HEFCE was asked to consider how best to measure the elements of a successful higher education system.
HEFCE was asked to focus on five policy areas when doing this:
- Research;
- Enabling businesses to innovate or knowledge transfer activity;
- High-quality teaching;
- Improving workforce skills; and,
- Widening participation.
HEFCE has now delivered it’s report: Understanding Institutional Performance [PDF 3,413kb] which is publicly available for you to comment on. (An executive summary [PDF 442kb] of this report is also available.)
You can join the continuing discussion on the issues and recommendations by posting your views on any aspect of HEFCE’s report on this blog.
Comments made on this page will be brought to the attention of the respective policy handlers for this issue on a weekly basis.
We look forward to hearing from you.
When introducing his vision for the future of the University of Southampton a few years ago the then newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor, now holding high office in UCEA, proclaimed that his focal aim was to improve the University’s ranking in the Times League Tables. It’s a point of view, of course, but possibly narrow and instrumental. An improvement has indeed come about. But HE is bigger than that, far far bigger. It is one of the most truly important activities that there can be. It is about creating opportunity for widening and deepening participants’ characters. It is about educating the minds of the next generation to study, to think rationally but also ethically, to consider and enhance the inherited but costantly evolving body of ideas and to imagine and proclaim betterment and advance, and by no means least to be pro-active as citizens. There is every reason to think that the successful product of such an approach can contribute to the world of work too; the shame is that so few employers seem to properly understand that, for example, the transferable skills arising from a sound research education can be of enormous benefit in the world of work. And there is no reason to think that a well-designed vocational course cannot achieve these broader aims too - indeed, it needs to do so to give depth and breadth to the consideration of the vocation.
This whole consultation appears to be far more narrowly conceived than such considerations indicate. Understanding effective HE performance means much more than, whilst nonetheless including, the efficiency of performance which is what the consultation is addressing.
Various commentators claim that our universities “don’t know what counts so they count everything”. How surreal this sounds against the crisis of the multi trillion dollar rescue of the global economy. Or do our highly paid ‘rocket scientists’ really have the measure of this? It is even more surreal when we learn that highly educated traders with degrees from some of our most prestigious universities have facilitated this catastrophe. So do our universities bear some responsibility for this systemic problem? More fundamentally are universities fit for purpose?
The current approach to quality in higher education emphasises the role of universities in serving economic interests, which restricts how quality is defined, understood and measured. Hence value for money, completion rates, graduate employment and graduate earnings feature strongly. Does this mean that a degree becomes equivalent to a share certificate whose value is determined by the issuing university?
A recent report by the New Economics Foundation (nef), ‘University Challenge: towards a well-being approach to quality in higher education’ takes this argument even further suggesting that the economic focus has led to a ‘marketisation of the sector’ and links this to the discussion about the introduction of variable tuition fees. This report also quotes from The Guardian (10/08/06):
‘This commercialisation of higher education serves a bigger purpose, though. It softens students up for the rigours of globalisation. By creating a market, young people are encouraged to think and behave like rational economic man. They become “human capital”, calculating the rate of return on their university investment. A degree becomes a share certificate. Commercialisation conditions students to expect no help from others, or society, and therefore never to provide help in return. Debt and economic conditioning discourages graduates from going into lower-paid caring jobs - and instead into the City, where the real “value” is. It fashions a Britain that competes rather than cares.’
More value should be given to how learning contributes to wider social functions such as active and ethical citizenship and shaping a democratic civilised and more sustainable society. Universities have a significant role in developing ‘sustainability literate’ leaders and hence optimising their contribution to the future of society and the environment and not only the future of the economy. But sustainability in this sense does not feature in our procedures for monitoring and evaluation and quality assurance. The Higher Education funding Council for England (HEFCE) is about to publish the results of its recent consultation on Sustainable Development in Higher Education. DIUS has also recently published its sustainable development action plan for 2008-2009 in which it recognises the central role universities can play in developing our understanding of climate change and other sustainable development issues. These developments provide a significant opportunity to embed sustainability into quality assurance procedures. And what a great opportunity to count things of real value!