Professor Christine King is focusing on the issue of part-time study.
She has been asked to consider how the higher education sector can respond to the fact that adults, often studying part-time will make up an ever-increasing proportion of the home student population over the next decade as they aim to increase skills levels.
What do you think?
For example do you think that it will be the case that part-time study will represent more and more of the study taking place in the UK in years to come? If so, how or what do you think the higher education sector will need to do to respond to these changing circumstances.
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Update (12/09/08)
“The flexibility needed to deal with the increasing diversity of the system will also be needed to deal with the second key theme: that there is no typical “university experience”. Christine King’s work suggests doing away with the demarcation between part-time and full-time students, instead developing flexibility in the system to benefit all students. This will require new approaches, so that students can fit studies in with their lives and work and acquire and transfer academic credit over time.”
(thoughts on what appear to be emerging themes extracted from John Denham’s speech to the UUK conference 11/09/08)
The full report by Prof. King will be published in October both on the DIUS website and here on the JISC hosted Future of Higher Education blog / forum where your views can be posted and discussion engaged with other interested stakeholders on the issues raised and recommendations made.
See further discsusion on this topic here.
I am presently studying for a MSc in E-learning, Multimedia and Consultancy at Sheffield Hallam University part time, I am 44 years old married and father of two primary age children. When I started the course a year ago I was very disappointed but to be honest not surprised that there was next to no financial assistance available for people such as myself who relish the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills in order to enhance and contribute to the future development of education and training both nationally and globally. I would truly love to go on and gain a PhD in this area however the financial sacrifices that both myself and my family have had to make so that I could study for this qualification are severe and I question whether it would be fair to make them endure this hardship for the extended period it would take to gain a PhD. I also have my doubts as to whether such a qualification is valued by the most organisations within the U.K. apart from H.E institutions. Sorry for the downbeat first posting but I feel quite strongly about this issue and would like to hear the opinions and experiences other MSc/PhD students.
There are so many issues in this area, not least the attitude and culture within HE institutions and the view of PT courses compared with FT (see also Dave Mackay’s comments in HE in General). Institutions have the potential for great synergies between FT and PT (e.g. reuse of lectures, mixed on and off campus tutorials, etc); the technology and tools are available, however institutional will is required. To answer your specific question, yes I believe PT will increase in the UK, particularly as CPD moves from the traditional professions to most industries and as people train and retrain for changing careers. Depending on how PT is defined (as opposed to blended learning etc) competition will be more global and probably commercial.
Allow more flexibility into the system
Got to review academic contracts and practices. Some are tied to face to face delivery hours. the innovators are struggling against the tide or red tape from quality and general university established and en grained processes. Rewards are for traditional academic practice (which is needed) but needs to be further balanced with the need to support teaching and learning
Working with Prof Claire Callender at Birkbeck (University of London) we are undertaking a longitudinal study of part-time students’ experiences and in particular how these experiences affect their career development and employment choices. For more information please see contact Pearl Mok on Futuretrackparttime@prospects.ac.uk
Following on from Jane’s post, I followed up and asked for some information on the study on PT students. I though that there might be interest in knowing more about it.
A brief outline of this programme can be found at: http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/hecsu.rd/futuretrack_196.htm
The study includes 29 HEIs around the UK, and a sample of students from certain subject areas from these institutions have been invited to take part. The wave 1 surveys for both starters and finishers are currently in the field.
Prof. Callender has also done a literature review for the study which will be available on the HECSU website www.hecsu.ac.uk.
I think that it is important that this issue is considered across the whole range of degree programmes. Part-time students, many of whom are mature, make up a large part of the cohort at M level and at doctoral level. At Vitae we have been doing some research into the experience of part-time research students which we would be happy to share with you. This cohort offer some challenges for Universities and often report a mixed picture in terms of satisfaction.
Please , Give one chaice for oldest people to get high aducation.
The proportion of mature and part-time students within higher education (already large) will continue to grow. The knowledge and skills acquired by young people during an initial period of HE can no longfer equip them for a lifetime of work. The pace of change is now so rapid that everyone will need to acquire new skills, or update and extend existing skills, at various points during their working lives.
We therefore need an HE system that positively supports lifelong learning and enables people to move easily from institution to institution, from full-time to part-time study, from university to work-based or home-based learning, and vice versa. We need a system of student support that transcends these outmoded distinctions and funds everyone on the basis of need, regardless of mode or length of course. We need, in short, a credit-based system of funding that treats all students even-handedly.
It is time we introduced parity of funding for full-time and part-time learning. The Government’s decision to introduce variable fees for full-time students effectively generated over £1bn of extra funding for English universities with full-time students. It provided nothing for the Open University, or Birkbeck, or for other universities seeking to provide for part-time students. As a result, units of resource for part-time teaching have fallen behind those available for full-time teaching, even though part-time providers face the same costs pressures (on salaries and infrastructure) as other institutions. Since it would be counter-productive to make up the difference through higher fees (that would simply drivce students away), we must increase the unit of funding that universities receive for part-time students.
Very many universities provide part-time study. Does anyone know of anywhere that provides guaranteed ‘fixed-today’s-price’ study over set timescales? Full-time students know the cost of their tuition. Part-timers tend to pay year-on-year and, by definition, that tends to be more years and more opportunities for charges to be increased.
In response to Gillian’s posting, I’m sure a number of places offer fixed-today’s-price, I know that we do on the postgraduate programmes we run. The only exceptions are the project stage of the masters level courses and if students choose to delay their studies for 6 months or more. I think this type of price transparency is particularly important in the PT environment and when students are paying relatively high prices.
True about India, also have a read of Thomas Friedman’s ‘The World is Flat’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat), about globalisation in the 21st Century. Lower labour rates, together with better technology, has US students benefitting from direct supplementary tuition from well qualified, lower cost, Indian tutors. The issues/opportunities/threats (delete as appropriate) for HE provision are clear.
Thinking out of the box. Working on a daily basis with part-time disabled students it occurs to me that the most important change that could occur in FE and HE would be for the time limit on degrees and higher degrees to be abolished and the introduction of a points system for study. For example, a fixed 3 years for undergraduate (6 years part-time) may sound fair and reasonable to people without disabilities but for disabled people for whom ‘Life Long Learning’ can be an escape from disenfranchisement it can still be major hurdle where relapse can mean academic failure. If study was truly modular and life long it would have the potential to enrich all and bring real benefits to the whole of society.