Understanding Contemporary Issues in Higher Education

Contradictions, Complexities and Challenges

Brendan Bartram

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367374136
• eBook ISBN: 9781000212778
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This insightful book offers a wide-ranging collection of lively discussions on contemporary issues, policies and practices in higher education. Bartram integrates contributions from experienced academics, teachers and students in a unique approach and structure, designed to enable students with both specific and wide-ranging interests in higher education to extend their understanding.

Including discussion points, research tasks and suggestions on further reading in each chapter, Understanding Contemporary Issues in Higher Education discusses a range of topics, such as:

• universities and the mental health 'crisis';
• knowledge, the state and the market;
• the role of technology in teaching and academic celebrification;
• disability, diversity and inclusive placement learning.

Written specifically for Education Studies students, this book constitutes a timely addition to student-focused themed studies looking at aspects of higher education.

1 Higher education

Change, churn and challenges

Brendan Bartram

Introduction

In many countries around the world today, higher education (HE) is a topic that is more than occasionally in the news. This is certainly the case in the UK, for a wide variety of reasons – there are more institutions than ever before awarding degrees, and more students studying for them at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This expansion in numbers and participation has been accompanied by questions about funding and management methods, growing expectations from stakeholders (e.g. regarding employability, mental health care, etc.), and increased scrutiny from government, the media and, indeed, wider society. HE itself is in part responsible for some of this growth in attention, as universities increasingly gaze inwards at themselves in an attempt to make sense of and reflect on the changing landscapes within which they operate. This academic interest has resulted in a global expansion of journals and research centres focused on the policy and practice of HE (Tight, 2018).

This mass expansion has unsurprisingly produced an increasingly diverse university sector in the UK. Though there are commonalities when it comes to certain policy trends and pressures (e.g. the Teaching Excellence Framework [TEF], Research Excellence Framework [REF]), the sector as a whole is arguably more diverse and divided than ever before. Around 10 years ago, I described higher education as ‘an educational sector that lacks even a unified sense of purpose and identity’ (Bartram, 2009: 308), a description which perhaps applies even more now than it did then. Some commentators (e.g. Scott, 2018) suggest that this lack of consensus constitutes a contemporary crisis of meaning, though such assertions might be misplaced – in one respect, such alarmist descriptions are neither contemporary nor quite accurate: a glance through history shows us a fairly consistent ongoing struggle with defining the purpose of HE in changing social circumstances. Nietzsche’s Anti-Education from 1872 (2016), for example, conveys a strong sense of dismay about the changing nature of universities and the degraded form of education they were providing, focused on personality and character development at the expense of developing deeply critical minds. He goes on to criticise what he saw as a system too focused on expanding an impoverished utilitarian education to people who would be better off pursuing other goals – views which still resonate with some today. Over 100 years later, the title of Allan Bloom’s 1987 book – The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students – requires no explanation as to the nature of its central message. Looking back through history, Virginia Sapiro (2015) suggests that a discourse of crisis has in fact characterised university education for several hundred years now.

In a sense, then, change and churn in HE may just be constant symptoms of a system in perpetual flux, driven by competing and evolving philosophies, expectations and demands. Though some of the drivers of change may not be new, there are of course some distinctively modern elements influencing the pace, nature and scale of change. I would argue that the increasingly heterogenous nature of HE has to do with how individual institutions are positioned (and position themselves) in relation to a mixture of long-standing and contemporary priorities and tensions that can be conceptualised as a set of binary polarities. These polarities are often closely inter-connected and mutually influential, with important implications for how universities shape their identities and define their purposes, the kinds of courses they offer, the teaching and assessment regimes they provide and, indeed, the students they recruit.

Questions for discussion

• Before looking at the next section, what do you think some of these binary polarities might be?
• When you have discussed your ideas with others, compare them with the list below.
• Where would you place your own institution on the various continua, and what evidence would you draw on to support your decisions?
• Why have some of the terms below been placed in inverted commas?
• What additional polarities could there be?
• Are some of these terms essentially synonymous? If so, which ones, and why?
• Is there any room to argue that some of these aspects may not necessarily be mutually exclusive?

Possible polarities and continua:

• Teaching intensive Research intensive
• ‘Traditional’ ‘Non-traditional’
• Lower entry criteria Higher entry criteria
• ‘Vocational’ ‘Academic’
• Pre-92 Post-92
• Global focus local focus
• Widening participation elitist
• TEF bronze TEF gold
• TEF-focused REF-focused
• Recruitment-focused rejection-focused
• High ranking Low ranking

One thing most current analyses of UK HE have in common is the broad agreement that the challenges and financial pressures universities now face are unlikely to diminish in the years ahead, and that these will have consequences for all those who work and study in HE. The Augar Review (DfE, 2019) will no doubt have far-reaching implications for HE in a number of important areas. These include such diverse issues as the sector’s rebalanced relationship with further education (FE) colleges, the potential loss of funding for foundation degrees, extending student loan repayments from 30 to 40 years, and the possible threat of removing certain non-vocational courses from universities within the post-92 sector. These recommendations serve to heighten ongoing pressures associated with finance, fees and funding, and in the process amplify the competitive challenges and demands imposed on institutions by a system already heavily dominated by metrics and mechanisms such as the TEF and REF. The various data sources these frameworks draw on – particularly the National Student Survey (NSS) with regard to the TEF – have significantly increased institutional efforts to manage and enhance students’ experience, satisfaction, wellbeing, engagement and employability, to say nothing of their academic outcomes and degree classifications. Some have suggested that these preoccupations have produced a managerialist audit culture which has practically fetishised the notion of competition in the sector (Bartram, 2020, Naidoo, 2018). Only time will tell, of course, what additional pressures and challenges will ensue as a result of Brexit, with already widely predicted reductions in research funding and collaborative opportunities.

Aims of the book

This book brings together a wide-ranging and stimulating selection of critical essays that explore current issues relating to the policy and practice of HE. It does this by including chapters which consider how staff and students experience aspects of working, learning and being at university. The contributions selected are deliberately wide-ranging in an attempt to provide higher-level undergraduate students of education with an imaginative set of varied theme-based analyses that will hopefully broaden their interests in the increasingly diverse and expansive field of HE. As different as the individual subjects the chapters cover are, they all engage with topical issues in the sector, from the current mental health ‘crisis’ at universities to the changing role of technology, the rise of precarity, the ‘teaching excellence’ conundrum and equality and diversity. Each chapter examines contemporary issues from the point of view of expert insiders, and provides students with discussion questions and topics that they may wish to select and explore further in their own assignments and education projects. The book is therefore a unique resource for students with strong interests in this important educational sector.

Overview of the chapters

Beth Sumner begins the book with an examination of changing notions of risk. The chapter explores the realities of studying at an English post-1992 university, examined through the lenses of institutional habitus and reputational affect. It draws on data taken from her doctoral study, which examined student biographies of transition at a post-92 Higher Education Institution (HEI) in the English Midlands. Binary ways of considering universities in terms of their pre- or post-92 status remain a common feature of the UK HE landscape. Consequently, reputation and league-table ranking continue to act as a proxy for quality, with ‘working class students predominantly ending up in universities seen to be “second class” both by themselves and others’, according to Reay (2018:10). This way of thinking prevails, regardless of the fact that there may be no systematic differences in teaching quality, or in the likelihood of obtaining a good degree classification. As Blackman (2017:14) suggests: ‘we appear to be in a world based on snobbery and discrimination rather than evidence, which is socially damaging and could be producing worse educational outcomes overall’.

Sumner shows that despite acting as an educational ‘sanctuary’ and offering many students their first positive educational experience, the ‘sticky residue’ of attending a low-status HEI had wide-ranging effects on students’ experiences and sense of self. The chapter explores the changing notions of risk that arise from studying at a post-92 HEI, seen initially by many as a ‘safe’ choice but which becomes a much riskier venture when attempting to make the transition into graduate employment.

Staying with the employment theme in the next chapter, Sinead D’Silva and Samantha Pugh consider the context of employability in higher education, reinforced through metrics like university rankings and the TEF. It focuses on the lived experiences of students as they decide on their various pathways from a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degree. The research uses the theoretical framing of Margret Archer’s ‘Internal Conversations’ to make sense of the reflexive actions of individuals. It presents the cases of Tony, who wanted to return home to the countryside; Jane, whose mental health became more important to her over the years and who wanted to choose an ethical career path; and Isaac, who wanted to be an engineer but picked his degree to boost his employability. D’Silva and Pugh argue that a blanket employability agenda, although beneficial to some, does not incorporate the lifestyle choices and experiences of individuals that mould their decision-making processes as they make their way through life. This exciting yet daunting point of transition is misunderstood through policy as objective, responding to market demands and skill shortages. Instead, the stories individuals share about their transitions from a degree to their lives as graduates are better explained through decision-making processes influenced by their personal concerns.

Following on from this, Bartram moves on to explore the topic of online academic self-presentation (OASP). A relatively small number of studies have to date examined this phenomenon, which sees academics routinely sharing and publicising their work online via platforms such as Academia.Edu and Research Gate, to name but a few. Studies that have been carried out tend to explore the extent of uptake and the perceived benefits and challenges entailed. This chapter touches on these elements but offers a more critical discussion of this less explored terrain – specifically, it examines the ways in which broader socio-cultural factors articulate with pervasive neo-liberal influences on HE to explain and understand the expansion of OASP. It begins with an exploration of the relationship between OASP and contemporary social trends, before moving on to examine how neo-liberal forms of competition in the academy become entwined with self-promotional tendencies influenced by contemporary celebrity culture.

In the next chapter, Mark Elliot continues the neo-liberal theme in his consideration of one of the most prominent contemporary issues in HE: the emergence of the student as consumer. He argues that HE policy in the UK since the Browne Review has recast students as consumers of educational services and universities as service providers, based on a belief that this approach will enhance both the performance of universities and the educational experience of students. UK HE has arguably been dominated by other neo-liberal reforms promoting competition. In 2011, for example, the coalition government simultaneously reduced the block grant to universities and increased tuition fees to a maximum of £9,000, thus increasing competition between universities to recruit students. In addition, the management of UK HE is dominated by the use of metrics to measure performance, perhaps most notably by the Teaching Excellence Framework introduced in 2017. Elliot’s chapter explores how the use of competition and performance metrics in UK HE have served to entrench a construction of the student as consumer – a construction that may have damaging consequences for students and, indeed, for HE as a whole. Mark also considers alternatives to the student-as-consumer model, and how such approaches could be creatively subverted.

Bailey et al. explore the interface of technology and learning in the next chapter, focusing specifically on the ways in which students navigate information online and the challenges they face. Against a backdrop of literature from the past two decades, findings are presented from a recent observational study (employing screen-recording software and stimulated recall) of how students approach a writing-from-sources task, supplemented by interview transcripts and reflective accounts by librarians and academic writing teachers at a UK university. The chapter begins with a brief discussio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Higher education: Change, churn and challenges
• 2 Changing notions of risk: The realities of studying in a post-92 university
• 3 Transitioning from higher education: Stories from students in a STEM discipline
• 4 ‘Academics online’: Self-promotion, competition and celebrification
• 5 Higher standards and better-informed students or false promises and ‘gaming’ the system?: Competition, metrics and the consumerisation of students in UK higher education
• 6 Weaving through the web: How students navigate information online in the twenty-first century
• 7 Academic diversity and its implications for teaching and learning
• 8 Let’s keep it casual?: Rising precarity and acts of resistance in UK universities
• 9 Meanings, models and muddles: Two tales of the pursuit of teaching excellence
• 10 Mental health and wellbeing in higher education
• 11 The development of knowledge in the modern and postmodern universities
• 12 Disability, diversity and inclusive placement learning
• 13 How to promote real equality in higher education
• 14 Higher education: Contemplating the contradictions, complexities and challenges
• Index