left to my own devices – occasional thoughts on higher education

Over recent years the Teritary Turn in UK education policy has been difficult to miss, and it’s still picking up pace.

the tertiary turn

Of course there have always been strong links between FE and HE, but increasingly over the last five years we’ve started to see these areas move in to a single regulatory home together. The responsibilities of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council; the establishment in Wales of Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (CTER). And while we haven’t seen that happen in England, the development of degree apprenticeships feels that it has brought the two sectors closer together and ‘thinking tertiary’ looks like the likely direction of travel should a Labour government be elected later this year.

And last week the Association of Colleges (AOC) published a report throwing its weight behind this idea in England, making the case for a tertiary education system.  AOC rightly highlights ‘mission clarity of schools, colleges and universities’ as being crucial to this, with a key element of this this being ‘at post-18, bringing together AEB [Adult Education Budget], HTQs, apprenticeships, HTQs, degree education into a coherent offer for all adults’ [p.11].

The course recommended here by AOC clearly makes sense from a learner point of view.  It also makes sense from a national perspective, in terms of ensuring that across post-18 provision FE and HE are together able to play a significant and essential role in addressing the key national challenges of poor productivity and sluggish economic growth.

different perspectives

Although I’ve tended to work in roles and/or universities that had less involvement in FE than many roles/universities, in 2019 I was fortunate enough to join the board of governors at a local Further Education College (FEC). Being a governor is of course different to working full-time in an organisation or sector, but it quickly became evident to me that being a governor was both a significant opportunity and a huge privilege.

I’ve had the chance to work with, and I hope support in at least some small way, an incredibly committed and able group of staff who are making a really significant impact on the lives of their students and the college’s wider community. It has also given me perspectives that, to be honest, I didn’t have before.

In universities we focus a lot on the problems we face, such as restrictive and overly complex regulation and financial shortfalls.  And those challenges are there. But there is sometimes a tendency to talk to ourselves a little bit too much and not appreciate how our challenges compare to those in other, similar sectors. And many of the same issues exist in further education (as well as other sector specific ones) to a far greater and much more challenging extent than we face in universities.

My experience as a governor has helped me to understand much more than I ever did before about the similarities, links and differences between FE and HE. And it has brought home to me the importance of understanding the way in which all three of these things (similarities, links and differences) co-exist and interact, and emphasised to me that while there are potentially significant opportunities and benefits from a Tertiary Turn there are dangers.

what we do

A few months ago Diana Beech wrote an insightful blog on this for HEPI, welcoming the Tertiary Turn while also sounding a note of warning.

A key point was the danger that a Tertiary Turn may not fully recognise the critical research and innovation work of universities, which is as important to the challenges of raising productivity and economic growth as a more coherent and effective approach to post-18 education.  Beech particularly highlighted the importance of ensuring that:

moves towards a tertiary framework do not push our world-leading research institutions into policy homelessness [from a government, ministerial perspective] or, worse, submit them to new forms of funding, regulation and policy developments which could jeopardise their excellent research credentials.

That’s an important and crucial point, from the perspective what we do in universities (i.e. research and innovation, as well as education).  But the important differences also extend to what we are.

what we are

A crucial element of this can be drawn out from the criteria for degree awarding powers, where the over-riding criterion for such powers is:

A self-critical, cohesive academic community with a proven commitment to the assurance of standards supported by effective quality systems. [p.6]

This criterion is focused on education and awarding powers (the ‘assurance of standards …’ bit), but in many ways it is the ‘self-critical, cohesive academic community’ that is the defining feature of every university. Of course this rightly underpins a university’s status as an autonomous degree awarding body; but a self-critical and coherent academic community is also at the heart of the research endeavour of our universities.

It is possible to be this type of academic community without being a university; but it is impossible to be a university without being such an academic community.  And that makes the nature of universities different (not better, not worse – just different) to other types of post-18 education provider.

While we need to escape from dated, hierarchical perceptions about types of tertiary education providers, we still need to acknowledge that there are critical differences in the nature and purpose of these different types of provider.

equity

As we pursue the Tertiary Turn in England, we need to recognise the common interests, activities and synergies across the different providers of post-18 education.  It is also essential that government recognises and values equitably the contributions made by all these different types of provider.

There may be a temptation to try to achieve this in way that Scotland and Wales are .  Bringing all of tertiary education under a single regulatory/funding roof: FE, HE and apprenticeships living side-by-side to ensure join up and consistency.

Whether that’s the case or not, if England does pursue this Tertiary Turn the way in which this is done must put in place approaches to funding and regulation that are nuanced enough properly to reflect the different natures of different types of providers, as well as the different activities and foci of different types of provider.  Any new tertiary framework in England needs to pay attention to these differences of nature and character, as well as differences in the particular areas of activity that different types of tertiary provider focus on. And if it fails to do this, then we risk the Tertiary Turn being a dead end in our search for a more effective system that meets the needs of both learners, and the wider society and economy.