'Two-tier' threat to university degrees

Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, plans to strip many former polytechnics of their ability to award PhDs and master's degrees by removing their research funding.

In a radical extension to existing policy that has already led to the reduction of research funds to some new universities, Mr Clarke plans to create distinct teaching universities that do not carry out research and, therefore, cannot award PhDs.

Critics claim this will be yet another step towards creating a two-tier education system in Britain, not unlike the one in the United States. They claim some universities, like the US Ivy League, will attract the lion's share of the funding and academic kudos, while others struggle unaided to survive.

Others insist the step is simply an admission that moves to convert the former polytechnics into universities were made at the expense of high-quality teaching and vocational training. It is this view that is thought to have swayed Mr Clarke as he prepares to publish the Government's review of higher education in January. He has already let it be known that there has been a "sense of drift in the definition of a university".

From next year, the Higher Education Funding Council for England will allocate only small proportions of funding for research to some of the former polytechnics while established research universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College, London, will receive significant research budgets.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, believes high-quality teaching is linked to research and that removing research from some universities would undermine their ability to provide a comparable education to students and attract applicants.

"Breaking the link between teaching and research would lead inexorably to a two-tier system. Those universities allowed by the Government to undertake research would become Ivy League-type instit- utions, while the others would be consigned to a second tier."