Baroness Delyth Morgan - Association of University Directors of Estates Conference
Liverpool University - 17 March 2008

Good morning everyone. It's a great pleasure for me to be here today and to have this chance to meet you all.
I must begin with a couple of words of apology.

The first is on behalf of Bill Rammell, who was due to be speaking to you this morning. Unfortunately, he has been detained in London because of some announcements about further education which are being made this morning and about which you will no doubt hear later on.
The second word of apology is about myself. For those of you who don't know me, my name's Delyth Morgan and, since February, I've been the Minister responsible for intellectual property, the quality of higher education and the Research Assessment Exercise. I'm also Minister for Students, which means I lead on the Government's student listening campaign and the newly-created National Student Forum.
What I don't have Ministerial responsibility for is the higher education estate. In fact, this is an area for which no Minister in the Government has specific responsibility. And I'm all too painfully aware that in this room this morning we have gathered together what's probably the greatest collection of expertise on university real estate that this country can muster.
To make matters worse, the subject I've been asked to speak on is “the future of university estates”.
Forgive me for being somewhat embarrassed by this fact. Because I do know exactly how important the university estate is. Let's face it, if it wasn't there, we wouldn't have anywhere to put our higher education system.
So this is what I propose to do.

I'm going to spend my time this morning talking around some of the issues of general higher education policy that, it seems to me, must now or will soon have an impact on the work that you do. But I want to leave lots of time at the end for you to ask any questions that you want to. And I also want there to be time for you to tell me about the sort of issues that in your own experience have or will have most effect on the work that you do from day to day.
I hope to leave Liverpool much better informed than I arrived. If I play my cards right, I may even end up being the Minister responsible for listening to university directors of estates, as well as students.

I'm going to start in my comfort-zone and work gradually outwards.
So first, let's consider for a little the main thing, in my and many people's opinions, that universities are for. Students.
I know that for estates staff students can sometimes seem no be little more than a mathematical problem. A certain number of students must be fitted into a certain space so many times a day. Factor in the need to ensure access for disabled staff and students and to comply with health and safety legislation, and the sums can get very complicated indeed.
And the more people go to university, the more difficult the sums get. I'm told that the amount of space per student in our higher education system has fallen by 12 per cent since 2002.
That rate of change would not be sustainable if it continued into the medium term. And in a minute I'm going to suggest some ways in which the circle of finite physical capacity and the absolute national necessity of raising participation in higher education can be squared.

There are three important factors in this of which we need to take account.
The first is that there is a need to maintain and improve the quality of the learning space on campus. There is plenty of evidence to show, at all levels of the education system, that attractive surroundings have a direct impact on the quality of the learning that goes on in them. To put the conclusion I draw from that into a single sentence, it's counterproductive to try to cram students like sardines into dingy seminar rooms.
And I strongly suspect that students are becoming increasingly less likely to stand for it. The enormous increases in university income that recent years have seen have been fuelled in part, a very important part, by students being willing to invest in their own futures. The quality of the return on that investment will depend to a significant extent on how good or otherwise the quality of their learning experience is.

I'm going to permit myself a small digression here. I know of more than one institution that bans staff from putting posters on their office walls, even though they undoubtedly brighten up the learning environment and often provide useful physical illustrations of the points being made in class. This is usually done allegedly - I choose that word carefully – for health and safety reasons. This leaves me at a loss for words.

I have plenty of difficulty with the concept that we should regard students just like any other consumers. In my book, a person's higher education is too important to be reduced to a pure commercial transaction. But at the same time a student who is contributing to the cost of their own tuition through fees has every right to insist on what they're paying for.
One of the many things I'll be interested to see over the coming weeks and months is the extent to which the learning environment features among the issues raised by the National Student Forum. I hope that you, too, will keep an eye on this and be prepared to react to any concerns that members of the Forum raise.

The need to expand higher education is great. That means both getting a larger and more diverse cohort of 18 year-olds into our universities. But the number of 18 year-olds in the population is already falling and will continue to do so over the coming years. 70 per cent of the people who will comprise our working-age population in 2020 have already left school. And yet the Leitch Review's analysis of our future high-level skills needs suggests that by then we will need at least 40 per cent of our workforce to be qualified to higher education level. That's about 10 whole percentage points more than the current level.
If all of those were to take traditional full-time on-campus courses, we would need more brown-field sites than exist, more builders than there are in Poland, and more money than there is in the bank.
There are a number of possible ways round that conundrum, and I suspect that all of them represent quite good news for Directors of Estates.

The first is to expand the number of part-time students. As you know, part-time numbers have been increasing now for a number of years. They must continue to do so. But I don't think that can ever be the whole solution. I suspect that there's an event-horizon to part-time study. All logic suggests that the number of working adults who can afford to take the cut in earnings that studying and working part-time implies is limited.
That's why my colleagues at DIUS and I are so insistent on encouraging universities to form much closer relationships with employers in their areas. And more than that, to be prepared to look much more flexibly than ever before at what learning is delivered, how and where. The institutions that derive most benefit from helping to meet the skills needs of the 21st century will be those that respond best to this challenge. Among other things, they will be the universities that find ways to take learning off the estate, away from the campus and into the workplace itself.
Here are also more traditional ways of finding extra space for students. One of them is by working through further education colleges, of which about 50 are currently providing higher education courses. That's just one of the ways in which the Government wants to see more extensive collaboration over the coming years between the further and higher education sectors.
In parallel with these developments, we recognize that there is also a need to increase the physical capacity of the university estate.

The week before last, John Denham launched a consultation exercise, to be led by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, on ways to open up opportunities for towns and cities to bid for new university campuses and centres of higher education. Our aim in doing this is to find ways to extend higher education facilities to parts of the country in which they have so far been, if not absent, then at least sparse.
Clearly, part of the purpose of this initiative is to make it easier for higher education to reach out into communities and bring what they have to offer to learners in their places of employment.
As you're well aware, this isn't asking universities to do anything they're not doing already, but rather it's about reinforcing their efforts. Since 2003, 17 new higher education centres have been opened or have had funding committed. My colleague Bill Rammell had the pleasure of opening one of them, a new postgraduate medical institute, in Colchester only last Friday.
The Government wants to enable universities to increase the pace of development and expects to have 20 more opened or agreed over the next six years, subject to high quality bids.
Filled to capacity, the new centres could provide study places for up to 10,000 students.

I want now to move slightly outwards from my comfort-zone, but not entirely outside it.
So far I've talked a lot about students. But I'd also like to say a word or two about the people who work, and especially teach, in universities. Since 1999 the Government has invested over £4,5 billion in the physical infrastructure of higher education institutions in England alone. And as John Denham announced in January, over the next spending period, which runs from this year until 2011, we will be spending £2,4 billion more. This investment has had a major impact on the sector and there is some, albeit anecdotal evidence that it has had a positive impact on the morale of academic staff.
That's all to the good. But I'd like to mention just three issues connected with the working environment that will continue to have to be considered and addressed.

First, numbers of research students in British universities have risen steeply in recent times, That's obviously a good thing, as is the fact that so many of them these days are able to gain experience of teaching undergraduates during their studies, But I know that for you this creates the headache of where to put them. I also know that institutions all over the country have found innovative ways of carving out some personal space for their postgraduates. That's something that we all should welcome because it has a qualitative impact on their research experience and also, because pay rates for postgraduates who teach generally remain very low, it helps make them feel a valuable part of the team.
Second, I hope it goes without saying that anyone who has a job also has a right to proper working conditions. They need to include a decent workspace if we are to perform as well as we are able. I know that there's been much debate in some universities over the past few years about how to reconcile this fact with the pressure son space with which many institutions have to cope.

We've seen experiments in hot-desking for permanent university staff, about which I have some reservations.
I don't know about you, but I'd certainly be troubled by the prospect of the professor of film studies arriving late in the morning and wailing “nobody puts baby in the corner!”.
Sometimes this approach can make staff feel less attached to their institution, but sometimes they can work. And sometimes there just isn't any alternative. A lot of the private sector hot-desks in order to accommodate more staff in less space. Back in London, my own department does the same – although I have to admit that no one except me has tried sitting at my desk recently. And I'll bet that no one has tried sitting at your vice-chancellor's, either.
Third, I'd like also to mention the needs of emeritus staff. Retirement is a nightmare for many university teachers. Among other things, it creates the problem of where to put all the books and papers previously kept in their offices. University librarians are as pressed for space as everyone else and are often unwilling or unable to accept them, even as gifts. The prospect of losing contact with the academic world is also often feared by those who are nearing retirement, and understandably so. But retired academics can still have vital contributions to make to knowledge, and it defies logic not to let them.
As, on average, we live longer and are able to remain physically and intellectually active for longer, the potential contribution of emeritus scholars to their universities and their disciplines grows. As with postgraduates, I am aware of institutions all over the country that are starting to make room, if only in the form of a locker and a shared desk, for their emeritus staff. And this, too, is in my opinion something very much to be welcomed.

I want to move now a little further afield and talk about the issue of sustainability. I find it very positive that this issue is one of the major themes of your conference this year.
You all know how seriously the Government takes the challenges of sustainable development and climate change. Our work is not only devoted to encouraging our partners in Europe and countries further afield. Across a range of domestic policies, from the use of the low energy light bulb and the funding of research into developing new and cleaner energy sources, to the installation in Government buildings of lighting systems attached to motion sensors.
And you'll also be well aware that the need for universities to make their contribution to this agenda for change featured prominently in this year's HEFCE grant letter.
Universities really do have a major contribution to make here. They're leading research into the development of greener products and practices. But they also have a huge impact on the environment in their own right.

The latest figures we have show that universities spend about £300 million a year on energy alone. They consume almost 8 million kilowatts of energy and 26 million cubic litres of water. HEFCE estimates that all this amounts to 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.
So there are many good reasons to encourage them to become greener.
Sustainability in all its forms – economic, social and environmental is vital for the success of the sector – and this applies equally to the estate.
Responding to climate change represents an exciting opportunity in terms of doing things smarter, in ways that attract staff, students and funding, improve the quality of life and working environments, reduce costs, improve reputations and anticipate future legislation. The role of higher education is rightly very wide ranging – equipping students with the necessary skills, research and knowledge transfer, policy development and playing a leadership role in society's thinking about these issues.
The recent report from Universities UK contains some good examples of what's going on in higher education, even though it also attracted some criticism for not being challenging enough in terms of what the sector can do.

I'm very pleased that HEFCE have just agreed to join with this Association in funding a project to develop an environmental assessment methodology for university buildings. This will be developed by May 2009, and will make assessing and improving the environmental performance of construction projects quicker, easier and cheaper. The Building Research Establishment are working on this and you in the Association of University Directors of Estates have committed £50,000 to it.
The last issue I want to raise this morning brings many of the themes that I've been talking about together.
With the large-scale capital investment that we've seen in higher education over the past decade, there's been plenty of new building going on, and there still is. There's also been plenty of building refurbishment, the average cost of which in energy terms is only a fifth of that of new build.

Much of this building has been very good as well as very innovative and has helped to enhance the physical environment in its area. It's also been designed with the needs of staff and students alike firmly in mind. I could mention the example of UCL's new building , for its School of Slavonic and East European Studies. This building is designed both to incorporate the latest energy-saving devices and to fit into a very awkward space in a conservation area.
Or I could mention the huge new building project at Leeds University, which will add a new and twenty-first century dimension to arguably the most interesting and certainly the most diverse complex of university buildings in the country.
Or I could cite the exciting and innovative new library buildings that are about to be erected at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
Only fear of seeming to be trying to curry favour stops me from also mentioning some of the excellent building work that's gone on here at Liverpool, too.
Those are just three examples out of many that I could mention. But they're indicative of the new, innovative and responsible approach to management of the estate that we're seeing all over the country.

I'm going to close in a few moments so that I can have the chance to hear what you'd like to say. I'm aware, of course, that there are many issues that you have to face day to day that I haven't touched on. A notable one is the management of historic buildings, which I know brings all sorts of complex problems all of its own. The issues around university catering are a specialism in their own right. And car-parking, that perennial cause of anger and gnashing of teeth.
But the final point I do want to make is this. I wish you could have seen the look on my staff's faces when they found out that I was going to address the Association of University Directors of Estates. You all know very well that it doesn't sound like exactly the most scintillating event in the higher education calendar.
But the more I thought about it, the more I begged to differ.
OK, I'll be honest. The more I begged to differ a bit. I have to admit that the minutiae of TRAC accounting are far beyond me, just as they are beyond most people. But however it's done, the centrality of the estate to the whole higher education process ought to be clear to anyone with an interest in the sector. Without the estate, well and sustainably equipped, well managed and strategically planned, nothing else in the university system works. That goes for everything, from the slide projector in the first-year art seminar to the vice-chancellor's Daimler – about which he really ought to do something in the name of sustainability, too, by the way.

An effectively run estate, every time, is illustrative of a well-run university, one that's focused on meeting the needs of the future as well as those of the present.
So the very last thing I want to say is to express my gratitude for the work that all of you do and to look forward now to hearing some more about it.
Thank you.