CHRIS PATTEN, the Chancellor of Oxford University, has told The Times that the Government's "appalling" policy of forcing universities to take more state school pupils is as serious a threat to a free society as curbing the freedom of the press.
Mr Patten accused ministers of forcing universities to lower their standards in order to engage in "social engineering". The inevitable result would be that Britain's university system became second rate, harming the national economy. In an interview marking the end of his five-year term as European Commissioner for International Affairs, Mr Patten said that unless the Government changed its policies, it would force Oxford, Cambridge and other universities to go private and sever their link with the state.
Oxford has been told that it must raise its state school intake to 77 per cent from the present 55 per cent under targets published last month. A new access regulator, the Office for Fair Access, nicknamed "Offtoff" by critics, will be charged by the Government with negotiating agreements on increasing state school intakes before granting permission for universities to increase tuition fees to £3,000 a year from 2006.
Mr Patten, who went to Oxford from a state school, said: "It's appalling. Universities are independent institutions, and part of the manifestation of their autonomy is their control over their admissions. It is an argument of huge importance for everyone who believes in a plural society, and everybody who believes that universities are among the most important bastions of a plural society. In its way, if you are talking about defending liberties, it is almost as important as arguing in favour of freedom of the press - it is a similar basic freedom in a plural society."
With the Government attacking excellence in universities, rather than defending it, the inevitable result will be Britain's university system losing ground to those of other countries, he said. "The result will be that we drift inexorably down the league tables. Oxford and Cambridge, by anyone's reckoning are two of the greatest universities in the world. If we had the greatest volleyball team, the Government would spend all its time saying how wonderful it was. It is inconceivable that President Bush or Senator Kerry would spend time rubbishing Ivy League universities."
Mr Patten was elected Chancellor last year following the death of Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. He has been Chancellor of Newcastle University since 1998, and has been involved in extensive outreach work to state schools in the North East. The trouble lay, he insisted, not with the university admission procedures, but with low standards in state schools. "What is Offtoff asking of universities? It is not asking them to be needs blind - they are. What it is asking is that they should lower their standards in order to engage in social engineering. Why do they want universities to lower their standards? Because standards in secondary schools are not high enough," he said.
Last week, Lord Beloff (sic), the President of Trinity College, Oxford, warned the Government to "take its tanks off" their lawns. He threatened that if it persisted in forcing them to lower standards, then Oxford would just sever links with the state and become a private university, setting its own charges and admission standards.
Mr Patten said that it was not desirable for Oxford to become a private university, but said it may have no option. "If the Government squeezes higher education budgets, if it caps permanently tuition fees at £3,000 and if it insists it is going to interfere in admission policy, then it is going to push Oxford and Cambridge in a direction they don't necessarily want. And not just Oxford and Cambridge," he said.
Since Mr Patten went to Oxford University in 1962, there has been a sixfold rise in the proportion of people going to university, but the proportion from working class backgrounds has remained the same. "That is not because universities have been somehow falling down on their egalitarian duty, it's because of a number of things, including the destruction of grammar schools," he said. He added that the solution was more state funding for further education, higher tuition fees, and more independence for university admissions.
Kim Howells, the new Minister for Higher Education, will seek to allay universities' concerns today in his first speech since being appointed. Mr Howells will tell a meeting in London of vice-chancellors that they will not be punished for failing to meet the new targets published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. He will argue that the benchmarks are simply informative tools that allow universities to compare their performance against similar institutions. Mr Howells will stress that they are not a means of pressuring universities into accepting weaker candidates by altering admissions policies.
Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, will name the director of the new Office for Fair Access (Offa) tomorrow. He or she will have powers to approve fee increases from 2006, as part of agreements with admissions officers on efforts to increase the numbers of applicants from state schools and working class families.