PSA: G Hinsliff universities article today

[poetryandwine]

In today’s Guardian, in print and online, Gaby Hinsliff has an article on the crisis being faced by UK universities. The title begins

’Universities are in free fall …’

and then the two versions differ slightly.
It currently appears on the front page of the (free) Guardian website.

The reason I thought this worth mentioning is that Hinsliff does an excellent job of briefly explaining the background and showing how the causes have fed on each other, from Brexit to greedy VCs to the interest rates rises to our confused social policy. The overview is very helpful.

The accounting firm PwC have just provided Universities UK with a sobering report on the financial future of the sector.

Well there are two issues here:

Firstly, method of delivery. I don't think 'university' itself is necessarily the problem. After all, even tuition fees are capped at 9K a year.
It's the expectation that people go away to study, for 3 years, often far from their homes. Racking up accommodation, food, etc costs. It's a somewhat British approach to expect them to go away, in other European countries with cheap university education most students live at home and commute.

In relation to the first, tuition fees and supply of grads. Opportunities were opened up for the first few to go to university, because it didn't cost them much provided their achieved, and jobs were plentiful. Tuition fees were introduced only in 1998 by the Blair government with students paying up to1K.

In 2024 it all costs a bomb. Not only that, because there are so many graduates plenty of jobs that previously didn't require them, insist on degrees. In my field many of the old-timers worked their way up even form clerical grades, this is impossible nowadays.

The plum 'graduate jobs' require multiple rounds of interviews, tests, etc. Graduates who need to work to fund themselves are less able to prepare, similarly many academic kids have to opt out of courses where the workload is too high as they need PT jobs. This isn't just 'low-income' people but, for example kids who have siblings in university at the same time... parents expected to make up the shortfall but don't have the money.

It's becoming more like the US, but what people forget about them, is that community college and state institutions are heavily subsidised for residents! The massive student loans etc are for people going to other more 'prestigious' institutions but it's possible to get a cheaper degree.

We have the OU, part-time degrees etc here but they're still not as cost effective or even sold as a viable option.

Thanks to @Piggywaspushed and @titchy for pointing out that the Surfing and Baking degrees I mentioned are Foundation degrees. I had no idea the Baking degree is so competitive; that’s actually rather cool.

Thanks also to @PerpetualOptimist for refining my thoughts on the interplay between HE and social class and to her and
@Mytholmroyd for extending this discussion. I am not British and I find this topic very interesting, so I would be particularly grateful for more insights and anecdotes.

Further thanks to @titchy for posting the link to the PwC study on the HE sector and to @buffetbuffalo for an interesting post on HE and class.

I knew my comment would be slightly controversial. But I don’t think I could explicitly call out what should and should not be a degree subject.

I do, however, have a problem with students being pushed towards university as the only option. Widening access schemes have only been a moderate success in my opinion - all too often they are targeting underprivileged student to study absolutely anything at their local uni, rather than truly broadening horizons (and I know this first hand as I have worked in that area before).

then there are MC families who have the urge to send DC to any uni whatsoever as other forms of training are beneath them.

universities should not exist in the current model of ‘proto finishing school’ for MC students and have a duty to ensure students are making informed choices about future career prospects.

someone upthread mentioned nursing, this is probably a good example of a degree that was created to add status to nurses and the SRN qualification (which they definitely do deserve) but has morphed from gov paying for training to students doing so.

currently we, the taxpayers, are propping up a very bloated HE sector that needs a good looking at.

People often forget that NVQ Level 6 qualifications are equivalent to an undergraduate degree. There are many professional qualifications that meet this. Professional accountancy qualifications like the ACA (which is NVQ Level 7 actually, so equivalent to a Master's), for example.
If you do the ACCA you can do an additional dissertation and get a degree from Oxford-Brookes university.

In my humble opinion, full-time degrees are for the academic study of a subject. They emphasize academic skills and knowledge, research.
However, there's a major emphasis on 'employability' in courses these days, with many modules involving presentations, short report-writing, group work. That's not the point of a degree!

All these can and should be learnt on the job you don't need 3 years of university for them. So IMO the subject isn't the issue, it's the composition of them. If most modules in a 'media studies' (or media production etc) degree involve a heavy proportion of critical analysis. Combining politics, art, literature, history . Surely it's academically rigorous and is a legitimate degree.

If however it involves a higher proportion of 'practical' modules like video production, casting etc. Then it's not really 'degree' level study. It's not to say that these things are useless, or require less intelligence/study. Simply that they're not the sort of knowledge expected from a 'degree' as opposed to something else. Writing one dissertation at the end doesn't make up for the rest.

Institutions have been forced to package things into degrees as that's how funding, loans etc work. It'll be interesting to see what happens when this is opened to to wider educational paths, as it used to be.

Yes agree - there's a definite tension between studying for academic rigour and employability.

On one hand parents and government ask what the point of university is if it isn't to prepare for work. On the other hand degrees which DO prepare for work are denigrated as poor academic quality.

Can't win!

When did the government begin to care so much about employability outcomes?

Did this concern exist back when government was funding tuition (before I came to the UK)? If not, why the change?

When did the government begin to care so much about employability outcomes?

When league tables started/started including it as a criteria maybe?

I agree we have blurred the distinction between professional and academic - universities swallowed up a lot of professional training/professional and vocational qualifications and turned them into academic degrees and now they are trying to get those same degrees rubber stamped by the professional bodies. Couldn't make it up!

The upshot is as other posters have said, young people end up shouldering the debt for training for vital and necessary roles in society that should be finances by the government IMHO.

I remember a colleague telling me about an essay written a long time ago when there was a big debate going on about whether universities should open medical schools - the essay (and I cannot remember the essayist sorry!) was very much against bringing what was seen as a practical profession into a university which he thought were purely for academic study. One day I will track it down!

Thank you, @Mytholmroyd This is fascinating.

I wonder if the inclusion if employability statistics in the league tables was the universities’ idea, or the government’s? I think the recent emphasis on the ‘value added’ component was initiated by the government, though I am not certain.

The history on medical schools is startling and quite a lesson for us now

many modules involving presentations, short report-writing, group work. That's not the point of a degree!

I am not sure I agree that degree courses shouldn't build in workplace, interpersonal, communication and interview skills- otherwise graduates are limited to academics. This is the mistake Gove made with schools - vanishingly few GCSE and A Levels now have any research skills, IT skills etc. It's all rote learning. And then they can't cope at university!

I think the league tables are largely responding to what 'the market' wants to know. Introduction of fees, and particularly increase to £9k in 2012 effectively made HE a market for which the consumer (ie students or at least their parents) started to ask what return they were getting for their investment (conveniently ignoring the fact that for many, there was no self investment). The Government rhetoric then, and since has been about HE as a market and students as consumers - now bound by CMA regulations as well as HE ones.

Disbanding of HEFCE, replacing (in England) with OfS, a regulator, who require a minimum threshold of graduates in graduate level employment for each university, AND who regard this as a measure of good quality (it isn't - hence why QAA, who do know what good quality HE looks like, quit as Englands quality assessor), was the final row of nails in the coffin.

I wonder if the inclusion if employability statistics in the league tables was the universities’ idea, or the government’s? I think the recent emphasis on the ‘value added’ component was initiated by the government, though I am not certain.

It bothers me substantially that people don't realise that university league tables are produced by newspapers purely for the purpose of selling newspapers. They have no official status, and neither the government nor universities have any control over what is included or how the rankings are calculated.

Whilst this is almost certainly not the essay to which @Mytholmroyd referred to earlier it provides an interesting perspective - albeit from 70 years ago

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2029428/pdf/brmedj03405-0017.pdf

It does quote some earlier work - three decades earlier again

Sir George Newman's two reports of 1918 and 1923 have already become classics in the historical literature of medical education, for no one in recent years has described the great issues with broader vision and perspective, and I here refer especially to the section of his first report entitled " A University Education in Medicine," in which he wrote eloquently upon the theme that a medical school without university affiliation ceases to be a medical school in the modern sense.

and concludes with a quote from 1906

"It appears that the function of university education is not special instruction in the lines of a profession or trade, however these ends may substantively be promoted, but in expanding and enlarging the mind and making it a more and more perfect instrument of knowledge and progress, whatsoever its destination."

I would just like to add a regional perspective and say that, whilst a shift away from the 'English model' of 'going away to university' may mean more choose unis they can commute to, many rural and other poorly connected areas have fewer 'realistically commutable' choices.

Universities themselves appear to have exacerbated the accommodation issues by overexpanding courses but not matching with local housing supply and/or by concentrating on building more expensive units (eg ensuite); yes, the market 'demands' that but unis can choose to deliver what they think is financially accessible for the student body as a whole.

I think the University of the Highlands and Islands had a good model for serving rural and island communities who cannot always go away to University.

"Limited to academics", huh? If that was true, people wouldn't be rushing to hire graduates back in the day when degrees were truly rigorous. Which then lead to the expansion of degrees, because 'other people should have the same chances as graduates', leading to degree inflation and our current position.

@titchy Well the parents are right for asking, because they're spending a lot of money. Unfortunately, as so many things 'need a degree' because of inflation universities have to come up with a to justify their position with a 'practical' element. Many of these institutions didn't always have degree awarding powers anyway but have been forced to adapt.

The truth is most people who are capable of graduating from an academically rigorous degree are capable of learning all this on the job. @Piggywaspushed interview skills etc are down to career centres and not the degree content. Similarly communication skills, workplace etc are all taught on the job! . Our graduates have skills sessions on communication, presentation etc from degrees that don't have all of this fluff. No issues, they pick things up quickly and are flying within a few months.

Furthermore, as an employer the competency based questions we ask are detailed and involve real life scenarios outside of the course (exceptions being research etc). These are not things that you can 'teach' in modules anyway, they come with practice. Anybody who uses 'group projects' as an example is instantly marked down and is very likely to fail the interview unless the rest of their examples are brilliant.

Exactly my point!
Medicine is an interesting one. On the surface 'vocational' but requires a great deal of academic study and understanding. Exams even years after they have left university which are very academic (not hands on like, say technology certifications).

There are certain jobs where those skills are needed from the get go.

Honestly, I had presentations and group work in my degree years ago.

I think the assumption that presentations aren't rigorous is interesting.

The problem is that all universities make a loss on home students no matter what the subject is. Tuition fees aren’t enough. Overseas students have kept the sector going but numbers have fallen off a cliff for a few different reasons, not least the government’s changes to the immigration rules concerning overseas students’ dependents.

universities are certainly looking at removing the courses making the biggest losses. for some students that may well be halfway through their course. Someone on here posted recently that her DD’s first choice offer has just been withdrawn as the uni are stopping the course. Very unfortunate for her if she has rejected other offers. But worse for the current students as the academics may well choose to not stay and teach the course out, they will look for other jobs.

Some universities are very likely to go bust and close down suddenly and others may merge unless something changes very quickly. Just look at the threads in the academic common room about redundancies. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a problem affecting lower ranked universities. It isn’t. There is a shit storm approaching fast and if you have a child either at university or potentially going to university you need to be clued up on what’s happening.

Even if your child is currently at university and makes it to the end without their degree/university closing the chances are their teaching will be affected by reduced staff and reduced teaching hours and reduced support.

Oh really? Like what? And do they only hire people from degrees that involve presentations?

BTW, it's not that I think presentations 'aren't rigorous' per se. Obviously the lecturers themselves are presenting, people present at research conferences etc, on very academic topics. And I also didn't say that there shouldn't be any modules involving these.

It's just that a degree shouldn't consist entirely of modules involving these and other condensed forms of communication. The skills are useful , but don't require to university and doing an entire degree. Unlike deep intellectual exploration and critical analysis presented as essays, back and forth discussions, etc. A presentation can involve a degree of Q&A but not as much as individualises discussions.

IME when researching degrees I found the presentation modules light on depth and content. But also, it still involves presenting to a single audience. Different from the workplace where you have people with various levels of understanding and different, erm, agenda, shall we say, to balance. It's easy to teach this to someone bright and switched on, whether they have been to university or not. People with good work experience I find are the best at this.

I agree with @PerpetualOptimist. Why should my DC be limited to going to university in Falmouth (largely deemed to be Exeter's poor relation, Plymouth or Exeter? Even then, the time & costs of commuting would be unreasonable.

It's a lovely idea to go local and would suit all those in London, Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire no end, but there are bright young people around the far edges of the country too who wish to study for studying's sake.

It's just that a degree shouldn't consist entirely of modules involving these and other condensed forms of communication

Is there any suggestion this is happening 

I echo everything @CormorantStrikesBack posted. Everything. HE is in absolutely dire straits right now, I cannot emphasise that enough. There will undoubtedly be fewer universities next summer.

Lots of jobs don't necessarily have training on the job. Teaching, for example, might look for those skills. That may not be a brilliant example but presentations at interview for PGCE are common. Group presentations are used in the sift for civil service applicants.

DS is currently applying for an internship where he is being asked about his experience of organising and running group presentations. It's an academic internship.

I just think it's a bit disingenuous to say those things aren't necessary, helpful, or useful in a degree.

I genuinely don't think there are degrees where every module is presentation/ report writing based.