New university ‘to rival Oxbridge’

Exciting news – it’s fantasy uni time

The Telegraph and Sunday Times both carry this most interesting of stories about the establishment of the ‘New College of the Humanities’. The Guardian also has the story but includes reactions from those expressing some consternation at the proposition as well as the key piece of information that the degrees will be awarded by the University of London.

The Telegraph reports that the College will charge £18,000 a year and that for this princely sum students will enjoy a range of benefits:

”Our priorities at the College will be excellent teaching quality, excellent ratios of teachers to students, and a strongly supportive and responsive learning environment.

”Our students will be challenged to develop as skilled, informed and reflective thinkers, and will receive an education to match that aspiration.”

The college claims to offer a ”new model of higher education for the humanities in the UK” and will prepare undergraduates for degrees in Law, Economics and humanities subjects including History, Philosophy and English literature.

Students will also take three ”intellectual skills” modules in science literacy, logic and critical thinking and applied ethics.

Practical professional skills to prepare them for the world of work including financial literacy, teamwork, presentation and strategy will also be taught.

And the staff will largely be star academics (Grayling, Ferguson, Dawkins, Pinker to name just the back four), motivated it seems by the desire to bring more high quality education to the UK HE sector and to improve society.

College chiefs say students will receive a ”best in class education”, with one-to-one tutorials, more than 12 contact hours a week and a 10/1 student to teacher ratio.

Prof Grayling said that budget cuts and dwindling resources are likely to limit both quantity and quality of teaching in the UK, leaving the fabric of society poorer as a result.

But there are a few questions here:

• Will anyone sign up at these prices?
• Will students be eligible for any public financial support?
• Who are the “College chiefs” quoted above?
• What does the logo look like?
• Will a ‘BA Hons (London) DNC’ award be embraced by employers?
• Did they test out the model using Virtual-U (it really does exist) before launching?
• And, most importantly, who is doing all the administration here? Or are they dividing it up amongst themselves?

Whichever way you look at it, it’s certainly a different approach to the challenges facing UK higher education. And it does create an entirely new game – fantasy uni league – where you too can put together your own team of top academics to deliver an Oxbridge-rivalling student experience (but perhaps best to do the dry run using Virtual-U beforehand).

Latest Guardian University League Table for 2012

New Guardian League Table for 2012

Top 20 of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year’s position in brackets):

1 (2) Cambridge
2 (1) Oxford
3 (4) St Andrews
4 (8) London School of Economics
5 (5) UCL
6 (3) Warwick
7 (6) Lancaster
8 (17) Durham
9 (9) Loughborough
10 (7) Imperial
11 (15) Sussex
11 (14) Exeter
13 (11) SOAS
14 (13) Bath
15 (9) York
16 (15) Edinburgh
17 (12) Leicester
18 (19) UEA
19 (21) Nottingham
19 (20) Surrey

The summary of the outcomes from the Guardian offers a few pointers to bigger changes within the overall table, particularly in the middle and bottom, but there really isn’t much movement at all inside the top 20 this year. Apart of course from the big news about the Oxbridge swap at the top, the only departure from the top 20 is Southampton with Nottingham slipping in at 19 to replace it. UEA remains following a dramatic climb last year, Lancaster is still in the top 10 and Durham rises to 8th place.

Other than that, as you were.

Criteria used

The Guardian is heavily focused on teaching-related indicators and in particular NSS outcomes. The full set of indicators they use are:

• Teaching quality, as rated by final-year students in the national student survey (NSS): percentage of students satisfied.

• Feedback and assessment, as rated by final-year students in the NSS: percentage of students satisfied.

• NSS results when final-year students were asked about the overall quality of their course.

• Spending per student – given as a banded score out of 10.

• Staff-student ratio: number of students per member of teaching staff.

• Career prospects: proportion of graduates who find graduate-level employment, or study full-time, within six months of graduation.

• Value added: comparing students’ individual degree results with their entry qualifications – given as a banded score out of 10. This helps to show the effectiveness of teaching at an institution – the extent to which a department helps students to exceed expectation.

• Entry qualifications (Ucas tariff score).

Pride and Prejudices: Problems with National and International League Tables

Presentation from AUA Conference 2011

Thank you to all who attended this session on 19 April 2011

As promised, here is the presentation:

New Guardian Higher Education Network

New online Guardian HE offering

The Guardian has just launched its new Guardian HE Network, which looks rather nice:

it’s an online space where higher education professionals can talk to one other, get advice and insight from peers and industry experts and grapple with the challenges that face the whole sector.

With so many changes and challenges facing the sector and its workforce, we feel this is the perfect time to create a place where HE professionals can share their experiences, ideas and even horror stories. We’ve started the ball rolling here with an anonymous blog exposing the less glamorous aspects of international officer’s role – the first in our series of ‘confessions of a…’

There’s lots of really good stuff in here and hope it will develop. I’m not just saying that because they happen to have carried a piece by me on students as consumers (or not). OK, that does have a bearing but there is I think a gap to be filled here. Will be interesting to see if it works out.

Universities ‘must be vigilant’ on campus extremism

Promoting academic freedom and tackling extremism

A new report from UUK is concerned with issues around freedom of speech, academic freedom and extreme views on campus. It’s a good report (but I was on the working group so perhaps biased) and received some straightforward coverage from the BBC News:

The updated guidance from Universities UK sets out the legal duties universities have to protect freedom of speech and also to promote equality and security.

Professor Malcolm Grant, chairman of the review panel, said: “The survey findings confirm how seriously universities take their responsibilities in relation to the safety and security of their staff and students, alongside their obligations to protect and promote free speech and academic freedom.

“Universities are open institutions where academic freedom and freedom of speech are fundamental to their functioning.

“Views expressed within universities, whether by staff, students or visitors, may sometimes appear to be extreme or even offensive. However, unless views can be expressed they cannot also be challenged.

“But all freedoms have limits imposed by law and these considerations are vital to ensure the safety and well being of students, staff and the wider community.

“Universities must continue to ensure that potentially aberrant behaviour is challenged and communicated to the police where appropriate.”

But he added that it was not the job of universities to impede the freedom of speech “through additional censorship, surveillance or invasion of privacy”.

The coverage of the report, which can be downloaded as a PDF, is broad:

The report starts by examining the meaning of academic freedom and freedom of speech: concepts which are often invoked but rarely defined. It then explores the contemporary context in which universities are operating, both in terms of the diversity of current student populations, and the wider national environment. It summarises the relevant law, and describes the Government’s security strategy and other security initiatives and structures. It then reviews the various ways in which universities from across the UK have addressed these challenges and sought to reconcile differing priorities, drawing on an on-line survey conducted by Universities UK of all its members in 2010.

But the Guardian carries a somewhat critical view from Lord Carlile:

The government’s counterterrorism watchdog believes Britain’s universities are reluctant to deal with radicalisation on campus and says a report by vice-chancellors that rejects demands to ban controversial speakers is “weak”.

Lord Carlile, who is in charge of overseeing the government’s counterterrorism strategy, Prevent, urges ministers to develop a “new narrative” for combating extremism, supporting moderate Muslim theologians against al-Qaida. “You have to meet like with like,” he says.

He is scathing about the conclusion reached by Universities UK, representing 133 universities – and says their report contains a “glaring omission”. He told the Guardian: “[There] is a total failure to deal with how to identify and handle individuals who might be suspected of radicalising or being radicalised whilst within the university.”

But this is not a “weak” report and universities are far from complacent on this issue – institutions take their responsibilities in relation to the safety and security of their staff and students extremely seriously, alongside their obligations to protect and promote free speech and academic freedom. We can do with a bit less of the “new narrative” and a bit more support of the good work that is undertaken.

More on ‘groundbreaking’ partnership

“Midlands mutuality breaks new ground”

Excellent article in Times Higher Education about the new collaborative agreement between the University of Nottingham and the University of Birmingham

Two competing Russell Group universities are launching a groundbreaking partnership that will feature joint academic appointments, research, degrees and overseas ventures.

The universities of Birmingham and Nottingham, which collectively have about 67,000 students and 14,000 staff, announced their “framework for collaboration” on 3 February, unveiling a model that they believe could be adopted by other institutions.

In an interview with Times Higher Education, David Eastwood and David Greenaway, the vice-chancellors of Birmingham and Nottingham respectively, said they hoped the partnership – a first for UK higher education – would be driven by academic collaboration.

They said the universities would also work together on entering new international markets and did not rule out the prospect of partnering on developments such as overseas campuses – an area in which Nottingham, with branches in China and Malaysia, has long led the pack.

This received a goodly amount of press coverage including in The Guardian and the BBC. All very gratifying. But this is I think an important and interesting development.

Six areas have been identified for initial collaboration, with the potential for further areas to be considered as the partnership evolves. There isn’t a huge amount of detail in the press reports so the following supporting information may be of interest to some:

1. Joint academic appointments

Creative approaches to developing intellectual capital are at the heart of the partnership and attracting the best international minds to the UK in general and Midlands in particular is key.  Where appropriate, the Universities will seek opportunities to appoint staff jointly in order to better support collaborative ventures.

2. Teaching, learning and student experience

Both Universities are major innovators in teaching and learning and the student experience.  They will work together to share ideas for enhancing undergraduate and graduate opportunities at both institutions.  Ideas include the development of jointly awarded degree programmes, the sharing of facilities, widening participation initiatives and other means of improving the student experience.

3. Research Initiatives

Sustaining world-class research is fundamental to both Universities’ missions. Through working together, the institutions can deliver more and more impactful research in areas of mutual strength.  Ideas here include bringing together potential collaborators from both institutions, submitting joint research grant applications and sharing of research equipment. The Midlands Ultracold Atom Research Centre is one example of an existing UoB/UoN collaboration that operates this model.  Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to the tune of £6million, the research centre is investigating the interface between cold atoms, condensed matter, and optical physics.

4. International Opportunities

Birmingham and Nottingham are world-class universities, each with strong international vision and a significant global footprint. The Universities believe in particular in the value of international experience for students as part of their programmes and in preparation for sustained employability in the global marketplace.  Ideas include greater opportunities for student mobility and exchange, including through the Universitas 21 network and to the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China for years, semesters and summer schools. In fact, places have been specifically set aside for UoB students wishing to study at the two Nottingham overseas campuses.

Opportunities will be explored for working together in new markets with an initial geographical focus on South America – a joint mission to South America is already being planned for summer.

Collaborative international research opportunities arising as a result of the framework will be encouraged and supported.  International collaborative research ideas are currently being developed in the fields of energy, innovative manufacturing, water, neuro-imaging, genetics, and urban resilience.

5.     Business Engagement and Knowledge Transfer

The Universities, both individually and collaboratively, are major partners with business, regionally, nationally and internationally.  Developing further effective engagement with businesses, commerce and industry is a key component of both institutions’ strategic plans and will be further enhanced through collaboration.  The Manufacturing Technology Centre, currently being built at Ansty Park in Coventry to which both institutions are key partners, is a prime example of how experts from academia and industry will work together to push the boundaries of global manufacturing research and translation to innovation.

6.     Management and administration

Both Universities have a strong track record in delivering effective management and administration and building financial resilience.  The institutions will explore novel approaches to collaboration in management and administration to enhance our mutual capacity to respond to the new realities.  Ideas include shared IT solutions, joint approaches to procurement, sharing best practice in management of common problems and collaboration on professional development for staff.

So, these are early days yet but there is huge potential here.

Morrisons to pay students’ tuition fees

The shape of things to come?

A story from the Guardian from back in October noted that the supermarket chain said it will pay for students’ university fees if they enrol on a degree course it is sponsoring. Morrisons is to fund 20 undergraduates a year on a three-year degree course in business and management.

The supermarket admits the course will leave little time for the recreational side of university life. Students will not take university holidays, but will have an annual leave allowance. They will receive £15,000 a year and will not have to pay their tuition fees of £3,290 a year. The students are also guaranteed a job once they graduate and must work for Morrisons for at least three years. Teenagers apply through Morrisons rather than Ucas, the centralised system for all university applications in the UK.

Morrisons is not quite the first retailer to offer a degree: in June Harrods announced it was to offer two-year degrees in sales with Anglia Ruskin University. A week ago GlaxoSmithKline announced it would sponsor a module on University of Nottingham chemistry degrees – the first collaboration of its kind between a pharmaceutical company and a university. Tesco sponsors a pre-degree foundation course in retail with Manchester Metropolitan University and University of the Arts London.

An earlier post commented on the Harrods development along with a Wal-Mart programme in the USA. Following the Browne review outcomes we can expect more of this.

More visa uncertainty

Position on visas still not clear

The Guardian has a story on the latest government position on changes to the visa regime.

Whilst on the face of it there does seem to be some movement in response to the concerns expressed by universities, there are still significant uncertainties:

But young scientists applying for visas may face serious difficulties because their incomes are often so low. Previously an MBA or a £150,000 salary guaranteed enough points to secure a visa, but a PhD scientist on a typical academic salary fell short. Scientists are concerned that the government will fail to address this disparity under the new scheme. A further problem is that scientists are awarded three-year visas for posts that can last much longer, forcing institutes to use two consecutive visas for each researcher.

“The average postdoc here lasts four or five years, so each consumes two slots and that is crazy. There are people here who are very nervous about whether they will be allowed to stay and finish their work,” Rigby said. “It is bound to be a disincentive for bright young things to come to this country.”

Catherine Marston, policy adviser at the Universities and Colleges Union, echoed Rigby’s concerns. “It causes difficulties for people who are already here in the UK. If their visa runs out, they will use up one of your allocation if you decide to support them. If you don’t decide to support them they will have to leave the country.”

Professor Rigby said the government must revise its “one size fits all” approach to immigration. He said the rules should be changed to accommodate scientists by giving PhDs more points and awarding visas for the full duration of an academic post.

The uncertainty doesn’t help. It sends out the signal that UK HE is not open for business. The proposed changes to student visas are likely to exacerbate this. Hard times indeed.

NB, Catherine Marston is the most excellent policy advisor at Universities UK, not UCU as stated in the report.

The Work Foundation: interesting acquisition

Work Foundation thinktank declared insolvent and sold

Unfortunate situation for the Work Foundation. However, things do seem to have turned out reaonably well according to the Guardian.

The Work Foundation, which bills itself as “the leading independent authority on work and its future”, announced today that it had been acquired by Lancaster University. The move came after a winding up petition, citing a £26.9m pension deficit, was filed at the high court yesterday.

The university claims the purchase minimises losses to creditors, including pension fund members, and safeguards 43 jobs, including that of the foundation’s executive vice-chair, Will Hutton. Hutton is a former editor of the Observer, a member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, and an adviser to the government on public sector pay.

The foundation, which aims to equip “leaders, policymakers and opinion-formers with evidence, advice, new thinking and networks”, will remain at its Westminster base as a separate entity. The alliance…would help the foundation consolidate its reputation for analysis and its ability to advise policymakers.

Private Eye has a slightly less positive slant on the situation in its most recent edition:

THE WORK FOUNDATION
How Will Hutton turned the Industrial Society with an annual income of £20m, into an insolvent disaster that can’t pay its former staff’s pensions – and all on a salary of just £180,000

However, it is probably a good thing that the Work Foundation will continue in existence. I really didn’t realise it was as big as that (although clearly a lot smaller than it used to be). It also will be interesting to see the impact on Lancaster’s REF submission. And what they do with the pension deficit.

Are private universities ‘a huge threat to academic standards’?

Problems with privates

According to a piece in the Telegraph private universities represent ‘a huge threat to academic standards’. This follows the award of the University College title to BPP College and the line comes from UCU:

More than nine in ten professors believe encouraging more private companies to become universities would be a mistake, the University and College Union (UCU) said. In a survey of 504 professors, the union found that 96.2 per cent opposed plans to make it easier for private companies to become universities. A call by David Willetts, the Universities Minister, to increase the role of the private sector in higher education represents “a huge threat to academic freedom and standards,” it said.

The UCU expressed concerns that private companies are not subjected to the same scrutiny as universities, and have no “tradition of academic freedom.”

An entirely contrary view is offered by via Geoffrey Alderman in the Guardian. Alderman argues that private universities are no threat to academic standards:

All of us who want the maintenance of appropriate academic standards and a robust student learning experience in British higher education must welcome the news that the BPP College of Professional Studies has been designated as a “university college” – the first wholly privately funded university institution to be established in the UK since the establishment of Buckingham University College – now the University of Buckingham – in 1976.

Given that Alderman is employed by the University of Buckingham his views are perhaps unsurprising. But what is the issue here? Are private universities really a threat to academic standards? The question is, of course, a ludicrous one. The arrival of new privately funded institutions will not, in itself, have any bearing on the academic standards set at existing institutions. Nor will standards set by such private universities necessarily be lower than those of other universities, just different. What will be interesting to see though is the broader impact private providers will have on publicly funded universities. The government clearly believes that the introduction of this kind of competition for students into the HE marketplace will force everyone to raise their game and lead to better quality of provision at lower cost. This is theoretically possible but what about reality?

Buckingham and BPP do seem able successfully to recruit students (although given the huge demand for limited university places this is not a surprise) and the former has enjoyed some success in national league tables but the standing of their graduates in the jobs market will be a key determinant of their success in the longer term. So, private universities may not have a direct impact on academic standards but if they succeed in recruiting good staff, well-qualified students and produce highly employable graduates then they will begin to offer real competition for publicly funded institutions. Will everyone else then begin to copy the private providers? We’ll see.

New Guardian 2011 University League Table

New Guardian League Table for 2011

Top 20 or so of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year’s position in brackets):

1 (1) Oxford
2 (2) Cambridge
3 (4) Warwick
4 (3) St Andrews
5 (6) UCL
6 (16) Lancaster
7 (8) Imperial College
8 (5) London School of Economics
9 (10) Loughborough
9 (11) York
11 (12) SOAS
12 (15) Leicester
13 (9) Bath
14 (13) Exeter
15 (7) Edinburgh
15 (18) Sussex
17 (14) Durham
18 (22) Southampton
19 (35) UEA
20 (27) Surrey
21 (26) Nottingham

The overview of the results from the Guardian offers a few additional points about some institutions which appear to be doing better or worse than in previous years:

Britain’s oldest universities still dominate the high rankings, although several have dropped many places from last year. The University of Manchester, which was formed in 2004 from two universities that were established in the 19th Century, has fallen to 51st place out of 118, from 32nd last year. Edinburgh has gone down to 15th place from seventh last year and Bristol has fallen to 33rd from 29th last year. Some universities founded in the 1960s, however, appear to be on the rise. Lancaster has climbed from 16th to sixth this year, the University of East Anglia has risen from 35th to 19th and York has gone from 11th to joint ninth place with Loughborough.

Overall though not huge changes with the exception of Lancaster which has jumped into the top 10 in all three of the most recent UK rankings.

Bristol University launches volunteering award

Volunteering award at Bristol University

According to the Guardian, Bristol has launched a volunteering award:

Organised volunteering and work experience has long been a vital companion to university degree courses. Usually it is left to employers to deduce the potential from a list of extracurricular adventures on a graduate’s CV, but now the University of Bristol has launched an award to formalise the achievements of students who devote time to activities outside their courses. Bristol PLuS aims to boost students in an increasingly competitive jobs market by helping them acquire work and life skills alongside academic qualifications.

This is, of course, a good thing. However, lots of other universities have been doing this kind of thing for some time. The University of Nottingham, for example, established the Nottingham Advantage Award in 2008 and the York Award at the University of York has been running for many years. Nevertheless, this kind of programme is a valuable offering for undergraduates and is just the kind of thing universities should be offering to undergraduates.

“Universities are crumbling”…

…according to a “secret database”

The Guardian claims a bit of a scoop following a Freedom of Information request on building conditions in universities:

Scores of university halls of residences and lecture theatres in the UK were judged “at serious risk of major failure or breakdown” and “unfit for purpose”, a secret database obtained after a legal battle by the Guardian reveals. Some of the most popular, high-ranking institutions, such as the London School of Economics, had 41% of their lecture theatres and classrooms deemed unsuitable for current use, while Imperial ­College London had 12% of its non-residential buildings branded “inoperable”. At City University, 41% of the student digs were judged unfit for purpose. Universities argue they have spent hundreds of millions in refurbishment since the judgments were made two years ago and use some of the buildings for storage purposes only.

Large amounts have been spent on capital improvements in the last few years but the backlog, following years of underfunding and neglect, was substantial. The position will undoubtedly have improved further since the survey referred to here but it is inevitable that there will still be poor building stock around the country. So, not clear what the shock is here.

The government agency that holds the information, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), was forced to reveal it after an information tribunal ruled in the Guardian’s favour, agreeing that it was in the public’s interest for the data to be made public.

It looks like then that the difficulty of securing release of the information became the story here rather than the data itself which, whilst disappointing, is not exactly surprising.

University Targets Overweight Students

Students have to take exercise in order to graduate

Students at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania are upset about a school rule requiring overweight students to take an exercise course in order to graduate. The rule applies to students with a body mass index above 30. James DeBoy, chair of the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Lincoln University, says the school officials believe that its their responsibility to alert students to the dangers of obesity.

via Pa. University Targets Overweight Students : NPR

So, is it discrimination? Nanny state-ism gone mad? Or benign concern for student health and well-being?

The story also appears in the Guardian, which reports that:

The course includes walking, cycling, aerobics and lessons in healthy diet. Students who fail to take it will not graduate, no matter how good their academic performance has been.

and also notes that, somewhat paradoxically:

Despite having introduced its controversial policy, it still allows KFC and the Grill to operate inside the campus, serving up double crunch sandwiches and fried mozzarella sticks to all-too-appreciative students.

“Old-fashioned universities letting students down”

Moaners not Maoists

According to the Guardian, David Willetts has said that old-fashioned universities are letting students down:

Universities are badly failing students with unfit teaching and old-fashioned methods and will have to radically modernise lectures and facilities if they want to raise fees, according to the Conservatives’ spokesman on higher education. David Willetts told the Guardian that vice-chancellors are not prepared for the pressure their students will put them under if fees go up and that many have failed to prove students are getting value for money.

It is really not at all clear from the article what “old-fashioned” methods large numbers of universities are employing…

“There are still too many horror stories I hear when I’m talking to students ‑ issues like academic work not coming back, not being able to contact tutors,” he said.

And such anecdotes, however horrific late return of work might seem, are really not a solid base for policy development.

“It’s amazing the change in this generation of students. The issue is not fomenting Maoist revolutionaries somewhere. They are much more likely to complain about how crowded seminars are or how slow the response to their dissertation was. Those are the kind of things that young people register.” Students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland currently pay up to £3,225 a year in tuition fees but many universities want a rise in the cap or even its removal. Willetts signalled the Tories were prepared to look at increasing fees, but with strings attached.

It will be interesting to see what these conditions for a fee rise turn out to be.