Spaced Out ::

Times have achanged in Higher Education in the UK. With the government aiming for 50% of young people to be entering HE, gone are the days of the “top 15% of the population” staying on education. Of course what this means is more students, more money and, ultimately, a lower cost per student to teach (read: less money per student). And whilst the government would have us believe that school results are improving year-on-year, I don’t believe that, as a population, we are getting cleverer.

Institutions then are taking more students and a greater proportion of weaker ones. And whilst our attention may be drawn to the “bottom tail” that has traditionally been taken up by ex-polytechnics, this is a problem also facing middle and upper tier universities. For example, when my brother went to university, one of his contemporaries at Oxford University claimed that he received 1 hour of tuition a week in his Pure Maths degree. Bearing in mind that OxBridge have/had 8 week terms, he received 24 hours of tuition a year!! At Kingston we often have a contact time of 4 hours per week for individual modules (8 per year). This is a huge step change for a place like Oxford and the effect on their teaching and research should not be under estimated.

Of course they still have relatively good students coming up and don’t have a problem filling their quotas. When you move to middle tier universities there is a little more of a struggle to achieve good students, particularly in subjects that recruit less well (and geography is quite a good example). Below this the quality of incoming student drops such that key skills cannot be taken for granted. And by key skills, I mean being able to write english, perform simple maths, use a computer, take lecture notes, find the library. And the policy at Kingston, and many other institutions, is to provide a “quality” first year experience. In practice this has meant no formal exams for assessment in semester one. One could be charitable and think that this helps settle students down by providing a less stressful first semester. Alternatively (and cynically!) this could simple be marketing that entices students in and then enables to pass the first year therefore retaining the student for the full degree. Either way, these decisions need to be made on educational grounds and whilst the first year rarely counts towards a final degree mark, it introduces core theory and skills that are developed across programs in the second and third years. The first year is therefore a vital and integral academic part of the degree. The lack of exams continues the school trend of coursework with the potential for an inflation of marks. For my first years this year, I introduced a mid-term multiple choice test and end-of-term short answer test. The results were shocking and demonstrated a lack of basic writing skills in addition to a painfull failure to show the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.

What does this say for HE at the moment? Well a large proportion of these students really aren’t prepared for academic study at university, at least not within the current setup. This should be offset against the students who don’t have traditional qualifications or are returning to education are a significant length of time. The “lower tier” universities have an enviable reputation for “value added” and there are some true “gems” that come through the student body who demonstrate a tenacity in adverse situations and fully achieve their academic ambitions. However I can’t but fail to be worried about the current status of basic skills in incoming students. Whilst we seem to have avoided the issue in the UK for a while, a 4-year degree is a potential solution, suing the first year to help bridge the gap between schools and HE. Of course with students who now pay (at least in part) for their education, there will be a clear (financial) preference for completing a (equivalent) degree in three rather than four years. And this is against the backdrop of the government introducing 2-year degrees!!