The Trouble with Higher Education

A Critical Examination of our Universities

Trevor Hussey, Patrick Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415871976
• eBook ISBN: 9781135237523
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Trouble with Higher Education is a powerful and topical critique of the Higher Education system in the UK, with relevance to countries with similar systems. Based on the authors' experiences that span over 30+ years of fieldwork, the issues discussed focus on the problems facing the principle responsibilities of universities: teaching, learning and research.

The first half of the book identifies a number of problems that have followed the growth of mass education. It examines their causes and explains their damaging effects. The second half of the book offers a broad vision and makes a number of practical suggestions for ameliorating the problems and improving higher education. Supported by research, the suggestions include: ways of managing universities; proper inspection; better ways of organising students' learning; improving teaching and learning; better approaches to assessment, and the proper use of ideas such as learning outcomes.

Topics discussed include:

• Chronic under-funding, the replacement of student grants with loans and the introduction of tuition fees.
• The growth of managerialism.
• The emphasis on accountability and decline of trust.
• The growth of a competitive, market ethos.
• Modular degrees, knowledge treated as a commodity and students seen as customers.
• The drift towards a two-tiered system, with teaching colleges and research universities.
• Casualisation of the academic profession.

The Trouble with Higher Education is aimed primarily at a professional audience of academics, educationalists, managers, administrators and policy makers, but would interest anyone concerned about higher education. It is suited to professional development courses, and Master's and doctoral level studies.

1
The Troubles

The crowd has found the door into the secret garden. Now they will tear up the flowers by the roots . . . .

Alan Bennett (1969) Forty Years On: 78

There was a time, not so long ago, when the way into the secret garden of higher education was known to a very few. Over the last four decades in Britain, successive governments have striven to change things: from being the privilege of a middle class élite to being accessible to a huge section of society. In the 1960s only about one in 18 young people made their way to university; today it is over 40 per cent, and it is the declared aim of government that half of all young people will go through higher education.

In terms of national prudence and social justice, these changes are surely admirable. If Britain’s economy is to prosper and its culture is to develop, we need to educate our people. We cannot compete in the global marketplace by our muscle power but must rely on knowledge, inventiveness and imagination. Success in science and technology will be vital in keeping the tills ringing; arts and sports make a huge contribution to the tourist industry, and all are of immense value to the quality of our lives. For the individual the advantages and benefits of an education are difficult to exaggerate: they are the means to a better quality, and even quantity, of life. It is surely right that the opportunity to benefit from higher education be not only increased but also spread to a wider social mix. People of both sexes in all social classes and of all ethnic origins must have a fair chance of a good education.

So, the expansion of higher education is laudable. But, agreement on this is the easy bit. The difficulties come when we ask exactly what is to constitute this expanded education and how it is to be paid for. Even here there are things that most commentators are likely to agree upon but, as soon as they are debated, doubts begin to appear about what has actually happened as higher education has been expanded and where we must go from here. Politicians, the general public and those working in the area, including the students, are aware that all is not well. As we will show, the fruits are blemished and it is suspected that some at least are rotten.

Those responsible for the development of higher education over recent decades, and those who voted them into power, almost certainly wanted to preserve what was good about the existing system: they wanted to preserve its essential nature and quality. After all, it had served us rather well, at least since the reforms of the nineteenth century. One Cambridge college had produced almost as many Nobel Prize winners as the whole of France, so we must have been doing something right. The, perhaps naïve, vision was that the masses would share the same venerable system that the élite had enjoyed, albeit greatly expanded. Above all, the quality of the education would be maintained: there would be no dumbing down.

The new students would also experience much the same student life: perhaps lager would flow where once champagne was sipped, and not all the students would stroll in ancient stone quads, but there would be the red brick or even breeze-block equivalents. More importantly, students would receive the same level of intellectual stimulation, the same access to lively minds and vast stores of cultural excellence. There were to be many more students, but then there would be many more universities, staffed by many more academics. The gowns and gaudies might go but the students would still enjoy that ineffable experience of being marinaded in knowledge for three or four years while, at the same time, imbibing the rich culture that seasons the university diet. They would still be able to realise their potentials and pursue their personal ambitions, while acquiring a genuine education that would transform them as persons and enhance the rest of their lives.

Of course, changes would have to be made to cope with the increased numbers, but essentially the same old system could be stretched to suit, and the traditional academic calendar could be preserved. By modularisation and semesterisation we could achieve the flexibility and volume required, and these innovations would enable the whole business to be managed efficiently. If credit accumulation was introduced, students would be able to take up their studies, lapse and rejoin the system at a later date, or switch from one university to another carrying their credits with them. So, marriage, pregnancy or getting on a bike to find work would not prevent the masses from passing through the system.

Obviously this admirable expansion would have to be paid for, but the money would be found. Politicians on the right would see the economic benefits of the investment and those of the left would see the burgeoning social justice as more than worth the cost. Naturally, some changes would have to be made. The bright new institutions would have to be properly and professionally managed. If vast amounts of taxpayers’ money were to be spent, governments could not pour them into the hands of be-tweeded dons. In the same way, the government might have to ensure the maintenance of academic standards. The seedling universities would not have the benefits of the sages lodged in the senior common rooms of Oxbridge colleges or the ancient system of Visitors to guide them and set the necessary standards. Independent bodies would be required for these purposes. Hence the creation of the Higher Education Quality Council and the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA), and their successor the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), and a number of other auditing bodies.

The 1980s brought a change of political climate and the vision was modified to embrace the invigorating cold shower of competition (Wright 2001). It was realised that another advantage of the great expansion was the creation of a market. The “customers”, “consumers” or students would have a range of universities and colleges to choose from, and the “providers” would have to compete to attract them. This competition, it was argued, would ensure both quality and efficiency. Institutions that performed badly would have to reform themselves and those that were too profligate would suffer the consequences. League tables of performance data would be published to enable customers to make informed choices. Thus there would be a self-regulating mechanism to ensure that the vision was not only transformed into reality but that this was achieved in the most efficient way possible. The result would be more students having more choice but being educated at less expense to the taxpayer – the political equivalent of turning base metals into gold.

Unfortunately, this vision has not materialised in quite the sturdy forms and glowing colours that were so keenly anticipated. In quantitative terms there has been real progress. Many new universities have been founded and one time polytechnics and colleges of higher education have been transmogrified. Student numbers have risen in a very satisfying curve, and even if the social mix is not quite as egalitarian as would satisfy those committed to extending the franchise of education, students are now drawn from a much larger and more diverse population.

However, many critics remain. Those outside the “industry” of higher education – the politicians, employers, and media pundits – see waste and decadence. They point to “Mickey Mouse” degrees, the dumbing down of traditional degrees and trivial or ludicrous research. Universities are accused of doing anything to attract students and anything to grease their passage through the system and prevent them failing. Degrees are, it is said, given away, and an ever increasing proportion of students are awarded first class honours. There are stories of illiterate and incompetent graduates who have to be trained from scratch before they are capable of work. Others claim that the whole thing is too expensive and inefficient and that it is educating the wrong people in the wrong way and for the wrong jobs.

The academics inside the system complain of the bureaucracy and burden of management; the focus on monitoring and accountancy and the death of trust. They bemoan modularity and the commodification of knowledge; they wring their hands at the quality of their students, and resent those students acting like aggrieved customers when they don’t receive the marks they expected. Above all they groan under the dispiriting and unrewarding burden of mass education: vast seas of anonymous faces that last only the first couple of weeks into the course, to be replaced by empty seats. Of course teaching can be a pleasing, rewarding and fulfilling experience and many academics chose their career for these reasons, but recent trends have made these benefits much more difficult to find, to the detriment of both teachers and taught. Those academics in the more prestigious universities can retreat into research but for the rest there is, too often, unremitting and thankless graft. Salaries are low by national and international standards, research money is difficult to find, the accustomed perks have been lost, and the traditional security replaced by casualisation and short term contracts.

The students have fared worst of all – although, because each intake has little idea of what went before, their afflictions are somewhat ameliorated: ignorance and innocence act as anaesthetics. None the less, the student experience has been transformed. The grant system has been replaced by work and debt. Students often work for more hours in a week than they attend college. Their studies are hard work but they are conducted on what energy and enthusiasm is left after stacking shelves or flipping burgers. In many of the new colleges they are encouraged by the system to see their education as a commodity to be bought at the lowest price. Each module has to be ticked off at the cost of an essay or an exam, and then off to the next. Too often the result is an “education” like a jigsaw puzzle composed of pieces selected randomly from different boxes.

One stark consequence of this transformation of the student’s experience is that many drop out of the process. Whereas back in the 1960s a small proportion of students failed to complete their degrees now, after half a century of growth, one in ten fall out after the first year and well over 20 per cent fail to complete their degrees (Bourn 2007). Even an £800 million scheme to reduce university drop-out rates has failed to make any significant difference (Curtis 2008). It is often claimed that, by international standards, our dropout rate is relatively low, but this is in part because our entry requirements are high: traditionally we have sowed sparsely and have not used university courses to thin out the crop, but this is changing now that so many more young people are being herded though the doors of universities. Those that survive the course may find that their employment prospects and earning power are not so very different from their friends who left schooling at 16.

Measured in financial terms, there have been some efficiencies of scale. To produce each graduate it now costs much less than that paid for the 1960s product, but this ignores the reduction in the quality of provision and the cost of those who drop out. The cost in human terms of failing to complete cannot be quantified in cash but it is deplorable. The trampled hopes and ambitions, the evaporated enthusiasm, the humiliation and sense of defeat, not to mention the wasted time, all taint people for life. Academics also feel the loss and let-down of depleted numbers. Those in the system have made changes in an attempt to increase retention of students. Course structures and teaching methods have been modified, induction courses elaborated, student support services have proliferated, “buddying” and mentoring programmes have been tried, all with varying results; however the haemorrhage continues.

There have been numerous responses from governments to try to overcome some of the problems mentioned above: changes in funding, league tables of institutions, modification of the way the monitoring is done by QAA, changes in the student grant and loan provision, bursaries and so forth, but the problems merely persist or mutate into new problems. One change that has insinuated itself, provoked at least in part by the spectre of international competition, is the separation of higher education institutions into two kinds: those that teach and those that do research. This, it is thought, will enable the leading universities to keep pace with the great universities of America and elsewhere, while retaining the means of mass producing graduates. It will preserve for the élite their Elysium and give to the rest what the nation deems necessary.

It will be interesting to see the effect on the careers and salaries of students passing through the two systems. Already there is a very significant difference between the experience of those students who attend the older universities and those who pass through the newer institutions; a difference emphasised by their contrasting drop-out rates. We can only speculate about the effect that it will have on academics but, given the need to build a CV full of publications, it may be yet another blunder. Of course teaching is a vitally important part of higher education, but most academics, even those who see their main priority and chief talent as teaching, will hesitate before allowing themselves to be caught in a teaching ghetto.

We can be justifiably proud of our higher education system, but our capacity to mutilate it must also be recognised. Our most prestigious universities appear in the top ten in world rankings (Times Higher Education 2007) but a huge proportion of our students attend very different institutions and they are our primary concern here. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the history of higher education but it is important and sobering to note that the path from the mediaeval studium generale in Oxford to the present plethora of institutions has been bedevilled by errors and misjudgements of policy: there are plenty of precedents for today’s predicament. Rulers, governments, the church, the aristocracy, the gentry, industry and the university authorities themselves have repeatedly manoeuvred and manipulated the system to gain their own ends or protect their own interests, often with disastrous consequences.

For example, after the Reformation, Oxford and Cambridge became the domain of the Anglican Church and they set about excluding first the Catholics and later the Dissenters – that is to say, those lecturers and fellows who refused to accept the Book of Common Prayer and ordination into the Church of England. The consequences were serious: apart from the social injustice involved, it caused an appalling loss of talent and intellect. It hampered the establishment of the experimental sciences in the universities, especially in Oxford, and neither institution played any significant part in the industrial revolution that transformed our society (Darlington 1970). The rule that not even professors of natural science could be appointed without swearing to uphold the Thirty-Nine Articles was not removed until 1871. The treatment of women is another example of the establishment’s resistance to change. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that women’s colleges appeared, and women were not permitted to take degrees in Oxford until 1920, while Cambridge held out until 1948, and even then restricted the number to six hundred. Today, women outnumber men in the United Kingdom’s universities.

Of course, these historical examples, and the many more that could be added, do not establish that today’s policy makers are wrong-headed, self-serving or malevolent, but they do underline the need to examine critically what is happening in our own time. Indeed, the Dearing Report (1997) showed that the capacity to get things wrong was still with us at the end of the twentieth century. It identified several recent government errors and miscalculations: amongst others, those concerning inadequate funding and staffing for the massive increase in student numbers. The report said that ‘The expansion was . . . much faster than the Government had initially envisaged and there was insufficient thought about the potential effects of a progressively reducing unit of funding’ (Dearing 1997: 3.115). The report also pointed out that the difference in funding levels between the older and the newer universities was an historical anomaly with little or no rational justification.

Dearing’s strictures had little or no effect. A recent report has shown that the pressure continues unabated to process more and more students “efficiently” ; that is to say with no commensurate increase in staff and resources (Tysome 2006). The Higher Education Statistics Agency showed that the student-to-staff ratios (SSRs) in higher education increased between 2000–01 and 2003–04, from just over 16:1 to more than 18:1; which is higher than in state secondary schools. Some institutions had SSRs of over 30:1 and the highest was 46:1. It is evident that it remains important to question what has been done to, and by, the institutions of higher education over the last few decades. Clearly the policies pursued by both politicians and educators have not had entirely benign results: there are serious problems with the present system.

So, the expansion of higher education achieved over the last half century, although estimable in principle, is in practice beset by disfigurements and serious problems. It is subject to criticisms from those who pay for it, those who work in it, those who are processed though it, and those who use its products.

Good intentions have not succeeded in producing what was envisioned and the chief faults lie with the system we have produced, not with the youngsters who suffer it. In his play Forty Years On, first performed in 1968, Alan Bennett has the public school headmaster say, with melancholic resignation:

The crowd has found the door into the secret garden. Now they will tear up the flowers by the roots, strip the borders and strew them with paper and broken bottles.

(1969: 78)

But the headmaster was wrong. The crowd has been led to the door and ushered into the garden by its proprietors, and it is the proprietors who are largely to blame for the desecration.

Let us be clear. We welcome the crowd into higher education but believe that this can be done without covering the garden with tarmac. We believe that the 1960s vision was wholly laudable and that it is possible for a wealthy nation to realise it in a much better form than achieved so far. We must try to preserve the essential nature and quality of what we had, and offer an educational experience that is enriching and life enhancing. Students must receive a real education that satisfies them, those who teach them, and those who subsequently employ them. Our aim should be a ‘liberal education’. We must reduce the waste and hurt involved in the dropping out of students, and all this must be achieved within a system that can handle huge numbers of disparate students from a wide variety of backgrounds. What is more the system must remain efficient and cost effective. Impossible? Perhaps, but given the present state of affairs it is at least worth trying to debate the problems and tender some suggestions towards impro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• 1. The Troubles
• 2. Expansion and Distortion
• 3. A Mycelium of Managers
• 4. Modules and Mutilation
• 5. A Thought Experiment
• 6. Students As Customers
• 7. Auditing Learning
• 8. The Other Side of Learning
• 9. A Broader View
• 10. Coping With Change
• 11. Processing or Progressing Students
• 12. Some Conclusions
• References