All universities should provide an excellent standard of higher education

[MapleandPear]

I see plenty of argument on here for kids having access to equal education in terms of schooling. People arguing against any schools which are exclusive, whether it be grammar or private schools.

I don't see a lot of argument, however, against the exclusivity of different universities, or that qualifications and grades should be all employers are allowed to see on CVs and job applications.

If social class, money and privilege buy you a standard level of education, do they not also forge a path into higher education?

This is particularly pertinent now universities get a lot of funding through tuition fees directly paid by students (or by the state/a quasi-governmental body which the student pays back). And many charge the same. Yet not many would say degrees are the same wherever you get them from, even in the same degree class. Or are they? If not, shouldn't they be?

I think that giving universities a financial penalty for the failure of their graduates to achieve decent employment is fair. Think it's reasonable that universities should pay the interest rate on student loans of students who never earn over the threshold, work full time and in the case of students who fail to pay off the student loan after 30 years pay some of the cost of writing off the loan. If they have worked for a minimum of 25 years full time.

Many graduates from Russell group universities earn badly. Universities do not understand that almost everyone need to find a way to earn their living.

Why do all universities set their own syllabus for their degree courses? If an English department at a new university put their students in for the same exams as sat by students at the university of London then it would be possible to compare standards. There are materials like Coursera or OU materials that could be used to reduce the cost of delivery. With a flipped learning approach lecturers should use the time for seminars with smaller groups.

There is no moviation for universities to cut costs.

If you impose such a rule universities will not take women, not take people known to have mental health issues, not take students with physical health issues etc etc.

If you support a reduction in academics salaries, correlated to how graduates do in the job market, would you also support a corresponding reduction in teachers salaries?

Very few maths graduates from lower tier universities would have any hope of being able to do Oxbridge maths papers.

Course content varies according to research expertises. Universities which leading expertise in particular areas provide modules in these areas which could not be expected from other departments which don't have research teams working on these topics.

I'm sure there will be some partial switch to online learning motivated by cost saving. The evidence so far is that online learning leads in general to worse outcomes - the OU model is not that cheap to deliver and works better in some subjects than others.

Threads like this make me very glad I am moving to a country where higher education is actually valued and where the intimate relation between cutting edge research and course content is understood.

BTW to repeat yet again something that can easily be verified online: our top universities are funded at a lower level than comparably ranked institutions elsewhere in the world. Universities are not just for teaching undergraduates - they are for research, which plays an enormous role in the economy. Cutting costs by massively increasing teaching load/academic or reducing academic salaries would kill our research sector, which in turn would hit the economy badly. It's no accident that Silicon Valley in California sits right next to world leading universities, or that the whole San Francisco area leads the world in high tech.

I think the OP has a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of universities. While they are educational institutions, this is not all that they do. To a certain extent fees and students are the business part that supports research. (Though not entirely).

T.o give an example, without wanting to out myself, I work in a university that has an endangered languages programme. We are world leaders in the preservation and study of languages on the brink of extinction. While important work, it's not exactly a money spinner and very niche. We use our larger and more popular courses to subsidise the program. We could, I suppose, simply drop the program because it's not financially viable but if we did, the loss of expertise would be catastrophic.

What I'm trying to say is if you look at higher education simply as a commercial product you lose its greater worth. Our degrees and research in endangered languages is unlikely to set a graduate into a path of large salaries and job security but that does not mean they don't have any worth.

"If you impose such a rule universities will not take women, not take people known to have mental health issues, not take students with physical health issues etc etc. "

Women tend to earn less if they take a career break. A woman graduate should still be able to earn a premium for having degree if she goes into full time work after graduation. I already said that there should be exceptions for disabled people so mental illness is covered by that.

"If you support a reduction in academics salaries, correlated to how graduates do in the job market, would you also support a corresponding reduction in teachers salaries?"

Teachers have had performance related pay for sometime. Why should universities not have some level of performance related pay.

People who attend lower tied universities are often extremely able and could pass really hard Oxbridge maths papers IF they were suitably prepared. Sometimes people choose to study locally for personal reasons or they are mature students or they were not hot housed at private school. One of the best mathematicans I met in the work place went to an ex poly. (He had followed up his first class degree at the ex poly with a PhD through imperial) Yes, he directly used his mathematical physics skills in his job.

The thing is a university degree is becoming a commercial product by charging tuition fees, which I have always been against whichever party was proposing them.

People who attend lower tied universities are often extremely able and could pass really hard Oxbridge maths papers IF they were suitably prepared. Sometimes people choose to study locally for personal reasons or they are mature students or they were not hot housed at private school.

I never even looked at Oxbridge - as far as I was concerned it was down south and too expensive - and this was in the 90s before tuition fees and when I got a full grant. I thought they were very posh and not for the likes of me. No-one in the family had been to university before, my mum thought it was all marvellous that I was going at all and my dad thought I'd probably be wasting my time and that it would be better to get a job. I wasn't even thinking of university until the 6th form college principal said with my predicted grades it would be a good idea, I just did A-Levels because my friends were doing them. I didn't get much other advice at school/sixth form on choice of institution. My friends and I were aware that Oxford and Cambridge were the best regarded and hard to get into but that pretty much any other university were on a par with one another, apart from knowing that perhaps some were known for certain subjects. We weren't aware of any league tables. There was no internet to look things up on. I just read the UCAS guide and prospectuses and went on gut feelings on open days. I went to an ex-poly in an area with family ties, though had much better grades than I needed to get in.

Don't get me wrong, I have done quite well, but definitely in spite of the university I went to being on my CV not because of it. I only later found out this university was always lingering towards the bottom of the league tables for my subject. Employers often don't understand the socio-economic factors involved in education and higher education 'choices'. Or they aren't interested as they just want to churn out other people like them.

Prehaps a more positive system would be IF graduates perform well in the work place the university get more funding as their graduates are paying more tax.

There needs to be move away from bums on seats. A university needs to provide those bums on seats value for money. There needs to be a disincentive for taking no hopers on to degree courses.

People who attend lower tied universities are often extremely able and could pass really hard Oxbridge maths papers IF they were suitably prepared.

I very strongly disagree with this, as somebody who is experienced with Oxbridge maths and with RG maths. Even with suitable preparation the vast majority of the RG maths students simply could not get to the level required by Oxbridge maths. There are always exceptions, very high ability students who are in the wrong universities, but the vast majority are simply not as strong in maths as those at the top universities.

Why should universities not have some level of performance related pay.

Universities have had performance related pay for decades. However, the performance measured is one which is (mostly) under the control of academics. Performance of ex-students in the job market is not under the control of academics, just as teachers should not be punished for pupils getting low grades through not studying (performance related pay for teachers is mostly to keep pay down).

And I say this as somebody who currently works at an institution for which the vast majority of graduates earn extremely high salaries i.e. I personally would benefit from pay based on the performance of my ex students.

I would add though that maths (and related subjects) are special cases.
It would be more realistic to set the same papers for history across a variety of universities.

But this is still missing the point - if we make university curricula homogeneous and unrelated to research then university becomes a continuation of school and we might as well just make students stay on at school until 21. University courses should reflect the research of departments and they should vary around the country to take into account the very wide variation in research.

And TEF will already give a strong disincentive for taking no hopers as it is likely it will heavily penalise higher drop out and failure rates. But this in turn could discourage universities from taking people who look risky (history of mental health or physical health issues, ...)

Why not monitor the sucess of a course and reward a department appriopiately. I am not sure I would put the extra money into performance pay, I think it would be better to give the extra budget to the head of department to spend as they see fit. If a university wants to charge higher fees then they need to show they add finanical value to their cohort of students. (It is perfectly easy to take disabled students out the statistics)

Maybe sucessful university departments should support or sponsor less sucessful departments in other universities to raise standards of education. It could be a bit like the academies programme for schools. I not saying that academics should be told how to do research.

In my experience the quality of teaching was far superior an ex poly than a traditional university. The academics at the traditional university were very researched focussed as that was where their income was.

Surely it's possible for university departments to be good at both research and teaching. Both are important.

In the past lower tier universities were not allowed to award their own degrees. Their students often sat papers set by the university of London. I don't understand why we can't go back to such a system.

Why not monitor the sucess of a course and reward a department appriopiately.

But how do you measure success, in a manner that does not waste lots of money actually measuring how well students do at the expense of teaching.

Surely it's possible for university departments to be good at both research and teaching.

Many (most) are. Poor experiences 20 or 30 years ago do not relate to what happens currently. As an academic who has worked in several countries, and is familiar with universities in many other countries, I would rank UK undergraduate education very highly in an international context.

It is really ironic that wasting resources to try and quantify measurements of the quality of the education is likely to have a hugely detrimental impact on the actual education offered, as well as driving top tier academics out of the country.

Maybe sucessful university departments should support or sponsor less sucessful departments in other universities to raise standards of education

We work 50-70 hours per week already and you want to give us yet more to do?

Having had 2 kids go off to uni, I am a bit shocked at how the kids aren't actually told to aim for "higher" universities if they are able. Schools seem to be teaching them that any degree and any university is as good as the next one.

Whilst I agree that a good degree isn't all you need to succeed in the world of work, I do feel that able students should be going to the best universities and not settling for something low down because they liked the bedrooms or the nightclub or because they got an unconditional offer.

I also think the less able students should go into their university education with their eyes open. University is no doubt a great life experience but if there is little chance of a better job at the end of it, it is a lot of debt for 3 years of "life experience".

BTW many universities already penalise academics directly for "poor" teaching, measured by student surveys. Scores below a threshold level on such surveys lead to pay freezes (i.e. pay cuts in real terms).

But this method of measurement is extremely flawed: it encourages academics to set easy assessments so that the students are happy, and therefore the students do not achieve all they should.

OP, I'm not sure you understand how universities work.

I am currently sitting in one of the country's top research centres in a particular field. The one really reason it exists is that my university has chosen to prioritise this are of research and has spent a decade building up its facilities and attracting top people in the field. As a knock-on benefit to this, the university is able to teach a specialist module on the topic that the majority of other universities are not able to offer as they simply don't have the people with that expertise.

So to make standards homogeneous across universities their only two possibilities:

a) Tell me university to stop investing in this research so that it no longer differs from other universities. Which is fine, but many of the top experts will just leave and move to a country that is willing to invest in this research and take their funding with them.

or

b) Tell the undergrads that although we have some of the top experts in the field on campus that they're not allowed to be taught by them as that would give them an unfair advantage over students at other universities.

Feel free to specify which option you would prefer.

What is the sucess criteria of a course? What does the university department hope it's students will achieve in that big bad world? It would be interesting to see if graduates of a course meet the sucess criteria.

Monitoring whether graduates are sucessful and can cope in the world of employment surely is a form of research. If 90% media studies graduates from X university all have careers in television after 6 months of graduation then the course is meeting the students needs.

If 90% of medieval literature graduates are on job seeker' allowance after 6 months then there is a problem. Maybe the content of such a course needs to reviewed.

What proportion of graduates should be earning the national average wage within 5 years? Do those who design courses expect their students to be employable?

What is the success criteria of a course?

This is what I would like to know as well, I know that universities have OFSTED in but how do unis get rated on course content? progress of students? effectiveness of the course? ability of the tutors to pass on knowledge?

If 90% of medieval literature graduates are on job seeker' allowance after 6 months then there is a problem. Maybe the content of such a course needs to reviewed.

What - you want Medieval Literature courses to include vocational skills, management modules, customer service etc?

How about Medieval Literature degree content is left at, errr, Medieval Literature?

Or maybe all degrees should be scrapped unless they are purely vocational.

Boney et al - TEF will go some way towards differentiating in the market-which-isn't-a-market. TEF measurements include employment stats, student satisfaction (!) and other data. Institutions who don;t get a decent TEF rating will not be able to put their fees up.

Universities do not have OFSTED.

The government is currently setting up a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to assess the teaching by universities. It is extremely hard to devise measures which assess the quality and effectiveness of university teaching. It is even harder to devise measures which don't eat up a significant fraction of the university teaching budget. (The UK's research excellence framework REF does use up a huge amount of resources which could be spent on actually doing research instead of assessing it.)

Most of my department's students go on to do terrifically well in the work place. We could take credit for this, and claim this is solely due to our wonderful teaching and our wonderful course content, but given that we start with very high achieving students with top grades at A level it would be unfair to give ourselves too much credit.

A medieval literature graduate need to include skills not directly related to medieval literature. Maybe an IT course and an insistance that all essays are word processed and good communication skills are developed. Maybe force students use presentation software like PowerPoint or the Google office equivalent to present their seminars. I am sure a lot of good universities have done this for years.

Maybe if a subject is really useless it should only be offered as joint honours. In other countries first year of degrees are more general.