New universities are in the government 's sights?

[mids2019]

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jan/20/ofs-publishes-plans-to-punish-english-universities-for-poor-value-for-money

The government plans to penalise universities whose courses are "poor value for money' . Won't this disproportionately effect newer universities and by extension students from poorer backgrounds? Are we starting to see the end of social mobility being extended through education?

Or.....is this a sensible approach to prevent students wasting time and money?

I don’t believe newer universities do contribute to social mobility to be honest. I think they perpetuate the status quo. Social mobility is enhanced by top tier universities using different methods to broaden the talent they admit (I say from my big, mortgaged home, a huge step up from the council house my parents still live in). I have improved my social standing through education, as have some of my neighbours.

Modern universities with degree subjects that do not enhance employability are not helping students progress socially, instead they are sending them home with masses of debt and a qualification that hasn’t fast tracked their career at all.

Meanwhile, the university has reached its financial target, and the debt will likely not be repaid to the government.

@titchy

If quality is measured on graduate employment, and equally all parts of a university are judged as one (so not the conservatoire separately) then it seems likely that all conservatoires and similar institutions would end up being shut down.

Yep. See also fine art.

But why do people need an actual degree for patisserie or theme park management?

Theme park management degree - I think if Alton Towers say they need graduates (and actually I would guess that managing a multi-million pound park with hundreds of staff and hundreds of thousands of visitors is a pretty significant undertaking), perhaps as the main employer we should trust their judgement. Or do you know better?

Absolutely.

The people who work at Alton Towers may be excellent at their job, but maybe they are not very good at teaching.

Making a qualification a degree course also gives access to funding. My daughter has trained in an area that traditionally didn’t come under degree funding. The cost of her course was over £30k. My son wants to train in an industry where most are freelancers so no employer to pay the cost of training (& let’s face it how can most small employers afford it). In the past it was only those with money who could afford to train for these jobs.

I think that, as I said above, there are too many people who do believe that a first from Bolton does equate to a first from Oxford and that there should be more transparency for both parents and students

The heart of the problem is here, and the answer is not to be aware of the gulf in standards, but to eliminate it by proper oversight and alignment of the assessment and degree-awarding system. Of course, when a large proportion of students from universities with poor standards are leaving with thirds or failing, those universities will either cease to be viable, or will need to drastically improve, either of which would be excellent outcomes. But are both reasons why this will never happen!

(My observation is that universities with poor standards choose staff from other universities with low standards to act as external examiners, so the whole system has a vaguely dishonest circularity to it.)

@cantkeepawayforever

Thinking from a personally relevant perspective- what about the degree-awarding institutions to which e.g. world class music / drama / dance conservatoires are linked? All fields into which conservatoires lead tend to have poorly paid and insecure employment, though the world would be poorer without brilliant musicians, actors and dancers….. The degree-awarding institutions these high quality conservatoires are linked to are often a ‘marriage of convenience’ (Iirc Hull, BCU etc).

If quality is measured on graduate employment, and equally all parts of a university are judged as one (so not the conservatoire separately) then it seems likely that all conservatoires and similar institutions would end up being shut down.

Ds’s first choice is such an institution (linked to Hull). The places Dd trained are linked to Chester & Wolverhampton.

These instructions attract students from all over the world.

@titchy

If quality is measured on graduate employment, and equally all parts of a university are judged as one (so not the conservatoire separately) then it seems likely that all conservatoires and similar institutions would end up being shut down.

Yep. See also fine art.

But why do people need an actual degree for patisserie or theme park management?

Theme park management degree - I think if Alton Towers say they need graduates (and actually I would guess that managing a multi-million pound park with hundreds of staff and hundreds of thousands of visitors is a pretty significant undertaking), perhaps as the main employer we should trust their judgement. Or do you know better?

I think the issue is quality and not necessarily subject.

And I agree that graduate salaries are not a straightforward measure - especially not fit courses in the arts. But I do think they should be high quality courses. Or there’s no point. Well trained artists and musicians can and do contribute to the country is all sorts of ways - however much money they make.

Students - even in highly vocational degrees - should be able to engage with current theoretical and methodological debates in the relevant area. They should be able to locate their work in relation to this. And they should be able to present it effectively in whatever the standard ways are for that subject area. That might be a brilliant performance or a design portfolio rather than an essay.

But not all courses are offering this.

And the supposed quality assurance processes are almost a joke. The external examiner system does literally nothing to benchmark quality across the sector. Neither does the TEF frankly.

There are brilliant degrees out there. And brilliant people working across the sector. But the structural issues are ridiculous.

@AuntyBumBum

I agree with this but we will never reach a situation where all institutions are teaching to the same standard. There are too many vested interests in our hierarchical HE system to allow that to happen.

There are provisionally teaching league tables and awards for universities but in reality they mean little in terms of society"s and importantly employers" views.

I think actually for some of the lower league unis there are actually quite a lot of firsts awarded as there is no disincentive not to award them and they improve the universities' profile and potentially lead to greater employability.

We have to be careful about leaving figures as often students at newer universities may have had more difficult upbringings, more likely to suffer disability or mental health issues and are more insecure financially.

Drop out may not all together be about ability (Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg gave up their courses....not exactly failures)

I think that, as I said above, there are too many people who do believe that a first from Bolton does equate to a first from Oxford

Surely nobody believes this?

Getting in to Oxford is already super difficult and once there the standard of teaching and learning is therefore likely higher.

Recruiters know this!

@RampantIvy

Your posts make depressing reading *@BurntToastAgain*. DD has to read and fully understand 30 page pubmed articles for her degree (biomedical sciences at an RG university)

Her dissertation supervisor is a professor who works on covid wards, and so far has proved to be pretty helpful and supportive.

Going back to the newer universities - I see that some of them are handing out uncondition or unconditional conditional offers pretty freely again.

What is everyone's opinion on this?

Of she is reading journal articles. And expected to not only understand them but to learn to engage critically with them. That’s what she’s there to do.

If they weren’t asking her to, she should be complaining. And probably would be.

Someone upthread described my previous students as ‘lazy’ and I can see why they might think that. I think it was less laziness and more that they were poorly advised and not in a place in their lives where they could even see the value of learning.

A consequence of this is that the majority of them really resented anything that felt challenging to them. Academically or personally. The reliance on student satisfaction was ridiculous because these students were only satisfied if it was not challenging in any way. Show them a Disney film and ask them what their mum thinks about x (not as a meaningful way into academic debates but as the end in itself) and tell them this is all so challenging (as some of my colleagues did - the same ones who passed everyone because ‘they’d had a go’ by handing anything in). Try to teach them anything that required effort or reconsidering their own assumptions and opinions and they basically threw tantrums.

The university leadership only cared that they were satisfied in the NSS not whether their satisfaction was reasonable or related to the quality of the degree. And the ridiculous external examiner system wouldn’t help there.

In contrast, I found that students at highly ranked universities were unsatisfied if they weren’t being pushed and they didn’t feel like a lot was expected of them. They had high expectations of themselves and the degree. Sometimes far too high - the anxiety levels my friends who teach these students tell me about are dreadful. They have students who will read the whole reading list and more and still be anxious they’re not working hard enough.

Whereas I had classrooms of young working class women who weren’t interested in learning and were just doing a degree at their local university in something that sounded easy because they had no idea there were other possibilities. Their parents thought it was important so they could make something of their lives. A few years down the line, many of them would have been brilliant students on courses they were passionate about. Or they might have been doing really well in vocational areas. But they were sitting in my lecture hall being disruptive and putting the students who were trying hard off. I blame the education system, the lies told about higher education in our culture generally and whole structures for it much more than those young women.

@Blubells

You would think so.....but university blind applications are becoming the norm in the public sector so not to bias towards any one institution. As long as you have a 2:1 or first you get an interview where university again is not a consideration.

Certain employers in the private sector obviously go for Oxbridge grads but in the public sector diversity is very much emphasised.

Recruiters often state a degree type and classification minimum but I have never seen a job advert which specifies institutions.

Institution blind recruitment doesn’t help you if your degree hasn’t equipped you with all the skills the competition have been learning in theirs though.

I think that, as I said above, there are too many people who do believe that a first from Bolton does equate to a first from Oxford

Surely nobody believes this?

The remark was originally made in the context of parents and kids from disadvantaged backgrounds with no experience of higher education. I think they might well think it, and it explains why, through no fault of their own, they can make poor decisions. And in fact it's not an unreasonable assumption at all. 'A'-level standards are pretty much equivalent across examination boards. As I posted earlier, the problem is not that those parents have that perception; it's that the truth does not correspond with the perception when it absolutely should!

If we could be honest about where all degrees fit into a single hierarchy of standards (and be honest that some are a bit shit) then we could begin to solve the problem, instead of pretending it's all fine, and that the subterfuge that @BurntToastAgain has described in some universities doesn't exist.

I agree with this but we will never reach a situation where all institutions are teaching to the same standard. There are too many vested interests in our hierarchical HE system to allow that to happen.

There are provisionally teaching league tables and awards for universities but in reality they mean little in terms of society"s and importantly employers" views.

By the way @mids2019, I'm not talking about trying to achieve equivalent standards of teaching. I'm talking about equivalent standards for assessing the degree, so that a student getting a 2-1 at Bolton is meeting the same descriptors assessed at the same standard as a student getting a 2-1 from Oxford.

Definitely something needs doing. Tuition fees at least need to be variable according to costs of providing. It's nonsense that a Physics or Engineering degree that needs lots of hands on expensive kit at a top Uni costs the student the same as an "essay" based degree at a lowly ranked Uni. When tuition fees were raised, it was the stated aim that it was "maximum" and that Unis were expected to charge different fees but that simply never happened.

@user1497207191

Definitely something needs doing. Tuition fees at least need to be variable according to costs of providing. It's nonsense that a Physics or Engineering degree that needs lots of hands on expensive kit at a top Uni costs the student the same as an "essay" based degree at a lowly ranked Uni. When tuition fees were raised, it was the stated aim that it was "maximum" and that Unis were expected to charge different fees but that simply never happened.

So you're advocating for Physics, Medical etc students to pay more then? Rather than universities have the extra costs of providing Physics, Medicine degrees etc paid for by the Gov?

@AuntyBumBum

One aspect of this is that it is politically incorrect (maybe justifiably so) to say that one institution is better than another in a professional context I know in work it is frowned upon to make aspersions about anyone's university attended (some attended none) and I wonder if teachers are professionally obliged to not mention the unwritten university hierarchy?

@AuntyBumBum

Theoretically there should be equivalence and there is a widespread pretence it does at least superficially. I think the 'hierarchy' is better understood at certain schools than others

One aspect of this is that it is politically incorrect (maybe justifiably so) to say that one institution is better than another in a professional context

I know what you mean @mids2019, but inevitably there is a hierarchy, and it doesn't really help anyone to pretend that there isn't. And again, I'm not talking about the standard of the institution. I'm talking about the standard of the degrees it awards.

@BurntToastAgain
Your situation seems awful!

Do you feel that the students don't have a level of emotional maturity to approach higher education? Could this be because of a society/school culture that has helped cultivate a negative attitude to learning?

I don't want to seem to make excuses as there does seem to failings here but I am making a presumption many if your students will be first generation undergraduates and a degree may be a route out of non skilled work (even though they don't appreciate it).

I agree approaching higher education at a later age is really beneficial for some but there are those that feel post school higher education should be available to all portions of society. Could we be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

@BurntToastAgain

I guess employers all have different skills they desire and there is no simple measure to find out which universities/degrees provide these especially as many roles are not degree specific

Your particular university does seem to present challenges though.

There are so many points to unscramble @mids2019!

You want lower ranked universities to help the disadvantaged become socially mobile. However if students go to their local uni and then look for grad jobs in their locality, they may be very disappointed. Lots of degrees don’t equip the student for these roles. Neither are there enough grad jobs to go round. Engineers should be OK, humanities degree holders may well struggle. We have 18,000 places to read law. Every year there are around 6,000 training positions to become solicitors. It won’t result in social mobility if your lower ranked uni gets a handful of students into these roles.

So why don’t the students get them? Often it’s intellect. All round ability. It’s academic rigour. It’s having to compete against classics degree holders from Oxford who sail through tests and actually are very bright. The lower ranked universities advertise a dream for wannabes. . It’s not attainable for many.

Then we have the issue of why should the disadvantaged be pushed to lower ranking universities. Why do teachers who qualified at these universities think their pupils should follow suit? “It was good enough for me” is what you hear. It might not be anywhere near good enough for their pupils. They absolutely do not have to say all universities are equal! However they do and it sucks! Why lie to a disadvantaged child? Utterly wrong!

The fees are a loan for many. The fees are never paid back so you could argue it makes no difference to the student regarding outcomes. But it does to the tax payers. Also talent might be wasted and we lie that a third rate university is great. No research agrees.

Salary levels are looked at by the IFS. RG universities are better. Of course there are some non RG that are brilliant but the university of “Just Around the Corner” isn’t one of them.

You cannot make all degrees the same level of academic study. The Oxbridge student simply isn’t the same as a CCC student. Teaching and learning will be different at different universities because the students are hugely different. Employers know where to place their trust. Also even if they don’t know institution, they set tests and the best students get the gig. Although many bright students don’t want to work for local government and its perceived as dull. Far better opportunities and money elsewhere for the best. (I used to work in local government). The talented people moved on!

My approach would be that far more courses should be a 1 or 2 year foundation. Gain the missing skills and then apply for a degree at a worthwhile uni. We need lower ranked universities to change what they offer. Plenty of courses need restricting. Law, Psychology, Sociology and many more need numbers reduced.

[quote mids2019]@BurntToastAgain
Your situation seems awful!

Do you feel that the students don't have a level of emotional maturity to approach higher education? Could this be because of a society/school culture that has helped cultivate a negative attitude to learning?

I don't want to seem to make excuses as there does seem to failings here but I am making a presumption many if your students will be first generation undergraduates and a degree may be a route out of non skilled work (even though they don't appreciate it).

I agree approaching higher education at a later age is really beneficial for some but there are those that feel post school higher education should be available to all portions of society. Could we be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?[/quote]
I think it was several things.

Yes. Many of them were young women who were not yet emotionally mature enough for any of it. But who had few other options open to them - all of which are culturally positioned as ‘lesser’.

5/10/15 years later they might have been really brilliant students working towards furthering or starting a career they were able to see as a possibility. But they’ll never get that chance now, because they’ve been encouraged (by a whole host of well meaning people) into wasting the one chance at funding they get.

They were generally the first in their families to go to university too (or their siblings had gone to the same local university). So the people around them didn’t have anything else to compare it to. They didn’t know that it should be different.

The general lack of aspiration or ambition for these young working class women in the university was a really big problem. No one expected better of or for them. So they chatted through the classes and did each other’s hair etc. The university and department leadership actively undermined any attempt to improve behaviour in the classes.

In contrast, I had been teaching predominantly students from no traditional backgrounds at one of those not-oxbridge-but-full-of-the-public-schooled universities. They we the first in their families and with nothing to compare it to. But they came in to a programme where we believed they could do it (sure they needed more support with some things because they hadn’t been educated extremely expensively) but they came in and the attitudes and atmosphere around them encouraged them to expect things from themselves. It was really wonderful to see how some of them grew in the time they were with us.

Another factor is the widespread idea that they are ‘customers’ and they are buying a degree. Alongside the idea that they should be ‘satisfied’. Combined with the lack of understanding about what HE is, that can produce the kind of attitudes you find in totally unreasonable trip advisor reviews.

They’d come from schools and colleges where the teachers had done incredible amounts to get them through their BTECs. And they expected that we should be telling them exactly what to write, paragraph by paragraph, and editing and correcting it so that by the time they handed in ‘their work’ they knew it was going to get the mark they expected.

It was complex and, as irritating their behaviour in classes and attitude towards me often were, I can’t really say it was their fault. They shouldn’t have been in the situation in the first place.

Fixing the situation requires really thinking about the opportunities we offer young people and the cultural attitudes and expectations around class (and race too).

The minute you put a price on something and people think they a buying a degree, they become customers. Even in this thread the cost of a degree is mentioned. If the repayment salary goes up to £27,000 even fewer will pay anything. A good salary was viewed as £24,000 elsewhere. The fact is most of them buy nothing or very little because they have a loan snd won’t pay it off! They are used as bums on seats and it needs to be sorted out.

@TizerorFizz

The minute you put a price on something and people think they a buying a degree, they become customers. Even in this thread the cost of a degree is mentioned. If the repayment salary goes up to £27,000 even fewer will pay anything. A good salary was viewed as £24,000 elsewhere. The fact is most of them buy nothing or very little because they have a loan snd won’t pay it off! They are used as bums on seats and it needs to be sorted out.

I don't think anyone views a £24k salary as "good". Isn't that the average?

Personally, I'd expect a graduate to be earning enough to be at or around the higher rate tax threshold within a few years of graduating, otherwise you have to query the "value" of the degree (both in terms of cost and time).

I can assure you huge numbers of grads are not high tax payers within a few years of graduating! Nurses, teachers and most local government workers certainly are not higher tax payers before they are 30! I don’t think £24,000 is a great starting salary but on another thread a poster thought if was. Depends where you live of course. The IFS quoted the difference in starting pay in economics grads a few years ago. Over double the average salary for grads can be generated by grads of LSE (for example). The employers who employ these grads wouldn’t get many from Wolverhampton uni applying. Hence uni of Wolverhampton economics grads don’t get big bucks (mostly). If some of them could have gone to LSE, it’s a tragedy really. Of course they might be happy at Wolverhampton but that’s another issue..

I’m afraid you are deluded if you think all grads should be higher tax payers after a few years. Not a chance! There might be a chance if 50% of degrees are culled!

@TizerorFizz

So many points to unpick as it's a complex subject.

I think the idea of pushing high achievers to low tariff universities is wrong. Young people deserve to be able to reach their potential and lack of aspiration in general should be tackled.

With regard to employers knowing to where to place their trust that will depend on the employer and what they require. It may be that a particular role does not require an outstanding intellect but requires soft skills such as team building, leadership, negotiation etc. I don't think one or two institutions necessarily have a monopoly on these skills so you could argue employers should be willing to cast their net wider (hence the university blind philosophy I mentioned earlier)

A lot of graduate roles do not specify a degree but simply a classification and hence should in theory be open to quite a wide range of applicants and I think it fair that within reason applications should be open as possible. I went to an RG university and there was a fellow student who studied American History that walked into an accountancy role at one of the big 6 companies and I think that type of role should be open to financial grads of 'lower' ranked university especially if the degree has an immediate technical focus. At the time it really looked like the company were focusing more on the institution than the direct applicability of the degree.

With regard to Law I agree whole heartedly. My cousin studied Law at Preston poly (years ago) and couldn't find a legal job despite trying for 2 years before he finally set up a mobile pizza business. It's not great seeing someone's career ambitions slowly wither to be honest. However you could argue in some cases those lower ranked Law grads could go for general graduate opportunities?

I think a focus of this debate is whether if you have a relatively low A level tariff you should realistically have the ability to embark on higher education and have the opportunity to apply to the full range of 'graduate jobs' and I think as a society we haven't quite decided on that.

My impression is that the government wishes to prioritise vocational training through schemes like apprenticeships and further education possibly at the expense of the lower end of the HE spectrum. (How low is a matter of debate)

The concern would be that for certain schools and certain demographics we are effectively removing higher education possibilities and are we in agreement about this? It has parallels with the grammar school debate where we are separating students by ability at a certain point and expecting one group to focus on vocation whilst the other group are allowed to continue in academia.

However if I were to discuss this with my children I would be clear there is a university hierarchy despite teachers not mentioning it and university attended being a rather hidden and little discussed feature of professional life. I think this only fair.