Coasting universities?

With seaside holidays approaching for many, it’s worth a look at a straw in the wind – in this instance, comment on Twitter about the concept of a coasting university.

I wonder if we'll get a definition of a 'coasting' university or college? Ministers are definitely using the term. http://t.co/VXct4WNfy6

— Andy Westwood (@AndyWWestwood) June 30, 2015

The phrase clearly is drawn on the notion of a coasting school. A helpful blog post from Professor Michael Jopling at Northumbria University discusses coasting schools. The meaning of that phrase has undergone a transition from schools ‘at risk of failure’ in 2007 to “the ones whose results have either flat-lined or where they haven’t improved as much as they could have” according to David Cameron in 2011. That’s clearly a raising of the bar.

It’s a fantastically problematic concept. If you look at value added, you get quite a different picture of which universities are doing best – here’s the top 6 on value added from the Guardian league table 2015:

Gloucestershire	7.7
Abertay Dundee	7.5
Edinburgh Napier	7.5
Liverpool John Moores	7.4
Bournemouth	7.0
Bradford	7.0

I don’t imagine that these are the Universities that government ministers have in mind when they think of top universities, but they’re setting the pace when it comes to not coasting.

There’s another problem with the concept, which is about the nature of higher education.

School education – up to the age 16 – is compulsory. Like it or not, you have to go to school. It gives you the chance to learn and to be able to play a part in society and the economy, and adds to the country’s capital. It makes sense to regard the state as a stakeholder, and therefore for the state to have a concern about the standard of what goes on. (nb that I’m not saying I agree with what the government are doing … and I do know that my characterisation of the point of compulsory education is a limited one.)

But higher education is different. Yes, there are high level skills and knowledge, tested by examinations, but it’s much more than that. It’s about changing the nature of the person who studies; about giving them a new way of understanding and engaging with the world; about become a complex actor in a complex environment. University helps you to change the world, not just to be a good citizen. I’m actually quite bothered by the notion that the state might decide what sort of university is right, because this puts a potential brake on what Acemoglu and Robinson call creative destruction.

I’m not trying to argue that all universities are the same; they clearly aren’t. But a slogan which supports the notion that there’s a clear and easily understood purpose in higher education, that ranking universities is easy, and that there’s a simple approach to telling which ones need to do better is just plain wrong.

I do hope that it’s just the impending holidays getting into ministerial speechwriting …

Value for money?

Earlier this week the BBC headlined a survey conducted by ComRes on their behalf which asked final year undergraduates three questions about their university experiences.  The headline figures were:

1 Which of the following comes closest to your opinion about your university education?
It has been value for money	521	52%
It has not been value for money	398	40%
Don't know	82	8%

2 To what extent do you feel that university has prepared you for the future?
A great deal	256	26%
Somewhat	576	58%
Not really	136	14%
Not at all	29	3%
Don't know	4	0%

If you could start university again, which of the following do you think you would do?
I would take the same course at the same University	458	46%
I would take the same course at a different university	181	18%
I would take a different course at the same university	166	17%
I would take a different course at a different university	117	12%
I would not go to university at all	34	3%
Don't know	46	5%

The headlines were clear – 40% of final year students didn’t think that their university education had been value for money. And with this being the first cohort to have paid £9k per year fees, that’s quite a story.

The sector response – if that is what a quote from the Chief Executive of Universities UK amounts to – was to defend universities’ record, drawing on the National Student Survey results.  Nicola Dandridge was quoted by the BBC as saying “The last national student survey reported that 86% of students were satisfied overall with their course. It shows that universities across the UK are responding to student feedback and working hard to improve the academic experience.”

The 2015 NSS results are set to be published by HEFCE on 12 August, and it’s a fair bet that many universities will be watching carefully not only because of their significance for league tables, but to see what effect the £9k fees have on student responses.

It seems very likely that there will be an effect: the ComRes survey broke down answers by subject of study and by region of university, and in Scotland, which does not charge fees to Scottish students, fully 79% said that their university education had been value for money, compared with 52% across all responses.

But there’s other interesting data too.  The third question is revealing: if they had their time again, only 3% of respondents would not go to university at all.  63% would go to the same university, with about a quarter of these opting for a different subject. 64% would choose the same subject, mostly at the same university.

	Same university	Different university
Same course	46%	18%
Different course	17%	12%

This tells me quite a different story – fewer than half of students made the right university/course choice; but most got at least one of the variables right.  So, much to be done on advice and guidance at application, but less of a panic, it seems to me, about the perceived value of higher education.  

Maybe the need to get this right will push post-qualification application back up the agenda.  If universities focused on the needs of students and learners rather than their own staff convenience, students might make better university and course choices, and so be happier. Just a thought …

The Groves of Academe

The world of higher education owes a lot to ancient Greece – the very term academic derives from the name of the place where Plato taught.  And the continuing saga around Greece’s economic and political travails look like a path to exit from the Euro and possibly the EU. If this happened, what would be the impact on UK HE?

First, some numbers: non-UK EU students account for just over 5% of the UK total student population (about 125k out of just shy of 2.3m in 2013-14, according to HESA).  Greece contributes the fourth highest number – just over 10.5k, about 8% of the non-UK EU students in the UK.

Data from HESA

The other top domiciles are Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, and Cyprus, which tells me that in Greece, Ireland and Cyprus going to the UK is a significant cultural pattern (think of the different populations of those countries.)

A decent number of these students are undergraduates.  Greece in 2013-14 had the third highest number of new undergraduates – just over 5000.  As EU citizens, undergraduates are eligible for student loans form the SLC in the same way as UK students, and this enables the continuation of what has been a pattern of EU students studying in the UK for their first degrees.

Data from HESA again

The same countries form the top 6 – again showing that there’s quite a habit of studying in the UK in Greece, Ireland and Cyprus.

So what would Greek EU exit mean?  Hypothetically, of course.

Without access to SLC funding, it’s unlikely that as many Greek students would travel to the UK to study. 5000 new undergraduates is the intake of a large university, so the impact would be felt over the years as fewer students applied to UK universities.

And there’d be immediate questions to address.  The politics make this interesting.  There aren’t any rules or procedures for a country leaving the EU, and my guess is that the politics of such a change would be disorderly and dramatic rather than with a planned transition.  So, just for a change, there wouldn’t be clear policy from the UK government.

And universities are bound by rules and regulations on this. See, for example, the University of Exeter, which has a very clear policy on fee status for EU accession candidates. If a country stopped being a member of the EU, then the natural consequence is that the students from that country would become, in terms of fee status, overseas. Universities can choose to set whatever fees they like, and so could continue to charge the home fee for such students, but since students would become ineligible for state funding, current Greek students would in any case face immediate financial uncertainty and pressure.

Visa status is a further uncertainty. Would Greek students need tier 4 visas? It would be tricky for the current government to be relaxed about this. My understanding is that the direction of UKVI policy is that overseas students who need a visa extension would be required to leave the UK to apply for the extension.  So overall my guess is that Greek students would need tier 4 visas; and would be asked to leave the UK in order to apply for such visas from outside. What chance that many would do this and come back?

This is obviously speculation – Greece hasn’t (yet) left the Euro and the EU, and maybe they won’t. But it might be worth universities checking how many students they have from Greece – if there’s a student support and a financial policy question coming, knowing the scale of it in advance might be wise.

Duff degrees

My recent reading on trips to and from a client has included the very informative and entertaining Degree Mills by “FBI Agent Allen Ezell (Retired) and John Bear PhD”.  It makes interesting reading, particularly alongside the news item last week about the government’s “crackdown on fake degrees”.

A good book. ISBN 978-1-61614-507-1

It seems that BIS has asked HEDD - Higher Education Degree Datacheck - “to proactively address issues concerning bogus institutions and the misuse of the word ‘university’ as well as to tackle the related area of degree fraud. It aims to reduce the burgeoning number of unaccredited institutions by increasing prosecutions through investigation and awareness-raising.”

The word University is a protected term within UK trade law, meaning, broadly, that if you use it without actually being a university you are liable for some sort of trouble. Exactly what trouble varies, as enforcement is usually down to trading standards teams within local authorities.

Compare this with the USA, where University is not a protected term, but those who run degree mills, when prosecuted, are prosecuted for fraud, with lengthy prison sentences.

Ezell and Bear’s book shows that there’s a real problem in the USA – with different approaches in individual states, and no monopoly accrediting body. Indeed, one of the interesting things that seems to be happening is that as well as degree mills (that is, organisations which sell degrees without requiring academic work) there are now also accreditation mills – fake accrediting agencies which give a veneer of respectability to degree mills.  And of course these can be one and the same operation.

The UK’s infrastructure in this respect is strong – the QAA does provide a good check on standards, and the Privy Council via HEFCE, is jealous of the term university. But there’s no room for complacency: the growth in private providers means that knowing all the UK degree awarders becomes more difficult, and if you’re not in the sector, how easy is it to tell if a place is a university?

The UK can be a plausible base for such operations: Ezell and Bear list institutions of which they are suspicious (25 pages of them in their book), and there’s a fair few in the UK. Here’s a selection to give a flavour: Abingdon University, Ashford University, Athenaeum University, Chelsea University, Lamberhurst University, Somerset University, University of Doncaster, Westhampton University. Now some of these look odd – but without looking on the web are you absolutely sure that some of these aren't legitimate?

Anther practice which encourages degree mills is the habit – which I, haven’t come across in the UK – of employment contracts which give a higher salary for a higher qualification. The financial benefit of having a master’s degree or a doctorate becomes very real, and the ROI for a fake degree – if you’re not found out – is pretty good.

Ezell and Bear have a chapter, though, which really works for me: Animals with degrees. As part of the prosecution, it seems that investigators have made a habit of buying degrees for animals. And so there’s a catalogue of qualified pets of various sorts – my favourite is Dr Zoe D Katze.  And if you kept a snake, wouldn’t it be great to have a Mamba, MA MBA?

Zoe D Katze, PhD

HEDD are doing an important service, and it’s good that BIS are making this a priority.  But unless the will to prosecute is there, is it going to make a huge difference? I know from experience that local authorities do not put tackling the production of fake degree certificates at the top of their priority list, and they’re getting ever more stretched. Time to treat degree fraud as a more serious crime?

Shut that door!

One outcome of the election which seems very clear is the continuation of previous Home Office policy towards international students. This won’t be welcome news to universities.

Firstly, the Conservative manifesto:

We will reform the student visa system with new measures to tackle abuse and reduce the numbers of students overstaying once their visas expire. Our action will include clamping down on the number of so-called ‘satellite campuses’ opened in London by universities located elsewhere in the UK, and reviewing the highly trusted sponsor system for student visas. And as the introduction of exit checks will allow us to place more responsibility on visa sponsors for migrants who overstay, we will introduce targeted sanctions for those colleges or businesses that fail to ensure that migrants comply with the terms of their visa.(p30, We will continue to cut immigration from outside the EU)

Secondly, the ministerial team: Theresa May reappointed as Home Secretary; James Brokenshire reappointed, but with a narrower brief, covering immigration only (in the last government he had responsibility for Immigration and Security). Both have proven unresponsive to lobbying on the question of overseas student numbers and their inclusion in the net migration targets.

There are three specific actions:

• Reviewing the highly trusted sponsor (HTS) system, under which universities are allocated the right to sponsor a certain number of students

• ‘Clamping down’ on satellite campuses in London – that is, London campuses operated by universities outside London. Presumably the argument is that away from the main administrative operation, there’s a greater risk that students will not be ‘genuine’ students, whatever that is held to mean

• Placing more responsibility on sponsors for students who overstay their visas – presumably requiring universities to keep tabs on where their students are, and where necessary taking direct steps to ensure that they leave the UK when their visas expire.

My guess is that the first thing to happen will be the HTS review, which will lead to more stringent criteria for achieving highly trusted status. And several universities either having their HTS status withdrawn, or choosing not to reapply. I've posted before on the dependency of UK universities on overseas student fee income, and removal of HTS is likely to have real and deleterious consequences.

Is that what the fuss is really about?

And on the same theme, but more positively for universities, London First published today a report on the benefit to the UK of London-based international students. (See also the BBC news report.) Using what looks like a pretty rigorous methodology, PwC calculate that overseas students at London universities (not at satellite campuses, mark you) generate £2.8 billion annually for the UK economy, and draw on £540 million annually of public services, a net annual benefit of £2.3 billion.

The report is well worth reading, and makes some sensible recommendations to government including, crucially, not counting overseas students within the net migration total. The problem here is that the Conservative manifesto is very specific; it’s an area where 2010 manifesto commitments weren't met, leading to pressure to deliver this time; and the narrative is tied in with the question of Europe, and the in-out referendum. I’m fairly sure that the Prime Minister doesn't want to the UK to leave the EU; but he’s calculating that to win the referendum he needs to be seen to be tough.

Difficult times ahead. It would take a brave university to plan on growth in overseas student numbers; it might be wise to work on a few contingency plans too.

Two's company

An interesting story in Inside Higher Ed raises the question of universities sharing administrative resources. Two two-year Colleges - Terra State Community College and Northwest State Community College – have agreed to establish a joint organisation which will provide:

a central administrative structure but, at least for the foreseeable future, no direct governance oversight of the community colleges themselves. The Northwest State and Terra State governing boards each will appoint two trustees to lead the new "regional council of government," as the new structure is formally known under Ohio law.

According to the press release from the two Colleges

The move does not merge the colleges themselves, rather it creates a centralized district and consolidates certain administrative positions for both colleges. The District office is expected to be housed at the University of Toledo Scott Park campus, in alignment with the recently-signed consortium agreement with the University of Toledo. Both Northwest State and Terra State are approximately 40 miles from the new central office.

And some very specific details about implementation:

The new central office is expected to be up and running by July 1, 2015. The first positions to move to the district office are the vice president of academic affairs and the chief financial officer. Terra State’s vice president of academic affairs is set to retire at the end of June, and Northwest State’s current vice president of academic affairs will move to the District office and assume the role for both schools. Similarly, Terra State’s CFO will move to the district office and will work collaboratively with Northwest State’s chief fiscal and administrative officer. Other positions will be phased in over several years through attrition, including a chief executive officer (separate position from the college presidents); chief operation officer; chief workforce development officer; and marketing and public relations, human resources, and information technology functions. No faculty positions are affected by the change.

Some faculty at the Colleges, according to Inside Higher Ed, suspect that this is a precursor to merger with the University of Toledo, and from a distance this does look like a possible outcome.

Campuses in Archbold and Fremont; a shared office in Toledo

More generally, and in the UK context, university governing bodies and vice-chancellors do on occasion wonder whether a sharing of back-office resources between universities would promote efficiency. On the surface, it sounds like a good idea, but in practice it has proven very difficult to do.

There are many reasons for this, but most boil down to the question of institutional autonomy. There’s little problem in sharing services which can be tailored to meet the needs of the partner institutions: for example, the Careers Group at the University of London is a brilliant example of universities sharing costs to get more than they could individually, but with local delivery looking and feeling different for each partner. But in many cases efficiency in delivery of services comes from common policies and procedures, which are often felt to be a component of institutional autonomy.

In addition, there’s the question of whether a partner could reasonably withdraw from a sharing once started. So, for instance, a shared Director of Finance could not effectively deliver for a partner institution which wished to have second thoughts about the arrangement: the space and time needed for the doubtful institution to think it through could not be given since the Director of Finance would have a clear duty to tell the other partner straightaway of this material change in circumstances. Once you start sharing strategic management you’re effectively merged.

Finally, there’s the issue of effectiveness. Many of the services which could be shared – that is, are transactional and routine to the extent that they don’t impact on the academic character of a university – rarely have the scale only within universities to make sharing worthwhile. Consider payroll: definitely shareable without harming autonomy, but it is done on a bigger scale beyond HE – why look to another university for payroll when the benefits of scale will come from much larger private operations?

The collaboration reported by Inside Higher Ed seems to deal with some of these issues (that is, it builds on an existing collaboration, and within a framework of law and regulation which perhaps means that autonomy is not such a pressing concern), and by working in harmony with planning retirements some of the managerial issues are dealt with. But I’d be very surprised if the governing bodies of the colleges hadn’t got at least an eye on merger down the line.

The people have spoken ...

And I’m not sure that many expected exactly the result we’ve got. There’s lots of things to be said about the detailed HE policy implications of the election result, and I might well say some of them in due course. But for now I just want to set out a few thoughts about the bigger political context – a small majority, Europe, Scotland and austerity.

Nicholson St, Edinburgh. Spot the Union Jack. #indyref2 on its way.

Firstly, the small majority. It won’t take many rebellious Conservative MPs to create a problem for the government. One or two voting against something won’t make a difference – the opposition doesn’t coalesce around any obvious point of view for that to be the case – but 20-30 rebels could well defeat the government. So there’ll be careful management of parliamentary business and it may well be that more contentious issues are shelved if they can be. Some university issues definitely count as contentious – 2010 Millbank riots anybody? – so HE issues that need parliamentary discussion or votes might not be flavour of the month.

Secondly, Europe. One of the ways that the Prime Minister will keep his MPs happy is to progress EU negotiations quickly in the hope that by 2017 there’s a good deal enabling a positive referendum campaign to stay within the EU. The problem is that what counts a good deal depends very much on where you’re sitting, and the benefits of Europe that accrue to HE – student mobility, research funding – might not look so beneficial if you’re worried about public spending and migration. So there could be a bit of planning blight around things European which might be tricky.

Thirdly, Scotland. I’ve been spending some time in Edinburgh recently and it’s obvious that something has changed in how lots of people in Scotland think and feel ab out the UK, its politics and government. The post-referendum response by the UK government was a fudge, and contributed to yesterday's overwhelming SNP victory in Scotland. If the issue is taken seriously, then pro-union views might yet find a way to keep Scotland within the UK, but I wouldn’t bet on it. And as HE is a devolved matter, any discussions around constitutional change or devolution will have an impact. No matter which part of the UK you’re in, this will affect you.

And finally, money. Even before the election campaign we knew that there were substantial further cuts planned to government spending. In England, BIS will not be immune; and the consequential impact upon budgets in devolved administrations (even if we assume that the Barnett formula will be maintained) will be real too. So the question of the sustainability of student funding (fees, grants, depending on where you are) and the amount of research funding will become pressing issues. But, see above, contentious issues might have to be shelved because of parliamentary problems. So research funding is likely to get clobbered.

Some of this would be true no matter what the outcome of the election, but it does seem to me that parliamentary politics hasn’t stopped being interesting for higher education yet...