How can we measure the real value of a university? This is a very relevant question right now, given the appropriate emphasis on greater transparency and consistency, and the introduction of the Key Information Set (KIS) of performance indicators for all universities. And yet KIS will still only give a superficial picture, and carries the risk that these indicators are somehow comprehensive. For example, student satisfaction measures are based on a narrow range of questions asked of third-year students only. Measures of employment are based on graduates’ circumstances just six months after graduation, and do not include a number of occupations as legitimate graduate jobs. Contact hours are a notoriously inaccurate proxy for the quality of a course.  KIS is good, and welcome. But these indicators were not designed to capture the full value of a university, and they should not be taken as such.

Participants take part in "Salford Young People’s University" programme

Social Return on Investment (SRoI)methods are designed to provide far  broader measures of value.  SRoI is already used by a good number of third sector organisations, and work by ascribing an estimated monetary value to a socially beneficial intervention. For example, investing in providing an education opportunity for a young offender may seem to be a welfare payment that can be discontinued. But if it can be shown that the educational programme reduced the incidence of repeat convictions and imprisonment, then the cost of the education programme can be offset against the savings in expenditure on the criminal justice system. The net financial benefit is a social return on the investment. A good example is the Salford-based social enterprise, Unlimited Potential, which has its performance evaluated using SRoI methods, and publishes its social accounts alongside its financial accounts.

SRoI measurement, though, is not straightforward, particularly for organisations as complex as a university. This is why a recent study by the New Economics Foundation – “Degrees of Value – how Universities Benefit Society” – is particularly welcome.

This report looks at a limited set of dimensions of social value in two case study universities – Warwick and Manchester Metropolitan. For example, it finds that the monetised value of Manchester Metropolitan’s work in facilitating social mobility through widening participation is £147.2m each year. One reading programme is offered by student volunteers from Warwick to 100 primary school children and has an estimated value of £290,000 for pupils and the local community. The study estimates that the social return on the investment in the Warwick Arts Centre is £27.7 million each year. The Foundation makes the point that, were SRoI methods to be extended to all aspects of a university’s work in research and innovation, the overall return in value would be many times the amount invested.

There is still a way to go before methodologies such as these provide the comprehensive rigour that will be needed to underwrite convincing public policy. But there is an increasingly prevalent view that narrow measures of performance are at best superficial, and may also be mistaken as indicative of what a university is actually for. This work by the New Economics Foundations is a welcome shove in a different, and far deeper and more valuable, direction.

_____________________________________________________________ 

Unlimited Potential:
http://www.unlimitedpotential.org.uk/the-difference-we-make

Degrees of Value:  How universities benefit society.  Faiza Shaheen, New Economics Foundation, 2011.  Available at: http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/degrees-of-value

Comments have been closed for this post.