0:03

Welcome to the WeSociety podcast, where

0:06

we bring you solutions from the world of social science

0:08

to some of society's gravest problems.

0:11

I'm Will Hutton, a writer, a columnist

0:14

for the Observer newspaper, and now the

0:16

president of the Academy of Social Sciences, the

0:18

organization that brings you this podcast.

0:20

Through this role and my

0:22

past roles, I've seen firsthand

0:25

how social science shapes the world we

0:27

live. In this series,

0:29

you'll hear from some fascinating academics

0:31

and public figures who find the social

0:33

sciences as vital and important,

0:35

just as I do.

0:40

British universities are one of our proudest

0:43

national assets. We have 15

0:45

in the world's top 100, but all's

0:47

not well.

0:48

There's the impact of Brexit,

0:51

student numbers from Europe falling, lecturers

0:54

on strike, and the prolonged

0:56

COVID pandemic, all factors

0:59

that have left a big imprint on our universities

1:01

and their students. Vivian

1:03

Stern is at the helm of navigating this

1:06

turbulent sea as chief executive

1:08

of Universities UK, a position

1:10

she took up a year ago. Her organization

1:13

represents 140 universities

1:15

across the country, from Dundee to

1:17

Plymouth,

1:18

Bangor to East Anglia.

1:20

As of the 2022 academic

1:23

year, UK universities and higher education

1:25

institutions generated nearly 47 billion

1:30

in yearly revenue.

1:31

These are not just hallowed halls,

1:34

but serious moneymakers. In

1:36

recent months, there have been setbacks.

1:39

The summer of strikes by members of the University

1:41

and College Union, UCU, meant

1:43

some students graduated without their final

1:46

grades. There is the Prime Minister

1:48

saying he'll crack down on Mickey Mouse

1:50

degrees. There are to be new

1:53

government restrictions on international students,

1:55

bringing dependents with them unless they're on

1:57

research programs.

1:59

all the value of tuition fees frozen

2:03

at £9,250 a year but should be over £12,000 to

2:08

have kept pace with inflation. Departments

2:11

are closing at an accelerating pace. So

2:14

do we value universal education enough

2:16

in Britain or is it valued too

2:18

much? Here with the answers

2:21

is Vivian Stern. Welcome to

2:23

the We Society and thanks so much for making

2:25

time for us. My pleasure. When

2:30

we asked you to come on the We Society podcast what

2:32

was your first thought?

2:34

Well I mean knowing something of some of

2:36

your previous guests I was just very flattered to be asked

2:38

but I don't know I mean I think that you

2:40

know I'm quite I'm quite a fan of

2:43

you know doing something to draw attention to the

2:45

importance of the social sciences given perhaps

2:48

it's a kind of current political

2:50

environment where people don't necessarily

2:53

recognize the importance of the social sciences in

2:55

you

2:56

know national life.

2:57

Well

2:58

we think they're pretty damn important. I

3:03

mean we think you know whether it's economics

3:05

whether it's law whether it's geography whether it's statistics

3:08

whether it's finance the

3:11

social sociology political science we can

3:13

go on I mean this covers the gamut

3:16

and actually you can't make policy in

3:18

the public and private sector without the insights

3:20

of some very evidence-based social science

3:22

and actually they're pretty interesting

3:25

degrees in their own right because

3:27

they combine element of

3:29

a kind of quantitative

3:32

kind of evidence gathering along

3:35

with qualitative assessments and

3:37

insights into kind of what makes them will happen.

3:39

And that brings me to my kind

3:42

of first question to you. Thank

3:44

you for saying what you said about social science but

3:48

think even bigger I mean what is the what

3:50

in your mind as the chief executive

3:52

of universities UK is a university

3:56

about conceptually what's it there

3:58

to do?

3:59

funny, I mean I was listening to the interview you

4:02

did with Hillary Clinton and you asked her the question, you

4:04

know, what does the We society mean to you

4:06

and it made me think of something that I've always thought, well

4:08

I've had the privilege in my professional life of

4:11

representing this enormously powerful

4:13

set of

4:15

institutions who do, I mean in my view,

4:18

colossal good in the world and I, you know,

4:20

the longer I've worked in the university sector the more kind of deeply

4:23

I have come to feel that they are,

4:26

you know, for all the bits that are rough around the edges for

4:28

all the things that I guess on any

4:30

day of the week might be, you know, good or bad

4:32

in University X or Y, they're kind of like a

4:34

perfect expression of something

4:37

that is rather wonderful about human beings which is

4:39

that we kind of want to work

4:41

together, we want to find stuff

4:44

out and then tell the next person and

4:47

if you think about the essence of what is happening

4:49

in universities, you know, generating

4:52

ideas not in a vacuum but because

4:54

you're listening to what other people have thought and said

4:57

and then trying to pass those

4:59

on and that sort of fact

5:01

that universities, they

5:04

exist around the core, the core idea

5:06

is create new knowledge and

5:08

share

5:09

it and I think it's a perfect expression of something

5:11

that's rather wonderful about human beings which,

5:13

you know, human beings aren't altogether wonderful

5:15

but that is rather wonderful.

5:19

I'm glad that you accent

5:22

in that answer not

5:24

just finding out about kind

5:26

of the world but passing the information on,

5:29

it's about research and teaching and

5:31

of course about the freedom to discuss,

5:34

the freedom to disseminate, the freedom to go where your

5:36

inquiry takes you, I mean it's an absolutely

5:39

indispensable element of university

5:42

and I think also a degree

5:44

of autonomy, I mean you don't want universities

5:46

to be strangulated

5:48

by kind of anything,

5:51

I mean they must go where ideas

5:54

and teaching takes them.

5:55

Yeah there's also something they're pretty

5:57

unique in that they're spaces where people are

5:59

allowed to

5:59

to take up blind

6:02

alleys and fail and get

6:04

things wrong. I think the essence of,

6:06

I suppose, the international research

6:09

effort is have an idea, test

6:11

it a little bit, see if you're right or wrong, but being wrong is

6:13

okay. And that sort of

6:15

ability to be places where people can take

6:17

risks, I think, is also rather wonderful, and special and

6:20

pretty unique, actually.

6:22

What is your view? We must do this

6:24

early and get it out of the way. What is your view

6:26

about the whole debate about safe

6:28

spaces, no platforming, et cetera,

6:31

et cetera.

6:31

I think you said it, universities have

6:33

got to be places where people can, within

6:36

the law, they

6:39

can debate ideas and they

6:41

can listen to views with which

6:44

they do not agree. They should

6:46

be places where we educate

6:48

students to encounter things which

6:50

are radical or uncomfortable

6:53

or possibly even unpalatable and

6:56

meet those ideas with critical challenge,

6:59

not with, I

7:01

don't want to listen to you because I find what you say upsetting.

7:04

Now, the lived experience of a university trying to marinate,

7:06

navigate all of that, given

7:08

that that makes it sound very simple and

7:11

there are people who will give you to understand

7:13

that it's a simple case that anybody

7:16

should be allowed to say anything on a campus.

7:18

Of course, it isn't as simple as that because you butt

7:20

up against all sorts of things like, an

7:24

interlocking set of legal obligations, the

7:26

requirements around being

7:29

able to maintain public order, all of

7:31

that kind of stuff. So it's not as simple as some people would like

7:33

to pretend, but fundamentally, I think

7:36

there's a consensus amongst the university leadership

7:38

in this country that the job

7:40

of higher education institutions should be

7:43

to help those people who

7:45

pass through this system to disagree

7:47

well.

7:48

That's certainly been my experience because I spent a period

7:50

of my career running an Oxford

7:52

college, and it's certainly my experience. And

7:55

actually in the main, the

7:58

student body would say yes. I mean, I've done that.

8:01

And I'm quite interested where do you, before

8:03

we've got, sorry to discuss, but just

8:05

before we go on to something else, where

8:08

do you think this intolerance

8:12

of wanting to hear a view that

8:15

might upset you or might make

8:17

you feel you're not safe, and where does that come

8:19

from? It wasn't around, say, 15 years ago.

8:23

It's a contemporary phenomenon. Why

8:25

is it? Is it an alertness to sensibilities

8:27

that should be respected or what's going on? I

8:29

don't know. I

8:31

mean, I partly feel that,

8:34

you know, universities are places where gears grind.

8:36

Social progress, you know, sometimes

8:39

plays itself out in messy and ugly ways in universities.

8:41

It happens that's historically been the case. And then what

8:44

we're partly seeing is facility

8:47

adjusting its views on certain topics

8:49

and those gears grinding in universities.

8:52

I also think that it's very easy for people to

8:54

dismiss those people who

8:56

talk about their safety

8:59

in relation to hearing

9:02

somebody say something which will, you

9:04

know, they will find very

9:06

challenging and upsetting. But I, you

9:09

know, my dad's a Holocaust survivor,

9:11

right? So I know I've grown up knowing

9:14

that words can have consequences.

9:18

So I don't think it's as simple as to, you

9:20

know, there are people who when they hear predominantly

9:23

but not always young people saying, you

9:25

know, I don't feel safe because you

9:28

have expressed a certain view. They

9:30

might roll their eyes and say, well, that's completely

9:32

nonsense. Nobody's threatening your safety.

9:35

But I think if you think about it, of course,

9:37

we know words can do real

9:39

harm.

9:39

They can catch

9:41

fire in awful ways.

9:43

And so I feel, you know, maybe

9:45

more ambivalent around that question of,

9:47

you know, is it a clear cut case

9:50

of these people just need to grow up and learn

9:52

to listen to views they disagree with? I'm not sure

9:54

that I feel that. I think that we ought

9:57

to understand that there was

9:59

a real

9:59

problem.

9:59

ways that you can talk about certain topics

10:02

which can do real harm to real

10:04

people.

10:05

Your point is well taken. Words matter

10:07

profoundly. John

10:10

Locke wrote a grateful English philosopher

10:12

wrote his kind of famous essay on tolerance and

10:15

this is the context of kind of at the

10:18

time in the 1680s it

10:20

was all about the Anglican church

10:22

tolerating Catholics. But it was very interesting

10:24

because he basically said look you can

10:26

only come to truth through exchange

10:29

of ideas and that requires

10:32

you to be tolerant of notions

10:34

or beliefs that and in this case religious

10:37

that you find kind

10:39

of that you object to. But you

10:41

must allow your interlocutor to find

10:43

his or her own way to the truth of

10:45

what they believe and the only way they can do that

10:48

is by freedom to say their say. And

10:52

I've got I do think Locke's essay on toleration is

10:55

a good starting point for this

10:57

you know. I mean just

11:00

tolerance all round. I mean it's a great English

11:02

tradition actually and very

11:05

precious.

11:06

I agree and I think that that

11:09

is I think in most

11:12

part what universities try to

11:14

ensure happens that people

11:17

are allowed to express contrary opinions

11:20

and deserve to be listened to with respect

11:23

and not every university gets it right

11:25

in every case. I think there's a great.

11:28

Well you should be tolerant of that too.

11:30

Well I mean at least not

11:33

see a small

11:35

number of incidents where a group of people might

11:37

have handled something badly as evidence of a

11:40

crisis in the sector. I don't think there I

11:42

think universities because they're right

11:44

there at the sharp end of

11:47

what I've described as the grinding gears of social

11:49

progress you know of course it's sometimes a bit

11:51

it's a bit hot. But can

11:54

we help them learn from each other? Can we help them manage

11:56

it better? Can we help to navigate

11:59

the sort of.

11:59

the competing responsibilities including legal

12:02

responsibilities universities have

12:04

in this space? I think we can and we can

12:06

probably do it without being too

12:09

dramatic about the kind of state of

12:11

British universities.

12:12

Now there's a whole

12:14

debate about whether market

12:16

and commercial pressures are too intense

12:19

on universities and part

12:21

of that, one way into that, is this kind of increasing

12:24

pressure from the government about universities

12:26

should surrender and stop offering what

12:28

they describe as a Mickey Mouse

12:31

degrees.

12:33

Where are you on that? So it's not a new

12:35

phenomenon, this charge that universities

12:38

are teaching, you know, Mickey Mouse degrees,

12:40

I mean I started working in the sector 20 years

12:42

ago and that was a feature

12:44

of the political debate then. I believe

12:47

it was a

12:47

feature of the political debate

12:49

when English literature was introduced

12:52

as a subject

12:52

in I think probably the 1870s

12:55

and people thought what on earth are you doing,

12:58

as in this to the academic suite

13:00

of degrees on offer. I also

13:02

think, you know, I suppose this

13:05

might sound rather naive but I think if

13:07

students, if potential students

13:09

have access to good advice and guidance

13:11

about where the choices that they

13:14

make going to university might lead them, you

13:16

should more or less let them decide what they want to do because

13:19

something funny happens when you let students study

13:21

something they're interested in, which is whether

13:23

or not there is already an

13:26

avenue for them to apply the things that they have

13:28

learned productively. If there isn't, they'll

13:30

probably create one. I'll give you one example, you mentioned

13:32

Dundee in your introduction. You

13:34

know, if you had been having this conversation maybe 10

13:37

years ago and you had been a different

13:39

sort of person, you might have said, you know, what's all this

13:41

nonsense about people studying computer games

13:44

design? I mean how can that possibly be a subject

13:46

that you would study in a university? That sounds like

13:48

a complete waste of time and they

13:50

probably would have just dismissed it as

13:53

people spending three years playing computer games.

13:56

If you're Dundee, which is not a particularly

13:58

affluent city, I'd I don't think you

14:00

need to explain, it doesn't need to be explained to

14:02

you, but the fact that principally

14:05

Abbotay Dundee, so not an institution

14:07

that's in the upper echelon of the rankings, has

14:09

this extraordinary strength in digital

14:11

arts and computer games, which

14:14

has created a kind of group of people

14:16

who probably didn't find it easy

14:18

to get jobs, so they created their own. They set

14:20

up their own little companies and from

14:22

that then they tracked it in the big players

14:24

and now there's a computer games industry in Dundee which

14:27

is really quite significant and

14:29

a massive economic force. And I guess my

14:31

lesson from that is let people study what they want

14:34

because you know they'll find a way to make

14:36

that useful. It doesn't mean

14:38

that every single graduate you know will

14:40

look back and think I would make exactly

14:42

the same choice again. I'm sure there is always

14:44

a proportion of graduates who

14:47

if they had their time again would do something different, but

14:49

I think we shouldn't be

14:50

overly, you know, the

14:53

desire to control

14:54

the choices of students entering the

14:56

system I think is a

14:57

mistake. Well I recall at the beginning

14:59

of the 2010s trying to persuade

15:01

Oxford colleges that

15:03

actually computer science was a

15:06

valid degree subject. It was really tricky. Now

15:09

on the fourth

15:13

interest revolution

15:15

artificial intelligence, I mean you

15:17

know nobody would ask that question. I

15:20

also think it's true that actually in

15:22

all academic disciplines there's

15:26

gold into the rainbow. You know people

15:28

if they're passionate will in so-called

15:30

Mickey Mouse degrees which no one sees

15:33

a name. I mean when you say well what's this Mickey

15:35

Mouse degree, no one wants to say well it's X.

15:38

You might have said computer games,

15:39

they'd certainly say well actually, there's

15:41

this

15:42

hundred billion bad industry. But

15:45

it does kind of get us into

15:47

you know this question of where's

15:50

the money going to come from. I mean I the government

15:53

wants to close on Mickey Mouse degrees, it wants

15:55

to stem the number

15:57

of international students coming to the country which are

15:59

very important. source of revenue. It doesn't

16:01

want to kind of fund universities

16:04

directly with tax revenues, and

16:06

it certainly doesn't want to increase student fees because,

16:08

you know, there's so much kind of pushback

16:11

on that. So universities are squeezed in the middle. I

16:13

mean, is the sector in peril?

16:16

I mean, look, I think we're

16:18

in a position which if you let it drift, the

16:20

consequence will be that we

16:23

used to have one of the world's best

16:25

higher education systems. That's what I think will happen. I mean, the

16:27

way I describe it is I think we're kind of a little bit of a fork

16:30

in the road. And if we take the path

16:32

we're currently on, you just see

16:34

the kind of slow diminution of something

16:36

that we used to be really, really proud of. And

16:39

I think we need, you know, our collective responsibility,

16:42

not just ours and universities UK, but

16:44

nationally, I think our collective responsibilities don't

16:46

let that path be the one that we take because

16:49

it rather is rather important to us

16:51

as a country in an extremely competitive age

16:53

that we have a higher education and research system

16:56

that serves our national needs.

16:58

And so we got to make that happen. Now, how do you

17:00

make that happen? Well, I think this is

17:02

the hardest problem I've ever seen. And

17:04

it's a bit like a puzzle box. You know, if you I

17:07

keep turning it around in my mind, and, you

17:09

know, we discuss it all the time, you know, it's

17:11

more or less I wake up thinking about it in the morning,

17:13

I talk about it all day, and I go to sleep thinking

17:15

about it in the evening. And, you

17:17

know, you are told by those people

17:20

holding ministerial positions right now, forget

17:22

about it, even if we had any money, which

17:25

we don't, it wouldn't be coming to you, you

17:27

know, the schools and rack

17:30

and if e colleges all need

17:32

money more than you and then that's before you even get anywhere near the

17:34

health service. So I mean, it's a hard

17:36

problem, right? We've got to work out if you don't

17:38

want a

17:39

system which is sort of slowly run into the sand,

17:42

we've got to collectively work out how do we get

17:44

off that path and on to the other one.

17:45

You can see already what's happening.

17:47

I mean, I know academics

17:50

in leading universities

17:53

who, I mean, really think that actually

17:56

you make a retreat from teaching altogether and

17:59

just take. post-graduates and

18:01

research and build the university around that

18:04

because teaching, you know, undergraduates

18:06

is loss-making and actually no one's

18:09

going to fund it. Or you charge an

18:12

amount which is so high that actually

18:15

only a minority of people can ever come

18:17

to your university. And it's real. I mean

18:19

you can imagine unless government

18:22

grips this our universities could

18:24

transform in front of our eyes.

18:26

Well I mean I think I don't wish to be

18:29

judgmental but if you decide...

18:29

Go on, be judgmental. Go on. Go on. Go on.

18:32

Go on. Be judgmental. Come on. If your

18:34

strategy was just concentrate and research

18:36

that would be a very bad idea because unfortunately

18:39

teaching is loss-making, research is even more

18:41

loss-making. At the moment universities recover about 70p

18:44

in the pounds of research that they conduct.

18:46

So we and actually the reason that

18:49

we've had a reasonably buoyant research

18:51

system because universities are kind of quite unusual

18:54

in that they can bring in cross subsidy. I

18:56

mean particularly cross subsidy from international

18:59

student fee income. So you

19:01

need this system needs a bit of balance.

19:05

So you've got to you lose money on research, you

19:07

lose

19:07

money on social science subjects

19:09

which are quite cheap to teach and quite

19:12

profitable and they create cross subsidies. I mean there's

19:14

a lot of cross subsidies everywhere actually.

19:16

I don't think even that social sciences

19:18

are not profitable anymore. Then the

19:22

fee regime that we currently have in England

19:24

and I should mention that because it's a different system

19:26

across each of the four nations. It

19:29

may have been possible to cross

19:31

subsidize from

19:32

humanities and classroom based subjects

19:34

into more expansive, kit

19:37

intensive lab based subjects but

19:39

now I think we're getting to a point where nothing

19:41

really is. It's just a question of is it

19:44

losing a lot. But

19:47

as I say the cross subsidy becomes very important and

19:49

that's where the international student population

19:51

is pretty critical.

19:55

The

20:01

Academy of Social Sciences is a national

20:03

body for academics, practitioners and

20:05

learned societies in the social sciences.

20:09

As the President of the Academy, I can tell you that we

20:11

champion the vital role social sciences

20:13

play in education, in government, in business,

20:16

the list goes on. You can find out

20:18

more about the Academy of Social Sciences work,

20:20

support us, or read up on our fellows

20:23

by going to the website acss.org.uk.

20:31

Tell us what we should be covering, who we should

20:33

be speaking to by emailing wesociety

20:36

at accss.org.uk.

20:41

Now back to the conversation.

20:50

What are we going to do about making

20:53

a career in academic

20:56

life attractive? You

20:58

know, there's a lot of kind of criticism

21:00

of these lecturers and the academic

21:02

community for coming out on strike. And I know

21:05

these men and women, I mean, they're dedicated.

21:07

I think it's really important as well not to think this.

21:10

They're desperate, you know, they want

21:12

to kind of have their

21:14

students leaving without their name,

21:16

what their grades are. I mean, they

21:19

feel pushed back against the

21:21

wall.

21:21

I think it's important also to just

21:24

reflect on the fact that not every

21:27

member of staff in a university

21:29

or a member of academic services in

21:32

the union, and not everybody

21:34

who was in the union took part in the marking and assessment

21:36

boycott. In fact, you

21:39

know, it's been if you were a student

21:42

who was affected by the MAB, by the marking

21:44

and assessment boycott, and your grades were withheld

21:47

and you couldn't graduate with all of your marks

21:49

or your graduation was delayed. It's

21:52

no comfort

21:53

me saying

21:54

you were part of a very small proportion of students

21:56

who were in that situation, but it was about 2%,

21:58

which means much, much less. most of the

22:01

academics mark their students' work and

22:04

the students graduated on time. And I think that's

22:07

important because as you say, they've got relationships

22:09

with their students. I don't think

22:11

holding students as part of the

22:14

industrial dispute was a terribly popular

22:17

tactic. But you know, leaving that aside,

22:20

universities are collections of people. They're good because

22:22

they've got good people teaching

22:25

and conducting research. And it is very

22:28

important that we get out of the

22:30

position we've been in at the last few years where the industrial

22:32

relations have been just

22:35

too difficult. We've

22:37

got a bit of responsibility for that through the

22:39

USS pension scheme, which university

22:42

UK has a formal

22:44

role in representing the employer perspective. But

22:47

it's been really tough. I think it's going

22:49

to get easier on the pension spent on

22:51

pay. You know, these forces that

22:54

drive institutional finances also affect

22:56

the freedom that universities have got to kind of sort

22:58

out the industrial relations

23:00

territory. I

23:02

mean, we have the frozen tuition fees

23:04

at 9,250. I mean, there are people who said

23:07

they should never have been tuition fees in the first place. They

23:10

should have graduated tax. But

23:12

here we are. If we keep it frozen,

23:16

we try to stop international

23:18

students growing. And if

23:20

we don't want to put the taxpayers' money in, I

23:23

mean, we're in trouble, aren't we? I

23:25

mean, this is a sector which is, I mean,

23:28

you say it keeps you awake at night. I'm

23:30

not surprised. What's your hope? What's how you

23:32

see your way through it?

23:36

I mean, I describe it as kind of little puzzle box.

23:38

I think you just have to keep this turning this one round and

23:40

round. First of all, I think, you know, we need

23:42

to try and get to some sort of past party consensus

23:45

on what the solution is for the medium to long

23:47

term, because I don't think I've continually tinkering

23:49

with the higher education funding system

23:51

is a good idea. I personally

23:54

believe that the system that we've got,

23:56

the design of a funding system

23:59

which…

23:59

at least to some

24:02

degree on the individual

24:05

beneficiaries of education contributing

24:07

on an income contingent basis

24:10

to loans. So they don't pay up-fent

24:12

but they pay when they're earning and they pay

24:14

to an extent

24:16

which is connected with their earnings. That

24:19

seems to me the right

24:19

basis for a funding system.

24:22

I was chatting to two football

24:27

Premier League chairs

24:30

completely kind of happenstance and

24:33

they volunteered the view that

24:36

a town with a university

24:40

in the 21st century, there was analogous

24:43

to a town having a cathedral

24:46

in medieval Britain. The universities

24:49

were the modern cathedral.

24:51

They actually bring in students,

24:53

they bring in life, they bring

24:55

in youth, they bring in clusters

24:57

of economic activity around them. Now, I'm

25:01

not sure that universities themselves want

25:03

to think of themselves in that way. I mean,

25:06

when you think about leveling

25:08

up, I mean one of the ways of leveling up is

25:11

what happened to a degree. If we hadn't

25:13

got such a strong university system in some

25:16

of our Midlands and northern cities, they

25:18

would be in a really parless state. Should

25:22

universities add to the notion

25:24

of being kind of knowledge

25:26

gatherers and disseminators

25:30

of knowledge that they're also

25:33

wealth generators in the 21st century

25:35

given that knowledge is going to be so important in the 21st

25:37

century economy?

25:38

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, to

25:40

pick up on your point about

25:42

these things, these sort

25:44

of amazing economic advocates like

25:46

the cathedrals of the Blackpool

25:49

is a great example. So there was a period of expansion

25:52

of the university sector in the 60s where universities,

25:55

where towns were invited to sort of put

25:57

in bids to found a new university.

26:00

university. And my understanding,

26:02

and I apologise to people of Blackpool if I'm getting

26:04

this wrong, but my understanding is Blackpool sort of undernaught

26:07

about it, and maybe they did and maybe they didn't.

26:09

And then by the time they got round, the kind of,

26:11

you know, great in the good of Blackpool got

26:13

round to putting in a bid for a university, their

26:16

kind of door had closed. And I would say,

26:18

you know, exactly,

26:20

you look at the cities that did

26:22

establish universities and what happened to them as

26:24

a result, just the, we just commissioned

26:26

a piece of work to look at the economic impact

26:29

of universities and across the whole

26:31

of the UK. And just through

26:33

the kind of direct and knock on effects of university

26:36

activity, the value is about 130 billion.

26:39

This sector

26:40

is a colossal month.

26:42

That's five sort of GDP. Yeah, it's very, very big.

26:44

Big, big.

26:45

Yeah. And when you look at things like we were talking about international

26:47

students earlier, when you look at the fact

26:50

that, you know, places that may

26:52

not be

26:53

otherwise, particularly pulling

26:56

in money from, you know,

26:58

the wider world, I was

27:00

in Paisley, to give you a perfect

27:03

example of this, was in Paisley visiting the University

27:05

of the West of Scotland two weeks ago.

27:07

And I was in Paisley Grammar School the other day.

27:09

And I checked into the

27:12

hotel near the university and

27:14

I got chatting to the guy behind the front desk, he turned

27:16

up to be the owner. And I wish I'd just videoed

27:18

it and stuck it on social media because he basically said,

27:20

oh, the university's fantastic for my business. You know,

27:23

the students bring their parents over

27:25

for graduation or when they're,

27:27

you know, coming to visit and the university

27:30

brings people into Paisley. Well,

27:33

we're getting near the end. I think it's been a

27:35

great interview. And I just want to hear you, you know,

27:39

sometimes say this at some of our interviews, I'm going to make you

27:41

a queen. Monarchial

27:45

discretionary kind of power for

27:48

a week. Okay. And

27:51

you're going to transform university's higher

27:53

education. What are you going to do?

27:55

I think it would take more than a week, but

27:58

I'd introduce I'd rent you. do some maintenance grants for

28:01

students because I think we got a

28:03

problem with maintenance. I would

28:05

invest

28:06

more public funding than

28:09

I'd index a fee from 2020 sex

28:11

onwards,

28:12

hoping that installation has come down a little bit.

28:15

So a combination of those three things

28:17

I think might get us into a slightly better

28:19

and more sustainable place.

28:21

Good. And lastly,

28:24

we're back in the Horizon programme from the

28:26

first to charity next year. I

28:29

am

28:30

beyond delighted. Elated.

28:32

Beyond delighted. That's a big thing. I

28:34

actually

28:35

cried. We found the news. I mean, it was just, this is

28:37

something we've been working on for seven years. It's good

28:39

for everybody.

28:40

Seven years? Yeah. Oh,

28:43

since we left the

28:43

Tutsi Fair. It's been a very, very long road.

28:46

It's good for everybody. I think that it might sound

28:48

like the kind of thing that only matters to researchers. But

28:50

if you've got a rare disease, you

28:53

want our researchers to be working with all

28:55

of those people in other countries who also have

28:57

little populations of people with that rare disease,

29:00

putting their heads together and trying to work out what to do about it.

29:02

So

29:02

it's good for all of us. It was

29:05

extraordinary, wasn't it? That we got to where we got

29:07

to. It's

29:07

been a long and very

29:10

stressful road, but I'm delighted.

29:12

And I think the government should actually be, you know, warmly

29:15

congratulated for having secured the deal, which is

29:17

actually, I think, pretty good deal in the end.

29:19

The disappointing that we

29:22

aren't opening the doors to EU

29:24

students in the same way.

29:26

Well, you know, it feels to me like we might

29:28

have turned a bit of a corner. There will be people who

29:30

would like to see a bit of consideration

29:32

of whether the Erasmus scheme might be

29:35

worth thinking about again. And I think

29:37

that would be extraordinary. Yeah,

29:39

I slightly regret. Well, I do regret the fact

29:41

that we're not in the Erasmus programme. But that's I think

29:43

that's a conversation for another day.

29:45

OK, a conversation of the day. Vivian

29:48

Stern, thank you so much. It's been

29:50

we've really covered some ground here. Thank you for

29:52

your validation

29:55

of social science on

29:57

the social science podcast, The We

29:59

Society. Thank you too for your

30:01

kind of beginning

30:04

at the end here to kind of point the way through the

30:06

financial straitjacket in which the British

30:08

university system is. Thank

30:10

you too for your I think tolerant

30:13

and level-headed remarks about safe spaces

30:15

for pointing out that actually only 2% of

30:18

our graduates actually left university

30:20

this year without knowing their grades and

30:22

above all thank you for your resounding

30:25

belief, passion and advocacy for

30:27

the concept of a university

30:30

as a place of learning,

30:33

research and disseminating what you find

30:35

as freely as you can and where

30:38

the inquisitiveness and quest for

30:40

knowledge takes you. It is I

30:42

think a kind of fantastic assets for

30:44

our civilization these wonderful wonderful

30:46

institutions and we're lucky to have so many of them and

30:49

they're so good in our country. Thank you very much indeed.

30:51

My

30:51

pleasure thanks for having me.

30:55

The Wee Society is brought to you by the Academy

30:57

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30:59

about the Society by going to www.acss.org.uk.

31:06

I'm Will Hutton, the producer is Emily

31:08

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