left to my own devices – occasional thoughts on higher education

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A few weeks ago I published a post based on a conference presentation I did about the future of TEF.  As part of the closing comments in that presentation, one of the things I said/wrote was:

outcomes are affected by much more than the actions of a university, and so the quality of our education rests in the approaches, the processes we adopt as well as the outcomes our students achieve.

It has become desperately unfashionable to talk about the importance of process in higher education, so I thought it might be interesting to unpack that passing comment a little.

principles vs. rules

The obvious starting point is the way that OfS has approached regulating the education we offer our students.  We’re all very familiar with OfS’s approach.  An Insight Brief on its approach is clear.  OfS is a ‘principles-based regulator’ by which it means:

concerned with qualitative standards of behaviour … it lends itself well to a focus on outcomes, setting the overarching goals (for example ‘a high-quality academic experience for students’) that the regulation is there to achieve.

OfS contrasts this with:

rules-based approaches … enforcing compliance through clearly defined, specific prescriptions … more concerned with processes and outputs

And in terms of what that means for regulating academic quality and standards, OfS’s CEO expanded on this in a blog post at the end of 2022.  OfS was taking ‘an academic turn’, moving away from the focus on ‘systems and processes’ in the pre-OfS regulation of academic quality and standards and ‘pulling the focus squarely back to learning, teaching and assessment’.

purpose

I don’t disagree entirely with this perspective.  The previous approach to quality assurance in England focused too little on outcomes for students, and there had been too much emphasis on process – at some times and in some places amounting to process for process sake.

As much was clear to me from a conversation a number of years ago with a senior university leader.

The colleague in question was in many ways an exceptional leader.  But on this occasion they asked me ‘Richard, how often does QAA require us to do annual review?’  It’s difficult to know how to respond when a far more senior, experienced and capable colleague asks you a question like that.  So rather than go for the obvious response (and collect my P45 on the way out of their office), I decided to pivot to the issue of purpose.

Reviewing programmes wasn’t something we did because an external body told us to do it (and anyway nothing in the UK Quality Code required an annual process), we did it because checking how our plans for delivering our programme actually worked out in practice was just effective, reflective professional practice.  What had gone well?  What had gone less well?  And what did we want/need to do differently next year?

The conversation was indicative of purpose and process getting out of alignment.  Quality assurance was being treated as ticking a box for an external regulator, when actually the purpose of the process was to reflect on how effective what we were doing was, and seek to improve it.  Process does matter, but it has to have a valid purpose and effectively deliver that purpose.

why does this matter?

It’s because I think that in some parts of the sector the implications of principles- and outcomes-based regulation have been misunderstood.

Some have heard the message, and taken it to mean that process no longer matters and is something we no longer need to think about.  OfS are clear that they are interested in outcomes not process, so we in universities can forget about process – it’s not needed, it’s something we can drop.  A perspective encouraged, perhaps, by some of the comments and actions of the OfS (e.g. incitement to abandon external examining, unsubstantiated claims that following the UK Quality Code can lead to breaching the B conditions).

But that’s not the real message of the shift to principles- and outcomes-based regulation.

We aren’t assessed on our processes any longer.  Any university facing a ‘boots on the ground’ inspection from OfS will get precisely nowhere by pointing to a policy, a process or an ornate mapping document that ‘demonstrates compliance’.  And any governing body worth its salt that’s presented with an account of ‘compliance’ with the B conditions that simply lists the processes relating to educational provision, rather than providing the evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of these processes in ensuring the B conditions are being met, should deliver a ‘revise and resubmit’ verdict. (And in that context also remember that only one of the five B conditions relates to quantitative data – four are essentially qualitative in nature).

But all outcomes are the results of a process.  As universities we still need to have processes relating to the quality and standards of our programmes, processes that we believe will ensure the type of high-quality education to which we’re all committed.

Some of the processes, in some universities, that existed prior to OfS’s new approach had become bureaucratic and ineffective (and at some point I’ll write more about how and why I think that happened).  But the point about the new OfS approach to regulation isn’t that we don’t need processes.  It’s that we have significant scope to choose which processes we have, as long as these are effective in meeting the purpose of delivering high-quality education.

purpose, process and innovation

If we get back to the true purpose of what we have traditionally seen as our quality processes, they are still crucial.

Designing good programmes; understanding whether once they are delivered these programmes are as good as we thought they would be, and how we can make them better; every now and then stepping back and taking a more strategic, holistic look at how effective our programmes are and how they should develop; and involving our students as co-creators in all of this.  Or in other words, approval, monitoring, review and student engagement.  As I said, all still crucial as long as we ensure they focus on their true purposes.

In order to do this what we have thought of as quality processes need to refocus on, in fact be driven by, effective programme design and educational development.  So still processes, but different processes that link far more closely to their purpose of ensuring we offer our students transformational educational experiences.

And there are lots of really interesting examples within the sector of remaking quality processes driven by educational design and development.  Design-driven approaches to curriculum development at Manchester; Nottingham Trent’s use of design sprints for programme approval; the use of what in ‘old money’ would have been described as periodic review to drive institutional education strategy and themes at Warwick.  And many more besides.

Despite the many concerns about aspects of the OfS’s approach to quality, we have been given an opportunity through its focus on principles and outcomes not process.  The opportunity isn’t to abandon process.  It’s to choose to remake our processes in ways that deliver real educational value