Professor Andrew Deeks:

This proposal comes from the Australian system and I taught in that system at the time it went from a fully free system to an income contingent loan scheme, which was not called a loan scheme. It was called the higher education contribution scheme but it is effectively the scheme that the Cassells group looked at. At the time, income contingent loans did not impact on the people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds accessing university and it had a positive impact on retention rates. When the system was completely free, many people did not fully consider whether they were suited to a university course or the benefits of undertaking the course; they drifted into university. The fact that when the scheme was introduced, they saw they would accumulate a debt to the state that would be paid off at a later time made them focus on whether they wanted to be in university, and if so, what programme they wanted to be in. We saw at that time a dramatic decrease in the dropout rates and, therefore, an improvement in retention rates. That supports the argument that there needs to be a contribution from each component that benefits from higher education - the student, the State and employers.

The Deputy mentioned the rankings. This is a significant problem for us. The underfunding of the higher education system which has led to higher student-staff ratios relative to competitors impacts directly on the rankings because that metric is used. It also impacts indirectly because it is an indication of the workloads of our faculties. This means that the time for research, and research performance, is also impacted. In The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, we have no university in the top 200. While we are supportive of the action plan for education and the ambition to have the education system at the top in Europe, of the top 200 universities in the rankings, 97 are European and, therefore, we have a significant distance to go and significant investment is required. Those rankings are important from a student recruitment point of view but also from the point of view of recruiting faculty from around the world. The first thing any student in an international market looks at is the rankings. They are interested in English-speaking countries, which is a huge advantage for us but once they look to these countries, they will look at the university rankings. It is important for us to sort this issue out.