Category / Fusion
Developing Global Higher Education Partnerships
As part of the new plan BU2025, “we want to continue to develop our global partnerships and links with other institutions and organisations”. This is an admirable aim, and it is, of course, the best way forward for a truly global Higher Education Institution like Bournemouth University (BU). But to translate this general aim into a particular global partnership we need to consider the underlying processes of initiating and developing such partnerships. We published a paper [1] on the issues one needs to consider in developing a partnership, based on the example of BU’s partnership with Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Nepal.
In late February this year MMIHS signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with BU at a ceremony in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, where Prof. Stephen Tee represented BU. This MOA is an agreement between us that provides a basis on which the parties will consider potential future collaboration. The UoA formalises a long-standing collaboration between the two institutions, and indicates a desire to collaborate further in the future. MMIHS and BU academics have jointly applied for research grants, conducted collaborative research and published together and it is exactly this personal link between people that allows this, and many other, global partnerships to flourish.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health
Reference:
- van Teijlingen, E., Marahatta, S.B., Simkhada, P., McIver, M., Sharma, J.P. (2017) Developing an international higher education partnerships between high & low-income countries: two case studies J Manmohan Memorial Inst Health Sci, 3(1): 94-100.
Loudspeaker Orchestra concert at BU
On Wednesday 28th February 2018 guest composer Dr Annie Mahtani, University of Birmingham and Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST), joined us for a concert of multi-channel, surround-sound music for Loudspeaker Orchestra in the Allsebrook Lecture Theatre. Organised by Ambrose Seddon (EMERGE; Creative Technology), the varied programme featured works from BEAST and BU composers.
Annie Mahtani presented and diffused three of her own multi-channel compositions (Inversions; Past Links; Aeolian) along with works by fellow BEAST composers James Carpenter (Pent-Up) and Nikki Sheth (Orford Ness). Ambrose Seddon diffused his recent multi-channel electroacoustic work Traces of Play while Panos Amelidis (EMERGE; Creative Technology and pictured sound-checking) diffused two compositions: Bird Train and Cracks.
Student volunteers from our BSc Music & Sound Production Technology provided crucial help rigging the loudspeaker system – they also gained invaluable insights into novel surround-sound loudspeaker configurations.
Thanks to all who attended and persevered despite the cold conditions!
US Funding – spaces still available on 9th March
Following on from the two US Funding seminars on 8th March, limited spaces are still available for the two sessions on Friday, 9th March:
Grants in the Humanities & Social Sciences – 09:00 – 12:00
Building the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant Proposal – 13:30 – 16:30
Both sessions will also be useful for those who do not consider themselves within these disciplines.
BU academic staff and PGRs can book to attend or turn up in time for the starting times of 09:00 and 13:30, but you will not be able to partake in the refreshments or networking lunch as the numbers for this have already been finalised. The event is taking place in FG04 with priority being given to those who have already registered.
Congratulations to Dr Elvira Bolat for securing Erasmus Staff Teaching Mobility Fund
Dr Elvira Bolat has secured Erasmus Staff Teaching Mobility fund to visit and teach at the University of Beira Interior (Covilhã, Portugal) in May-June 2018. Elvira will deliver a social media marketing and online communication course to Master students. This visit will be hosted by Dr Arminda Maria Finisterra do Paço, Assistant Professor in Marketing.
In addition, Dr Bolat is organising and chairing the 17th The International Congress on Public and Non Profit Marketing (IAPNM), an annual event organised by major universities and scientific institutes that offers a friendly atmosphere and professional work environment for the presentation and discussion of the latest scientific and practical advances in the areas of public and nonprofit marketing, as well as in any other issue related to corporate social responsibility, social marketing and management of nonprofit organisations. IAPNM will be held in Bournemouth on 6-7 September 2018. The event attracts academics, businesses, public organisations and non-profit organisations across the world. Bournemouth being a Sustainable Fish city of Europe will continue building on its current reputation in a sustainability agenda. Dr Arminda Maria Finisterra do Paço and Dr Helena Maria Alves, from the University of Beira Interior, are members of IAPNM scientific committee. Travel to and teaching in the University of Beira Interior will allow Dr Bolat to discuss organisation of IAPNM in Bournemouth as well as enable collaborative research projects via joint funding proposals and research papers around use of social media in NGO’s (non-governmental organisations), tourism or HEI (higher education institutions).
Overall the visit will strengthen and expand the partnership between BU and the University of Beira Interior, especially in relation to the nonprofit marketing discipline.
Congratulations to Dr Jason Sit for securing Erasmus+ staff mobility fund
Dr Jason Sit has secured Erasmus+ staff mobility fund to visit IQS School of Management (Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona) in April 2018. Jason will share his research insights into Retail Consumer Experience and Technology with the UG and PGT marketing students at IQS. The visit will be hosted by Associate Professor Nicoletta Occhiocupo who teaches and researches in the domain of retail marketing. The visit will strengthen and expand the partnership between BU and IQS, especially in relation to the retail marketing discipline.
Interdisciplinary Research Week 2018
The third Interdisciplinary Research Week (IRW) is being held from 19th to 23rd March 2018. Join us to celebrate the breadth and excellence of Bournemouth University’s interdisciplinary research, and stimulate new collaborations and ideas amongst the University’s diverse research community.
The week-long event includes a programme of lectures, workshops, and discussions, aimed at promoting interdisciplinary workings; to provide an understanding of how to get involved in Interdisciplinary Research.
Programme
Inspirational Speaker – Professor Celia Lury
British Academy Visit – Interdisciplinary Research
Collaborating with Others: Becoming a Better Team worker
Networking: Making the Most of an Upcoming Event
New research realities and interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinary research with industry
Lighting Talks: What can and should be achieved in Interdisciplinary Research
What happens in Vegas comes to Bournemouth!
Last April representing the research team from Bournemouth University, Sarah Hodge presented cross-discipline PhD research in a competitive symposium in Las Vegas organised by Nick Bowman. The research team included Jacqui Taylor and John McAlaney from the department of Psychology, Davide Melacca and Christos Gatzidis from the department of Creative technology and Eike Anderson for the National Centre for Computer Animation. Since then the research project was invited to contribute a chapter to a book related to the topics from the Symposium, which is due out this summer (see below for further details).
In the spirit of this collaboration, Nick came to BU this month to give a guest talk for the Psychology seminar series, which was open to all departments and faculties. The talk was related to the book from the symposium and was titled: Video Game Demand – Specifying and Measuring an Elusive Construct.
In this talk Nick proposes a model and scale of measuring the demands of video games on the user (see below for further details). It was wonderful to see those from other departments and faculties attending the talk, creating a diverse audience and an engaging atmosphere. The talk also supported the psychology undergraduates; particularly those that selected the Cyberpsychology final year unit, where they had been discussing Nick’s and colleagues research. It was a fantastic experience having Nick visiting Bournemouth from America, and we are looking forward to future collaborations with him.
Book: Bowman, N. D. (in press). Video games: A medium that demands our attention (Ed.). New York: Routledge
Chapter 7 contribution from BU: Hodge, S., McAlaney, J., Gatzidis, C., Anderson, E.F., Melacca, D. and Taylor., J. Applying Psychological Theory to in-game moral behaviors through the development of a purpose-made game.
Chapters related to Nick’s talk: Chapter 1 Bowman, N.D. The Demanding Nature of Video Game Play and Chapter 13 Bowman, N.D., Wasserman, J., and Banks., J. Development of the Video Game Demand Scale
If you would like more information about the research please contact: shodge@bournemouth.ac.uk
CFP: Nexus of Migration and Tourism: Creating Social Sustainability Symposium, Hanoi
We are very pleased to annouce CFP: Nexus of Migration and Tourism: Creating Social Sustainability Symposium on 20-21 September at Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
Deadline for Abstracts: 15 March 2018
For more information: https://tourism-migration.co.uk.
Keynote Speakers:
Prof Michael Hitchcock, Goldsmiths, University of London
Prof Adele Ladkin, Bournemouth University, UK
Prof Alan Lew, Northern Arizona University, USA
Prof Noel Salazar, KU Leuven, Belgium
Book Launch:
‘Tourism and Memories of Home: Migrants, Displaced People, Exiles and Diasporic Communities’ by Dr. Sabine Marschall, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
We are also delighted to announce that, with quality submissions, we will potentially organise two special issues with two sponsoring journals: ‘Tourism Geographies’ http://www.tgjournal.com/ & ‘e-Review of Tourism Research’ https://ertr.tamu.edu/
Looking forward to receiving your abstract by 15 March!
#tourismmigration18
Awarded Student Research Assistantships
The following projects have been awarded for the summer round of the Student Research Assistantship (SRA) scheme. Projects are open for applications and students can apply via MyCareerHub using the links below.
This summer programme is for 120 hours work between May and 31st July 2018 and is open to all campus-based undergraduate and postgradaute-taught students from all faculties, who have grades of over 70%.
2D/3D Animation Tool Developer – Student Research Assistant – Dr Xiaosong Yang
An analysis of Channel 4’s broadcast coverage of the 2016 Rio Paralympics – Student Research Assistant – Dr Dan Jackson and Dr Emma Pullen
Augmented Reality Student Research Assistant – Dr Tom Wainwright
Blockchain and its potential to transform business operating models in tourism and hospitality – Student Research Assistant – Dr Viachaslau Filimonau
CAIRIS Research Software Engineer – Student Research Assistant – Dr Shamal Faily
Creating a citizen science website for identifying wildlife habitats: Wildlife Space Search (WiSS) – Student Research Assistant – Dr Anita Diaz
‘Debt Financing Impact – Family Firms UK’ Student Research Assistant – Dr Suranjita Mukherjee
Digital connectivity and leisure in later life – Student Research Assistant – Prof. Janet Dickinson
Entrepreneurial Graduates Student Research Assistant – Clive Allen
Evaluator for children’s emotional education and well being – Student Research Assistant – Dr Ching-Yu Huang
Facebook Personalisation and Digital Literacy (Algorithms and Fake News) – Student Research Assistant – Dr Roman Gerodimos
Student Research Assistant: Food donations in the UK grocery retail sector – The role of local charities – Dr Viachaslau Filimonau
– Dr Viachaslau Filimonau
‘Housing Information Retrieval System’ Student Research Assistant – Dr Edward Apeh
HTML5 Game developer – Student Research Assistant – Dr Vedad Hulusic
Inter-professional attitudes and beliefs about pain management: support to write a research paper – Student Research Assistant – Dr Desiree Tait
Low power IoT devices for Network Visuals – Student Research Assistant – Liam Birtles
Marketing & Economic Well-being Student Research Assistant – Prof. Juliet Memery
Marketing and Media Student Research Assistant – Dr Tom Wainwright
Modelling and System design for Intellectual Property law application – Student Research Assistant – Dr Sofia Meacham
M-shopping and senior consumers: A multi-method investigation into attitude and shopping process – Student Research Assistant – Dr Jason Sit
Older carers story project research assistant post – Student Research Assistant – Dr Mel Hughes
Public Engagement Student Research Assistant (Virtual Avebury) – Prof. Kate Welham
Public Service Motivation and Civic Engagement – Student research Assistant – Dr Joyce Costello
Quantifying Dyslexic Performance in Classroom Copying Tasks – Student Research Assistant – Dr Julie Kirkby
Reconstructing Disney Films – Student Research Assistant – Dr Alexander Sergeant
Student Research Assistant for a Political Anthropology Project on Gibraltar & Spain – Dr Laura Bunt-MacRury
Research Assistant: Economic Impact of the Rohingya Refugee Crisis – Dr Mehdi Chowdhury
Student Research Assistant in Managing Crises and Disasters at International Sport Events – Dr Richard Shipway
Student research assistant to support the development of a change framework for Higher Education – Dr Lois Farquharson
– Dr Sally Lee and Prof. Lee-Ann Fenge
Student Research Assistant to The TACIT Trial: TAi ChI for people with demenTia – Dr Samuel Nyman
Story-mapping Marginal Voices: Using Modes of Interactive Storytelling – Student Research Assistant
– Dr Paula Callus
AI and Business Applications – Student Research Assistant – Dr Martyn Polkinghorne
Public Engagement Activities of Postgraduate Researchers – Student Research Assistant – Dr Martyn Polkinghorne
Entrepreneurship Education – Student Research Assistant – Dr Mili Shrivastava
Student Research Assistant (micro-plastics and disease dynamics) – Prof. Robert Britton
Student Research Assistant in Law & AI – Dr Argyro Karanasiou
The effect of signage on driving performance: Student Research Assistant – Dr Christos Gatzidis
The material culture of mantelpieces as expression of self-identity – Student Research Assistant
– Dr Fiona Coward
Traveling with Diabetes – Student Research Assistant
– Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis
Understanding the Hackers: Student Research Assistant – Dr John McAlaney
‘Who’s a scientist?’ Project Student Research Assistant – Dr Shelley Thompson
Team-based Learning Student Research Assistant – Lucy Stainer
‘TRAnsparent Web protection for alL, TRAWL’ Student Research Assistant – Dr Alexios Mylonas
Please promote these vacancies to students where applicable. All jobs are live on MyCareerHub, our Careers & Employability online careers tool. You will need to use your staff/student credentials to login.
Please do look out for SRA updates on the BU Research Blog.
If you have any questions about this scheme, please contact Charlene Parrish, Student Project Bank Coordinator, on 61281 or email sra@bournemouth.ac.uk.
17th International Congress on Public and Nonprofit Marketing (2018) Invitation to Submit Abstracts/Papers
Details for the Theme, Submission guidance, Deadlines and Provisional Programme can be found under http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/iapnm-2018
HE policy update w/e 26th January 2018
It’s been a busy week. We have oodles of news for you, feel free to scan through and find the sections that are most interesting to you!
Ministerial update
The new Universities Minister, Sam Gyimah, has been more active this week.
The HE Review: The much heralded and still elusive HE Review was a popular topic again this week. Responding to a parliamentary question on the HE finance review Sam hinted: “This review will look at providing an education system for those aged 18 years and over that is accessible to all and provides value for money. It will also look how choice and competition is incentivised across the sector.”
Q – Layla Moran (Lib Dems) asked: with reference to Industrial Strategy…if he will make it his policy to extend the Government’s major review of funding across tertiary education to include the education system for people aged 16 years and over.
A – Sam Gyimah (Con): The government will conduct a major review of funding across tertiary education. In the Industrial Strategy, it was stated that the review will consider a range of specific issues within post-18 education. The government will set out further details on the review shortly.
The Telegraph quote Sam as stating a review of tuition fees will be a “positive move” for the Government. The article also backs up other emerging hints that he may champion small aspects of students’ lives such as not paying for a full year’s rent upfront and challenging high printing costs.
- “I mean it’s a small cost but it just shows there are lots of things around student funding – fees, living costs – I think it is good for us to look at them”
- “The point I was trying to illustrate is the case for reviewing – when you talk to students directly here are a lot of issues in play, not just fees”.
- “This regime has been in place since 2012. There are things that are working well and we shouldn’t forget what is working well. I don’t think we will go back to an era where students do not contribute in any way to their fees.”
The minister’s official title has been finally confirmed as Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (there was a little bit of speculation (by us) that the science and research bit had fallen off in the initial announcement, but it seems to have been an oversight). His responsibilities are:
- industrial strategy
- universities and higher education reform
- student finance (including the Student Loans Company)
- widening participation and social mobility
- education exports (including international students, international research)
- science and research
- innovation
- intellectual property
- agri-tech
- space
- technology
During the Education World Forum Sam signed an agreement with Egypt meaning UK universities are permitted to open branch campuses to offer education in Egypt. This is reported as giving the UK HE sector a competitive advantage in Egypt. Note: currently 82% of UK HE providers deliver degrees overseas. He said: “I welcome the contribution that this partnership will make to both UK and Egyptian economies and the wider benefits it will provide to students and institutions in both counties.”
Egypt’s Minister of Higher Education Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar declared: “We are excited to see how IBCs [International Branch Campuses] will contribute to the fabric of Egypt’s higher education landscape and be catalysts for broader international partnerships between the UK and Egypt in research, innovation and mobility.”
The next big event is the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (April, hosted by UK), perhaps further partnerships may be forged at this forum.
Technology, IT, STEM and the Industrial Strategy
On Thursday the Prime Minister made a speech from Davos in which the industrial strategy and technology featured heavily. Here are the tech focussed excerpts:
“The impact of technology is growing in ways that even a few years ago we could not have imagined.
- Just last week, a drone saved two boys drowning off the coast of Australia by carrying a floatation device to them.
- The use of Artificial Intelligence is transforming healthcare. In one test, machine learning reduced the number of unnecessary surgeries for breast cancer by a third.
- The development of speech recognition and translation is reaching a level where we will be able to go anywhere in the world and communicate using our native language.
- While British-based companies like Ripjar are pioneering the use of data science and Artificial Intelligence to protect companies from money laundering, fraud, cyber-crime and terrorism.
We need to act decisively to help people benefit from global growth now.
So we are establishing a technical education system that rivals the best in the world, alongside our world-class higher education system. We are developing a National Retraining Scheme to help people learn throughout their career. And we are establishing an Institute of Coding – a consortium of more than 60 universities, businesses and industry experts to support training and retraining in digital skills.
And I know from my conversations with tech companies how seriously they are taking their own social responsibility to contribute to the retraining that will help people secure new opportunities in the digital economy. But this strategy and partnership with business goes further than getting the fundamentals of our economy right. It also seeks to get us on the front foot in seizing the opportunities of technology for tomorrow.
We are delivering the UK’s biggest ever increase in public investment in research and development, which could increase public and private R&D investment by as much as £80 billion over the next 10 years.
- We are at the forefront of the development, manufacture and use of low carbon technologies.
- We are using technology to support the needs of an ageing society, for example by employing powerful datasets to help diagnose and treat illnesses earlier.
- And we are establishing the UK as a world leader in Artificial Intelligence, building on the success of British companies like Deepmind.
But as we seize these opportunities of technology, so we also have to shape this change to ensure it works for everyone – be that in people’s jobs or their daily lives…we need to make sure that our employment law keeps pace with the way that technology is shaping modern working practices …to preserve vital rights and protections – and the flexibilities that businesses and workers value…we have to do more to help our people in the changing global economy, to rebuild their trust in technology as a driver of progress and ensure no-one is left behind as we take the next leap forwards”.
Catalyst Fund winners: HEFCE’s catalyst funding round aims to support the Industrial Strategy through developing curriculum programmes directly aligned within skills gap areas. Here are the Universities who obtained funding along with the area they will develop. From HEFCE’s press announcement:
…this funding is supporting a range of projects in many different sectors which align with the Industrial Strategy’s ‘Grand Challenges’ – from advanced engineering to data analytics, and from artificial intelligence to bioscience. HEFCE’s investment will help to enhance graduate outcomes and employability, and to upskill the workforce – providing the key skills that industry and employers will need and contributing to the UK’s productivity in the longer term.
And some questions in Parliament:
Q – Justin Tomlinson (Con): how many students have graduated with a degree in ICT & Computer Science in each year since 2010?
A – Sam Gyimah (Con): HESA 2016/17 data:
Academic year Number of qualifiers
2010/11 14,505
2011/12 15,225
2012/13 15,565
2013/14 16,080
2014/15 15,595
2015/16 15,280
2016/17 16,805
In relation to increasing the number of students studying for a degree in ICT and computer science, the government is undertaking a range of initiatives to promote digital and computing skills throughout the education system. For example, the government is investing £84 million of new funding over the next five years to deliver a comprehensive programme to improve the teaching of the computing curriculum and increase participation in computer science GCSE.
The government is also seeking to strengthen the role that higher education providers can play in providing digital and computing skills. This will be through supporting the establishment of a new Institute of Coding to serve as a national focus for improving digital skills provision at levels 6 and 7 with a £20 million fund to improve higher-level digital skills, with joint collaborations between universities and businesses, and to focus on computer science and digital skills in related disciplines. This will ensure the courses better meet employers’ needs.
Additionally, there is funding to support universities to develop conversion courses in engineering and computer science that allow graduates from other subjects to undertake further study and pursue careers in engineering and computer science.
Following last week’s National Audit Office report on STEM another parliamentary question to the Minister requested data on the numbers graduating with a STEM degree. Here’s the data which shows growth between 15/16 and 16/17:
Academic year Number of qualifiers
2013/14 174,950
2014/15 170,480
2015/16 172,480
2016/17 181,215
Source: HESA Student Record
Tech skills gap: The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee continued to investigate Higher, Further and Technical Education this week. Witnesses discussed the skills shortage in the tech sector, they stated that employers struggled to hire employees with the skills and expressed concern as deficiencies in education and training. Concern was expressed at the lack of diversity in those studying STEM subjects. A KPMG representative stated universities needed to encourage a wider curriculum within STEM subjects to encourage greater gender diversity. The (in)adequacy of apprenticeships and the damaging inflexibility of the apprenticeship levy was also discussed. It was felt using the levy to support smaller packages of training would better support the tech skills shortages. As would the opportunity for graduates to return to university to brush up on specific skills necessary for the business environment.
- The skills gap was attributed to high sectoral growth as well as digitisation in the wider economy. Computer scientists and mathematicians were cited as particular skills gap areas. Alongside challenges filling the higher end of the digital skills section – software development, machine learning and cybersecurity,
- The lack of mid-grade technicians and apprenticeships was touched upon but the witnesses felt volume of gradates was still a problem even though more were coming through. In particular, the witnesses felt that graduates were lacking ‘soft’ leadership and team-building skills, as well as lacking skills in the artistic and design-orientated side which fed into software development.
- Universities were criticised for not doing a good enough job in making sure their graduates came out of university with appropriate skills for working in new digital roles. It was stated that Universities should provide every student with some degree of coding experience.
- One witness stated that traditional university subjects did provide the skills necessary for working in innovative tech startups.
- Post-graduation support: A witness expressed that graduates should have the opportunity to go back to universities to brush up on skills
Harassment and Hate Crime
Last week there was a partnership announcement detailing funding for a new programme to support universities in tackling antisemitism on campus consisting of a visit to the former Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau and a seminar dealing explicitly with campus issues and how to identify and tackle anti-Semitism. This week a new question was tabled:
Q – Ian Paisley (DUP): To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to tackle anti-Semitism on university campuses.
A – Mr Sam Gyimah (Con): This government takes anti-Semitism extremely seriously. There is no place in our society – including within higher education – for hatred or any form of harassment, discrimination or racism, including anti-Semitism.
Higher education providers are autonomous organisations, independent from government. They have a clear responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive environment. In September 2015, the government asked Universities UK (UUK) to set up a Harassment Taskforce to consider what more can be done to address harassment and hate crime on campus, including antisemitism. The taskforce’s report, ‘Changing the Culture’, published in October 2016, recommended a zero-tolerance approach to harassment and hate crime.
On 27 July 2017, UUK published a directory of case studies detailing the innovative projects universities have developed to address the taskforce’s recommendations. These include Goldsmith’s hate crime reporting centre (case study 11) which is a joint initiative with the local authority in Lewisham and the Metropolitan Police, which provides students and staff with a safe space to report incidents. These are published on UUK’s website . In addition, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has provided £1.8 million for projects to improve responses to hate crime and online harassment on campus. HEFCE is currently working with UUK to test the sector’s response to the Taskforce’s recommendations and the results of this will be published early this year.
Employability
Damian Hinds is advocating public speaking and sport to teach children the resilience needed by the workplace. The Telegraph quote Damian as stating the “hard reality” is that teaching children how to build “character resilience” and workplace skills is crucial for a thriving economy. He also spoke at length on digital technologies noting the current generation of children are “digital natives” that should be taught how to create apps rather than how to use them. He noted that some current teaching staff experience trepidation and are failing to embrace technology. That significant funding (£84 million) is being pump primed to improve computer science teaching, the number of IT teachers will treble (GCSE level) and a National Centre for Computing will be established. The Telegraph also state Damian urged schools to focus on the core subjects such as maths, English, sciences and languages – rather than waste time on alternative qualifications. Too much focus on alternative qualifications was ‘well-meaning but did little to recommend pupils to employers’.
Last week Damian announced a package of measures focused on disadvantaged geographic areas to support underperforming schools. £45 million will go to multi academy trusts (MATs) with a proven track record of success to help them build their capacity, drive improvement and raise standards in areas facing the greatest challenges in England.
BU2025
Work is proceeding on the new BU2025 strategic plan, with announcements this week of an updated draft and a set of responses to feedback. BU staff can read them here.
We will be expanding our horizon scanning work to looking at the Fusion themes and other areas from a policy point of view, with a new regular section in this update covering updates relating to the Industrial Strategy, the work of APPGs (All Party Parliamentary Groups), ministerial announcements and so on.
Widening Participation
Bumper happenings within WP this week – new Access and Participation plans progress through parliament, young carers publication, pupil premium funding, UCAS WP data revelations, parliamentary questions and the failure to make progress with social mobility is examined.
New Access Plans – content Currently parliament is progressing the Higher Education (Access and Participation Plans) (England) Regulations 2018 to replace OFFA’s Fair Access Agreements with Access and Participation Plans (the motion was approved in Parliament). These are anticipated to be very similar but heavier in their content on supporting students during their degree (on course achievement, skills and personal support measures) as well as improving their employability prospects. Also mentioned are:
- Closing the gap on the differing achievement outcomes between student groups (e.g. ethnicity gaps)
- Monitoring and evaluation compulsory, with expectation providers move to invest in the most effective interventions (as evidenced by the monitoring and evaluation)
- The views of the student body should be taken into account as the provider develops the plan (this has greater importance and emphasis placed on it than past recommendations to include students)
- OfS powers to enforce and refuse provider’s plans
Section 9.1. talks of the government policy directives to OfS, stating “it is the intention that guidance will be issued to the OfS in due course…in relations to its access and participation activities.”
The annual guidance on plans to the sector will come from OfS early in 2018 for the 2019/20 plans. The process for developing and agreeing the new plans should be the same as the existing Fair Access Agreements with no additional burden.
Access and Participation Plans – Parliamentary Discussion During the parliamentary discussion that agreed the motion to approve the new plans it was stated the Government intends to use HERA (the Higher Education and Research Act) to make further progress on access and participation. Other key points were:
- Institutional autonomy was acknowledged.
- New and alternative providers will be able to charge the full higher fee from the outset if their Access and Participation plans meet scrutiny.
- The expectation that providers will spend a proportion of their higher fee income on Access and Participation continues.
- Where there are serious concerns that a provider has not complied with commitments in its access and participation plan, or other conditions of registration, the OfS will have access to a wide and more flexible set of sanctions and intervention measures to tackle these issues with the individual provider than were available to the Director of Fair Access previously. This could include further monitoring, monetary penalties, suspension from the OfS register or deregistering providers in extreme cases.
Baroness Wolf (Cross bench) raised concerns about regulation: “I have to say that the very short history of the OfS inclines me to feel that we are faced not with a Government who want to leave a regulator to regulate, but one who wish to tell the regulator precisely how to manage”.
- Government response: HERA sets clear limitations in this context in order to protect academic freedoms and institutional autonomy. For the first time, it also makes explicit that guidance cannot relate to parts of courses, their content, how they are taught or who teaches them, or admissions arrangements for students. The OFS will absolutely be left to do its job as the regulator.
The Baroness also expressed trepidation about supporting/tracking individual students and risks to marking anonymity
Lord Addington (Lib Dems) was concerned there was no universal guidance, baseline or good practice for support for disabled students, that supporting each student’s individual needs lead to disparities and that universities should be held to a national universal standard as a minimum.
- Government response: We want institutions to think imaginatively about the support that individual students might need, and we will support them in that. That is because each institution is different: they have different needs and courses, and are based in different parts of the country… it is absolutely essential that they be allowed to decide for themselves how disabled students are looked after. However, the Government spokesperson did undertake to write and set out more on disability adaptation.
Baroness Blackstone (Labour) questioned how the plans and the OfS would address the mature part time decline problem.
- Government response: We are working towards launching a new maintenance loan for part-time students studying degree-level courses from August this year. In addition, the Government are looking at ways of promoting and supporting a wide variety of flexible and part-time ways of learning [accelerated courses]
The lack of student and sector diversity on the OfS Board was also criticised by other members. The lack of a FE represented was noted by the Government and taken back to DfE for consideration.
Finally, on the WP Tsar:
- we expect that bringing resources and expertise from HEFCE and OFFA together in a single organisation, while still having a dedicated champion for widening participation appointed by Ministers, will provide a greater focus on access and participation.
- HERA ensures that the Director for Fair Access and Participation will be responsible for overseeing the performance of the OfS’s access and participation functions, for reporting to other members of the OfS on the performance of its functions.
Library Briefing preceding the Access and Participation Plans
Alongside the Access and Participation Plans legislation the Commons Library has produced a succinct briefing paper on Widening Participation strategy in HE in England. It provides an excellent summary of WP to date and further hints of how the tide has turned in the type of interventions universities are expected to pursue:
- It notes the increase in disadvantaged young people attending university along with sharp rises in the number of young black students and disabled students. Set against decline in attendance from mature and young white low income males.
- Section 2 gives an excellent history of the changing policies behind the WP agenda dedicating several inches to the proposals for universities to set up or sponsor schools to improve attainment. The document notes the Conservative manifesto commitment:
- It notes no further commitments or announcements have been made on this since the election.
- It is well known that Theresa May is a firm fan of sponsoring schools to raise achievement, however, it remains to be seen whether her Cabinet reshuffle may herald a refreshed push in this direction.
- An ‘innovative Evidence and Impact Exchange for Widening Participation’ will apparently be linked to the OfS.
- The transparency duty is mentioned again later on: We will use the transparency duty in the Higher Education and Research Act to shine a stronger light on the universities who need to go further in improving equality of opportunity for students from under-represented and disadvantaged groups.
- The document notes the alternative providers perform well on WP measures (proportion of WP students within the whole student body).
Finally the report mentions two guides:
- OFFA’s The Evaluation of the Impact of Outreach
- The Sutton Trust’s Evaluating Access
Young Carers
The Local Government Association have published Meeting the health and wellbeing needs of young carers which provides basic factual information and shares a number of good practice case studies. The document is a good background read of interest to those with an interest in outreach, social care, or of wider interest to those supporting students who are adult carers. Leaf through the full document to access the case studies.
A parliamentary question to the Universities Minister on BAME access to the arts:
Q – Alex Sobel (Labour): what steps his Department is taking to assist people from BAME backgrounds to be better represented in university arts courses and stage schools.
A: Mr Sam Gyimah (Con):
- The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has commissioned research to understand the existing barriers that prevent people from lower income households and under-represented groups, such as those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, specifically from becoming professionals in the performing arts. It is important that the performing arts are representative of society as a whole.
- One of the ways this can be achieved is by doing more to ensure more people from BAME backgrounds go on to higher education. However, for some groups of students from ethnic minorities there is more to do to improve their participation – their retention, success and progression to higher education.
- That is why the most recent guidance to the Director of Fair Access in February 2016, asked him to focus on activity to continue to improve access and participation into higher education for students from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds.
- We are also introducing sweeping reforms through legislation. The Higher Education and Research Act includes the creation of the Office for Students, which has a statutory duty to consider the promotion of equality of opportunity for students as it relates to access and participation. It also includes a transparency duty requiring all universities to publish applications, offers, acceptance and retention rates broken down by gender, ethnicity and social economic background. This will help to hold universities to account for their records on access and retention.
Pupil Premium Funding: The Education Endowment Foundation have published The Attainment Gap 2017 considering the value of pupil premium funded trial initiatives aiming to close the achievement gap. Read the Key lessons learned (page 16). They found small group and 1:2:1 interventions were effective but of other trail programmes reviewed 1 in 4 didn’t succeed any better than the current measures schools are taking.
Social Mobility Committee – under questioning: The Education Select Committee’s Accountability Hearings took on the former members of the Social Mobility Commission this week (you’ll recall that previously all the members of the commission dramatically resigned in protest over the Government’s lack of progress in addressing social mobility).
Witnesses:
- Rt Hon Alan Milburn, former Chair, Social Mobility Commission
- Rt Hon Baroness Shephard, former Deputy Chair, Social Mobility Commission
- David Johnston, former Commissioner, Social Mobility Commission
The committee heard that Theresa May’s government lacked clarity around the issues of social mobility and that the Government had neither the ability or the willingness to progress the recommendations of the Social Mobility Commission.
Several questions on FE Colleges took place, with the questions continuing to meander through T-levels, apprenticeship training, and even Learn Direct.
Commencing the second session, the panel were asked whether issues with social mobility had been raised with the government. Alan Milburn, former chair of the Social Mobility Commission asserted the failure of the government to give commitment to the Commission as an independent body, failure to appoint new members leading to a lack of information that the Commission could provide. Baroness Shephard referenced the prime minister’s speech on the steps of Downing Street on the day of taking power where she emphasized social mobility, but went on to criticise her and query the lack of engagement since then. It was stated that since the 2017 election there had been no engagement,
While there had been good initiatives and some good ministers trying to do the right thing, Milburn explained that it didn’t seem that the Government had either the ability or the willingness to put their collective shoulders to the wheel when it came to delivering social mobility and cited the complex Brexit negotiations as the focus of the Whitehall machine. He commented that he felt that the Government lacked the headspace and the bandwidth to really match the rhetoric of healing social division with the reality.
When questioned on whether the Social Mobility Commission was really needed Shepherd responded that if actions and initiatives were left solely to the political process most good initiatives would just fall to the wayside…a more non-political/ cross party body was needed to get things moving.
Milburn concluded by voicing worry that the promises of doing better than previous generations no longer applied with declining youth employment levels and home ownership. He asserted that these issues could not be ignored and stated that there were political, social and economic incentives for parties to put social mobility as the cornerstone of their pledges.
(Excerpts taken from the Committee’s summary by Dods.)
UCAS surprises: Meanwhile amongst the rhetorical doom and gloom of failed social mobility and access challenges an alternative picture emerged from UCAS. With the number of disadvantaged and ethnic minority students entering universities on the rise again. Including a rise in offer rates 71% (2012) to 78.3% (2016/17).
Les Ebdon, Director OFFA, responded:
- “Today’s figures are a positive sign that further progress has been made in widening access to higher education in England, and that the work of universities and colleges is paying off.
- “While encouraging, the detail of the figures show that there are still stark gaps between different groups and at individual universities and colleges. The reasons behind these disparities are multiple and complex, and the challenge now for universities and colleges – as well as the new Office for Students – is to bring about a transformational step change in fair access. Incremental change is not enough for those students who are missing out.”
Admissions & Marketing
A HEPI guest blogger describes Lessons for higher education from private – and quasi-private – schools it talks of the increasing influence of parents in their children’s HE institution choice. Comparing private schooling and HE decisions on matter of affordability, pay off (HE as a conveyor belt into higher-paying employment), and the rise in alternative routes to the workforce: In a world where university itself is no longer the unquestioned guarantor of career success, ‘savvy’ parents are motivated to seek more cost-effective and/or efficacious routes.
It states the hands-on parental influencing has implications for:
- the positioning of marketing material and events;
- universities’ outreach to sixth-form influencers; and
- the stress placed upon students by their increasingly expectant parents.
It concludes by commenting: While the sector remains as rich as ever in statistical data, the appetite of higher education institutions to seek real insight into the buying behaviour of their prospective market remains, in comparison to the business sector, surprisingly weak. The guest blog was written by Mungo Dennett, Director or a strategic research company working with schools and universities.
HE regulation
There’s an interesting article in Friday’s FT about a National Audit Office blog Is the market for HE working?. The blog pulls out key aspects from the increasing marketisation within HE. It provides a good, simple introduction to this multi-faceted debate. It highlights the (market failure) struggles students face when choosing a HE institution:
- Users find it difficult to discern quality and service differences when exercising choice because the ‘product’ is complex, personalised and/or they are unlikely to purchase the service more than once in their lifetime.
- Users struggle to make well-informed choices due to too much or too little information.
- Users’ knowledge of the service is only discernible during, or after, ‘consumption’.
- Users are, or feel, ‘locked in’ once the service is bought and switching provider is not considered realistic or desirable.
- Users play an important role in co-producing the value that they derive from the service.
- Disadvantaged groups struggle to access the services, and or have worse outcomes than other user groups.
- It’s difficult for providers to enter the market or poorly-performing providers to exit it.
It notes there are too few incentives for providers to push take up of the government’s priority courses (e.g. expensive science); that providers have other routes to attract learners when teaching quality isn’t impressive; and that the DfE’s plans for new providers to enter the market (and more providers to exit) are untested and risky because its unclear how well students will be protected during provider exit (nor whether an influx of new providers creating competition will help drive HE quality improvement).
It raises two major concerns associated with the government’s current objectives:
- Increased competition creating a two-tier system will see WP students suffer worse, and graduate employment gaps widen.
- Increased competition will not result in providers charging different tuition fee levels
During the parliamentary consideration of the new Access and Participation Plans this week Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour) tackled marketisation stating: The key to our concern is whether Ministers, instead of promoting scholarship and encouraging research or a concern for truth, have as their goal turning the UK’s higher education system into an even more market-driven one at the expense of both quality and the public interest. It is worth reminding the House that this is not a broken system which needs shoring up and intervention. It is the second-most successful higher education system in the world, with four universities ranked in the top 10. When and how will the Government give us an assurance that they are stepping back from their market-driven obsession and that they intend for the OfS to be a sensible, balanced regulator?
Freedom of Speech
The Select Committee on Human Rights continued its investigation into Freedom of Speech in Universities. Sir Michael Barbet (Chair, Office for Students) was one of the witnesses called this week. The session considered the approach to the issue adopted by the newly formed Office for Students, and the impact of Charity Commission regulations on student events with external speakers. It looked in detail at how the Charity Commission worked with students’ unions, where the responsibility for dealing with events that breached human rights and the law lay, and the clarity of Charity Commission guidance. When asked if Sir Michael had considered how the Office for Students might work with the Charity Commission he confirmed that the two organisations would be preparing a Memorandum of Understanding around their future working
The session also explored the role of the Office for Students in promoting freedom of speech in universities in England. Sir Michael explained that he wanted to see maximum freedom of speech throughout universities, not just in the students’ unions. He acknowledged the universities’ need to have policies in place because they have a responsibility for what happens on their campuses. He acknowledged that some codes of practice were over-complicated, but that good practice did exist. He did not want the Office for Students to issue a single code of practice, saying that would be up to universities and students’ unions.
Questioning how the Office for Students would monitor compliance with the duty to promote freedom of speech among universities followed. Sir Michael reiterated his commitment to maximum freedom of speech and said he would only review university codes of practice on a risk basis. Any intervention would be to promote free speech, he told the committee. Sir Michael clarified that the Office for Students would have no jurisdiction over the students’ union.
When questioned whether the Office for Students was the right body to receive Prevent returns, questioning whether it would have the right expertise. Sir Michael emphasised the need to protect the institutional autonomy of universities and the need to balance that with security. He believed the Office for Students was the right body to this, as the agency that would know about universities, rather a policing agency. He continued to receive challenge on this point.
(Summary courtesy of Dods, Political Monitoring Consultants.)
Contact Sarah if you would like further information on the content of the session.
Other news
International Students: This week the Financial Times ran another story on the economic benefits of international students. The article rehashes HEPI’s study and last week’s mayoral letter, however, the main thrust calls on parliament to unite and overrule what it sees as Theresa May’s lone standpoint of negativity towards international students through their inclusion in the net migration targets. On international students the FT states: the evidence is overwhelming – they bring widespread economic benefit to the UK.
HM Opposition: The Fabian Society issued a report on Labour’s National Education Service plans.
The report features an introduction from shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner MP and contributions from experts in further and higher education, including shadow minister Gordon Marsden MP, former education and employment secretary Lord Blunkett and leading figures from the NUS, UCU, Open University the Learning and Work Institute.
Between them the report contributors argue for a National Education Service that is:
- Accountable – democratically accountable and open at every level
- Devolved – with local decision-making which delivers coherent, integrated local provision, albeit within a national framework
- Empowering – ensuring that learners, employees and institutions are all enabled and respected
- Genuinely lifelong – with opportunities for retraining and chances to re-engage at every stage, and parity for part-time and digital distance learning
- Coordinated – flexible pathways for learners between providers and strong partnerships involving providers, employers, unions and technology platforms
- Outcome-focused – designed to meet social and economic needs, with far more adults receiving productivity-enhancing education but also recognising that learning brings wider benefits
The report also suggests that the ultimate price-tag for the new service may be more than Labour pledged in its 2017 manifesto.
Wonkhe blogger and VC of the Open University Peter Horrocks considers Labour’s National Education Service within the context of the relentless industrial automation in Five things that might save us from the robots, a quick focussed read (with only one shameless Open University plug).
The Universities team within parliament regularly run training events for academics to understand how to begin the process of utilising their research to influence government policy. The Government increasingly leans towards evidence-based policy making and understanding who, when and where the best opportunities are to influence the Government is crucial. Here are the event details: Book a place at Research, Impact and the UK Parliament at Plymouth Marjon University on Wednesday 21 March 2018 at 1.30pm.
At the 3 hour training event, you will learn:
- How to contact MPs and Members of the House of Lords from Parliament’s Outreach & Engagement Service
- How to work with Select Committees from a clerk of a House of Commons Select Committee
- How Parliament has been cited in REF 2014 impact case studies from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
“This event was excellent – well organised, highly relevant, focused, all speakers strong, content highly practical” – RIUKP Attendee
Tickets cost £40 and include afternoon tea. Here’s the link to: Book your place at Research, Impact and the UK Parliament now.
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Opportunity to preview Her story: Tales of Poole Women Past and Present
As a result of their long standing research partnership with Poole Museum, Dr Holly Crossen-White and Dr Anglea Turner-Wilson were invited to preview a new exhibition last Friday attended by the Mayor of Poole, Councillor Lindsay Wilson and Councillor Mohan Iyengar Cabinet Member for Economy, Culture and Learning and Community Engagement. The exhibition, Her story: Tales of Poole Women Past and Present was inspired by International Women’s Day and features two women associated with Bournemouth University. Firstly, Jean Tocher who served as a WREN in the Royal Naval Intelligence Section at Bletchley Park during World War II and in later life worked at Bournemouth University as a Careers Advisor. Dr Kate Murphy from the Faculty of Media and Communications is the other women to feature in the exhibition. The exhibition highlights the great achievements of women who have a local connection. Visitors to the exhibition are being asked to leave their own reflections about a woman they feel has had a significant influence upon their life.
Digital politics, fake news, propaganda: Paweł Surowiec speaks to the EU and the NATO
The debate about the proliferation of fake news and disinformation campaigns launched towards European democracies from Russia is gaining momentum as the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation are gearing their efforts to challenge both fake news and disinformation campaigns. Upon the invitation of the EU and the NATO, Dr. Pawel Surowiec, of the Faculty of Media and Communication, addressed the audiences of both both institutions, and spoke at events concerning challenges to strategic communication brought about by fake news and disinformation campaigns. On 7 December, 2017, at the conference entitled ‘Myth and Reality: Countering Disinformation in Visegrad 4’ (Warsaw), the Faculty’s researcher participated in a panel discussion focusing on solutions to the disinformation campaigns, and offered an expert intervention on hybridisation of soft power and strategic communication during the conference held on 23-24 November, 2017 at the Annual Plenary, Club of Venice – the European Council’s network of strategic communicators.
HE policy update for the w/e 1st December 2017
The KEF is coming
On 1st December, HEFCE launched a consultation on the new Knowledge Exchange Framework – the KEF – which was announced earlier in the Autumn by the Jo Johnson – as the “third leg” of the HE stool*. Putting aside the rather unflattering stool analogy, we prefer to think of this as the third side of the Fusion triangle. (For those of you who have not yet looked at the staff consultation on the BU2025 strategy, spoiler alert – the proposed new Fusion device is more of a vaguely triangular swirl. Much more inclusive and dynamic. And better colours than the red and yellow of the previous one.) But anyway, knowledge exchange is an important part of what we do at BU and this is important.
The consultation, which closes at the end of January, will give us a chance to contribute to the design of this framework. The HEFCE press release says “The KEF metrics system will provide more information for the public and businesses on the performance of universities in knowledge exchange – how they share knowledge, expertise and other assets for the benefit of the economy and society. The aim is to provide regularly updated data that enables fair comparison between institutions’ performance in knowledge exchange. This will help to support further improvements in universities and promote accountability, responsiveness to economic and societal needs and effective use of public funds.”
So much like the TEF this is being pitched as being about value for money and choice (for those interested in funding research or choosing where to work). And, like the REF (indirectly), and as with the TEF (at least as originally planned – more on this later), there are cash incentives for universities to do well in this new framework via HEIF funding.
“The KEF metrics will help support the Industrial Strategy, which includes the commitment announced on 27 November to increase Higher Education Innovation Funding to £250 million by 2020-21. This increase will allow Universities to work with businesses of all sizes to support the delivery of the Industrial Strategy in diverse ways.”
And of course, like the TEF, the key to all of it is the metrics. A metrics working group has been established – details of the people are below.
There are only 5 questions, as follows.
- What approaches and data need to be used to ensure a fair and meaningful comparison between different universities, taking into account factors that might impact individual institution’s knowledge exchange performance (such as research income, size or local economic conditions), whilst allowing identification of relative performance? How should benchmarking be used?
- Other than HE-BCI survey data, what other existing sources of data could be used to inform a framework, and how should it be used?
- What new (or not currently collected) data might be useful to such a framework?
- How should KEF metrics be visualised to ensure they are simple, transparent and useful to a non-specialist audience?
- Any other comments?
This is a bit of a concern. If it measures research income, there is a great risk of it being circular – and therefore not inclusive across the sector. This would conflict with the principles behind the Industrial Strategy – which are about focussing on areas of strength – wherever they are. We would prefer it not to be entirely metrics based (as we said for the TEF – where the written submission became a key part of the process and had a significant impact on the outcome in some cases).
Questions 2 and 3 are the opportunities to get into this debate – even through the questions are framed as questions about metrics. The letter from the Minister commissioning the work is a bit more helpful: “The design process should: …
- Consider whether additional metrics can be devised and collected to provide a more comprehensive view of the effectiveness of universities’ external engagement, whilst having regard to the burden and cost of collection.
- Take into account factors that might impact individual universities’ knowledge exchange performance, such as the university’s research income, size or local economic conditions, to ensure comparability between institutions …”
We will be working with RKEO to draft a BU response to this, so please contact policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you would like to contribute to this process.
The key people involved: “The technical group, chaired by Professor Richard Jones FRS, University of Sheffield, will advise HEFCE and later RE on the design and delivery of the new KEF metrics system. The group’s members have been chosen to provide expertise in knowledge exchange metrics and external insights on performance. The members of the KEF metrics technical advisory group are:
- Chair: Professor Richard Jones, FRS, Professor of Physics, University of Sheffield. EPSRC Council Member.
- Tomas Coates Ulrichsen, Research Associate, Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation, University of Cambridge.
- Alice Frost, Head of Knowledge Exchange policy, HEFCE / Research England.
- Alice Hu Wagner, Managing Director for Strategy, Economics and Markets, British Business Bank.
- Professor Graeme Reid, Professor of Science and Research Policy, University College London. Member of the Research England Council.
- Mr Peter Saraga CBE, FREng, Senior Independent Member on the Research England Council. Former Managing Director of Philips Research Laboratories UK, Chair of HEFCE’s UKRPIF panel, and formerly President of the Institute of Physics and Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
- Stian Westlake, Policy Adviser to the Minister for State for Universities, Research and Innovation at Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
- BEIS observer: Carolyn Reeve / Thomas Crawley.
- HEFCE / Office for Students observers: Mario Ferelli, Richard Puttock
- Higher Educations Statistics Agency (HESA) observer: Andy Youell, Director of Data Policy and Governance, HESA.
- Head of secretariat: Hamish McAlpine, HEFCE / Research England
Professor Trevor McMillan, Vice-Chancellor of Keele University, has been leading work on the principles and good practices of university knowledge exchange since 2015. He will continue to do so, including providing advice to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). For the KEF metrics system, Professor McMillan and his university expert group will advise on the value of the exercise for good practice development within universities”.
*(with REF and TEF – we’re in TLA chaos. Even though the TEF is now TESOF (SO = student outcomes) but we’re not allowed to call it that). Arguably as has been noted elsewhere, the KEF should be KEEF – Knowledge Exchange Excellence Framework). As we have also noted before, many voices have suggested that the OfS should be the OfSHE (Office for Students and Higher Education). But TLAs are the thing, it seems).
And…the major review of fees and funding….
We have discussed the options for fees and funding a lot recently, as the “national debate” that followed the election was continued over the summer and the debate shifted to whether there would be a review or not after the Conservative Party Conference in October. The Minister told Wonkfest in early November to watch for it in the budget, but no…. The BBC reported on 1st December that it is actually happening – so please keep watching this space.
Future of skills and lifelong learning report
The Government Office for Science have issued the Future of Skills and Lifelong Learning report. In 112 pages it sets out a pathway to develop skills in the UK to support the Industrial Strategy, productivity and improve wages (and health and wellbeing along the way).
The focus on workplace learning, placements and work experience, and the role of extra-curricular activities are very interesting and consistent with the BU approach in many ways – so this is interesting for us. It also raises interesting questions about supply and demand and information flows.
To quote from the executive summary:
- “Young adults in the UK have relatively poor literacy and numeracy and there are signs that we are falling further behind international competitors. …Seven OECD countries have numeracy scores equal to or higher than the UK for all age groups, and the number of countries increases considerably if the UK’s high-performing 60-65 age group is excluded. Literacy for UK 16-19 year-olds is ahead of only Chile and Turkey among a group of 24 (mostly OECD) countries. Literacy and numeracy performance varies between UK regions, with London and the South East achieving the highest scores …There is also evidence of intergenerational effects, with poor parental attainment reflected in the educational outcomes of the child. Breaking out of this cycle may require interventions that target both the parent and child, for example family learning programmes. Improvements to literacy and numeracy continue beyond school and higher education into the early years of work, suggesting that workplace environments play an important role in developing these skills.
- Employers believe labour market entrants are not properly prepared for the workforce; again the UK compares poorly against other countries. Employers are looking not only for better literacy and numeracy, relevant qualifications and/or discipline-specific training but also for more positive attitudes towards work as well as ‘character’ attributes. Greater collaboration between employers and education providers may help to ensure that education-leavers are equipped with the skills that are in demand. Work placements and experience can help individuals gain the non-academic skills desired by employers. However, only around one-third of employers offer these opportunities and they are predominantly found in the South East of England. Informal learning also has a part to play, including participation in peer-to-peer learning or sports and other extra-curricular activities.
- The UK has relatively large mismatches between the supply of and the demand for skills. Skills underutilisation is particularly high in the UK, while at the same time there are shortages of some particular high-level skills. Such mismatches imply that education providers are not offering, or students are not selecting, the courses that match with employers’ skills needs, and that future skill needs are not being fully anticipated. Improving the quality of and access to labour market information may be able to help address this.
- Many places and sectors in the UK are in “low skills equilibrium”. A low skills equilibrium occurs when the availability of low-skilled jobs is matched by a low-skilled workforce, such that students have limited incentives to gain higher skills (or to remain in that place if they have them) and employers adapt to but are constrained by the skills supply. This is a stable equilibrium that can only be changed if supply and demand for skills are addressed together. If only the supply of skills improves, not the demand, it will create surplus and underutilisation or prompt migration to where those skills are in demand. This suggests that close partnerships between employers and providers of education and training are required to avoid mismatches, or improved infrastructure is needed to facilitate longer commuting distances.
- Participation in formal learning declines with age. Adult learning is in overall decline and is disproportionately taken up by wealthier, more highly skilled individuals. Formal workplace training has also declined over the last 15 years. This may in part be explained by the fact that learning by adults aged 55+ has shifted from formal to ‘informal’ channels in the last decade or so, with higher socio-economic groups more likely to engage in such self-directed or peer-driven learning, potentially because of positive prior experience of education. While cost and lack of time are reported as common barriers to adult learning for individuals of all skill levels, individuals with no qualifications are more likely to cite attitudinal barriers including lack of confidence, lack of interest, and feeling too old to learn. However, low skilled individuals or those from poor socio-economic backgrounds and minority groups, reap the greatest rewards from learning. If the former trend persists, it suggests that older and particularly lower skilled individuals will be especially vulnerable in a future labour market that is likely to place a premium on lifelong learning.
And one conclusion:
- “Analysis of the wage benefits associated with higher levels of education suggests that the returns on learning are substantial. A 2013 estimate found that an individual who has earned a bachelor’s degree will earn on average £210,000 more over the course of their lifetime, after taxes and loan costs, than someone with only A-levels. The benefit is greater for women, at £252,000 than for men, at £168,0006 (BIS, 2013b, p.5).”
Industrial Strategy
As noted, this was published last week and we are still digesting it (another 100+ pages). However, at least the models are simplified from the Green Paper (10 pillars etc). Now it has 5 foundations: Ideas, People, Infrastructure, Business Environment and Places and 4 grand challenges. The paper says “Our focus on them responds to the detailed feedback to the Green Paper”.
To coincide with the publication of the Industrial Strategy White Paper, UUK has published new guidance for businesses on how best to involve and engage with universities when developing a sector deal.
So what is actually going to happen? There is more detail below – and some practical steps to implement it:
- “We will create an independent Industrial Strategy Council that will develop measures to assess and evaluate our Industrial Strategy and make recommendations to the government. The Council will have access to relevant government data and will be funded to commission specific evaluation projects as appropriate. It will be drawn from leading business men and women, investors, economists and academics from across the UK.”
- “Investing in R&D to transform our economy. For the UK to become the most innovative country in the world we need a generational increase in public and private R&D investment. In this strategy we commit to reach 2.4 per cent of GDP investment in R&D by 2027 and to reach 3 per cent of GDP in the longer term, placing us in the top quartile of OECD countries. If we meet this target we will transform our economy. It could increase public and private R&D investment by as much as £80bn over the next 10 years, with much wider benefits across the UK economy.”
To do this:
- As a first step we will invest an additional £2.3bn over what was previously planned in 2021/22, raising total public investment in R&D to approximately £12.5bn in that year alone.
- We will work with industry in the coming months to develop a roadmap for meeting this target. This will provide a framework to drive business investment in R&D and focus on key sectors, technologies and clusters, including by optimising government investment to drive private investment in R&D and considering further opportunities to improve the business environment, including access to finance, regulatory frameworks, and intellectual property. This will maximise the impact of public investment in science and innovation to support businesses to invest more and drive outputs to realise our commitment to invest 2.4 per cent of GDP in R&D.
- We will invest a further £725m in a second wave of the Industrial Strategy Challenge programme across the UK to respond to some of the greatest global challenges and opportunities – from climate change to automation….
- We will invest £300m over the next three years in world-class talent including in priority areas aligned with the Industrial Strategy, such as artificial intelligence, to enhance our skilled workforce and attract private sector R&D investment. This investment will focus on collaboration and the flow of people between industry and academia and interdisciplinary and cutting-edge research and innovation to support the Industrial Strategy programme and the Grand Challenges. Support will range from Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and PhD programmes, with strong and flexible links to industry, to prestigious awards that support rising stars and the top talent from both the UK and overseas.
- We will work with our leading universities, research institutes and UK Research and Innovation to increase global investors’ R&D activities taking place in the UK. Of the world’s 2,500 top R&D investors, just 50 businesses are responsible for 40 per cent of private sector investment globally. If we could attract an additional five per cent of R&D from these top 50, UK based R&D would increase by around a third.
- We will work with UKRI to develop a new competitive Strategic Priorities Fund…This will support high quality R&D priorities which would otherwise be missed – multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary programmes identified by researchers and businesses at the cutting edge of research and innovation. …. UK Research and Innovation strategy will deliver a real-terms increase in council budgets of approximately 20 per cent between 2015/16 and 2019/20. We will also increase support for Quality-Related research through Research England. This recognises the vital importance of providing underpinning funding for our world-leading universities to invest in the excellence and impact of their research and ensure the sustainability of our research infrastructure.
- We will improve the UK tax system to support innovation. ….
- We will make it easier to finance innovation by increasing the resources for government agencies that promote and fund innovation like Innovate UK – our world leading innovation agency that supports businesses across the UK to collaborate and innovate – and the British Business Bank..
- We are also allocating a further £44m of grant funding to enable Innovate UK to fund £150m of responsive grant competitions in 2017/18. This will allow it to support hundreds more high-growth businesses, collaborations and industries to innovate and compete in future global markets. In addition, Innovate UK will pilot new ways of financing innovation: – £50m Innovation Loans pilot over the next two years to target the most promising projects in viable businesses on the cusp of commercialisation, but not yet ready to access loans from commercial lenders; and – an Investment Accelerator pilot to bring in seed equity alongside grant funding by matching the most innovative early stage businesses with investors. …
- We will develop an agile approach to regulation that promotes innovation, the growth of new sectors, and innovative market entrants while ensuring effective protections for citizens and the environment. An example is establishing a clear framework for autonomous vehicles and, through our Digital Charter, building agreement on the ethical and effective use of new technologies and data. …
- We will improve public procurement as an important source of finance for innovative businesses that does not dilute their equity and gives an endorsement for others to invest. …. we will refocus the [Small Business Research Initiative] SBRI programme to increase its impact for innovative businesses, aligning it with Grand Challenges and building capability in the public sector to drive productivity by adopting SBRI solutions. As a first step, this month we announced a new GovTech Catalyst with a GovTech Fund of up to £20m over three years, which will use SBRI to support tech firms to provide the government with innovative solutions for more efficient public services
“We will:
Ideas:
- raise total research and development(R&D) investment to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027;
- increase the rate of R&D tax credit to 12 per cent;
- invest £725m in new Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programmes to capture the value of innovation;
People
- establish a technical education system that rivals the best in the world to stand alongside our world-class higher education system;
- invest an additional £406m in maths, digital and technical education, helping to address the shortage of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills;
- create a new National Retraining Scheme that supports people to re-skill, beginning with a £64m investment for digital and construction training;
Infrastructure
- increase the National Productivity Investment Fund to £31bn, supporting investments in transport, housing and digital infrastructure;
- support electric vehicles through £400m charging infrastructure investment and an extra £100m to extend the plug-in car grant;
- boost our digital infrastructure with over £1bn of public investment, including £176m for 5G and £200m for local areas to encourage roll out of full-fibre networks;
Business Environment
- launch and roll-out Sector Deals – partnerships between government and industry aiming to increase sector productivity. The first Sector Deals are in life sciences, construction, artificial intelligence and the automotive sector;
- drive over £20bn of investment in innovative and high potential businesses, including through establishing a new £2.5bn Investment Fund, incubated in the British Business Bank;
- launch a review of the actions that could be most effective in improving the productivity and growth of small and medium-sized businesses, including how to address what has been called the ‘long tail’ of lower productivity firms;
Places
- agree Local Industrial Strategies that build on local strengths and deliver on economic opportunities;
- create a new Transforming Cities fund that will provide £1.7bn for intra-city transport. This will fund projects that drive productivity by improving connections within city regions; and
- provide £42m to pilot a Teacher Development Premium. This will test the impact of a £1000 budget for high-quality professional development for teachers working in areas that have fallen behind.
- These policies, alongside the many others set out in this document, are the first strategic actions of a long-term approach to transform our levels of productivity and our earning power as a nation, as businesses, as places, and as individuals. We are ready to be judged on our performance in implementing them.
Student visas
The Home Office released quarterly and annual immigration statistics including data on study visas here: Why do people come to the UK? (3) To study
The data relating to study found in the year ending September 2017:
- An increase of 8 per cent in Short-term student visas
- A 6 per cent increase in University sponsored study visa application
- Increases of 9 per cent for Russell Group universities to 87,362,
- A decrease of 4 per cent in applications for the Further education sector
Nationalities data for the year ending September 2017 (top 5):
- China: +15 per cent
- United States: +6 per cent
- India: +27 per cent
- Hong Kong: +5 per cent
- Saudi Arabia: -2 per cent
The lead story is the rise in visa applications for Indian students, with the first annual rise in applications since 2010: THE Article. [thanks to Dods for the summary].
Jo Johnson has tweeted about this.
Committee inquiries
Two parliamentary committees on issues of key importance to the higher education sector are now taking written evidence.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into freedom of speech in universities has a deadline for written evidence of 15 December, while the Treasury Committee’s inquiry into student loans will accept submissions until 31 December.
Earlier this week Professor Julia Buckingham, Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University London, represented UUK before the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee in relation to its ongoing inquiry into the economics of higher, further and technical education.
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HE policy update for the w/e 24th November 2017
Industrial Strategy
A little bit late this week, but that gave us the opportunity to include a reference to the Industrial Strategy, launched today. It has just been published and you can find it here. It sounds as if it hasn’t moved on much from the Green Paper – read our end of summer summary here.
Headlines, courtesy of Dods, are:
- Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund will invest £725 million in new programmes to capture the value of innovation
- first ‘Sector Deals’ – to help sectors grow and equip businesses for future opportunities
- 4 ‘Grand Challenges’ which will take advantage of global trends to put the UK at the forefront of the industries of the future.
Sector Deals will include construction, life sciences, automotive and AI the first to benefit from these new strategic and long-term partnerships with government, backed by private sector co-investment. Work will continue with other sectors on transformative sector deals.
4 Grand Challenges; global trends that will shape our rapidly changing future and which the UK must embrace to ensure we harness all the opportunities they bring, they are:
- artificial intelligence – we will put the UK at the forefront of the artificial intelligence and data revolution
- clean growth – we will maximise the advantages for UK industry from the global shift to clean growth
- ageing society – we will harness the power of innovation to help meet the needs of an ageing society
- future of mobility – we will become a world leader in the way people, goods and services move
To ensure that the government is held to account on its progress in meeting the ambitions set out in the strategy, an Independent Industrial Strategy Council will be launched in 2018 to make recommendations to government on how it measures success.
Linked to this, ahead of the budget, the PM announced a boost to research funding. The Government will make an additional investment of £2.3 billion in 2021/22 (total R&D investment £12.5 billion in 2021/22). They will also work with industry to boost R&D spending to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 (possible increase of £80 billion over next 10 years).
The Business Secretary, Greg Clark said: “Through our Industrial Strategy we are committed to building a knowledge and innovation-led economy and this increase in R&D investment, to 2.4 per cent of GDP, is a landmark moment for the country. The UK is a world leader in science and innovation. By delivering this significant increase as part of our Industrial Strategy, we are building on our strengths and working with business to ensure that UK scientists and researchers continue to push the boundaries of innovation.”
Budget and the fees review
And having mentioned the budget – we were expecting an announcement about HE fees and funding, but there wasn’t one. There was a hint about post-study visas. As you will recall, if you have been following the “national debate” since May, a “major review” was promised by the PM at the Conservative Party conference in October with a freeze on fee increases in the meantime and nothing has been heard since. Fee increases for were put on hold – so that there are currently no planned increases for 2018/19 or beyond. Wonkhe have noticed that the “red book” that comes out with the budget has confirmed that this freeze is planned for 2 years but nothing is said beyond that. So the review may still be on the cards, but maybe the budget was too soon, or too risky, a forum for that announcement.
And with that in mind, note this bit from the summary of the Lords Select Committee proceedings below “Cross-subsidy is worth a major inquiry in its own right.”
Parliamentary Questions
Following the Panorama programme disclosing alleged abuse of the student loan system, questions were asked in Parliament last week
Gordon Marsden: What safeguards her Department operates to prevent the abuse of student loan funding by private Higher Education providers. [113082]
Joseph Johnson:
- Higher Education Institutions that are designated for student support must, on an annual basis, meet robust standards for quality, financial sustainability, and management and governance.
- Designated Alternative Providers without their own Degree Awarding Powers are also subject to student number controls, limiting the number of students eligible for student support that they can recruit each year.
- The Department can and does use sanctions where breaches of the conditions of designation are identified, including the suspension or removal of designation for student support where we have serious concerns about providers.
- Following the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act, the Office for Students (OfS) will be established formally in January 2018. It will provide, for the first time, a single regulator for higher education providers regardless of how they are funded. The OfS will have powers to assess the quality of, and standards applied to all English Higher Education provision.
- The OfS will place a focus on students and greater emphasis on ensuring value for money for students and taxpayers. There will continue to be tough and rigorous tests for providers who want to enter the system and enable students from all backgrounds to receive funding.
Angela Rayner: What additional funding allocation her Department will receive for each of the next three financial years to fund the increased RAB charge resulting from the increase to post-2012 loan repayment thresholds. [113058]
Joseph Johnson:
- The Government has frozen tuition fees for academic year 2018/19 and for financial year 2018-19 has raised both the repayment threshold and the thresholds at which variable interest rates apply to borrowers in repayment.
- The repayment threshold will rise from £21,000 to £25,000 for the 2018-19 financial year (from 6 April 2018). Following the threshold change, interest will be charged at RPI for those earning below £25,000 (compared to £21,000 before) and at RPI+3% for those earning above £45,000 (compared to £41,000 before), with interest applied on a sliding scale for those earning between those two thresholds.
- The long-term cost of the student loan system is reflected in the Resource Accounting and Budgeting (RAB) Charge, which measures the proportion of loan outlay that we expect not to be repaid when future repayments are valued in present terms. In each of the financial years (a) 2017-18, (b) 2018-19 and (c) 2019-20, the RAB charge for higher education loans is expected to change from around 30% under the previous policy to between 40% and 45% under the new policy.
- The allocated budget for RAB expenditure forms part of the total resource departmental expenditure limit. It is disclosed within the depreciation figure set out within the annual report and accounts. In the 2016-17 annual report and accounts, this was forecast to be £3.5bn for 2017-18, £3.9bn for 2018-19 and £4.3bn in 2019-20. As in prior years, the 2017-18 budget and future budgets will be reviewed as part of the annual Estimates process and confirmed in the published Estimates documents.
- The cost of the system is a conscious investment in young people. It is the policy subsidy required to make higher and further education widely available, achieving the Government’s objectives of increasing the skills in the economy and ensuring access to university for all with the potential to benefit.
Gordon Marsden: What monitoring and scrutiny of student recruitment agents for private Higher Education and Further Education providers her Department undertakes. [113080]
Joseph Johnson:
- All higher and further education providers are accountable for their respective recruitment practices. If those breach the respective conditions for funding then a consequence may be regulatory sanctions or termination of their contract. Providers are subject to robust regular monitoring for standards for quality, financial sustainability and management and governance.
- And in the meantime, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee investigation into the Economics of Higher, Further and Technical Education continues. This week’s update comes from the oral evidence heard on 14 November.
Q: To what extent do you think technical education can be delivered through higher education institutions?
- Professor Patrick Bailey (DVC, London South Bank University): all the universities are delivering higher education courses that include enormous amounts of information directly relevant to workplaces. Most…ensure that all their students will have professional practice and some of the technical skills that are going to be required when they move into jobs afterwards. There is a move…to ensure that students are job-ready when they leave. There is a misconception that there are technical skills and pure academic subjects. Even those that would be defined as purely academic now have significant components that ensure that people are ready for a wide range of tasks. Many universities are also well directed towards developing the technical skills.
- Pam Tatlow (Chief Executive, MillionPlus): If you want to deliver learning and qualifications that match what employers want and the reality of students’ lives, whatever their age, there is a very good case for a more flexible funding system where you fund by credit or module. That would reflect the reality of the lives of students, both the younger ones and the older ones already in the workplace…. However, it would not be for the Chancellor to introduce the primary legislation we need to create a more flexible funding system. The Government missed an opportunity to do that in both the Education Act 2011 and the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.
- Professor Bailey: There is a subtlety here in that once students are enrolled on a three-year programme, universities are penalised in how they are judged if students do not progress through to that degree… across the sector overall we are losing the opportunity to upskill a wide range of people who could meet the needs of the industries around the UK, which are crying out for levels 4, 5 and 6 in particular.
- Professor Bailey: The universities are extremely well placed to take level 4s and upwards. However…the ability to have a break and to exit at an early stage without a penalty increases the opportunity for many, particularly part-time and mature students who are challenged in other ways. There is a continuum: the idea that it is either FE or HE is wrong. FE does not have either the expertise or facilities to deliver at level 6 and rarely at level 5. Crucially, more and more universities like mine are working closely with FE to ensure that students feel they have a choice, as they come through level 3, either to go to level 4 at FE or move to a higher education degree at a university. It comes back to giving choice and ensuring that students have the chance to develop skills to their maximum potential.
- Lord Burns: The same question has been on my mind. Are you saying that you can see a world in which universities are going to do both HE and FE work? I can see that FE cannot do the university work but over the years I have watched universities becoming involved in more and more different areas…with mergers, they are getting bigger and bigger. Is the end product here that universities will try to do everything over the age of 18?
-
Pam Tatlow: No.
-
Sir Anthony Seldon (VC, Buckingham University): I disagree…some universities will embrace FE. I think we will see a top tier—Oxford, Imperial et al−that becomes more research-focused, competing in the world tables and other, more regionally-based, universities that will come down to FE and even UTCs and academies and go all the way through. We do not know, but that is my sense: that the new binary divide will be between HE and FE but with less research and with high research at the top end. Who knows?
Is there a disparity in the available funding higher education and further technical education? If so, how would you address it?
- Professor Mike Thomas (VC, University of Central Lancashire): Yes, there is a disparity. I can tell you how we are addressing it…We feel that when you do an undergraduate degree—four years for engineering or five years for medicine and so on—you should also be allowed the opportunity to do an apprenticeship at the same time, so that when you qualify and graduate you may be, say, a four-year engineering degree-holder but you may also be a trained fitter or plumber. If you are doing construction, you could do joinery or carpentry. We tested this model internally in the university. We have 1,000 student start-ups at the university, which is quite a large number for the economy of Lancashire, creating about 3,000 jobs over three years, with a turnover of about £500,000 on average. Many of them come from fashion and the arts, because when they get their degree they set up on their own. When we piloted this internally at the university, we found that our art students, particularly fashion students, wanted to do a certificate in accountancy because they were setting up their own businesses, but they were not allowed to do it because it involved different funding or different institution.
- We are modelling a system in the university whereby students can do that. At the moment, we are picking up the fees. Engineers can train through a long-term apprenticeship levy. Arts and fashion students can train to get other types of qualifications. We do not take the hierarchical vertical view of learning; we take a horizontal model and work with 21 FE colleges so that our students can go there on Wednesday afternoons or spend four to six months in employment. The piloting with BAE involves them doing two years of a degree in the university, but in the final year they move to a levy and a degree apprenticeship, so that reduces their fee loans. They pick up an “Earn as you Learn” as they go along, and they graduate with a degree and an apprenticeship at the same time. We think that we meet the employer need.
- The difficulty is the silo payment; you have to have an EFA or an ESF payment or a student loan. We think there should be one payment and that undergraduates should be allowed to do apprenticeships and respond to the lifelong learning. For me, it is self-evident that people need support, in relation to what Peter said. We are living longer and people are doing different jobs. Even if they stay in the same firms, the technologies in that firm will change so they will need to relearn anyway as they go along, but those opportunities are not there. We are very much modelling a horizontal model.
- Lord Turnbull: I think you are telling us that we are going down a cul-de-sac in thinking of tertiary education as having these two divisions, HE and FE apprenticeships, and that we want to create something that is seen across this whole system… You heard in the previous session that you can go along the pathways and every time you hit a block there is some kind of regulatory funding decision to the effect that, “When you get here, you cannot get on to the next stage”.
The committee then moved on to discuss the blockages and how it could be easier for people to move across different models. - Professor David Latchman: This emphasis on the student and the student outcome is the key, because we have a system that is basically like the school system: you leave school at 18 and you will never go back. Our system is predicated on you requiring an undergraduate degree, 18 to 21, and never needing that again. Somehow or another, within the funding envelope or in some other way, we have to get to this lifelong learning issue, because the world is changing. What you do at 21 is not going to be what you do at 51, and to assume that you will never need to get other qualifications between 21 and 61 or whatever is madness in today’s world.
Q: What kind of future do you see for degree apprenticeships?
- Professor Bailey: I can see an engagement from business and industry more generally, which has picked up as they have had to pay the levy and have realised the financial implications and how it affects them, and that has been really positive.
- Pam Tatlow: The Institute for Apprenticeships does not understand HE standards, which is a major issue…there is an inflexibility in the Government’s approach to the use of the apprenticeship levy. There could be some relaxation…. There is a bit of a numbers game going on when actually we need degree apprenticeships to be allied with programmes where it makes sense. We are dependent on the employers recruiting to degree apprenticeships; it is not our gig. We need the employers to be convinced that this is what is going to deliver for them.
- Professor Bailey: The concern…is that a tranche of standards have been identified by the professions, which need to be superimposed on the qualification requirements that we have for degrees—in particular critical thinking, working in teams, synthesising information and taking complex problems.. there are high-level skills that would benefit anybody within a technical discipline, but how the technical part is defined is rather more specific within those particular disciplines. They can complement each other, but it makes it a very complicated process for us, because we have to run the whole degree programme and map that across a different set of standards that the apprenticeships require. However…I think it has provided an additional incentive for employers to become engaged in how we develop qualifications.
TEF
- Professor Bailey: [we] were aware that we were using very weak proxies to identify the quality of education in the UK. We did our very best to combine the crude metrics that were used to identify which rating institutions should get with the provider statement that went alongside it. The thing that came across really strongly from the teaching excellence framework was how little difference there was in the quality of provision. At the beginning, it was assumed that there were outstanding institutions and others that were performing very poorly and it was important to identify those extremes. In the end, you obtained what I will call a black mark if you were 2% below the standard in an area being measured, such as the quality of the facilities. You got a gold star if you were 2% above that. That tells us that the differences across the sector were very much smaller than people outside higher education had perceived…As to how it has helped students, it is probably slightly limited because the range is smaller than had been perceived at the outset.
Cross-subsidisation of research
- Lord Darling of Roulanish: Jo Johnson, the Universities Minister, said recently that he wanted to see a reduction in the cross-subsidy between courses. What is your view on that?
- Professor Simon Marginson: Cross-subsidy is worth a major inquiry in its own right. It is a complex problem, and it is an information issue in part. The tendency has been for us to find every way and means we can to subsidise and build research, because research is not only integral to the role of universities but has become central to their national and global competition…Of course, teaching and research are integrally related. It is not as if, when you subsidise research, you do nothing but teaching. It becomes a more complicated problem. Some disciplines are cross-subsidised by others. In many institutions, I suspect that the relatively low-cost business programmes, which generate high volumes of students, with large numbers of international students paying full fees and so on, subsidise a lot of other activity.
OfS consultation (part 3)
We continue our series on the OfS consultation on the future regulatory framework with the 4th objective of the OfS on value for money for students and a look at how the OfS will regulate the HE market (as opposed to how they will regulate individual providers, which we will come back to in a future update).
Objective 4: that all students, from all backgrounds, receive value for money
- “Providers have a responsibility to ensure that students are able to secure value for money for their investment in their education, just as students have a responsibility to engage with their own learning and take the opportunities higher education offers.”
- “Transparency is also central to promoting value for money for students and protecting their rights, shining a light on provider activities and ensuring they are held to account. Students must be assured that the investment they are making in their future is worthwhile, and will be able to challenge institutions that do not deliver on their commitments.”
- Under the management and governance condition (see the section on this below), providers in the Approved categories will be expected to be demonstrably responsible for operating openly, honestly, accountably and with integrity, and will be required to publish a statement on the steps they have taken to ensure value for money for students and taxpayers which provides transparency about their use of resources and income. Providers should design this statement to allow students to see how their money is spent, following examples from other sectors, such as Local Authorities publishing breakdowns of how Council Tax is spent. ….Where there are substantial concerns the OfS may carry out an efficiency study to scrutinise whether a provider is providing value for money to both its students and the taxpayer.”
- “Higher education providers are autonomous institutions, and they are solely responsible for setting the salaries of their staff. However, the taxpayer is the sector’s most significant single funder and there is a legitimate public interest in their efficiency, including of senior staff pay. There will be a new ongoing registration condition requiring providers to publish the number of staff paid over £100,000 per annum, and to explain their justification for pay above £150,000.”
- “Arrangements will be made for the publication of data on senior staff remuneration, including in relation to protected characteristics such as gender and ethnicity. Where issues with senior staff pay lead to substantiated concerns over governance, the OfS will be able to arrange for efficiency reviews into the providers.”
Consultation question: What more could the OfS do to ensure students receive value for money? |
Market regulation – Chapter 2
“Effective competition compels providers to focus on students’ needs and aspirations, drives up outcomes that students care about, puts downward pressure on costs, leads to more efficient allocation of resources between providers, and catalyses innovation. The higher education sector in England is well suited to market mechanisms driving continuous improvement “
“It does not, however, follow from these features that an entirely laissez-faire approach is appropriate. Higher education is a service unlike any other:
- there are almost never repeat “purchases” of the same type of higher educational courses by an individual student – the market is in most cases a one-shot game
- many of the primary benefits to the student (for instance improved learning, knowledge, and skills, greater earnings and career prospects, and personal fulfilment) are not received immediately; they are spread out over their life time. This exposes the market to distortions such as time inconsistency (where students’ preferences change over time) and temporal discounting (where students value the benefits of higher education less because they occur in the future)
- similarly, the cost of higher education is often not paid immediately, but rather paid for after through graduate repayments, which in most instances are subsidised by the state. This too, creates temporal distortions, and exposes the sector to moral hazard (where students may take greater risks because they do not necessarily bear the full cost of the degree)
- there are (currently) significant information asymmetries, and prospective students often make decisions with limited reliable information
- in the case of undergraduate degrees, there is a price cap in place for some providers. In practice, providers sometimes compete in terms of the grades they require to admit students, rather than on price
- institutional failure has significant repercussions for current, past, and (in some cases) potential future students, as well as wider social and political consequences. This is why the OfS’s regulatory framework is designed to prevent sudden, unplanned market exit (in particular through its approach to early warning monitoring), and support students to continue their studies if their original provider can no longer deliver their course. The creative destruction witnessed in more traditional markets, though still a powerful and relevant tool, has the potential to carry greater costs
- there are both private and non-profit organisation competing in the provision of similar services”
Student engagement: “The OfS will engage with students to ensure the student voice is not only heard clearly, but that students actively shape the OfS and – by extension – the sector itself. Alongside the student representation on the Board and Student Panel, the OfS will seek the input of individual students and their representative bodies, including student unions.”
The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF): “In accordance with the provisions set out in HERA, a statutory Independent Review of the TEF will likely take place in academic year 2018/19 and will report in time to influence the assessment framework for assessments taking place in academic year 2019/20 (TEF Year 5). Depending on the findings of the Independent Review and of the subject pilots, this will also be the first year of subject level TEF. The assessments taking place in academic year 2019/20 will therefore constitute the completion of the TEF development process. This will be a significant milestone for the TEF, which has the potential to evolve over time as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) has done.”
Proposed on-going condition: Condition P: “The provider must participate in the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF).”
Consultation question: Do you agree or disagree that participation in the TEF should be a general condition for providers in the Approved categories with 500 or more students? |
Removing unnecessary barriers to entry (for new providers that meet a high bar): “The OfS and HERA will enable new providers in particular through the mechanisms below:
- Simplification of the regulatory landscape:
- No requirement for a track record
- Increased options for market entry
- Recognition of diversity
- Reduction in burden
- Grant funding and registration fees
- Validation”
Accelerated courses: ”HERA includes powers for the Government (subject to approval by Parliament) to set the annual tuition fee cap – for accelerated courses only – at a higher level than their standard equivalent. This should incentivise more providers to offer accelerated courses, increasing choice for students. At the same time, the cost for a student taking an accelerated course which is subject to the new fee caps will be less than that of the same course over a longer time period. The Government will consult shortly on specific proposals for accelerated courses.”
Teaching grant: “The teaching grant is designed to support a range of activities and provision …The majority of the funding is used to support provision where the cost is greater than the amount received as tuition fee income either because the course is costly to provide, because the location brings about additional costs or additional opportunities, or the provision is highly specialised, as with the support provided to our world-leading specialist institutions. The teaching grant supports efforts to improve social mobility by widening access to under-represented or disadvantaged students and ensuring their continued participation and success in higher education. Funding also supports innovation and the national academic broadband infrastructure. The OfS will continue with this approach, but it will also wish to deploy the teaching grant strategically, taking into account Government priorities. This will enable it to influence sector level outcomes“
Widening Participation – Parliamentary question
Q – David Lammy (Lab): Whether she has made an assessment of the effectiveness of steps taken by Oxford and Cambridge Universities to improve access and widen participation from under-represented groups; and if she will make a statement.
- A – Joseph Johnson (Con):. …the Director [of Fair Access (DfA)] negotiates with institutions to ensure that Access Agreements are stretching and appropriately demanding. Higher Education Institutions are independent from Government and autonomous – legislation specifically precludes Government from interfering with university admissions.
- In our guidance to the DfA, published in February 2016, we asked for the most selective institutions, which include the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, to make faster progress on widening access, and to ensure their outreach is more effective. The guidance acknowledged that within this group of institutions there is wide variation, with some demonstrating little progress.
- Access agreements for the 2018/19 academic year show that the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge plan to spend over £22 million on measures to further improve access and student success for students from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds.
- Following the introduction of the Higher Education and Research Act, from January 2018, the Office for Students (OfS), with a new Director for Fair Access and Participation appointed by my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State, will take on responsibility for widening participation in higher education. The OfS will have a statutory duty to promote equality of opportunity across the whole lifecycle for disadvantaged students, not just access. As a result, widening access and participation will be at the core of the OfS’ functions. In addition, our reforms will introduce a Transparency Duty requiring higher education providers to publish application, offer, acceptance, drop-out and attainment rates of students broken down by ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background. This will shine a spotlight on those higher education institutions that need to go further and faster to widen participation in higher education.
Consultations
Click here to view the updated consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.
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JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER
Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer
65111 65070
Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk
Dr Sascha Dov Bachmann, Associate Professor in International Law (BU) and War Studies (Swedish Defence University – FHS) to give key note speech at ICCWS
HE Policy Update w/e 10 November 2017
HE Policy Update
w/e 10 November 2017
A research funding crisis?
Follow this link to read the A research funding crisis? summary with all the diagrams and charts.
Or read the summary below without the charts.
Ahead of the Autumn 2017 Budget the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has published How much is too much? Cross-subsidies from teaching to research in British Universities written by Russell Group PG Economics student Vicky Olive. The paper concludes that research within universities is reliant on subsidy by tuition fee funding. As international students pay higher fees more of their fees go towards research than home and EU students. The paper concludes that on average international students contribute £8,000 from their total fees towards research. While the figures vary between universities, in 2014/15 teaching income funded 14% of English university research (approx. £1 in every £7 spent).
The paper argues that although the UK has a leading global research performance (see diagram below) R&D expenditure is well below competitor nations and unsustainable in the long term.
The paper argues that In 2014/15 the UK HE sector had a sustainability gap of £1 billion. This is described as a looming crisis because of a number of factors:
- the focus on value for money for students paying tuition fees
- Brexit threats to EU research funding
- the unwelcoming nature of current immigration policy
- the improvement of HE education in countries where the UK traditionally recruits international students
- the impact of UK austerity policy which has seen limited science and research budget growth.
The Conservative Government’s has a target to increase R&D spend to 3% of GDP. The paper suggests that to realise this target the following would need to occur:
- the UK would need an additional 250,000 full fee-paying international students;
- Research Councils and Funding Councils to spend an additional £3 billion on funding research;
- industry to contribute an additional £700 million;
- charities to contribute an additional £830 million;
- government departments to contribute £760 million extra each year.
Current R&D expenditure is 1.7% of GDP (25% of which spend by HEIs, 66% of spend by industry). The Government has announced additional investment of £4.7 billion by 2020/21 for R&D, however, the paper argues this isn’t enough and that other sectors must also increase their investment. The paper summarises recent Government policy related to R&D budgets.
The paper considers, and discards, the notion of only providing QR funding for 4* research.
In addition to her calls to increase research investment the author states her aim is to bring together UKRI and OfS to facilitate a sensible research funding model which neither underfunds or jeopardises research sustainability nor exploits students. The paper also urges universities to push back and recover a greater proportion of full economic cost from industry funders, particularly when the research is not directly for the public good.
Nick Hillman, Director of HEPI, commented : ”Anyone who wants to end cross-subsidies must say how they would fund universities’ various roles properly. There are three pressing issues. First, those who fund university research – public and private funders as well as charities – do not cover anything like the full costs. Secondly, the cross-subsidy from tuition fees to research is probably not sustainable at current levels. Thirdly, the Government wants a near doubling in research and development spending as a share of GDP, yet recent funding injections are only enough to stand still.
Our conclusion is that the Chancellor needs to find another £1 billion for research in this year’s Budget, with some set aside for the work universities do with charities. But even this level of additional funding would mean stagnation relative to other countries. So we also need a strategy for increasing research spending to OECD levels over the next few years and German levels thereafter – as promised in the 2017 Conservative manifesto.
The Times covered the report in University research subsidised with £281m from tuition fees.
Separately but relevant to this debate:
- THE have written about the latest OECD data stating it shows a levelling off in global numbers of mobile students after the exponential growth of late 1990s and 2000s – read Data bite: international student flows in focus.
- As we near the Autumn 2017 Budget parliamentarians have been calling on the Government to support their campaigning interests. This week Vince Cable (Lib Dem Leader) covers education and research and development in his pre-budget speech: “Long term studies by the LSE have shown that the two main determinants of poor UK performance on productivity are lack of innovation (R&D as opposed to basic science where the UK is strong) and low levels of skills. The former problem is being addressed by R&D tax credits and by the work of Innovate UK, in particular the Catapult network, which Liberal Democrats launched in government as part of the Industrial Strategy.
- The latter is a far less tractable problem and despite the progress we made in the Coalition in raising the number and quality of apprenticeships, especially Higher Apprenticeships, the programme is now slipping backwards largely because of clumsy implementation of the apprenticeship levy and the neglect of careers advice and guidance….a budget built around the industrial strategy, prioritising education and skills, R&D and infrastructure would, at the very least, send the right signals.”
Interdisciplinary Research
HEFCE have opened sub-panel nominations for roles related to IDR within REF 2021 aiming to support and promote the fair and equitable assessment of IDR outputs and environment through:
- the inclusion of Interdisciplinary Research advisers on each sub-panel
- the continuation of the optional IDR flag
- the inclusion of a specific IDR section in the environment template
In September HEFCE blogged on the importance of academics within interdisciplinary research culture in What creates a culture of interdisciplinary research? HEFCE described what the new IDR role may look like in Wednesday’s blog REF 2021: Where are we on interdisciplinary research?
Widening Participation and inclusivity
OFFA has commissioned a new evidence based research study: Understanding and overcoming the challenges of targeting students from under-represented and disadvantaged ethnic backgrounds.
HEA and Runnymede Trust will analyse existing practice across the sector and ‘produce a suite of practical guidance to support staff in a variety of different roles within universities and colleges in overcoming the challenges associated with this work’. The project is part of OFFA’s long-term aim to challenge and support universities and colleges to do more to address the differences in higher education participation, attainment and progression to further study or employment that persist between students from different ethnic groups.
Les Ebdon: “Black and minority ethnic (BME) students have been a key target group for OFFA for a number of years. But our research suggests that universities and colleges are struggling to target the activities they deliver through their access agreements where they are most needed…This project will help us understand how activities can be targeted appropriately and effectively towards students from disadvantaged and under-represented ethnic backgrounds, enabling OFFA to better support universities and colleges to accelerate progress in this crucial area.”
Principal Investigator, Jacqueline Stevenson, stated: “Our intention is not just to indicate the barriers institutions are facing, but also what they are able to do to address these entrenched and long-standing inequalities.”
Scope call for inclusive workplaces: Scope has called on the Dept for Work and Pensions to develop universal, industry-standard information and best practice guidance for all businesses to support their employment and management of disabled people. Scope’s new research Let’s Talk found many disabled people struggle to share information about their impairment or condition in the workplace making it hard for them to access the support and adjustments they need to carry out their job.
Question to the Dept for Education: Office for Students
Andrew Percy (Con): Whether the remit of the Office for Students will include anti-discrimination on campus.
Jo Johnson (Con, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research & Innovation): The government has published a consultation on behalf of the new Office for Students (OfS) regarding the regulation of the higher education sector. It proposes that, in its regulatory approach, the OfS will look to ensure that all students, from all backgrounds can access, succeed in, and progress from higher education.
Higher Education (HE) providers are autonomous organisations, independent from Government, and they already have responsibilities to ensure that they provide a safe, inclusive environment, including legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 (the Act) to ensure that students do not face discrimination.
The OfS, like some HE providers, will also have obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty in part 11 of the Act. This includes a requirement that the OfS, when exercising its functions, has due regard to the need to: eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and any other unlawful conduct in the Act, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations in relation to protected characteristics.
In addition, in September 2015 the government asked Universities UK (UUK) to set up a Harassment Taskforce, composed of university leaders, student representatives and academic experts, to consider what more can be done to address harassment and hate crime on campus. The taskforce published its report, ‘Changing the Culture’, in October 2016, which sets out that universities should embed a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment and hate crime. This includes hate crime or harassment on the basis of religion or belief, such as antisemitism and Islamophobia. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is currently working with UUK to test the sector’s response to the Taskforce’s recommendations and the results of this will be published early in 2018.
House of Lord Questions – Disabled Student Allowance
Lord Addington (Lib Dem) has asked three parliamentary questions regarding the disabled students allowance.
Q1: Whether the evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances will include consideration of the need for third party advisers to have clarity of information about the respective responsibilities of higher education providers and claimants of those allowances.
Q2: Whether the evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances will include consideration of the benefits of issuing a guide to higher education providers about their responsibilities in relation to students claiming those allowances who fall into bands 1 and 2.
Q3: Whether the evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances will include consideration of the levels of information provided by higher education providers to students claiming those allowances about the respective responsibilities of those institutions and students.
The Earl of Courtown provided the same (non-)response to all three questions:
A: The evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances (DSA) will address a range of factors relating to the efficacy of support for disabled students, including the effect of recent changes to DSA policy.
Parliamentary Questions
Question to the Home Office – Visas: Overseas Students
Q -Jo Stevens (Labour): How much was accrued to the public purse from charging international students applying for Tier 4 student visas in each year since 2010.
A – Brandon Lewis (Con, Minister of State for Immigration): Visa income is not differentiated between the various categories in which they are received. Visa volumes by broad category (study, work etc) are published in the data section of this webpage: LINK Fees and unit costs are also published, for example, for 2017/18: LINK
Private Providers
Lord Storey (Lib Dem) has tabled two questions about the quality of private providers:
Q1 – On how many occasions in the last three years the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education has (1) raised concerns, and (2) taken action, regarding private colleges and providers of degrees
Q2 – What measures they are taking to provide quality assurance for students studying degree courses at a private college whose degrees are validated by a university
These are due for answer on Tuesday 21 November.
Consultations
Click here to view the updated consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.
New consultations and inquiries this week:
- Two Dept for Health consultations on nursing, and one on regulation and workforce development of the health services
- Jo Johnson has announced the sector will be asked for their opinion on two year degrees in a forthcoming consultation
Other news
Student Engagement: Guild HE have written for Wonkhe censuring the limited nature of student consultation and engagement proposed through the new Quality Code and critiquing both the TEF and the Office for Students in Engaging students as partners: two steps forward, one step back.
HE Policy Briefings
Awareness of policy is integral to many roles at BU and with HE constantly in the news it can be hard to sort the wood from the trees to keep current. We’re running two short and sharp HE Policy Briefings during November and December; all are welcome so come along to learn more!
The briefings will:
- present the latest policy developments for universities and how they may affect BU, our staff and students
- cover the next steps for the Teaching Excellence Framework, including subject level TEF, and how this could impact BU
- support you to consider actions you could take to prepare for change and challenges arising from these development.
Email organisational development to attend on: Wed 22 November 12-13:00 at Lansdowne or Thurs 7 December 12-13:00 at Talbot (mince pies included!)
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JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER
Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer
65111 65070
Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk