The number of universities in the UK should be cut by up to half, and serious thought be given to making major research-intensives postgraduate-only, a former president of Universities UK has said.

Sir Roderick Floud will mark the end of his reign as provost of Gresham College in London on 19 June with a speech that will praise the expansion of UK higher education during the 50 years since the landmark Robbins report, but lament the ¡°messy, muddled non-system of higher education¡± in which it has occurred.

Sir Roderick, who was UUK president between 2001 and 2003 and is former vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, will argue that the UK now has far too many higher education institutions.

¡°We don¡¯t need two or more universities in each of our major cities, glowering at each other and competing to attract the attentions of businesses and local authorities¡­Is it really necessary to have two universities outside Brighton, separated only by a main road?¡± he is due to ask in his lecture.

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¡°In London, the situation is even more bizarre, with colleges which are all nominally part of the University of London all competing to remain independent from each other¡­We have conservatoires and art colleges which could perfectly well be faculties of a larger university,¡± he will say.

He believes the number of UK universities should be cut by ¡°at least one-third if not one-half¡±. However, ¡°experience suggests that universities will not make such radical changes for themselves, [while] the Higher Education Funding Council [for England] has remained supine in the face of the evidence that all this is unnecessary and inefficient.

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¡°The Welsh government has stepped in to reduce the number of universities in Wales; maybe the next English government will have to do the same.¡±

The merging of departments would also help to eliminate the ¡°duplication and waste¡± of having first-year lectures ¡°given at several different universities in the same city at roughly the same time¡± every year ¡°in an age when every student can download a lecture on to a tablet or smartphone¡±.

Freeing up lecturers to hold more seminars ¡°might [also] enhance student satisfaction, which is wilting under the combined impact of high tuition fees and the increasing lack of willingness of the research ¡®stars¡¯¡­to undertake undergraduate teaching¡±.

Sir Roderick will also suggest that major research intensives could concentrate entirely on postgraduate education.

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The Robbins committee dismissed the idea of barring undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge since it would be ¡°too great a change¡± to the universities¡¯ character in an era in which only 18 per cent of their students were postgraduates.

But now the proportion is ¡°much larger¡± and ¡°it is probably time for there to be a proper and open debate about it again¡±.

Sir Roderick will also condemn the research excellence framework as ¡°an expensive charade¡± since successive iterations result only in very small changes in the distribution of quality-related research funding.

All research funding should instead be distributed by the research councils, he believes.

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paul.jump@tsleducation.com