left to my own devices – occasional thoughts on higher education

Photo by Unsplash from Freerange Stock

Shortly after Bridget Phillipson issued wrote to vice-chancellors about the government’s higher education review, I wrote the following:

As a sector, English higher education is in a financial hole: partly of its own making; significantly excavated by the last government. Compared to the last government, the new one has stopped digging that hole; is no longer stood above us at the edge of the hole, shouting abuse; and is saying it very much hopes we get out of the hole. To date though, it’s done nothing to help us out of the hole.

The post’s title was i’ve got plans involving you, as essentially the review was the vehicle by which the government would develop and set out its position on this issue, and many others, affecting the higher education sector.  And last week’s white paper revealed the plan; about higher education finances, and the sector more broadly.

And the answer to the hole we’re in appears to be to give us a ladder (raising the home undergraduate fee cap); but for it to be too short (no action on the legacy of underfunded teaching and research); and to dig the hole a bit deeper first (international student fee levy).

So the sector was up against it. And the climb out of the hole looks, if anything, longer and steeper now.

after the flood, a little more rain

As I say, the white paper is much, much broader than this financial issue and there’s been no shortage of commentary and analysis of it.  Which might have been a prompt for me to step away from the keyboard, and not add to the avalanche of pixels tumbling across our screens over the last week.

Unfortunately I don’t possess that kind of level of self-control and restraint, but rather than delve into all the (crucial) detail in the white paper I thought I’d try to take a step back.  And as I’ve done so two things have struck me.

so what really matters?

The first is the sheer volume of commitments, initiatives and ideas that are in the white paper once it’s dissected.  And thinking back over the various green and white papers on higher education that have come out while I’ve been working in the sector (too many, but that may reflect my age rather than the frequency of white papers), that feels par for the course.

Of course, when so much is included many of the things that are picked up in white papers are subsequently laid down either incomplete or never started.  A couple of years ago I traced one such issue, teaching qualifications for academic staff, through multiple white papers to show how the original commitments were never really met, but that was just one among many (for instance the publication of module evaluation questionnaire results).

(And in parenthesis that shows how good ideas, teaching qualifications, and bad ones, publishing MEQ results, can both be dropped).-

So as the dust settles on the white paper, one of the questions it leaves me with is which elements of it will end up being implemented; and which ones will end up on the cutting room floor, remembered only by bloggers with monotropic tendencies?

something for a lot

The second thing that struck me links back to the start of this post.

The higher education aspect of the white paper was pre-sold by government as being something for something; help with the sector’s financial challenges, in return for sector reform to align it more closely to delivery of the government’s priorities. And that’s where we’ve ended up, but the balance is crucial.

The something that is being demanded by the government from the sector is very substantial.

For example, the white paper grows rather than shrinks the regulatory demands on universities.  The merit and necessity of each of these increases can be debated, but the regulatory expansion (and occasional land grabs) are undeniable .  And there are already murmurings of what this means for institutional autonomy.

know thyself

While autonomy is an important concept and state for the sector, it’s one that somtimes gets misued.  Too often the autonomy that’s cited feels implicitly, or sometimes even explicitly, to be along the lines of ‘we are free to do whatever we want’; to which the response is sort of, but no.

Real autonomy is more nuanced than that. One (not the only) way of thinking about its meaning is that it’s about having a mature and well-grounded sense of self; and making conscious and purposeful decisions about how to act in the situations in which we find ourselves, accepting that our choices will always have constrains on them. And that often what are termed to as constraints are actually obligations we owe to others in the communities and societies of which we are a part.

For organisations such as a university this sense of what it means to be autonomous means having a clear, genuine and deep-seated sense of its purpose, mission and values.  One that goes much, much deeper than the sometimes vacuous institutional strategy development and outcomes into which too many organisations fall. That then drives our decisions, actions and practice; including, particularly those relating to the external constraints on us.

And this is critical to how universities respond to the white paper.

choices

One of the long-term pathologies of universities has been the tendency to chase after most if not all government initiatives, often irrespective of whether that is truly in line with their purpose, mission and values. The government of course says it wants specialisation to be a future feature of our universities, but I suspect that this deep seated pathology is not going to be broken by the weak incentives and imaginary leavers in the white paper.

At all times, but particularly now in how they respond to the white paper, each university needs to be critical (in the best sense of the word) and discerning about where and how government priorities align with their university’s particular missions, purposes and values. Being genuinely strategic (which of course is very different to just having a strategic plan) is critical.

The government will progress some, even many, of the things in white paper, while it will choose (either as an expressed or revealed preference) to drop others.  Equally universities need to think hard about where and how they (given their mission, purpose and values) seek to pursue the priorities in the white paper; and not chase after every element.