Interview with David Eastwood

Interview with David Eastwood

by Helen Cherns at the HEFCE Conference 2008

Interview with John Denham

Universities Secretary urges VCs to go back to school

by Conor Ryan

Much stronger engagement between universities and schools must be a crucial part of the widening participation agenda in the future, universities secretary John Denham told delegates at Warwick today.

Mr Denham had trailed his appearance at Warwick well, with news of a shake-up of Aim Higher to fund 5,500 new student ambassadors at the weekend. Today’s papers heralded a tougher set of powers for the access regulator, OFFA, to monitor what universities are doing on access.

And as Mr Denham reiterated his commitment to 50% participation by young adults – albeit over a longer timescale than the government originally envisaged – he also made clear on the Today programme this morning that he expected much more effort with 13 and 14 year-olds to improve their aspirations of going into higher education than has hitherto been the case.

So Mr Denham’s audience at the HEFCE conference felt they knew what to expect by the time he stood up this lunchtime.

But they got a fascinating speech that went well beyond the trailed announcements. First, Mr Denham made a passionate case for the government’s 50% target linked to what he said was the aspiration of more than half of all families in every social class – including a fast-growing level of aspiration among those with no HE tradition.

And while he repeated the familiar arguments about globalisation, he also pointed out that 45% of young women already enter higher education, compared with perhaps 34% of young men, and much of the target could be achieved by raising the aspirations of young men.

Equally, he pointed out that those for whom WP and access programmes were aimed were not just those from the most disadvantaged youngsters, but the children of the majority of families who were working in jobs like classroom assistants, but had no history of going to university in their own families.
“I worry that too many people think that fair access is about someone else’s children,” he said. “We sell ourselves short if we pretend that this is all it is about.”

Mr Denham said that the ‘consistency of relationships’ between universities and schools, teachers and pupils was what worked best, and he was pleased that 26 institutions were already partnering academies, with 30 in discussions to do so. 59 were linked to trust schools.

The universities secretary said that it was also important that more schools offered students the chance to study three GCSE science subjects, as there was a strong correlation with progress to university among those who did so. With a new entitlement for high achievers in tests at 14, he expected the proportion of schools offering triple science to rise from 27% in 2005 to 50% soon.

Mr Denham was at pains to stress that his proposals for annual reporting of access arrangements should not mean an extra burden on HEIs. But he believed there was a corrosive debate on the subject, and a feeling that “my child is going to lose out no matter how hard they work”. So, the answer was “openness, transparency and accountability” with HEIs publishing their admissions policies, having the means to implement them and assuring themselves they are doing so. “This is not a new burden,” he insisted. “But it will address public confidence.”

This was a carefully argued and measured argument for wider access, one that sought to move the debate from one about poorer families into one that addressed the hopes and aspirations of the mainstream majority. And it was well-received by delegates.

Turning the tables

by Conor Ryan

The most heated debate among delegates privately at the HEFCE conference is about league tables. In some countries – such as Germany and Australia – there are official tables in place for universities. But in the UK, the absence of such official data has led newspapers to do their own, with varying results.

So, when new research was published today showing ‘room for improvement’, many vice-chancellors probably felt that this was an understatement. Yet when universities do well in the tables, most are not shy about sharing the results, and there is a realisation that students want objective quality indicators.

The research from the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) at the Open University and Hobsons Research showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the tables only reflect what is included in them. And these tend to be reputational factors such as entry qualifications, the number of firsts and 2:1s and Research Assessment Exercise grades, rather than measures of quality. As a result, some produce non-standardised results. But it also found that universities are strongly influenced by the tables, many using them as key performance indicators.

William Locke, Assistant Director at CHERI told the conference that the tables should be updated to reflect social responsibility, environmental impact and online learning, and urged that the tables should allow interactivity to enable people to rank universities by their own priorities.

Line Verbik, Research Manager of Hobsons when the study was compiled, explained how the researchers at examined the impact in six HEIs – they found that league tables had a big impact on institutional behaviour, sometimes helping to set strategic priorities, although there was a reluctance to acknowledge the extent of its impact. Institutions wanted more transparency and more value-added measures.

Ms Verbik said that league tables were used most by young students and those from overseas, though they were only part of the decision-making process. They also influenced academic decisions about which universities they were willing to work in. Alternatives included the German system which grouped institutions rather than individually ranking them, or following the Berlin principles for greater transparency and comparability.

Five tables were analysed for the study – those used for the Sunday Times, Times and Guardian University Guides in the UK and the international studies published by Times Higher Education and Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education in Shanghai.

The perversity of some league table findings was highlighted by John Brooks, vice-chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University, who said that reputational factors had led a joint architecture course it runs with the University of Manchester to be ranked very differently for each university on one national newspaper’s tables, leading to four times as many applications for the same course to the University of Manchester as to MMU (even though the paper corrected the error online within days).

The researchers urged universities to do more to inform students and the public about the league tables. David Eastwood said that “league tables are here to stay” but HEFCE’s role remained one of compiling data and had no plans to replace commercial league tables.

But, shouldn’t the question for vice-chancellors be not whether league tables should exist – because they can’t be wished away – but how can they collectively develop an authoritative set of measures that avoids many of the pitfalls highlighted in today’s research, as those used in Germany?

Developing the HEFCE strategy for 2009-14

Over the year ahead we will be developing a new HEFCE strategy for 2009-14.

We want to involve universities, colleges, and our other stakeholders in this development, to ensure our strategy helps us prepare for and then address the opportunities and challenges hacing us and the higher education sector over the next five years.

We are planning a variety of ways to enable you and others to feed into our strategy development.  For example. we are aiming to hold various events in the autumn of 2008 and publish a formal consultation document in early 2009.

We would appreciate any comments and thoughts you may have as we kick off this process of thinking about our direction for 2009-14.  It would be helpful if you could consider the questions below and leave comments using the comments facility below.

What will be the different demands placed on higher education by 2014?

In your view, how will the higher education sector have changed by 2014?

In your view, how should the higher education sector have changed by 2014?

Student learning through technology

by Philip Pothen

The ‘Google Generation’ – young ‘digital natives’ who make up the bulk of university applicants – make widespread use of social networking tools but don’t believe in technology for technology’s sake and strongly believe in face to face interaction.

These are some of the findings of research commissioned by JISC and undertaken by Ipsos MORI last year which is feeding into an independent committee of inquiry on the changing learner experience.

A session on ‘student learning through technology’ heard from the committee’s chair, Professor Sir David Melville, former Vice Chancellor of Kent University and Chair of Lifelong Learning UK, about the work of the committee. Sir David began by saying that the point of the inquiry, which is backed by the leading education organisations in the UK, is to explore the assumptions of the Google Generation, their ready and quick adoption of new, interactive – or Web 2.0 – technologies, and the impact of these phenomena on higher education.

Web 2.0, said Sir David, ‘is about that part of the web which is defined by those who access the web.’ It is ‘universalizing and globalizing’ student conversations which had previously been local, something that is profoundly changing learning and teaching in all education sectors.

The committee, he continued, includes not only representatives from universities but the commercial sector, student bodies and further education. It hopes to report later this year and will explore not only the impact of social networking on learning and teaching but will also take into account its use in schools, colleges and company training.

Amanda Jefferies of the University of Hertfordshire who is working on the JISC-funded STROLL project, looked at some of the issues faced both by students and by institutions in striving to unlock the potential of the new technologies. ‘Do our learning environments support their aspirations for learning?’ she asked.

Staff development was an important and perhaps neglected issue, suggested one questioner; while students are readily adopting new technologies, persuading staff to do so is proving more difficult. Another asked about the use of spaces such as café and other recreational spaces to support the new broader concept of learning that the adoption of new technologies seemed to presuppose, while another asked about the increasing requirement for open access learning and teaching resources.

The panellists were Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC, and David Sadler, Head of Networks at the Higher Education Academy, who responded by pointing to JISC- and Academy-funded work, particularly the Benchmarker and Pathfinder programmes and JISC’s Effective Design for Learning publication, which attempted to answer some of these questions. They suggested that if further work was needed in any of these areas, they would be happy to listen to suggestions.

A Tale of One City

Despite being the last event on the first day of a busy programme, A Tale of One City produced arguably the most emotive messages of the day.  Anglia Ruskin (ARU) and Cambridge Universities highlighted their relationships with two employers, with the first presentation from Specsavers being particularly slick and glossy.  However, Paul Carroll from Specsavers spoke warmly and positively of the companies relationship with ARU and showed just how effective HE and business can be together.

Cambridges presentation focussed more on the human element of developing staff through flexible working.  During the panel discussion, Amanda Buikenham (sp?) spoke emotionally about how she had been written off at school due to her dyslexia but she now has a thirst to achieve and wants to do a full degree.  Lyn Rose explained how she can empathasise with her two daughters, who are both at university.  Both projects demonstrated a commitment to providing alternative access to HE and the session highlighted what a positive differene education can make to someones life.  Hopefully it will have reminded the delegates just how vital their work is and that they should strive to provide further channels for learning and development.  After all, this type of employer engagement activity may well be the future of HE.