, Clause 106 ensures that the two organisations can co-operate and share information in relation to any of their functions, including granting research degree-awarding powers. UKRI will play a key role in developing research degree-awarding powers’ criteria and guidance, including for postgraduate research degrees, and it will work closely with the OfS to design the process for assessing applications and in its operation. We will make this explicit in the published government guidance on degree-awarding powers. The Secretary of State will also have powers to require this co-operation to take place if the OfS and UKRI do not do so of their own accord. UKRI will be responsible for all research funding, including postgraduate research. It will support postgraduate training and doctorates, as the research councils do now.
I do not agree that legislation is the right route to formalise the detail, due to the risk of unintended consequences. Instead, a memorandum of understanding between the OfS and UKRI will be produced. This will provide detail on how oversight of the sector’s interests as a whole will be maintained, including how the two bodies will work together in respect of postgraduates.
Turning to the amendments relating to the OfS granting time-limited or probationary degree-awarding powers, the current system has protected quality successfully and, as I hope I made clear in my earlier remarks, we are not proposing a complete overhaul. Reference has been made to factsheets, and we have set this out in more detail on a factsheet specifically on degree-awarding powers and university title, which we published last week. I hope noble Lords have found it helpful.
However, I make it clear that this does not mean we should be satisfied with the status quo. Under the current regime, new and innovative providers have to wait until they have developed a track record before operating as degree-awarding bodies in their own right, no matter how good their offer is or how much academic expertise they have. To develop that track record, they are usually reliant on finding another institution to validate their provision and must negotiate a validation agreement, which can be one-sided and sometimes
prohibitively expensive. My noble friend Lord Lucas asked about validation arrangements. I agree with his points about the problems with validation. We will come to that in more detail in a later debate, so I hope he has some patience for that.
We strongly believe that the sector needs to have at its heart informed student choice and competition among high-quality institutions. This incentivises institutions to raise their game, with the potential to offer students a greater choice of more innovative and better-quality courses. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, claimed that the shift to full-time undergraduate degrees was not due to validation and a lack of innovation. I quote to him Paul Kirkham, who he may know is vice-chair of Independent Higher Education:
“I can see essentially only one ‘product’ in the higher education world that has real currency—the three year, full-time, on-campus undergraduate university degree, almost exclusively priced at a single point. This is a high cost and inflexible approach that, with in excess of 50% of the population wishing to engage, cannot be the only solution”.
Our plans for probationary degree-awarding powers mean that high-quality providers do not need to rely on incumbents and can be permitted to award degrees in their own name from the start—subject to close supervision.
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However, let me reassure noble Lords, including in particular the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, that quality is absolutely still paramount. In order to become eligible for degree-awarding powers, including probationary powers, all providers will have to register, and we expect this to be in either the “approved” or the “approved (fee cap)” category. This will ensure that all applicants meet high market-entry conditions, which we see as including quality and financial sustainability, management, and governance criteria.
In order to access probationary degree-awarding powers, we plan that providers will also need to pass a new, specific test to demonstrate that they have the potential to meet the full degree-awarding power criteria by the end of the three-year probationary period. We fully expect probationary degree-awarding power holders to be subject to appropriate restrictions and strict oversight by the OfS in order to safeguard quality. We expect this oversight to be not unlike the support of a validating body—except that new providers will not need to ask a competitor to do this.
My noble friend Lord Norton asked what would happen to students if a provider loses their probationary degree-awarding powers. We expect all providers with degree-awarding powers, including those with probationary degree-awarding powers, will have a student protection plan in place. This will set out plans to ensure that students can complete their course and obtain their degrees, or to provide alternatives if for any reason that is not possible. I think this was made quite clear in the Committee, but I should say again that it would be highly unusual if an institution with probationary degree-awarding powers failed, and it would have gone down a long process to get to that point. It is not expected to happen, particularly as we are setting out such stringent criteria at the beginning of that process.
I stress that giving degree-awarding powers on a time-limited and renewable basis is not new, and it is already the case that alternative providers and further education providers are granted those powers on a six-yearly renewable basis. We intend that all degree-awarding powers are granted on a three-year, time-limited basis in the first instance, with the opportunity for all to progress to indefinite degree-awarding powers—but subject to satisfactory performance. This will be the same for all providers.
Turning to Amendment 269, as now, we would expect an independent committee to play a vital role in the scrutiny of applications, bringing to bear its unique and expert perspective on the process and enabling the OfS to draw on its expertise.
Briefly, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth—and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who spoke on his behalf—and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, for tabling Amendments 268A, 338ZA and 338ZB. I know that my officials have already been discussing some of these issues with the most reverend Primate’s office, and rather than trying to respond to these amendments today, I offer to meet the noble Lord and the right reverend Prelates to discuss specific issues in more detail outside the Chamber. I hope that will be helpful, rather than going into all the arguments this evening.
We will continue to listen carefully to your Lordships’ concerns. We are fully committed to maintaining quality, but at the same time, we want to ensure that there is a clear and simple route for new, innovative and high-quality providers to enter the market. I hope that by spending some time answering the questions, I have provided some reassurance to noble Lords on this important subject. In the meantime, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, who spoke on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, to withdraw Amendment 244.