Standards
24 August 2009
VC Martin Hall talking to a University of Salford student
The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee report, “Students and Universities”, published on 2nd August and available at http://www.parliament.uk/ius, must be one of the more bad-tempered exercises in public accountability. For example, some evidence by Vice-Chancellors is dismissed with the conclusion that “it is absurd and disreputable to justify academic standards with a market mechanism”, and a whole chapter is devoted to considering whether one university had breached parliamentary privilege by interfering in the submission of evidence.
While the report is wide-ranging in its scope, the tinder box is the question of standards. Should universities set their own standards, or should standards be set and regulated by an independent body?
In coming to its conclusions, the committee heard directly from 29 students, including a core group of five that included Ricky Chotai of the University of Salford, currently a Vice-President of the USSU. I’m proud and pleased that Ricky was able to contribute to this important public debate, and to give a view from Salford.
One point that Ricky made during his evidence was to ask why ”his degree [in business management] isn’t just as worthy as a business management degree from the University of Manchester. Employers immediately pick up on that and if I managed to get a first class or 2.1 against one of those students I think my application would be further down the list” (para 204).
The Salford comparison was picked up by Phil Willis, chair of the select committee, in comments to the Observer on 2 August: “of course, at the University of Salford, say, there will be a number of exceptional students worthy of the very highest academic achievement. But let’s not pretend they are going to emerge in the same numbers in Salford as they might at Imperial or UCL.”
Now, I believe that the public debate about standards is both appropriate and important, whether related to admission criteria (Phil Willis’s point) or the comparability of qualifications (Ricky Chotai’s point). I also believe that we need an open and robust internal debate about standards, involving both students and colleagues. I don’t have the answers, but here are some thoughts.
Firstly, we need to be clear about what standards actually are. The select committee defines them as follows: “predetermined and explicit levels of achievement which must be reached for a student to be granted a qualification”. But perhaps this is more a concept of minimum requirements. The committee concluded that such minimum requirements do not presently exist for subject areas across universities, but is this actually the case? Many disciplines lead to qualifications that are externally regulated. If a business studies degree leads to professional accreditation in, say, accountancy, the common, externally-set professional examination process will force a convergence of preparation across universities, and a baseline of common minimum requirements.
Secondly, would the universal requirement for a set of common and predetermined levels of achievement actually improve higher education? The select committee recommended that a revamped Quality Assurance Agency must have responsibility for “maintaining consistent, national standards in higher education institutions in England and for monitoring and reporting on standards”. Making this happen would require something akin to a national curriculum for each subject. But is, say, a national curriculum in History a valuable or desirable thing?
Thirdly, the committee runs together its desire for national standards with its wish for comparability between degree classifications: “so long as there is a classification system it is essential that it should categorize all degrees against a consistent set of standards across all higher education institutions in England”. But degree classifications and standards, while related, are somewhat different things. Degree classifications are summative statements of individual attainment in assessment systems. This means that you can have comparability between different universities’ assessment systems without predetermined requirements about what should, or should not, be included in a programme of study.
Finally, the report runs together questions of standards and assessment systems with the issue of esteem. This is the essence of Ricky Chotai’s question. If there were to be a clear understanding that a 2.1 from Salford reflected the same combination of effort, sweat, knowledge and individual ability as a 2.1 from the University of Manchester (and I believe that there should indeed be such an equivalence), then would a potential employer look equally favourably on both graduates? Ricky thinks not and so, probably, does Phil Willis. But the Universities of Salford and Manchester are different, and should be different. Rather than trying to push them into the same boxes through a national curriculum policed by an external regulator, should we not be concentrating on defining and demonstrating the particular advantage of a Salford course of study for students looking for a particular learning experience, and particular benefits?
August 24th, 2009 at 9.54 am
You mention one point that Ricky Chotai made during his evidence was to ask why his degree [in business management] isn’t just as worthy as a business management degree from the University of Manchester? The British class system and pecking order of universities (as described in Sampson’s Anatomy of Britain) is at work here. You are dealing with perceptions and unchallenged assumptions. The attitude is that universities are grouped according to their status (Oxbridge, re-brick and new), the technical universities (including Salford) standing to the side of this grouping, maybe at the same status as red brick universities. So degrees of the same class are ranked (unfairly so in some quarters) by the universities that issue them. It is a cultural and historic problem which is self-perpetuated by the academics who aspire to work at the “better” universities in the UK and by employers who rank applicants for jobs.
This university as a centre of learning aspires to be the best in its fields of expertise. (This is reflected in the academics and their contributions). As a technical university, we should promote the excellence of our engineering contribution to society. But Salford is more than this and has diverse areas of study, including languages, media and law. So we have many things to talk about to promote the university and we should do so to challenge the widely-held assumptions mentioned above. Yes, we should market the unique “selling points” of the university and its courses in attracting students here. We can aspire to be a centre of excellence in a wide range of areas, not just engineering and let people know about it, so they choose to come to our university for those reasons.
August 25th, 2009 at 12.12 pm
One quickly finds oneself buttressed against similar arguments that politicians once had to consider during the Los Alamos project in the 1940s. Prior to the detonation of the first nuclear device, a small group of the physicists present recommended to the political authorities present that the test be called off as there was a chance that conducting it might trigger a chain reaction which would engulf the entire planet. A majority of the physicists present disagreed with them and their recommendation was thus over-ruled by the political authorities.
Of course, one would think that no sane human being would authorise such a test if a possible consequence were the annihalation of humanity. But, as it stands, the decision was taken by politicians who were neither qualified nor experienced enough to understand the physics on either side of the argument.
Which brings me to our current academic calamity. How can external auditors who do not understand the nuance of the subject they are being asked to investigate comment on whether or not it is being taught effectively? The only option open to them is to measure its success or failure on criterion that are implicative rather than conclusive. Do the students look engaged? What are the employment prospects upon graduation? What is the retention ratio? What proportion of good degree classifications are being produced? What proportion of graduates go into further study? What are the average earnings of a graduate of a particular discipline?
These questions, of course, have nothing to do with education and everything to do with market forces. In my comment on Professor Hall’s last blog post, I suggested that the merging of the Universities, Skills and Innovation department with Lord Mandleson’s Business department was a highly troubling development. I say this because it implies a streamlining in the eyes of government between markets and education.
The most conclusive evidence we have to suggest that such an approach eventually leads to anarchy is the student rebellions of 1960s America. Adam B. Ulam writes very effectively of this in his text, ‘The Downfall of the American University’ (Professor Ulam himself being a Harvard Fellow). Converging market forces with educational requirements is the antithesis of effective learning.
I believe the desire on the part of governments to achieve this stems from their insistence – particularly on the part of New Labour – that higher education for all is a gateway to a more prosperous society. All recent evidence suggests that this is not the case at all as social mobility continues to implode and the gulf between affluence and poverty spans greater distances with each passing year. Rather than admit that they got it wrong, politicians instead elect to blame the system over themselves.
The current tinkering will not yield positive results and, in the end, market forces will dictate the terms under which student numbers contract, as well as the remarkable profligacy with which they expanded in the past decade. What the University of Salford would do well to consider is that, whilst in the domestic employment arena a degree from Salford will never equate to its Cambridge counterpart, globally a degree from any British University is a hallmark to be looked upon with envy. Last year’s annual accounts report touched upon this, and any future policy would do well to consider the esteem in which a degree from Salford is to be held internationally, rather than just its domestic lack of equivalence.