A curate's egg

Higher Education Minister Jo Johnson’s speech to Universities UK this morning presages an interesting few months. He set the scene for a forthcoming green paper, with four broad themes.

Firstly, teaching excellence. The idea of a Teaching Excellence Framework was set out in July; we now know a bit more, but I’m not certain that BIS have a clear idea yet. On the one hand, they know their target: it’s the idea of students’ workload, with the Minister comparing a busy engineering student at Bristol with a drop-out humanities student at ‘a prestigious London university’.  And there’s the notion of a disengagement contract.

The Minister quotes Palfreyman and Tapper; it’s worth looking at the full quote (from Reshaping the University: the Rise of the Regulated Market in Higher Education):

The last item paints a grim picture indeed of ‘limited learning on college campuses’ based on an extensive research project funded by the US Social Science Research Council (this is not some hysterical polemic to be brushed aside by the HE establishment): students’ ‘academic effort has dramatically declined in recent decades’ from some 40 hours per week in the 1960s to about 27 in the 2000s, and the ‘faculty cultures and orientations’ of ‘the college professoriate’ has much to answer for, since they have struck a ‘disengagement contract’ with their students (along the lines of ‘I don’t want to have to set and mark much by way of essays and assignments which would be a distraction from my research, and you don’t want to do coursework that would distract you from partying: so we’ll award you the degree as the hoped-for job ticket in return for compliance with minimal academic requirements and due receipt of fees’; and on the Party Pathway through HE as some HEIs come to resemble country clubs see Armstrong and Hamilton 2013).

The words quoted by the minister are italicised; the whole sentence shows that the authors were describing a US study of a US issue. There may well be issues with teaching in UK universities, but I’m not sure that it’s right to raise the temperature by scare stories from across the Atlantic. And increasing the marketization of HE is precisely moving us towards a US model, not away from it.

That aside, there’s also a little bit of muddle between what they’re seeking to encourage. There’s speak of excellence in teaching, assessment, feedback and employment skills. From students being busy, and the Minister’s recollections of university life (Oxford, Balliol, Modern History) we also get an implicit elision to contact hours. So do we care about students being busy, or being in the classroom? They’re not the same thing.

And there’s an emphasis on information to applicants so they can see what they get (presumably KIS hasn’t done the trick). It’ll be good to see what this actually looks like when the Green paper is published; but there’s also a clarity that it’ll matter. Success in TEF will enable a university to increase its £9k fee in line with inflation. Ouch!

Second up is Widening Participation. The Minister has two issues in his sights: participation by black and minority ethnic students with a Caribbean background, and participation by white British boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. Participation by both of these groups is low, and I think that the focus is spot on in this regard. And there’s talk of better data to enable this to be understood (be still my beating heart!)

Third up, a blast form the past. Having spotted that alternative providers need validation to be able to award degrees, and that this presents a potential conflict of interest, there’ll be a consultation on ‘alternative options for new providers if they do not want to go down the current validation route’. Which sounds an awful lot like the return of the CNAA. The old Gray’s Inn Road building looks like rental office space now – I wonder if that could be used …

Parts of the speech are excellent

And finally, a level playing field. There’s a recognition that the current regulatory environment is complicated, with different levels of scrutiny for different types of provider, and, now that HEFCE funds universities less and students themselves fund more, a more limited range of sanctions are available to regulators. If you only have a nuclear option, you never use it, which isn’t good for regulation. Wales has got this a bit better – by having HEFCW oversee access agreements, there’s a more nuanced approach possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if HEFCE and OFFA went the same way.

Another aspect of a level playing field is recognising that entry to the market implies the possibility of exit from the market, and the promise of consultation on ‘measures to require all providers to have protection measures in place so that students who benefit from greater choice and diversity do not lose out in the event of provider failure’. An insurance bond scheme for universities? It’s an idea from the travel market, but the costs of securing provision elsewhere would be potentially large: I’ll be interested to see how the economics of this play out.

So lots to come, and some good and necessary issues flagged, but there’s still woolly and ideological thinking in there.

Agenda setting

Not a minister

Not a Scottish footballer

Jo Johnson, Universities minister, gave a speech to UUK today.

When his appointment was announced back in May, I misread and thought they’d appointed Mo Johnston, former Scotland striker. Instead they went for a slightly blonder minister, whose speech shows that the government has an agenda for higher education.

The speech name-checked the government’s manifesto pledges, so it’s worth reminding ourselves about what they were:

We will ensure that if you want to go to university, you can

This year, for the first time, over half a million people have been admitted to our universities, including a record proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. From September, we will go even further, abolishing the cap on higher education student numbers and removing an arbitrary ceiling on ambition. Our reforms to university funding mean you do not have to pay anything towards tuition while studying, and only start paying back if you earn over £21,000 per year. We will ensure the continuing success and stability of these reforms, so that the interests of both students and taxpayers are fairly represented. We will also introduce a national postgraduate loan system for taught masters and PhD courses. We will ensure that universities deliver the best possible value for money to students: we will introduce a framework to recognise universities offering the highest teaching quality; encourage universities to offer more two-year courses; and require more data to be openly available to potential students so that they can make decisions informed by the career paths of past graduates.

Conservative manifesto 2015, p35

Like every good to-do list, it includes two things which have already been done – removing the cap on places at English universities and introducing postgraduate loans (again in England only – HE is a devolved matter). That leaves four pledges:

1. Ensuring the continuing success and stability of the student loan system
2. Introducing a framework for teaching quality
3. Encourage university to offer more two-year courses
4. Require more data to be available to students

‘Value for money’ is the catch all for the last three of these.

And then the speech itself:

… my focus will be on implementing 3 key manifesto pledges, so that we consolidate and build on these achievements:
• Firstly, lifting the cap on student numbers and widening participation, so that we remove barriers to ambition and meet the PM’s commitment to double the proportion of disadvantaged young people entering higher education by 2020 from 2009 levels.
• Secondly, delivering a teaching excellence framework that creates incentives for universities to devote as much attention to the quality of teaching as fee-paying students and prospective employers have a right to expect.
• Thirdly, driving value for money both for students investing in their education, and taxpayers underwriting the system, so that we ensure the continuing success and stability of these reforms.

Teaching at the heart of the system, speech by Jo Johnson to UUK, 1 July 2015

And he had a lot to say about this, highlighting:

• Data that shows students are less happy about choices they have made (but see my post on the ComRes data)
• The possibility of assembling data showing student engagement and specific salaries from different universities, and the need for greater transparency about how fees are spent
• The government’s commitment to support an increase in the number of high quality universities
• His worry that the graduate premium has reduced, and the need to find out why and do something about it
• The need for partnership with business to influence curriculum design
• Plans for a Teaching Excellence Framework: 

"I expect the TEF to include a clear set of outcome-focused criteria and metrics. This should be underpinned by an external assessment process undertaken by an independent quality body from within the existing landscape."

• A green paper to be published in the autumn
• The need to tackle degree class inflation
• The need to use continual assessment (ie the GPA system) to push students harder throughout their programmes (with a dig at contact hours in the meantime)
• His intention to focus on WP in the more selective institutions (by means of two year programmes, apparently)

Four thoughts on this.

Firstly, who’ll run TEF? QAA looks like the obvious candidate, but let’s not forget the other “independent quality bod[ies] from within the existing landscape” –

• HEA – they know about teaching
• HESA – they have data on student progress
• OFFA – they know about student success
• OIA – they know what makes students cross
• Ipsos Mori – they know about student opinion through the NSS

Secondly, how do you do a light-touch TEF? You can use data on student achievement and value-added, which is about outcomes not about teaching; you can survey the taught, which is about perceptions not about outcomes; or you can inspect the teaching, which won’t be light touch. Answers on a postcard to Jo Johnson, please, before he has to sign off the green paper.

Thirdly, this stuff about the GPA. I’ll need to think about this but it seems to me that the argument goes that moving from degree classification to a 13 point scale will help student motivation because students currently don’t work hard because degree classes are an inexact measure of achievement. I’m not sure that this is an entirely flawless argument.

Fourthly, the graduate premium. The minister acknowledges that a university education is about more than salary, but argues that the decline in the graduate premium is a cause for concern, and promotes data that enable students to see what previous graduates have earned. Is this an argument that paves the way for raising the cap on fees, when the evidence, or sector action, supports the conclusion that it’s worth it? Or an argument for not raising the fee cap, as there’s work yet to be done?

There’s more to think about, and enough material for seminars and conferences, let alone some more blog posts. Interesting times.