Leader: The job can be done but not without more cash

In her final editorial, Auriol Stevens argues that higher education has delivered, now it's up to the government to pay for its policies

From the cutting edge of research to the frontiers of wider participation, people are feeling frustrated, let down, overburdened. Everyone's hopes are pinned on this summer's spending review. Will the government provide relief?

At the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, there is frustration. The 320 scientists and 80 support staff in this Medical Research Council unit, which boasts ten Nobel laureates, know that they are at the forefront of work in biomedical sciences.

"This is the golden age for biomedical science, a very unusual period. The government sort of knows it, but will it invest? If we blow it now, we won't catch up again," according to the leader of one of the LMB's larger research groups. What the LMB and others face is the pull of the US National Institutes of Health, which is sucking in talent from all round the world. At a time when the English funding council has cut support for the best biomedical research, the NIH has more than doubled its budget from $11.5 billion to $26 billion (£8 billion to £18 billion) in five years. "Everyone here who's good has offers from the United States," said LMB director Richard Henderson. "It is getting increasingly hard to get the people we want."

The LMB is insulated from the financial, administrative and teaching pressures that universities endure. The support, materials and equipment needed are there for the asking. "We will do anything for the science," Dr Henderson said. "Research is so competitive now, you have to do it full-time." People working in the LMB say they would not transfer to a university - "Not in a thousand years. I'd rather peel bananas," said one. Young team leaders say that if they do not get permanent jobs at the LMB, they would rather work in the biotech industry and make some money than go for a chair in a British university.

The LMB has long been semi-detached, but now, across universities, cutting-edge research is shifting to specialised institutes free of administration and teaching requirements. This is the price of high research assessment scores and the cause of ever-heavier loads on colleagues. The LMB prefers its PhD students, who need the cash, to take paid jobs in the lab rather than to teach in the university so that they stay on site.

At the University of East London, there is fear. The university is doing pioneering work to widen participation - work paid for by the European Social Fund and urban regeneration schemes rather than by the funding council. In Ilford town hall, the Sikh community was out in force this month for the 11th Sikh women's fair. Jasbir Panesar, who organises it for UEL, is adept at finding ways for women to persuade their families that studying poses no threat. "You need to know about each different community."

On UEL's Barking campus, the new "Skillzone" provides a base for a free education-advice service for area residents and for free seven-day credit-bearing introductory courses to degree study. There will be 15 courses with 20-25 students on each this year. "We are inundated with demand. It is not true people in this area don't want to study," the organisers said. But many drop out because they cannot afford to lose benefits. The Skillzone is also the base for the Earn and Learn project, which finds local work placements for students, a scheme that enabled dressmaker Martha Sagoe and hairdresser Sharon Grimmond to complete IT degrees while supporting small children.

It is fabulous work, time consuming, expensive. Universities such as East London, where such work is concentrated, have about half as much public money per student coming in as the top research universities. They do not have the PhD students to help with teaching. They do not have many well-prepared students. And now they face a double threat. Neighbours in London that have lost research funding but have been freed to recruit more students may turn to bounty hunting, replacing lost research cash with extra students from deprived postcode areas.

At the same time, the university fears being excluded from the research community. When the local MP, higher education minister Margaret Hodge, tells universities to play to their strengths, UEL hears: "Get back in your box. Give up research", even though it has one 5-rated and two 4-rated research groups. "We are happy to accept the vocational role, but I'm darned if we'll be shut out of research," said vice-chancellor Mike Thorne. "That's what makes a university."

The University of Salford shows the benefit of opening up the possibility of research to institutions that are vocationally orientated. In 1989, the university agreed to merge with the neighbouring college of technology. This brought into the university health, music and performance faculties, all important to the economy. They are keeping the university buoyant as the local economy shifts from manufacturing and engineering to the creative and health industries. The School of Media, Music and Performance, which has more than 1,400 students and 50 staff, gets 3,000 applications for 300 places each year. It is the largest school in the university and it has the largest budget. To get in, you need at least BCC at A level, plus musical aptitude and preferably some maths or physics. The school has a TV station broadcasting to the region, recording studios, a theatre, dance studios, wardrobes and industry-standard editing suites.

The school is housed in a former German-owned chemical works completed (and confiscated) in 1915, which is, put politely, in need of refurbishment. Joining the university gave it access to postgraduate study and to research. It also sharpened up the courses. Its music degree, based on the brass band, initially provoked academic scorn. "You cannot be serious" has been a recurring theme, according to professor of music Derek Scott. "The hoops we had to jump through were formidable, but having to argue for everything did reinforce the quality," he said. "We've done everything we wanted to do, and we are in the premier league for what we do," echoed head of the school, Ron Cook.

What the school does is combine the hands-on tradition of the college with the academic rigour of a university. Professor Cook and Professor Scott are in constant demand as assessors and external examiners as new courses target the creative industries. And it is their turn to be shocked. Students in too many places are, they say, getting too easy a ride. "Our students have to do a project, a dissertation and other course requirements in year three. In some places, they hardly have to do anything."

It is a recurring theme. When ministers talk, as education secretary Estelle Morris did recently, of "bearing down" on completion rates, they issue an invitation to relax standards. Everywhere, off the record, academics say that the combination of growing class sizes, less well-prepared students who need to earn while they study, withdrawal of research staff and judgement-by-dropout are leading to less demanding standards.

How did we get in this bind? What happened to the fine, hopeful mood that went with the transformation of polytechnics into new universities? What happened is that student-to-staff ratios doubled. The amount of research rated of international quality more than doubled. Lax practice in teaching was wrung out through exhausting inspections. And academic pay fell back compared with like groups.

Such extra money as there is - and the government boasts of an 18 per cent increase - has come mostly from students through fees and grants forgone, from foreign students, from contract research, from donations and other private earnings and, most of all, from the unpaid overtime of staff. And now people who have achieved extraordinary things are hectored by ministers demanding "something for something", as if nothing had been delivered. Anger is greater because of a growing recognition that universities are themselves in part to blame. Staff and students, for the best of reasons, saw to it that weak vice-chancellors and councils took the easy option of looking to government for decisions and for cash instead of seeking their own salvation.

The pass was sold in 1995. When Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke announced cuts equivalent to £500 a student over the next three years, vice-chancellors considered raising fees to cover the deficit. Politicians of all parties, facing a general election within 18 months, panicked and drafted in Lord Dearing. The vice-chancellors held their fire. Dearing's report spelled the end of university autonomy. Dressed up as a "compact" to which the government never signed up, its recommendations on student finance were ignored, its recommendations on "accountability" accepted. The Treasury's bill for higher education was cut. Penalties for breaking free became prohibitive. Micro-management was imposed from the centre through an absurd quality-assurance regime and dirigiste instructions to the funding council.

The long wait for "something" from government continued. But now there is little universities can do except kick a funding council that has too little cash to go round. If influential voices in Downing Street persuade the prime minister to fund a small group of universities for research so they can compete on the world stage while the rest concentrate on teaching, the rest of the universities will have little choice but to accept. If universities break free, using their existing power to raise fees, the government can bankrupt them.

Universities face a government so eager to give the voters of middle England what they are thought to want in the short term that it is putting at risk one of the country's most promising industries. It is a government trying to use institutions that by their nature must be selective and meritocratic as agents for social inclusion.

That Britain's universities and colleges are still so good and so innovative in testing circumstances is tribute to the enthusiasm and creative genius of the people who work in them. As I retire, I want to say what a tremendous privilege it has been to work with so creative and altruistic a community. It has also been great fun, challenging, stimulating; a chance to learn at least something of a broad range of disciplines; a chance to eavesdrop on some of the most exciting debates of our time. So much has been achieved in the past decade and so much will be possible in the next - if the money can be found.

As I hand over to my successor, John O'Leary, I would like to thank you all, for ideas, support, help, criticism and friendship. I hope he will get as much pleasure and satisfaction as I have from editing your house magazine, from trying to provide for you a service that can make the job you do a little easier. I wish him and you all the very best. Above all, I hope the government comes to value you more. It shows some signs. Let us hope they are real.