Outstanding higher education teaching should not increase students’ debt
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Version 0 of 1. In his speech to vice-chancellors, the new universities minister, Jo Johnson, said he was determined to complete a piece of “unfinished business” from the Tory manifesto, namely the introduction of a so-called Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), a way to assess how well universities actually teach their students. “My priority will be to make sure students get the teaching they deserve and employers get graduates with the skills they need,” he said. The TEF would include outcome-focused criteria and metrics, but he did not specify what these might be. There will be a consultation on the details and a green paper will be published in the autumn. It is expected that the TEF will include such measures as the National Student Survey and indexes of added value in employability and intellectual achievement (so called “learning gain”). Just a week later the TEF story took an interesting twist, when the chancellor, George Osborne, announced that universities that “offer high-quality teaching” would be allowed to raise the cap on the £9,000 undergraduate fee in line with inflation from 2017-18. So a good showing in the TEF could mean an institution would be allowed to charge students more. Alongside this, Osborne said maintenance grants would be abolished from 2016-17 for new students. Related: Funding reforms mean 'substantially higher debt for poorest students' What does it all mean? First, connecting TEF to inflation-linked fees is strange. Inflation is low and the TEF condition seems to rule out the across-the-board rise that many selective universities desire. But this is still an anti-progressive measure. The strategy seems to be: let’s find the universities that teach best and make it even more difficult for poor students to get into them. You can imagine a prospectus: “The University of X: outstanding teaching that deepens your long-term indebtedness.” It is as if students were a bottomless pit of funding, an alien constituency present only as part of an abstract economic equation. Link this to the abolition of maintenance grants, the reduction in the disabled students’ allowance and the prospective abolition of the widening participation premium, and it all looks like putting teaching at the heart of the system while building a fence of jagged price tags around it. What we should do is precisely the opposite. Universities with high teaching ratings should be able to charge less, not more, to ensure that all who can benefit most from great teaching are accepted on merit. For excellent teaching institutions or departments, the discount would be reimbursed directly from public funds. Treating students as customers is ill-conceived and unsustainable, and ultimately against the national interest, but also, look at how differently we treat the “customers” of our research. In the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which awards money on the basis of the strength of research, those departments that demonstrate excellence get funding to maintain and improve their research infrastructure. Universities with high teaching ratings should charge less, not more This means clients of university research – industry, charity, public bodies – do not have to cover those costs when they commission projects. Why, then, should students have to pay more for teaching excellence when industry pays less for accessing brilliant research? I like the idea of a TEF. It could serve as a long-overdue disruptive influence on league tables and, as Johnson says, “rebalance” teaching and research. And wouldn’t it be nice if high TEF scores led to more sensible treatment by the UK visa and immigration department? A TEF should be peer-led rather than metrics-led. Hefce, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, this month published a report confirming that metrics should not replace the next REF, advocating instead a “‘variable geometry’ of expert judgment, quantitative indicators and qualitative measures that respect research diversity”. Substitute “teaching” for research and we’re there. If we are to secure parity of esteem for teaching alongside research, the TEF must have parity with the REF. The TEF should therefore adopt the same star rating scheme as used in the REF, use similar descriptors of excellence, and crucially, work with the same schedule as the REF, with the results of both published on the same day. The REF is imperfect; a REF-inspired TEF would be imperfect, but its imperfections would be salutary for the sector. If we get this right we can boost teaching, have a fairer system, push investment into all forms of excellence, tell the world that UK universities are student friendly, and promote excellence for the many, not just the few. For me that is the unfinished business of higher education. |