One in, one out

There’s another change coming in the collegiate line-up of the University of London. In addition to the forthcoming inclusion of City University, London, there’ll be the departure of Heythrop College.

Heythrop is a small College, with a Catholic ethos and a focus on philosophy and theology. Originally founded in the early 17th century, it gained a Royal Charter and has been a member of the University of London since 1971. And recently – early in this century, if my memory serves me rightly – the College was recognised for public funding, and came within HEFCE’s remit.

So what’s happened? The College’s Principal sets it out in a public letter: in short, the College is too small to bear the overheads and complexity of being a modern university institution, and the Society of Jesus is no longer able (or perhaps willing) to provide funds to keep the College solvent. There had been merger discussions with St Mary’s University, but these had not borne fruit. And so there was no viable future.

The statement from the College’s Governing body included a sentence which I had thought was a face-saving formula:

Both the Governors and the Society of Jesus are committed to finding a way in which the mission and work of the College, including the ecclesiastical faculties, will continue in a new form after 2018.

After all, by leaving the University the College lost the possibility of awarding degrees through the University of London, and that is a valuable thing to give away.

But it seems that I had judged harshly. Through a conversation with a scholarly and learned person I learned that in 2013 the Bellarmine Institute – the part of Heythrop College which maintained specifically Catholic links – had been reinstated as a Pontifical Athenaeum by the Congregation for Catholic Education, part of the Vatican Curia, and hence had a right to award

ecclesiastical bachelors (STB, BacPhil), licentiate (STL, PhL) and doctoral degrees in Philosophy and Theology

This, of course, harks back to the method by which Europe’s ancient universities were founded – by Papal Bull. Ecclesiastical degrees play a significant qualifying role in the Catholic religious hierarchy, so the College may well continue tru to its original mission.

There’s a hard lesson here for other institutions, too. Heythrop was too small to survive (its turnover was amongst the very lowest of UK institutions, and it had run a financial deficit in both 2012-13 and 2013-14). It couldn‘t make a merger work. And so it will cease to trade as a regular UK university. Not, perhaps, the university failure that some had predicted, but nevertheless there’s a reasonable case to be made that Heythrop has been a victim of the marketization of HE.

A fine romance

An interesting item on the BBC website today – the University of Sheffield has abolished library fines for students.

The BBC rightly identifies this as stemming in part from the OFT’s advice against academic penalties for financial debts. And it also speaks to the growing recognition that students are customers (see also Goldsmiths’ decision to have a student member of its Remuneration Committee.)

But there’s a small sting in the tail – students have to bring the book back when someone else wants it, and won’t be allowed to borrow any more books until they do. So it isn’t quite a free-for-all, and the students will still need to learn to share. Although students in plural may be king (or queen), a student in the singular still needs to do what they’re told. The student contract isn’t quite dead yet.

I’m filing this under ‘straws in the wind’. There’s clearly a changing relationship between a university and its students, and some benign changes like this will occur, as well as some which may seem more threatening.

QAA? Armageddon outta here!

Yesterday’s announcement – on the HEFCE webpages but on behalf of HEFCW and DELNI and in parallel with the Scottish Funding Council – has caused more than a few ripples of excitement.

What’s the news? A request for feedback from the sector, to inform the specification of a tender for quality assurance for higher education. If that doesn’t sound significant, let me tell you that it is. First, some background.

The 1992 Further and Higher Education Act provides (para 70) that the Funding Councils “shall … secure that provision is made for assessing the quality of education provided in institutions for whose activities they provide, or are considering providing, financial support …”. Each Funding Council has a Quality Assurance Committee, comprising people with sector experience, to advise on how to undertake this work.

If my memory serves me right*, in the early stages HEFCE did some assessment of standards work in-house (the Academic Audit Unit), and a sector body – the Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC) – developed methodology for assessing and assuring quality at a subject level. And in 1997 the QAA was established to bring it all together.

An opportunity for a new logo?

And so the consultation and tender exercise is giving notice that the status quo is up for renegotiation. No doubt with pressure from some such as the Russell Group for a ‘risk-based’ approach (‘leave us alone, the metrics show that we’re fine!’) and, with an equal lack of doubt political pressure from different quarters to address perceived issues such as contact hours and value for money

And so this is a fight about university autonomy and about marketization. Part of the rationale for establishing HEQC and QAA (both bodies owned by the HE sector, like UCAS and HESA) was that if the sector didn’t do something, government would impose an OFSTED style inspectorate. And since one of the crowning glories of UK higher education is that our academic standards are high, this would be a problem. Universities need autonomy to set and maintain these standards, so the argument goes.

And marketization? Well, applicants to universities, almost by definition, don’t know much about the content or value of the programme they’re seeking to join. In the OFT’s view, they are much less sophisticated as consumers than the universities with which they are making a contract. So an assurance regime which is more like consumer protection – guarding against rogue traders – might be considered appropriate. There’s a lot of public money and private individual debt at stake, so these aren’t concerns which can be dismissed flippantly.

There’ll be a lot of debate and discussion. The Wonkhe post by Mark Leach is a good resource with links to various statements and also in the comments. Which is where, by the way, the Armageddon word came from: #QAmageddon being the hashtag of choice …

It pays to read the legislation carefully: “assess the quality of education.” Who defines quality and its indicators, that’s the question. And the outcomes will matter for the sector.

*Edit 9 October. My memory didn't serve me right! Academic Audit Unit became HEQC; HEFCE continued with TQA until QAA took over. Thanks to Mike Ratcliffe @Mike_Rat for the correction. We need the equivalent of rock family trees ...