left to my own devices – occasional thoughts on higher education

One thing we’re not usually short of in higher education is words.  Written or spoken, we tend to use a lot of them.  At times though there are perhaps too few words used in relation to higher education.

When that’s the case there’s a temptation to overload those words with too much significance.  And it’s a temptation that I’m too weak to resist.  Everything means something.  Surely?

303. 417. 186. 123.

Not my laptop’s IP address.

Those four figures are the number of words addressing higher education in the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Reform UK manifestoes respectively.

As I said, when there are so few words it’s tempting to over interpret the ones we have.  And I’m about to compound that, as I was drawn to just 12 of the 417 words that Labour devoted to higher education in their manifesto:

We will act to improve access to universities and raise teaching standards.

And to double down, the thing that really caught my eye were just the last three words: ‘raise teaching standards’.

an opportunity

The first thing that struck me was the focus on teaching.  Those three words could suggest a significant shift from the way we think about how we ensure the core element of studying in higher education, the degree programme, is up to scratch.

Since 2016 the regulatory approach to the educational has veered towards a sterile, facile and solitary obsession with outcomes.  As David Kernohan has recently written:

quality assurance has shifted from understanding teaching to seeing well-to-do graduates secure better jobs than their less advantaged peers as an indicator of excellence.

Could the approach of a new government herald a significant shift of emphasis?  Where a focus on intent and implementation sits alongside a focus on the impact of these as seen in outcomes?

An approach that recognises teaching as a process and a practice that is fundamentally people-based and -focused, considering these alongside outcomes while also recognising the complexities of cause and effect? I’m perhaps being uncharacteristically optimistic, but maybe a commitment to ‘raise teaching standards’ offers an opportunity to allow some of that approach to become a reality.

If a new government were to move in that direction, perhaps as a sector we’re starting to get ourselves in a position where we can make the most of this opportunity.  Today’s publication of the new UK Quality Code is significant, a step forward from the 2018 version thanks to the adoption of a more comprehensive and nuanced approach.

And as they say there are no coincidences, as today also sees the establishment of the Quality Council for UK Higher Education, with a definite shift of focus and emphasis from the UK Standing Committee on Quality Assessment that it replaces.

So perhaps we can see the outlines of a ceasefire and possibly even a new settlement in our current quality war?

a challenge

Maybe.

My last post was pretty dismissive about the lack of impact of the Tory party’s gambit early in the election campaign about Mickey Mouse degrees.  And despite the recapitulation of this theme in the Tory manifesto launch, it hasn’t had much purchase (a lack of impact that mirrors pretty much every aspect of the worst election campaign in modern history).

But while a desire to ‘raise teaching standards’ is different in intent and impact from the Tory commitment to ‘curbing the number of poor-quality university degrees’ [p.4], do they come from a similar place?  A belief that there are issues about educational quality in English higher education.

An incoming Labour government may have a different core belief to the current Tory government about higher education, but it seems to feel there are issues about quality that the sector needs to address.

Have we been honest enough with ourselves about such issues?  Or have we been so busy defending ourselves from repeated political attack, fearful of giving any ground for fear of our defences being over-run, that we haven’t been willing to engage sufficiently openly with these issues?

Perhaps with a new government less antagonistic to higher education, we need to move to greater openness in the way we, as a sector, talk about educational quality – including the impact on the student educational experience that the huge scale of planned job losses in the sector is bound to have in 2024-25, coming on top of the consequences of the significant falls in the unit of resource over the last four years.

a changed but familiar landscape

I suspect that this isn’t the only issue where under a new government what we see is a change of tone (a willingness to engage, rather than a determination to confront), but important continuities, and even challenges, from government.

Yes, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is the wrong answer; but how we ensure open and respectful freedom of speech will remain a crucial and challenging question.

Yes, international students add hugely to all aspects of our universities as well as in effect subsidising inadequate funding for home students and research; but we can’t pretend that there are no limiting factors, both in our universities and our communities, that need to be set alongside this. And there are other such issues.

As ever, continuity and change will sit alongside each other; and understanding this, and how they interact, will be crucial.