Eight minutes to choose a degree course

A report on the use made of Unistats

HEFCE has published an evaluation of the Unistats website after its first period of operation. It suggests that the huge demands made of institutions in providing the necessary data have paid off as Unistats has already become “one of the most widely used higher education course comparison websites”.

Since its launch in September 2012, the Unistats web-site has received over 3.8 million page views and over 175,000 unique visitors – an average of 984 new visitors per day. The site is used extensively by prospective higher education students, their parents, careers advisers, teachers and higher education staff.

The research, commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Councils, looks at the site’s position in the market and how it is perceived and used, as well as issues such as navigation, search, filter and comparison functions, and data presentation. A separate report by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) focuses on the experiences and views of higher education institutions.

Key findings include:

The average length of visit to the site is over eight minutes (a long time compared with use of other web-sites).

Many users regarded the independent and authoritative nature of the site as one of its key strengths.

Prospective students, current students and parents were more positive about the site than careers advisers, teachers and higher education staff, and more likely to describe the site as ’useful’ and ‘easy to get around’.

All very gratifying for Unistats fans. But as an earlier post noted there really is no shortage of information on HE opportunities. The most worrying element of this report though is the eight minute visit. Whilst this is undoubtedly a comparatively long time for a website visit it really is a frighteningly short time to spend looking at possible course choices.

Higher education funding letters: another bundle of joy

On government HE funding letters

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has written to HEFCE with the Department’s annual message on funding and helpful bag of instructions.

The letter

sets out Government funding and priorities for HEFCE and for higher education for the second year of the new financial arrangements for higher education in England. The Government’s vision for higher education, outlined in the higher education white paper ‘Students at the heart of the system’, remains, and HEFCE is asked to continue to support learning and teaching activity, quality assurance, widening participation and an enhanced student experience. HEFCE will also continue our support for postgraduate provision.

Super. More instructions.

Not only does it offer even more directions to HEFCE, at 36 paragraphs and eight pages it is the second longest of the four to date issued by the Secretary of State and the Minister and confirms a return to the sterling epistolary efforts made by the previous government.

Last January’s effort really set the standard though – although it contained 35 paragraphs was in fact nine pages long. The December 2010 was somewhat shorter at only 28 paragraphs and can be seen as the BIS duo just getting into their stride.

The earlier post on this topic back in August 2010 noted:

The most recent funding letter of June 24 2010 from Vince Cable and David Willetts to the Chairman of HEFCE is distinctive for three main reasons. First, and unsurprisingly if dispiritingly, it outlines the first major tranche of savings to be made in the 2010-11 financial year. Secondly, it is extremely short – indeed at 10 paragraphs and just over two pages it is the shortest funding letter to the Council in at least 14 years and undercuts all letters under the previous government by some way. Thirdly, it is the first such letter to be signed by both the Secretary of State and the relevant Minister. And thank goodness too or some of us might never have seen this fascinating signature:

Of course those with longer memories will have fond recollections of the briefest of grant letters from the University Grants Committee (UGC) which simply set out the amount of money available for disbursement. Many will long for the golden age of five year funding settlements under the UGC. Whilst it could reasonably be argued that the UGC served as an effective buffer between the state and the universities, the options for the Higher Education Funding Councils, and in particular HEFCE, are much more limited as the directives from government on spending have become ever more detailed and prescriptive. Fortunately though we are able to examine all of the details of these as HEFCE has a nice collection of funding letters going back to 1996.

This decidedly dubious summary of these letters draws on this collection but refers only to English funding allocations. I’m sure the other funding councils receive similar missives from their respective governments but it is beyond my capacity to deal with them I’m afraid.

The length of funding letters has seen two peaks in the last 14 years: January 2003’s letter was 73 paragraphs long and the December 1998 note ran to 66 paragraphs. The November 1999, November 2000 and December 2001 letters ranged from 40 to 46 paragraphs but the January 2004 letter and subsequent missives tend towards the more traditional brevity of only 15-25 paragraphs of instruction to HEFCE.

Just for completeness then here are some of the details about English Higher Education’s most exciting epistles:

1. The first letter in this series is the last prepared under the previous Conservative government, way back in November 1996. This 41 paragraph note (signed by a Civil Servant) covers: linking funding to assessment of teaching quality, expanding part-time provision, the importance of closer links with employers, not wanting to see longer courses, a planned reduction in student numbers by 2,000 for the following year and keeping the participation rate at around 30%. Some interesting parallels here with the most recent letter from the current government perhaps?
2. The December 1998 letter is the first New Labour funding letter. At 66 paragraphs it is one of the longest in recent times and the last one to carry the name of a senior Civil Servant rather than the Secretary of State. Topics covered include sector spending, lifelong learning, increasing participation, maintaining quality and standards (a recurring theme down the years), widening access, promoting employability, research investment, capital spend, tuition fee arrangements and Year 2000 issues (we were all worried then).
3. The November 1999 letter, 43 paragraphs long, provides David Blunkett with the opportunity to wax lyrical on the importance of maintaining quality and standards, increasing participation and employability, widening access, equal opportunities for HE staff, dealing with student complaints, new capital funding, pfi/ppp opportunities, research funding and HE pay.
4. David Blunkett, in his November 2000 letter, which runs to a sprightly 46 paragraphs, makes some big points on widening participation as a key priority, business links and the e-university.
5. In November 2001 Estelle Morris provides a neat 40 paragraph letter which gives lots of direction on widening participation, maintaining quality and standards, strengthening research, the importance of links with industry and communities, as well as something on the value of the e-Universities project (remember that?) and, last but not least, social inclusion.
6. January 2003 represents the high water mark of recent funding letters: in 73 action packed paragraphs Charles Clarke, in his first outing as Secretary of State, is clearly keen to lead the way. The letter covers, among other things, improvement in research, expanded student numbers, foundation degrees, widening participation, improving teaching and learning and increased knowledge transfer. As if that were not enough we also have the establishment of the AHRC, the introduction of a new quality assurance regime but with reduced burdens for institutions (yeah, right), credit systems, FE partnerships, expanded student numbers and new investments in HE workforce development. A real blockbuster of a letter.
7. The January 2004 message from Charles Clarke comes in at 20 paragraphs in just over 4 pages with reducing bureaucracy, building research and quality and standards and the establishment of Aimhigher as its central features.
8. December 2004 brings a Christmas treat from everyone’s favourite Santa, Charles Clarke. With just 16 paragraphs and 4 pages of direction Clarke stresses the importance of maintaining the unit of funding for teaching, controlling student numbers and making efficiency gains.
9. The January 2006 letter, a first and last offering from Ruth Kelly, comes in at a modest 15 paragraphs and 4 pages. No huge surprises in the text with employer-led provision, more widening participation, additional research and capital funding and a strong steer on reducing bureaucracy being the primary features. Additional points to note include equal opportunities for HE staff, efficiency gains, the new conditions which accompany the new tuition fees regime and reference to access agreements. What’s not to like here?
10. January 2007’s is a punchy 19 paragraphs and merely five pages from Alan Johnson (his one and only letter). Despite the wordiness there isn’t a huge amount in here beyond employer engagement, growing foundation degrees and a lot on widening participation.
11. January 2008: as with its successor letter this one is 24 paragraphs and 7 pages long (and note the online version on the HEFCE website is erroneously dated 18 Jan 2009). In this funding letter Denham indicates that his priorities are increasing student numbers, developing employer part-funded provision, and widening participation. The letter also refers to encouraging HE to develop stronger links with schools and colleges, greater investment in research, the importance of STEM, a green development fund, closer measuring of performance, and the establishment of the fund-raising match-funding scheme.
12. January 2009’s letter is 7 pages and 24 paragraphs long and in it John Denham seeks to encourage HE to support the economy through recession, wider engagement with business, promote employer-led provision, innovative ways to support business, promotion of STEM subjects and widening participation and extending fair access. Additionally, there is the confirmation of the ‘university challenge’ with 20 new HE centres to be established, emphasis on the maintenance of quality and standards, plans for continuing to reduce regulation, commitment to dual support as well as the development of REF, steps to tackle climate change and bearing down on over-recruitment by institutions.
13. The December 2009 letter from Lord Mandelson comes in at 15 paragraphs. This short note follows up on Higher Ambitions (which, in case you had forgotten, “sets out a course for how universities can remain world class, providing the nation with the high level skills needed to remain competitive, while continuing to attract the brightest students and researchers”) and also covers the Economic Challenge Investment Fund, wider and fairer access to HE, increasing the variety of undergraduate provision, new funding incentives to deliver higher level skills, developing REF, new developments in quality assurance including the publication of a standard set of information for students, engaging with communities and penalizing institutions which over-recruit students.
14. June 2010 sees the first funding letter from the new coalition government: Cable and Willetts give us 10 brief paragraphs covering initial savings, efficiencies and cuts but also 10,000 extra places (but with strings).

So, that’s your lot folks. All you never wanted to know about 14 years of funding letters.

Shall we dance? Collaborations, Alliances, Mergers

Or Snog, marry, avoid? More universities are working more closely together

In one of its latest circulars (2012-21) HEFCE has published some new guidance on collaborations, alliances and mergers. It’s interesting stuff and timely given the context:

The pace of change in the HE sector is probably accelerating in many countries due to a number of complex and interacting factors, such as globalisation, internationalisation, the growing role of the private sector, increasing use of international rankings of institutions, and changing student needs and expectations. In England the new approach to the funding of teaching, and changes taking place to other major sources of funding, will also have a big impact on institutional behaviour, as will the renewed emphasis on placing students at the centre of the system. In various European countries and in Wales there have been major CAM developments, often actively promoted by governments to strengthen institutions and improve performance.

A clear, if rather simplistic, spectrum shows a range of possible partnerships from soft through to harder collaborations although there is plenty of scope for overlap here:

Continuing the rationale for this kind of activity, the paper also notes:

Institutions are being challenged as never before to reconsider their fundamental role, market position, structures, relationships, partnerships, policies and processes. They will need to continue questioning how they operate internally, engage externally with other institutions and organisations, and interact with the wider society. This raises the profile and potential relevance of collaborations, alliances and mergers as part of institutions’ response to the drivers for change. Nonetheless, institutions are autonomous and there is no question of a top-down approach in England.

There are some interesting case studies in here, ranging from the UMIST/Manchester merger, the development of what was Thames Valley University and the establishment of University Campus Suffolk. Although the emphasis is more on mergers than collaborations and alliances it is nevertheless a helpful guide and certainly reflects some dimensions of the Nottingham/Birmingham partnership.

A little more information can be found in this Prezi on the collaboration between the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham as delivered to colleagues at the recent AHUA conference.

Undoubtedly we will be seeing more collaborations, alliances and even mergers in future.

Blots on the information landscape

Exciting new report on redesigning the higher education data and information landscape

A previous post commented on regulatory issues and the work being undertaken on the “information landscape”. A report on part of this work, the imaginatively entitled “Project B” has recently been agreed by the Interim Regulatory Partnership Group. The report sets out a new way forward for the governance of HE data:

The project report was presented to the Interim Regulatory Partnership Group (IRPG) at its meeting on 15 June. The report envisages a new, collective approach to the governance of the data and information landscape in HE, which could be achieved in the medium term.

IRPG accepted the recommendations of the report and agreed that this work should be scoped as a part of the broader programme of activities being taken forward by the Group.

Part of the evidence considered by the Group was a survey which aimed to establish the totality of external reporting undertaken by HEIs in the UK. The survey identified 550 (550!) separate external reporting requirements and grouped them into seven main categories as follows:

The main recommendation contained in the report is that the key players should get together and agree what data and information is required:

To achieve this IRPG should task some of the key stakeholders in information flows (e.g. HESA, QAA, SLC, UCAS, AoC, Guild HE and UUK) to develop and propose the structure, resourcing and operation of a governance model for the data and information landscape.

This would enable a programme of work, using shared expertise, to create a more coherent set of arrangements for the collection, sharing and dissemination of data. These arrangements would include the identification, development and adoption of data and information standards and the review and scrutiny of data requests.

In order to fulfil this role there would need to be a series of enabling projects, including:

• Develop a calendar and inventory of data collections across the year as a first step towards streamlining collections and improving the timeliness of information
• Develop a data model, lexicon and thesaurus for the sector – this would be a purely administrative/reporting model that does not seek to impinge on academic practice or to impact the way business processes are carried out. It may be that this would be a series of linked models using a consistent approach and a common data language.The establishment of this collective oversight of the information landscape would require each of the organisations involved to make a real commitment to work collaboratively and openly on issues involving data and information.

Whilst these steps will be important they do seem relatively modest aims in the light of the sheer scale of the regulatory burden identified by the group. It remains to be seen how much benefit will result from the establishment of a “coherent set of arrangements” in the medium term. Let’s hope it leads to some real reductions in the data information demands placed on universities.

David Willetts on internationalisation via sharing university statutes

An interesting idea?

At the recent HEFCE Annual Conference the Universities Minister, David Willetts, delivered a wide-ranging speech which included a couple of interesting points on internationalisation:

Since becoming universities minister, I have worked hard with UUK’s excellent international office and of course the British Council in forging partnerships with other countries: with China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and – in the past fortnight alone – Turkey, the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Malaysia and Indonesia. This week in London, I have already met my Chinese counterpart, and today I am meeting he science minister from India. There is a lot going on. In Turkey, for instance, I witnessed the real potential for a “system-to-system” offer – with students able to study in either country, sharing of educational technologies, academic exchanges and degree validation. The Science Without Borders initiative with Brazil is path breaking.

In Indonesia, I agreed a joint communiqué on education to develop our links with Indonesian universities – promoting two-way student mobility, institutional leadership and knowledge transfer. The likes of Nottingham University already have solid connections to Indonesian institutions. There’s room for more productive associations – in Malaysia, for example, which has more overseas British campuses than any other country.

My department is working with UUK, UKTI, the British Council and others to support our excellent universities – and private companies working in the education sector – to seize these opportunities. It means attracting overseas students here. It means more overseas campuses. But it has to go further and be a full offer from the range of players that make up British higher education today – from architects and trainers of administrators through to external examiners and shared post graduate study. We are still only scratching the surface. This is one of Britain’s great growth industries of the future. The deep respect for our universities across the world is a reminder of what we have achieved here and what more we can do in the future.

All very positive but does remain rather at odds with the Government’s visa policy. One point which was made by the Minister, which does not appear in the published speech, I found rather interesting (and not a little bizarre). Referring to one of his visits, possibly to Kurdistan, Willetts reported that he had been approached by an academic who was seeking to establish a new university. As a starting point, the Professor had downloaded the charter and statutes of Lancaster University and was using them as a blueprint for setting up a regulatory framework for the new institution. The Minister was clearly taken with this idea and thought that it might be a good thing to take copies of a university governance template on future international missions.

I’ve not looked at the Lancaster statutes but if they are anything like those of other universities of a similar vintage and even if the charter, statutes and ordinances had been modernised in the past few years they are unlikely to offer the ideal model for a new university. The Willetts idea is, I am sure, well-intended but statutes and ordinances will be the product of a series of negotations, local and national (in the case of the Model Statute relating to academic terms and conditions), and will have been modified and adapted over many years. There are some good examples out there but statutes don’t lend themselves to being copied in quite the way suggested. Nevertheless, having a Registrar and Secretary or similar on international missions who is able to advise on governance may well be a useful idea.

The Imperfect University: Do we need a level playing field?

On the issue of a “level playing field” for universities

For the next, slightly briefer, piece in the Imperfect University series, I thought it might be interesting to pick on a topical issue which nevertheless has wider relevance and also serves to highlight some of the imperfections inherent in higher education. Following the White Paper, Putting students at the heart of the system, published in June 2011, there has been a lot of talk about importance of a “level playing field” for the universities and the expected new for-profit entrants to higher education provision in the UK (or, to be precise, England, given that the other nations in the UK have different, and increasingly divergent, arrangements for higher education and therefore their own playing fields with which to concern themselves).

The demands for a level playing field seem to come from all quarters, with established players insisting that new entrants should be subject to all the same controls and constraints that already apply to them and the for-profit wannabees insisting that they need more of a break given the decades of advantage enjoyed by recipients of public funding.

The fact that we are already in the sporting arena for our metaphors is in itself interesting (is this just a game then or is it more serious than that?) but if we set that matter aside and confine ourselves to the consideration of playing fields what can we conclude?

Different pitches, different teams

Steve Egan, Deputy Chief Executive at HEFCE, at a recent AHUA (Association of Heads of University Administration) event, was rather dismissive of the idea of a single level playing field, preferring to imagine number of different playing fields. However, it was not clear if these were side by side or one on top of each other or indeed whether they were marked up for the same game or which teams were playing on each.

Pinsent Masons, in a draft response to the BIS technical consultation (dated 14 October 2011, circulated by email on 18 October) observe that charitable universities and non-charitable for-profits have fundamentally different aims. They are two quite different teams – hens versus foxes is what Pinsents suggest – which means we are unlikely to get either a good match or a fair result.

The paper rightly points out that this is a key issue when considering what we mean by a University:

…the problem with the BIS proposals, as it seems to us, is that alternative providers will be given access to public funds when they have no corresponding obligations in relation to public benefit and the long term interests of the sector.

Our alternative proposal is that in order to access public funds, whether directly through grants or indirectly through access to the student loan system, HE providers must have charitable status.

There are plenty of ways for for-profit providers to compete, with many of the advantages which come from their lack of regulation but, as Pinsent Masons put it:

fundamentally, public money should not be subsidising the private benefit of the owners and shareholders of for profit HEIs.

So, it looks like the playing field is already sloping in favour of the for-profits.

International matches

This is a key issue internationally too as we find in The Road to Academic Excellence: The Making of World-Class Research Universities. This recent report from the World Bank makes specific reference to this thorny issue. Examining the very different positions of publicly funded and private universities, the report cites a range of examples from East Asia to Chile:

The case studies, which analyze a number of positive and less favorable governance situations, show that an appropriate regulatory framework, strong and inspiring leadership, and adequate management significantly influence the ability of research universities to prosper. Indian Institutes of Technology, for example, would not have operated as effectively as they do if they had been constrained by the same financial and adminis- trative regulations that all other public tertiary education institutions must adhere to in India. They have also, by and large, been protected from political interference for the selection of vice chancellors and the recruitment of academics.

The comparison between the University of Malaya and the National University of Singapore illustrates in a striking way the differences in leadership and management approaches and their direct impact on the respective performance of the two institutions. Similarly, the University of Chile’s status as a public entity prevents it from competing on a level playing field with the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Paradoxically, the latter is not subject to the same rules concerning administrative, procurement, and financial control as the former, even though the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile receives budget contributions from the state as other public universities do. The University of Chile is also handicapped by excessive decentralization, which undermines the power of the rector, and by not having a board with outside stakeholders that can help the university to respond better to the needs of society.

As private universities, Pohang University of Science and Technology and Monterrey Institute of Technology have enjoyed much more autonomy and flexibility than public universities in Korea and Mexico, respectively. And as just discussed, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile has certainly benefited from its status as a private institution by enjoying the best of two worlds—the agility and independence of a nonpublic university, while obtaining public subsidies on a regular basis.

The key dimensions of autonomy brought out by the case studies include the ability to mobilize significant additional funding from a variety of nonpublic sources; to provide attractive remuneration packages for top academics; and to boost the international nature of the institution in terms of program content, language of instruction, and focus of the research. (p332)

The playing field therefore looks rather uneven in Chile too.

Keeping it fair

So perhaps the way to keep the playing field level is with the conditions that attach to public funding. Whilst these often feel excessive to those of us working in universities, there is, nevertheless, a strong argument for at least some accountability for the use of taxpayers’ money (although there does needs to be a balance here too – more of this later in the series). David Willetts, speaking at the HEFCE annual conference on 18 April 2012, argued that there is already a level playing field (no, really) and that therefore we should all stop worrying about the precise legal status of the new entrants to higher education. It is difficult not to be concerned about this though.

Nicola Hart in another Pinsent Masons flyer circulated on 23 March 2012 entitled ‘HE reforms – on or off?’ makes the accountability argument more forcefully:

The HE reforms are going full steam ahead. There is a market. For-profit providers are full competitive players in the sector, and seem pretty content with the current (no bill, no extra regulation, no charity law obligations) state of affairs. With these competitive pressures rapidly increasing, encouraged by government, nobody can afford to be complacent and assume that the sector (or their part of it) will remain unchanged. Universities need to continue to think strategically about how they position themselves in a climate that’s becoming less predictable and where change will be driven by policy, not big set-piece legislation. The for-profit providers have been noticeably effective in their lobbying efforts with government. Universities should also think hard about what they want to achieve and what lobbying they need to do to get policy decisions working in their favour. The main missing ingredient is a coherent system of regulation to match the fundamental changes the sector is going through. The leverage of state funding delivered via HEFCE is about to disappear. For-profit providers are playing on the same field as universities but with different (fewer and less onerous) rules and obligations. We think this is important and something which government will need to square – where there is public funding, in whatever form, there needs to be (at least) appropriate public accountability and regulation.

For the for-profit entrants, they will need to subject themselves to the same requirements as others if they wish to access public funding (as Hart suggests). The alternative is to enjoy the freedom to act which comes without such regulatory constraint. So, not exactly a completely level playing field and indeed the rules are a little different for both teams but there would at least be a chance of a decent match.

And if we change ends at half time then we can at least argue that the unevenness of the ground doesn’t matter (although no doubt there would always be some complaints: “they had the wind behind them in the first half and it’s now changed direction” or “we had the sun in our eyes” etc).

Then all we have to worry about is the referee. Or perhaps finding a new metaphor.

On Meaningful University Collaboration

Collaboration Theory and Practice

There’s an exciting new HEFCE report out on the lessons learned from collaborations, alliances and mergers. It has also resulted in an exciting new acronym, CAM. In these austere times it’s good to know that we are still able to produce good acronyms. The report, available here, is also a consultation document which invites further comment and evidence from the sector:

Collaborations, alliances and mergers among universities and colleges have been an important feature of the higher education sector throughout its history, but relatively little information has been published on this activity. We have therefore published this study to help the sector learn from the experiences of others and improve the likelihood of success considering or implementing change. The information has been drawn from case studies in England and overseas, interviews, existing literature and other published information.

Sir Alan Langlands, HEFCE’s Chief Executive, said:

‘CAM activity might well continue to be part of the higher education sector’s response to change, and has the potential to provide opportunities for educational development, new research directions and greater effectiveness. However, any decision about change is a matter for institutions – there is no question of a top-down approach. HEFCE’s primary role is to safeguard the collective interests of current and prospective students and the wider public. In seeking to encourage the development of a more diverse and dynamic sector and supporting student choice, we will respect the autonomy of institutions and support them in any way we can.’

The CAM report coincides with the first anniversary of the University of Birmingham/University of Nottingham collaborative partnership, the marking of which was reported in the Times Higher Education:

Publication of the report came as David Eastwood, University of Birmingham vice-chancellor and former Hefce chief executive, gave his view on the sector’s future as the collaboration between his institution and the University of Nottingham marked its first anniversary.

Professor Eastwood told Times Higher Education that while Nottingham and Birmingham each had annual turnovers of around £500 million and were “financially strong”, there were universities with £30 million to £50 million turnovers “having to carry a lot of the same infrastructure costs that we do”.

“If we can see some issues from a combined operation of almost £1 billion, you would expect others to be in search – rather urgently – of those kinds of efficiencies.”

In their year of collaboration, Nottingham and Birmingham have jointly appointed an international officer to boost student recruitment in Brazil and established a £480,000 joint investment fund for research partnerships with institutions in Sao Paulo state. At home, they shared research equipment and won a share of £5 million to set up one of two national centres for ageing and pain research funded by the Medical Research Council and Arthritis Research UK.

Professor Eastwood said the collaboration had stimulated “a lot of interest both in the sector and in government. What we are doing will remain relatively rare, because it is relatively rare to have two big universities, financially strong, which over a period have built good relations. There will be other issues that move other institutions to alignments and mergers.”

Nottingham and Birmingham “have their own identities…and are not going to do anything that undermines that”, he added.

Nottingham vice-chancellor David Greenaway put the collaboration in the context of “diversifying research income streams – which is important to do in the current climate”, arguing that “there are resources out there, especially in the big emerging economies”.

Professor Greenaway said of the joint MRC funding: “I don’t think that would have happened without the collaboration. We probably would have ended up putting in competing bids – neither bid would have been big enough, strong enough, in its own right.”

He also highlighted the potential for the two universities to work together in pre-university education on “changing life opportunities in [the] two cities”.

(See also the University of Nottingham statement on the milestone.)

Another dimension of the collaboration, a research partnership in Brazil, was also reported recently on the Guardian Higher Education Network:

The ability to operate at scale has allowed us to develop 20 full-fee PhD scholarships annually for Brazilian students; a visiting fellows programme and a £480k joint research investment fund with the São Paulo Research Foundation. We have also planned a series of joint workshops in-country focused around energy (oil and gas, bioenergy), with further themes under discussion.

Alongside the benefits of scale are the traditional benefits of complementarity. Our collaboration enables each partner to bring its individual strengths to the table. We have found this could be research expertise or in areas such as student exchange and teaching links. An example of this is in the area of ultra-cold atoms and energy – Birmingham has expertise in optical lattices and nuclear energy and Nottingham in atom chips and bioenergy; both areas being of particular relevance in our links with Brazil.

Although it is still early, there is a real sense of purpose around what we are doing in Brazil. We hope what will follow will be additional academic collaborations, increased research income, and greater visibility. Overall, we need to be prepared to invest considerable time and energy working together and acknowledge that the effort may take a while to bear fruit.

These are just a couple of case studies of how the Birmingham/Nottingham collaboration is playing out. It still feels like early days but there are some striking examples of how working together is proving to be mutually beneficial. This is very much at the softer end of HEFCE’s CAM spectrum but it is extremely fruitful for both universities.

Other universities have sought to emulate the success of the Nottingham/Birmingham partnership in the last year including Liverpool and Lancaster (although that does seem to have gone a little quiet of late). Most recently though Warwick and Queen Mary have announced a partnership. According to the Times Higher though they seem to be slightly at odds about some elements of the collaboration:

The University of Warwick and Queen Mary, University of London, could share lecturers as part of a new programme of research and outreach collaboration.

In a joint statement, the two institutions said “cross contributions to undergraduate teaching” by their scholars would “ensure that the universities’ students benefit from the partnership by having access to an even broader range of leading academics”.

Overall, the collaboration in teaching, research and widening participation “aims to ensure that both universities continue to thrive amidst the increasing uncertainty and pressures facing higher education institutions in England”.

A spokeswoman for Queen Mary added that the universities would share lecturers in third-year undergraduate history, English and computer science seminars, and look to expand to other subjects in the future.

However, a spokesman for Warwick stressed that no decisions had been taken, claiming that there were no specific plans to share lecturers.

This comes on the back of the international partnership recently announced between Warwick and Monash University in Australia which will be secured by, among other things, the appointment of a shared Pro-Vice-Chancellor.

So, everyone is at it and that HEFCE report is looking rather timely.

The Imperfect University: More and more regulation

More Regulatory Woes

A recent speech by the Universities Minister focused on his apparent desire to reduce regulation for institutions: “We are in a government that understands the value of autonomy,” Mr Willetts said.

Mr Willetts talked about the possibility of reducing data collection requirements as well as the likelihood of universities escaping some EU regulation following the shift to majority private funding as a result of the new fees regime.

Both of these would be welcome steps. The burden of excessive regulation is a significant problem for universities. It might be thought that as the size of the public contribution to higher education funding declined this would be reflected in a reduction in red tape. Unfortunately, despite the rhetoric, universities are left with the feeling that the weight of regulation tends to keep growing rather than reducing.

So will the reduction in public funding really mean less government involvement in university affairs? Sadly, no. Rather than cuts in government funding to HE resulting in a bonfire of red tape, there is a whole host of new or augmented regulations, including:

• The new fee arrangements which institutions are all deeply engaged in preparing for the implementation of at present
• Changed student number controls, with the uncertainties of AAB+ and bidding for the 20,000 students at the margin
• The move to more comprehensive annual access agreements with OFFA
• The changed financial memorandum between institutions and HEFCE
• New visa arrangements for Tier 2, staff, and Tier 4, students, together with monitoring arrangements for the latter
• The Key Information Set (KIS) which will require all universities to provide more information to prospective students
• The proposed introduction of a Student Charter
• The idea of extended transcript information for all graduates through the Higher Education Achievement Record
• The revised Quality Assurance Agency institutional review method
• The increased burden of Freedom of Information requests
• Developments in the work of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator
• Charities regulation.

This is only part of the picture. The cost to the sector of compliance with this regulatory framework is significant. And this really is not what universities need right now. Part of the burden is data collection and the Information Landscape Project, announced by the Minister in the same speech, is intended to address this:

The BIS White Paper ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ discusses a new regulatory framework for HE in England and explicitly tasks HESA, working with the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Higher Education Better Regulation Group and the Information Standards Board for education and skills, to redesign the information landscape in order to arrive at a new system that meets the needs of a wider group of users; reduces the duplication that currently exists and results in timelier and more relevant data.

Will this make a difference? We will see. Universities have been here before though and have yet to see a real impact on regulation.

Policy, Regulation and Lies?

So, how big is the accountability ‘burden’ on institutions? Looking back over the past dozen years there are several attempts to measure and to reduce or improve regulation. In 2004 PA Consulting, following up an earlier report on accountability costs, investigated changes in accountability costs as perceived by the universities they contacted. The study cited a number of changes since 2000 including the introduction of a revised QAA framework and reduced requirements from HEFCE in terms of bidding, tendering and consultations. The paper concluded, on the basis of its survey, that the accountability cost to the sector had declined over the four year period to the equivalent of £188m (at 2000 prices), a reduction of 25%. However, it is also noted that this was the equivalent to the ‘annual income of two large universities’ (at that time) and therefore ‘a cause for continued attention’. Something of an understatement, especially given the ‘slightly disconcerting’ range of additional accountability requirements identified in the report. These findings were commented on favourably by the (then) Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education in his presentation of the Government response to the Interim Report of the Better Regulation Review Group (in 2004).

The Better Regulation Review Group was succeeded by the Higher Education Regulation Review Group (HERRG). HERRG was established to ‘introduce a stage of informed scrutiny into the policy making process’. The impact of both groups was, arguably, negligible. It is difficult to muster much confidence that the latest incarnations of this kind of task force will be any more beneficial in terms of reducing the bureaucratic burden.

There is always a gap between policy as formulated and as implemented. The simplistic nature of the instrumental interpretation of relationship between policy and evaluation is rational but disconnected from reality. Unfortunately though, evaluation is often seen in this way, as the provision of information to policy makers or stakeholders who prefer simply described and preferably numerical outcomes. The disappointment at the lack of measurable output inevitably leads to a desire for further regulation in order to deliver greater confidence in the results of policy. The consequences of this though can be inimical to the intended ends of the original policy and corrosive of trust.

Victims of our own success

The role of HE in creating the professional labour force of the UK public sector is one example of how successful universities have been and how vital is their role in contemporary society. Given the importance of universities then the desire for intervention should not come as a surprise but the interventionist approach which characterises regulation in HE is also part of wider trends and a diminution of an historical trust which no longer appears to offer adequate reassurance of the quality and standard of HE provision. This decline in trust results in heavy transaction costs and, associated with the move towards controlling institutions via contract and regulation, matters have to become more explicit rather than implicit. It is difficult though to see this reduction in trust in institutions as anything other than a long term and irreversible trend. The very nature of the national quality assurance framework, for example, would seem to reinforce this and it is difficult to imagine that the historical basis of trust can be reconstructed.

Regulations - lots of them

Other angles

Some other interesting views: Martin Wolf [1] has argued that universities are, in effect, a nationalised industry which accepted their financial dependence on the state with the foundation of the UGC in 1919. The government has asked institutions to assure quality without providing the funds needed to ensure it and the less generously the government funds, the more it interferes with the universities. That has certainly been the experience in the last few years. Salter and Tapper [2] suggest that, whereas Robbins saw total institutional freedom as necessary for the efficient operation of universities, in the 1980s the principle of HE regulation was established to ensure the efficient use of public funds and then, having developed this far, specific accountability arrangements were needed.

The costs of regulation of HE outweigh the extremely limited benefits. Indeed the Better Regulation Task Force report says that the HE sector has ‘earned the right to more autonomy’ and that multiple audits, excessive data requirements and over-restrictive funding are ‘symptomatic of a lack of trust between government and the HE sector’.[3] The Chairman of the Task Force observes that ‘there is no evidence that the sector is particularly prone to management or financial failings or failures to deliver on academic performance’. The statement suggests that earned autonomy is a key theme for government which wants to see it applied more in HE. The report refers to the PA Consulting study (quoted above) which estimates the accountability burden for HE to be £250m per annum and notes that the National Audit Office regards HE as a low risk sector in terms of fraud and malpractice.

The changes made in HE regulation in the first decade or so of the 21st Century have not resulted in the reduction in burden and cost which is called for. The claimed 25% reduction in the burden of regulation between 2000 and 2004 seems extremely modest in the light of the above (incomplete) list of regulatory interventions which includes a number of new requirements replacing the eliminated accountability demands.

Private HE institutions, which are expected to increase in number under the new fee regime, will benefit from significantly lighter regulation. However, for everyone else there remains the seemingly iron law that as government funding declines the volume and range of government regulation inevitably increases. So, less money and ever greater constraints on how it can be spent. No matter what the Minister may say.

It could be worse?

Things may be difficult in universities but they could be an awful lot worse according to a recent story in the TES about the appearance of Geoff Russell, chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), before the Public Accounts Committee which was considering how bureaucracy should be reduced in the FE sector:

Mr Russell’s retirement may be imminent but, as the hearing made clear, few expect the red tape that has stifled the sector for so long to be untangled any time soon. The committee was informed that, for every £5 that goes to FE, £1 is swallowed up by bureaucracy. The biggest difficulties, MPs heard, are caused by colleges having to deal with very different data obligations and regulations from several agencies simultaneously. A general FE college offering higher education provision, Mr Lang explained, has to accommodate the requirements of four different funding bodies – the Department for Education, the Young People’s Learning Agency, the SFA and the Higher Education Funding Council for England – as well as policy directives from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

That’s pretty expensive and works out at more than £150 per student according to the National Audit Office. Things may be bad for the universities but at least they aren’t this bad. So, should we feel lucky?

What is to be done?

There has been only one substantive change in the last decade to the mass of regulation loaded onto institutions: the ending of subject-based inspection of universities (Subject Review or TQA as it was originally known). Whilst undoubtedly welcome and beneficial, the gain the ending of such inspections represented has more than been replaced by other forms of regulation. So the burden continues to grow. One step forward, two steps back.

What then are universities to do? In order to respond to the ever increasing burden of regulation I would suggest that the following steps are worthy of consideration:

• Don’t put too much faith in Ministerial rhetoric when it comes to reducing bureaucracy;
• When working out how to deal with all of the different regulatory demands try to sort what really matters from what is less important – assuring quality and standards, and complying with the demands of the QAA is pretty important as is legal compliance with health and safety, employment and equality legislation but other regulations may be less significant;
• Protect core activities, ie teaching and research, from the impact of regulation as far as is possible;
• In most cases, go for minimal compliance rather than ‘gold-plating’ of procedures to respond to regulation – this often means steering away from what may be seen as ‘best practice’;
• Object to new regulations wherever possible – work with others for greater effect;
• Don’t be deflected from delivering the agreed university strategy by regulation.

Will we see a reduction in the regulatory burden as Mr Willetts claims? We might, but it is unlikely to make a big difference. My advice? Don’t hold your breath.

________________________________________

[1] Wolf, M (2002), ‘How to save the British Universities’, Singer and Friedlander Lecture, delivered on September 26 2002 at Magdalen College, Oxford

[2] Salter, B and Tapper, T (2000), ‘The politics of Governance in Higher Education: the Case of Quality Assurance’, Political Studies, 48(1), pp66-87.

[3] Better Regulation Task Force (22 July 2002), Press release for Higher Education: Easing the burden, London: Cabinet Office.

“Doubling foreign enrolments is ‘unbelievable’ aim”

So, are international student numbers set to double?

According to Times Higher Education:

English universities are relying on “unbelievable” plans to increase international student numbers by up to 100 per cent in four years as government policy leads to fears of volatility in home student numbers.

Durham University plans for a 97 per cent increase in non-European Union undergraduates between now and 2014-15, while the University of Exeter is planning for a 73 per cent rise in certain areas in the same period.

Senior figures in the sector warn that universities are relying too heavily on unrealistic targets for overseas income in their financial planning.

For 2010-11, English higher education institutions aimed to increase their non-EU student fee income from £2.1 billion (9.6 per cent of total income) to £2.3 billion, according to figures from the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

But in a statement to Times Higher Education, the funding body highlights increased competition for international students between UK universities, and fiercer recruitment battles with other nations.

A Hefce spokesman said this “implies optimism in some of the current growth forecasts”.

Les Ebdon, chair of the Million+ group of new universities, said Hefce had used stronger words in informal discussions about future projections.

“Every (institution’s) strategic plan includes losses of money on home students and a massive increase in international students. (Hefce) says it is unbelievable. It is unlikely the numbers would increase by the amount people are predicting.”

Are HEIs’ targets ‘unbelievable’? There will undoubtedly be optimism here. There may even be a little desperation in some quarters. But no university can ‘rely’ on targets. It’s the delivery that counts. And sustained delivery of recruitment targets depends in large part on delivery of a high quality student experience. It’s about an awful lot more than just clever marketing and a large dose of optimism.

Of course there will be institutions which fail to deliver fully on over-optimistic targets but many more will be able to grow in a sensible and managed way. This is despite the likely negative impact of Tier 4 visa changes. Unfortunately though this line of argument does rather take us into Daily Mail ‘foreign students steal our degree places’ territory.

Regulation, Regulation, Regulation

More Regulatory Woes

In University Governance: Questions for a New Era, Professor Malcolm Gillies looks at a whole set of issues around university governance. A previous post noted his suggestion about a greater involvement of alumni but he suggests that they will become more important than the state, at least in governance terms, because of the change in balance of funding from public to private, ie from government to graduate:

42. State denial:  The withdrawal of the state as chief funding agent of higher education creates new balances in governance authority.  The body which can be most expected to fill that space is the alumni, as they now become the chief funding agent of most English universities in direct replacement of that state interest, through their decades-long repayment of state-provided loans.  The alumni also have the greatest, life-long stake in the institution’s reputation and its protection.  They understand the institution’s symbolic value.

But will the reduction in public funding really mean less government involvement in university affairs? Sadly, no. Rather than cuts in government funding to HE resulting in a bonfire of red tape, there is a whole host of new or augmented regulations, including:

• The new fee arrangements which institutions are all deeply engaged in considering at present
• Student number controls, which may well change in the light of fee developments
• The move to more comprehensive annual access agreements with OFFA
• The changed financial memorandum between institutions and HEFCE
• New visa arrangements for Tier 2, staff, and Tier 4, students, together with monitoring arrangements for the latter
• The Key Information Set (KIS) which will require all universities to provide more information to prospective students
• The proposed introduction of a Student Charter
• The idea of extended transcript information for all graduates through the Higher Education Achievement Record
• The revised Quality Assurance Agency institutional review method
• The increased burden of Freedom of Information requests
• Developments in the work of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator

Private HE institutions, which are expected to increase in number under the new fee regime, benefit from significantly lighter  regulation. However, for everyone else there remains the seemingly iron law that as government funding declines the volume and range of government regulation inevitably increases. So, less money and ever greater constraints on how it can be spent.

HEFCE “fears government’s controlling hand”

Government control issues for HEFCE

According to a recent report in Times Higher Education HEFCE still fears government’s controlling hand over its budget despite its status as an “arm’s-length” public body:

Newly published Hefce board papers reveal internal fears about its ability to “maintain the standard of its work” and its relative independence given the pressure from ministers to cut its running costs. Hefce is making efficiency reductions of £2 million – amounting to a real-terms cut to its administration costs of 11 per cent this year – to help the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills save £836 million in 2010-11.

During a meeting on 25 November, the body’s audit committee said it was worried that the “continued pressure” to reduce running costs would have a serious effect as it helps universities manage the changes to funding and the introduction of higher fees.

“We expressed our concern about the capacity and capability of Hefce to maintain its standard of work over the medium term when faced with continued pressure to reduce administration costs,” a report of the meeting says.

“We also noted with concern the level of control imposed by BIS over Hefce and the potential impact on its governance and management.”

Whilst it is important that the Funding Council is not protected from the cuts facing the sector, nevertheless it is a reasonably lean and efficient organisation already. So the Council’s ability to maintain its capacity is something to be watched. However, the real concern here is that government uses the opportunity of funding reductions as a lever for greater direction and control over the business of HEFCE and the sector. It would perhaps be surprising if BIS did not seek to exert greater control in the current climate with the significant changes and challenges facing the sector. However, this environment means that, perhaps more than ever, the sector needs a helpful funding council to support an intelligent approach to 2012 and beyond, whatever government thinks.

So, the fear is not misplaced but there will be big challenges ahead, for HEFCE as well as universities. Part of the response has to be to minimise the unnecessary intervention and direction from government both at HEFCE itself but also more across institutions.

The Globalisation of Higher Education: Conference at The University of Nottingham

The Globalisation of Higher Education

Lord Dearing died in 2009 having left an indelible mark on UK higher education with his landmark 1997 report Higher Education in the Learning Society. He also had particular impact on The University of Nottingham, having been Chancellor from 1993 to 2000.

In recognition of Lord Dearing’s contribution to higher education, and to give others the opportunity to shape the debate on its future, The University of Nottingham will host the “Annual Dearing Higher Education Conference”. In 2011 the conference will take place at the East Midlands Conference Centre on Thursday 17 February.

Keynote speakers include David Willetts and Alan Langlands.

Details of the conference and registration arrangements can be found at the Globalisation of Higher Education site.

Providing information that helps students with HE choices

New consultation on providing information that helps students make the right higher education choices

HEFCE has launched a consultation on information for prospective students:

Schools, colleges, universities, student unions and a wide range of other bodies are being asked to comment on the information that higher education (HE) providers publish to help prospective students choose the course and institution that are best for them.

They are invited to respond to a consultation being conducted by HEFCE, Universities UK and GuildHE. The consultation mainly concerns a proposed Key Information Set (KIS) which all publicly funded HE providers in England and Northern Ireland would be required to publish for each course on their web-sites.

The press release continues:

The consultation is informed by the results of research commissioned by HEFCE, and undertaken by Oakleigh Consulting and Staffordshire University, which identified the information current and prospective students identified as ‘very useful’. This mostly relates to costs, satisfaction and employability. Information about the fees for each course will also be included.

The intention is that information will be presented in a standardised format on each university and college web-site, looking similar for all courses at all institutions, thus making the information potentially more useful, comparable and accessible. Discussions are also taking place about how the information can be linked to the UCAS web-site.

But do prospective students really need more information? And is this kind of standardised set of data really going to help inform decisions. Or will most students turn to other sources such as The Times League Table rather than this sort of information. Guess we’ll find out.

Browne report: the end of the QAA (and OFFA and OIA)

Beyond changes to higher education funding

Naturally, all of the attention today will be on the funding elements of the Browne report. However, one significant change which is unlikely to attract much comment will nevertheless carry major implications for universities. It is proposed to merge four agencies into one:

The higher education system is currently overseen by four bodies: HEFCE, QAA, OFFA and OIA. These will be replaced by a single Higher Education (HE) Council. It will take a more targeted approach to regulation, with greater autonomy for institutions.

The Council will be independent from Government and institutions. It will have five areas of responsibility:
• Investment – identifying and investing in high priority courses; evaluating value for money; dealing with the unexpected, with the primary aim of protecting students’ interests
• Quality – setting and enforcing minimum quality levels across the whole sector
• Equity of access – making sure that individual institutions and the sector as a whole make measurable progress on admitting qualified students from disadvantaged backgrounds
• Competition – ensuring that students get the benefits of more competition, by publishing an annual survey of charges, and looking after the interests of students when an institution is at risk
• Dispute resolution – students can ask the Council to adjudicate on a dispute that cannot be resolved within their institution and provide a decision which binds both sides
The HE Council will explain how it is investing taxpayers’ money, and safeguarding students’ investment in higher education, through an annual report to Parliament.

So, it looks like the end of the road for the QAA, OFFA and OIA.

Consumer crackdown on ‘Mickey Mouse’ courses

“Consumer crackdown on ‘Mickey Mouse’ courses by showing future prospects”

Excited Daily Mail story on ‘Mickey Mouse’ courses:

Degree courses will be rated for teaching quality, salary prospects, tuition time and value for money under plans to unleash ‘consumer power’ on universities.

Poor quality ‘Mickey Mouse’ courses will be exposed on a website – similar to those used to select car insurance or electricity – allowing potential students to compare them.

The 16 statistics students most want to know about courses before making their applications were revealed in a report published yesterday by England’s higher education funding quango.

They include the proportion of graduates employed in professional or managerial jobs, their average salary, the quality of teaching on the course, weekly hours of teaching time and the quality of library and IT facilities.

All measures should be published ‘as a minimum’ for each degree course in the country in a web-based format that will allow comparisons, the report said.

A range of very different courses is helpfully compared:

Presumably the Mail expects that some of these courses would disappear if potential students were aware of this data.

The report in question, Understanding the information needs of users of public information about higher education, a report to HEFCE by Oakleigh Consulting and Staffordshire University, is available from HEFCE and is somewhat more sober than the Mail article would suggest.

It lists the top items of information potential students would wish to know about a university or course:

(The final two not listed above are the ‘Proportions of students at the university satisfied or very satisfied with the IT facilities’ and the ‘Maximum household income for eligibility for a bursary’.)

Essentially, it is argued that this data needs to be published on a consistent basis for every institution and course and this will help inform decision making. But all of the information is available at present, in one way or another, albeit not always in the most accessible form. And it seems, according to the HEFCE report, that prospective students, whilst they would like to have the data, simply aren’t prepared to look for it:

Less than half the sample had tried to look for 11 out of the 16 most highly ranked items. This is partly explained by participants’ estimate of the usefulness of the information. Those who rated the information ‘very useful’ were much more likely to look for it. However, a surprisingly large proportion (between a quarter and a half) of participants who rated items ‘very useful’ reported that they had not tried to find the information. A maximum of two-thirds of these reported that they had tried to look for information on student satisfaction and employability data. One possible explanation is that prospective students were unaware that these data might be accessible.

Another possible explanation is that the demand for information, and the need for a ‘consumer crackdown’ is somewhat overstated.