Universities should set own fees, says Oxford chancellor Patten - By Richard Garner, Education Editor, The Independent, 17 mars 2010

Former diplomat backs calls for radical overhaul of higher education funding

The chancellor of Oxford University has called for the abolition of a
"preposterous" £3,200 cap on student tuition fees, adding his voice to those
demanding that each institution be allowed to set its own limit.

Lord Patten of Barnes told a conference of independent headteachers in
London yesterday that he would do a deal with the Government and accept a
limit on state funding, in exchange for the freedom for universities to
charge whatever fees they wanted.

The former Tory minister is the most senior university figure to call for
unlimited fees since an inquiry into student finance began last autumn.

"I would be prepared to cap the funding of our teaching grant if we were
able as a result to set whatever tuition fee we wanted, provided we could
demonstrate we were still guaranteeing needs-blind access with generous
bursaries," the peer said.

"It is preposterous that we can only charge for teaching an undergraduate
less than half the cost that those who do that teaching would have to pay
for crèche facilities for their own children."

Lord Patten declined to put a figure on the fee he expected universities to
levy. However, he disclosed that it cost on average £16,000 a year to
educate a student, about half of which came from teaching grants, the £3,240
top-up fee and endowments. So far, neither Oxford nor Cambridge have told
the review how much they would like to be able to charge. The only evidence
to emerge from vice-chancellors is a survey which found they would like to
see the fee raised to £7,000 a year.

Lord Patten also called for a radical overhaul of university finance - by
concentrating scarce resources for research upon an elite and allowing more
specialisation. "We pretend to give every 18-year-old qualified to go on to
higher education the same experience at the same sort of institution," he
said. "That represents an expensive and inefficient delusion. We should
differentiate between different sorts of institution, prize these
distinctions and devote our energy to ensuring reasonable movement by
students from one sort of institution to another, according to ability."

Lord Patten also criticised Labour for failing to invest in higher
education. "Whereas governments in France, Germany and the US have recently
announced big increases in university funding, in this country higher
education faces £1bn of cuts, with more in the pipeline," he said.

"With cuts on this scale, it is worse than insulting for Lord Mandelson
[whose department is in charge of universities] to tell us the science
budget is being protected, and for the Higher Education minister [David
Lammy] to advise universities to apply to America for research funding."