Higher ambitions…

New HE Framework

Follow up to earlier post on HE as food-labelling:

Lord Mandelson has launched Higher Ambitions. There’s a lot in here and much of it yet to be fully fleshed out. And the much trailed element on improved consumer information still requires some work:

All universities should publish a standard set of information setting out what students can expect in terms of the nature and quality of their programme.

This should set out how and what students will learn, what that knowledge will qualify them to do, whether they will have access to external expertise or experience, how much direct contact there will be with academic staff, what their own study responsibilities will be, what facilities they will have access to, and any opportunities for international experience. It should also offer information about what students on individual courses have done after graduation. The Unistats website will continue to bring together information in a comparable way so that students can make well-informed informed [sic] choices, based on an understanding of the nature of the teaching programme they can expect, and the long-term employment prospects it offers. We will invite HEFCE, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) and UKCES to work with the sector and advise on how these goals should be achieved.

Hmmm. Should be an interesting consultation.

Sunday Times League Table

Sunday Times League Table is now out

The 2010 Sunday Times Good University Guide. Change at the top but not really “a year of upheaval” as billed:

1. Oxford (2)
2. Cambridge (1)
3. Imperial (3)
4. UCL (6)
5. St Andrews (5)
6. Warwick (7)
7. Durham (8)
8. York (9)
9. LSE (4)
10. Bristol (16)
11. Bath (10)
12. Southampton (12)
13. King’s College London (17)
14. Nottingham (13)
15= Edinburgh (15)
15= Loughborough (11)
17. Exeter (14)
18. Sheffield (19)
19. Lancaster (20)
20= Leicester (18)
20= Birmingham

The University of Oxford is on something of a winning streak. After a second successive victory over Cambridge in the boat race this year, the university has now knocked its light-blue rival off the top of The Sunday Times university league table for the first time.

This feat, after 11 years in second place, earns Oxford The Sunday Times University of the Year award. It edged narrowly ahead of its principal British rival in a year of upheaval in our league table, prompted by the first research assessments in seven years and the move to measuring teaching quality primarily by levels of student satisfaction expressed through the annual national student survey (NSS).

Not really a huge change to the table since last year apart from the diversion of a bit of a boat race going on at the top. Although new NSS scores and 2008 RAE do figure they don’t seem to have made a big difference. The numbers involved in the survey of Heads and peers, which results in one indicator, aren’t obviously identified.

NSS results – just about the same as last year

Good news or bad news?

Not a lot to write home about with very little change but BBC reports that satisfaction rate ’slips’:

This year’s final year students in England were marginally less happy with their university experience than last year’s leavers, an annual survey shows. The National Student Survey shows 81% were mostly or definitely satisfied with the quality of their course, against 82% last year. In Wales the rating was unchanged, 83%, and in Northern Ireland up one at 84%. Twelve Scottish institutions also took part, achieving the highest overall score of 86%, the same as in 2008.

Pretty positive stuff you’d think but the NUS has a different perspective

NUS president Wes Streeting said: “Tuition fees in England were trebled in 2006, but students have not seen a demonstrable improvement in the quality of their experience. “Universities have a responsibility to deliver substantial improvements in return for the huge increase in income they are receiving from fees.”

And the Guardian also focuses on the negative:

Almost a fifth – 19% – of final-year students told the National Student Survey they were dissatisfied with or ambivalent about their courses – a rise of 1% on last year.

HEFCE though offers a more positive interpretation and the full details of results.

But overall this is surely a good news story, albeit one that is pretty much the same as in 2008.

Students “more satisfied than ever before”

According to the Times Higher Education analysis of the latest NSS data, students are more satisfied than they’ve ever been.

For universities in England, students’ overall satisfaction rate rose slightly from 81 per cent last year to 82 per cent, while satisfaction scores in six specific areas, including teaching, assessment and academic support, also all increased. Students are most satisfied with the teaching they receive, with 83 per cent reporting general satisfaction. But satisfaction with “assessment and feedback” remained lower than in other areas, at 64 per cent. Minister for Students Delyth Morgan said: “The continued high level of satisfaction is a welcome testament to the quality of the teaching and learning experience in this country.”

But is this really telling us very much about the real quality of the student experience? Especially when you note the following:

The top UK satisfaction score of 96 per cent went to the University of Buckingham, a private institution. Vice-chancellor Terence Kealey said: “This is the third year that we’ve come top because we are the only university in Britain that focuses on the student rather than on government or regulatory targets. Every other university should copy us and become independent.”

I’m sure students at Buckingham have a distinctive experience but the reasons for this result are perhaps a bit more complicated than suggested here. Still, the NSS does at least provide much-needed fodder (or core data on the quality of the student experience) for the league table compilers.

The full data is available from Hefce. The THE rankings are as follows:

Most-satisfied students Institution 2005 2006 2007 2008 University of Buckingham 94 93 96 Royal Academy of Music 95 81 90 94 The Open University 95 95 95 94 University of St Andrews 92 94 93 Courtauld Institute of Art 100 81 74 93 University of Cambridge 93 University of Oxford 92 92 University of East Anglia 88 89 89 92 Birkbeck, University of London 90 91 92 92 Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln 88 89 87 92 University of Leicester 89 89 90 92 University of Exeter 86 85 91 91 University of Aberdeen 88 91 Loughborough University 88 88 89 91 Harper Adams University College 90 86 91 90 Aberystwyth University 87 90 90 90 St George’s Hospital Medical School 86 80 87 90 Institute of Education 83 80 90 University of Kent 86 86 88 90 University of Sheffield 86 84 87 89 The table shows the percentage of students, full and part time, who “definitely” or “mostly” agreed with the statement: “Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of my course.”

Taking “enhancing the student experience” too far?

Interesting piece in the Chronicle about the student experience at High Point University (where “every student receives an extraordinary education in a fun environment with caring people”). The features apparently include:

cone

• valet parking

• a hot tub in the middle of the campus

• an ice-cream truck that circles the campus giving out free ice creams etc

• live music in the cafeteria

• Snack kiosks around the campus offer free bananas, pretzels, and drinks

• Gifts are left for students in their halls for when they return from breaks.

Perhaps most scarily:

Birthdays are big events at High Point. Each undergraduate — and there are 2,000 — receives a birthday card from the university, signed by the president, with a Starbucks gift card tucked inside. Plus balloons. What’s more, when birthday boys and girls visit the cafeteria, their ID cards electronically alert the kitchen staff. The staff then fixes a slice of cake, and the featured musicians sing “Happy Birthday.”

All is overseen by “a director of WOW!”. How long before we have one of those at a UK university? And might free ice cream help those NSS scores?

New Conservative position on fees?

Which seems to be: neither higher nor lower, we should neither raise nor lower the cap

According to a Guardian report on a recent speech:

The Conservatives today called for the review of tuition fees planned for 2009 to start now to allow for enough preparation time. The government has promised a review of the increased tuition fees regime in two years. But, in a speech at Sheffield University, shadow universities secretary David Willetts said: “A proper review takes time. We do not need to make a decision any sooner than the government suggests – but why waste this two years which could be spent collecting data, talking to people, or analysing what is happening?

“We are not calling for the cap to be lifted and we are not calling for it to be lowered. Nobody knows enough about tuition fees and their impact to make any decisions at all on this issue,” he said.

Suggesting that a review be brought forward a bit does not appear to represent a bold new position.

Moreover, we need more information:

Mr Willetts also urged universities to give students and their parents more information about contact hours, class sizes and employability before they start courses. “Students and their parents are not simply concerned about the cost of higher education. They care about quality. Students now regard themselves as customers, and they want to know that they are investing in the right student experience. He claimed the national student survey was being manipulated by universities and called for a national student experience website to pull together information on research ratings, drop-out rates, library facilities and university estates, as well as contact hours, class sizes and employability.

Sounds a bit like a combination of the Sunday Times League Table and the data recently produced by HEPI – see earlier post on this topic. And isn’t this what the new (as yet unlaunched) Unistats site is largely intended to address?