Medical emergency

If the independent Buckingham University can start a private school of medicine, it could have a seismic effect on the state system. Lucy Hodges visits an institution in the vanguard of change

Twenty-eight years ago, the tiny independent Buckingham University was created by Professor Max Beloff to challenge the state monopoly of higher education in the UK. Located in the small but leafy market town from which it takes its name, it was treated as a pariah by the rest of the university system because it charged fees, recruited right-wing academics, had Lady Thatcher as its chancellor, and educated the children of rich people from abroad.

Twenty-eight years ago, the tiny independent Buckingham University was created by Professor Max Beloff to challenge the state monopoly of higher education in the UK. Located in the small but leafy market town from which it takes its name, it was treated as a pariah by the rest of the university system because it charged fees, recruited right-wing academics, had Lady Thatcher as its chancellor, and educated the children of rich people from abroad.

Today Buckingham is not doing anything very different. It is still very small, with an annual turnover of only £10m, and has just 80 staff and 800 students, who pay fees of £10,000 a year. Its academics tend to be refugees from the state-funded system and 75 per cent of the well-heeled students come from overseas. One of its visiting professors is Chris Woodhead, the former Chief Inspector of Schools, who is well known for his criticism of state education.

It would probably be fair to say that the university has not yet lived up to the hopes of the signatories of a declaration published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in the late Sixties calling for an independent university "to develop its own forms of excellence which could rival the best in the existing system". And Buckingham's original vision of becoming an American-style liberal arts college has not been realised because the bottom fell out of the student market when the polytechnics became universities. It has, therefore, evolved into a vocational university, teaching mainly law, business, accounting, economics and IT. But things are changing. The new vice-chancellor, Dr Terence Kealey, a bouncy biochemist from Cambridge, has won the support of Tony Blair and is expanding the place. He is hoping to create the United Kingdom's first independent medical school, or at least the first independent medical school since the 18th century. "We have to grow," he says.

At the moment Britain has no medical schools outside the state-funded system. But private medical schools exist off-shore in the Caribbean, notably St George's in Grenada. These are used by American students who can't get into medical schools in the United States.

The idea is that Buckingham medical school would be a high quality institution - certainly of a similar quality to existing British medical schools - and would mop up the students who are turned down by state-funded medical schools despite having three As at A-level. It would charge American-style fees of, say, £20,000 a year, and there would be no problem raising money for the buildings, according to Dr Kealey, because money would be forthcoming from the City of London. The hope is that it would attract academics who like the idea of the freedom and flexibility that come with an independent institution.

Buckingham is already attracting more attention. Two months ago, Prince Charles visited the campus. At about the same time, the Quality Assurance Agency approved its teaching. Today, the university announces that it is to be the new home of Professor Alan Smithers's Centre for Education and Employment Research, which carries out mainstream studies for government, trade unions and foundations.

At the same time, Buckingham is creating a new education department, headed by Professor Anthony O'Hear, a philosopher who left Bradford University in despair, which aims to transform British education. "I think education has lost its way in what I would call the maintained universities," says Professor Smithers, who is an adviser to the Commons select committee on education. "Universities probably accept too much of their money from the government. The government, quite reasonably, wants to make sure that the money is spent wisely, but the kinds of things it is doing perversely have the opposite effect of what's intended."

Education is a practical subject, according to Professor Smithers. "The point is to make education happen better," he says. But education departments in universities are having to behave like, say, physics or history departments. That means they have to perform in the research assessment exercise (RAE) to attract funding. And to secure a high score in the rae you have to show that your academics have written articles in peer-reviewed journals. These articles may be read by only a handful of people, and they may be impossibly theoretical and turgid, but they make the difference between a department that has kudos and money and a department that is seen as second-rate and is closed down.

The department that Smithers has come from at Liverpool University was closed because it scored only a three in the RAE, which meant it attracted no government funds for research. In the last RAE, Professor Smithers's research centre was described as a "service department". Professor Smithers says he doesn't know what that means. But on all other indicators his centre is successful, attracting £250,000 of income annually and used by clients as diverse as the National Union of Teachers, the Department for Education and Skills, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Nuffield Foundation.

Buckingham's education department wants to produce research that informs public debate. It also wants to revolutionise teacher training. A new postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) has been created by Professor O'Hear. This PGCE, which is essentially school-based, has been approved by the Headmasters Conference for use in independent schools. The hope is that the Teacher Training Agency will also approve it for use by state schools.

"The established model of a PGCE tends to promote an ideology of personalised learning and child-centredness," says Professor O'Hear. "It is concerned with issues such as gender, race and cultural background.

"Really, education ought not to be about this kind of social engineering but the transmission of the best that has been thought and known. Everybody should be given a common inheritance."

In its first year of operation, which is just ending, the new PGCE had 13 students, all from independent schools and all sponsored by those schools. Their fees of £2,000 were paid for them. They visited Buckingham for three sessions of three days each and were mentored at school. While at Buckingham they attended talks given by, for example, John McIntosh, head of the London Oratory School to which Tony Blair sent his sons, John Venning, head of English at St Paul's, and Kenneth Baker, the former Conservative Education Secretary.

The thread running through every initiative is that it should be self-financing so that it is free of government interference. The university is proud to have raised £1.35m last year. Smithers's research centre is self-financing. Anthony O'Hear is the Garfield Weston professor of philosophy. His salary is paid by that charitable trust. Chris Woodhead is the Sir Stanley Kalms professor of education, paid for by the man who set up the chain store Dixons.

The academics have more plans to raise money and to find gaps in the education market for their courses. Professor O'Hear, for example, is hoping to run a course for people who want to read the greatest books that have been written - The Iliad, The Odyssey, and books by Plato, Virgil, St Augustine, Dante and Shakespeare. "We would end up with either Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina," he says.

The hope is that the course could be put on in London. If Buckingham managed to attract 30 students paying £3,000 a year, that would produce a lot of money for the university and to pay staff. Students on the course could be middle- aged or retired, or students on their gap year, or Americans on their junior year abroad.

"I think this is the way the education department will be kept real because it will be doing things that people value so much they will pay for it," says Smithers. "What happens in most education departments is that money comes down through various bureaucratic processes and then the energy and effort goes into fulfilling those processes rather than responding directly to what is needed and making it happen."

Smithers would like to see the British university system going that way. It is good to have a plurality of funders, he says. In that way you have flexibility, and universities aren't being made to do lots of things that those who take a large sum of money from the government have to.

Physically, the Buckingham campus is a collection of buildings that the university has bought and refurbished or built from scratch with money from private donations, all set around a manicured lawn and the River Ouse. Thus there is a hall of residence called Hailsham House and the business school is the Rothschild Building.

Students form a deep attachment to the place, says Emil Vassilev, who has an MBA from Buckingham and is now working as a sabbatical officer in the publicity department. "The thing about Buckingham is that it's a very difficult place to leave," he says. "There is virtually no crime, no racial tension. It's Buckingham's magic. It's very quiet, you can make friends easily and there are no drugs."

With the advent of top-up fees, Buckingham is going to be on an increasingly equal footing with the rest of the university system. If it can really expand, add on a medical school and escape its right-wing label, there is no reason why it should not become a respected university.

education@independent.co.uk