BU Research Blog | international | Bournemouth University

Category / international

June 17, 2019

HE Policy Update for the w/e 14th June 2019

Business Engagement, EU, Global engagement, HEIF, Impact, Industry collaboration, innovation, international, policy, Research news, Student Engagement jforster

Another busy week in national politics and also in HE policy. The government may be having a slightly quieter time while they elect a new leader but that gives us time for plenty of speculation….

Research Communications

BU is running a Research Communication Day on Thursday 20 June. The morning (from 10:30) will share tips and hints on successful communication through talks from the Editor of The Conversation and a BU academic colleague experienced in research communication. The afternoon provides choice in a series of 50 minute sessions covering everything from broadcast training, developing the impact of your research, sharing research through social media and – saving the best for last – the BU policy team will be there to talk colleagues through how to engage with policy makers from 14:30. See this intranet page to book. Please share with colleagues!

Student Academic Experience Survey

The Higher Education Policy Institute published their annual student academic experience survey with AdvanceHE. The lead press story was about disclosure of mental health concerns to parents:

The Radio 4 Today programme (Thursday) covered this story. Nick Hillman (HEPI) gave his personal view that the decision to share mental health status should be opt out rather than opt in to consent –– because it is more efficient to run a system on opt out where the majority (over 50%) of the student body consents.

Chris Skidmore answered a Parliamentary question: Q – Dr Matthew Offord: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance his Department has published on suicide prevention strategies for universities.

A – Chris Skidmore:

Mental health is a priority for the government, which is why we have worked with Universities UK, the Office for Students, and other stakeholders in the higher education sector to develop guidance on measures to help prevent suicide. This guidance was published in September 2018, ahead of the 2018/19 academic year.
In addition, the government has published the first cross-government suicide prevention plan for wider society. The plan, led by my hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, sets out actions for local government, the NHS, the criminal justice system and the Department for Education in relation to universities. The plan focuses on how social media and the latest technology, such as predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, can identify those at risk of suicide.

There was also a parliamentary question on mental (and physical) ill health research spending.

The key findings of the report include:

41% of students perceive ‘good’ or ‘very good’ value from their course – this is the second consecutive year with a three percentage point improvement; 29% of students perceive ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ value, which is a drop of three percentage points since last year and five percentage points since 2017.
Value-for-money perceptions differ according to the characteristics of students. Those from Scotland have relatively high positive perceptions (63%) while non-EU international students have relatively low positive perceptions (37%). Recent funding changes for students from Wales have not yet had any material impact on perceptions of value for money.
Teaching quality is the main factor for students who perceive positive value (64%) and tuition fees are the main factor for students who perceive poorer value (62%).
Among students who say their experience surpasses their prior expectations, 59% cite the ‘right level of challenge’ as the key factor. Where students report a worse experience than expected, around one-third (35%) blame themselves for not putting in enough effort. This rises to 42% among BME students.
A new question shows most students feel they were ‘very prepared’ (16%) or ‘slightly prepared’ (44%) for university, compared to under one-quarter who were ‘slightly prepared’ (14%) or ‘very unprepared’ (9%).
Two-thirds of students (64%) would choose the same course and same university if they were applying again. Only 4% would opt to ‘do an apprenticeship’ and even fewer would not enter higher education to ‘get a job’ (3%) or not enter higher education to ‘do something else’ (2%).
There have been small changes to average contact hours and workload in recent years. Since 2015, there has been a decline in independent study (15.2 hours a week to 13.8) and an increase in timetabled contact hours (13.4 hours to 13.9 hours).
Given relatively low scores for student satisfaction with feedback in this and other surveys, a new question for 2019 asked how this might be improved. The most popular option, supported by 63% of students, was ‘more detail on why the mark was awarded’.
Students are significantly more anxious than other young people: just 16% of students surveyed report feeling ‘low anxiety’, against 37% for all those aged 20 to 24.
- A new question on disclosing mental health issues to students’ parents or guardians finds high levels of support. Two-thirds (66%) of students support disclosure ‘under extreme circumstances’ and a further 15% support it ‘under any circumstances’.
- The results confirm students want more support from taxpayers for the costs of teaching undergraduates: 22% say Government should pay all the costs and 43% say Government should pay more than half the costs. This is out of line with the recent Review of Post-18 Education and Funding (the Augar report) on England, which says taxpayers should continue to pay half.
- For the first time, students were asked about their views on two-year degrees. While over four-in-ten students were ‘very positive’ (19%) or ‘positive’ (24%), three-in-ten were ‘negative’ (19%) or ‘very negative’ (10%) and the rest were either neutral (24%) or did not know (4%).

Policy recommendations

A notable increase in value-for-money perceptions shows last year’s comparable increase was not just a quirk or a blip. …The most effective ways for higher education institutions to continue improving value-for-money perceptions may be to make faster progress in telling students where their fees go and further improving the quality of teaching and learning….Given the big drop in value-for money perceptions after fees increased in England from 2012, any significant reduction in fees could improve value-for-money perceptions further.
…our results suggest schools, colleges and universities could all do more to help prepare potential students, especially in the context of a growing number of students from non-traditional backgrounds (such as first-in-family students). …The notable contrast between the idea of higher education as a time when you can be true to yourself and the specific groups that feel least well prepared, such as LGB+ students, suggest targeted interventions could also help raise preparedness.
….The big expansion in apprenticeships that many want to see could depend more on finding new learners rather than persuading people who are already on course for a more traditional university experience to change direction – or else, we need to convey the perceived benefits of apprenticeships more persuasively
…the results pose a challenge to the overall idea that levels of preparedness for higher education should always be high in all respects – at least, to the extent that learning gain seems to correlate inversely with preparedness. [this is interesting – it might suggest instead that these courses need to be more stretching?]
The Survey suggests the optimal total student workload – for example, in relation to overall student satisfaction and satisfaction with course and institution – is in the 30–39 hours category. This chimes with the evidence on the best work–life balance for people in the labour market. This level of commitment leaves more time for student activities – such as involvement in clubs and societies, part-time employment and socialising – than is available to those students with the longest working hours (such as those preparing to work in the health sector). Students with the lowest workloads of all, of under 10 hours a week, in contrast face a range of challenges that affect their quality of life and their quality of learning. Regulators may well wish to ask whether any student can secure the full benefits of higher education at such a minimal level.
The Survey provides evidence to help explain the already well-documented BME attainment gap – for instance, there are notable differences by ethnicity in perceptions of teaching quality. It remains controversial in some quarters to suggest curricula, the make-up of academic staff and the provision of support services should reflect the changing demographics of students, but the evidence base for doing this is strong.
The Survey adds to the growing evidence on the relationship between students’ living arrangements and their quality of life. While some students will always choose to live at home for a variety of reasons, any attempt by policymakers to reduce students’ costs by encouraging more students to live at home risks encouraging less good outcomes – unless accompanied by specific, and potentially quite costly, actions to address the challenge.
The Student Academic Experience Survey began in early 2006 as a way of measuring how the academic experience of students changes in response to funding reforms. However, despite the big shifts in funding, most obviously for students from England and Wales, the workload of students has only changed marginally – the most notable shift being the number of timetabled hours moving from being slightly behind the number of independent learning hours to slightly ahead. Advocates and opponents of so-called ‘neo-liberal’ student funding systems may well have over-exaggerated the effect that changes to student funding have on the way students and institutions approach teaching and learning.
For many years, one of the lowest-scoring areas in a number of student surveys, including the official National Student Survey, has been assessment and feedback on academic work. While our Survey shows modest improvements on this issue, the responses to one of the new questions could help drive greater improvements. …
A new question on disclosure of mental health issues to a student’s parents or guardian finds high levels of support, with two-thirds of students supporting disclosure ‘in extreme circumstances’ and a further 15% supporting it ‘in any circumstances’. These results are similar to those provided by university applicants in another survey back in 2017, suggesting that views have not changed much since enrolment. Some higher education staff have, rightly, pointed out the legal and practical difficulties in disclosing mental health issues experienced by their (adult) students to others, although some have recently changed practice in this area. Our results provide support to politicians, the families of students who have taken their own lives and others, such as some university staff, who have sought to encourage debate on current disclosure practices.
A majority of students across all four parts of the UK continue to believe the costs of higher education tuition should be covered entirely or mainly by taxpayers via the government. …
…Nearly twice as many full-time undergraduates say they would feel ‘very positive’ about such accelerated learning if they were applying to university now as say they would be ‘very negative’ about it (19% versus 10%). There are somewhat higher levels of support among students aged over 25, who might particularly appreciate the option of taking less time out of the labour market in order to secure a degree. …

The Minister speaks

Chris Skidmore was at the launch of the HEPI survey and took a very different approach from his predecessors. Unlike Sam Gyimah and Jo Johnson, who arrived with a flock of minders and gave big speeches from the podium, notably in Sam Gyimah’s case attacking the sector for focussing on putting “bums on seats” at the expense of student outcomes, the Minister took part in a fireside chat with Nick Hillman in which he came across pretty well. He was necessarily a bit vague on policy – Augar being a question for the new PM and the spending review – but repeated his message on a 3D threshold (something he was prepared to “die on a hill” over. And he said that the “bums on seats” line should be banned, because no institution was doing that. He also failed to attack the sector on unconditional offers and grade inflation – unlike Nicola Dandridge, who spoke later and claimed credit for the OfS on progress made in the sector on both issues.

He was most animated on Research – in his role as Minister for the 2.4% [investment in R&D], being very clear that he is campaigning ahead of the spending review. And he trailed his speech on Thursday evening, the third of 4, with a focus on working with industry and IP, and commercialisation. Research Professional have reviewed that speech, so we don’t have to.

He talked about investment in research [we’ve included the RP commentary]:

Investing in new technologies is inherently risky. If it weren’t, we could comfortably leave it to the market. But so long as the UK has R&D excellence on which we can build and so long as there is an international business case and we base our decisions firmly in expert advice, we should seek to continue to invest in emerging technologies. This is a fair risk to ask the taxpayer to bear given the enormous economic opportunities on offer.
[This is a bold move, politically. Has anyone asked the mythical taxpayer if they are happy to pile in on this investment? If the Augar review tells us anything, it is that there is not enough public support to justify the expenditure on undergraduate teaching in England. An expensive industrial strategy requires similar levels of public sign-off. That’s why Corbyn’s question about Scunthorpe is important—that’s what most people hear when you use the phrase “industrial strategy”. Just as government and universities did not explain the student finance system enough to the public, there is a big communication job to do over the investment in the industrial strategy.]
…we need to spell out a clear strategy for our future investment. This is crucial for the government’s commitment to spending 2.4 per cent of GDP, both public and private, on R&D by 2027—the OECD average. For we need to not only raise our investment but decide the direction of this investment and what we are aiming for.
[Your periodic reminder of what the 2.4 per cent target really amounts to as a commitment of government spending. Figures released yesterday by the Office for National Statistics show that government spending on R&D as a percentage of GDP barely changed between 2012 and 2017, accounting for 0.59 per cent of GDP by the end of that period.]

The Minister also spoke about the Government’s recently published white paper on Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which sets out plans to transform the UK’s regulatory system, to support innovation while protecting citizens and the environment. This followed concerns raised by industry that overzealous regulation would stifle innovation.

In related news, University Alliance members have been awarded £76m to fund the establishment of 13, new innovative research institutes and centres. Their research will be funded by a grant from the Expanding Excellence in England Fund. This is part of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy aimed at maintaining the UK’s position at the forefront of innovative scientific research.

Student Mobility

UUK published their annual student mobility report – Gone International: rising aspirations. It finds 18,510 respondents to the DLHE survey have undertaken a period abroad during their undergraduate study. This equates to 7.8% of all undergraduates with almost half of all mobility funded through Erasmus+ (49.2%).

Language graduates had the highest mobility rate of 34%, rising to 87% if linguistics students were excluded. The next highest mobility rates were for combined subjects (33%), medicine and dentistry (31%) and veterinary science (17%). Social work, computer science, sport science and nursing students are still least likely to undertake time overseas. English students were less mobile (7.2%) than the other nations.

UUK note an increase in more students from ‘underrepresented demographics’ studying abroad (including students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, black and minority ethnic (BME) students and disabled students). 5.6% of mobile students were from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds (9.6% of advantaged students were mobile). White students (8.3%) were more mobile than Asian (5.5%) or black (5.1%) students. Care leavers participation was 4.5%. Page 4/5 has more statistics on the other disadvantaged categories.

Most mobility was for study (75%), followed by work (22%) and volunteering (4%).

Duration:

64% long-term mobilities of 14 weeks or more
15% of instances were medium term mobilities (5−13 weeks)
21% were short-term mobilities of less than four weeks

50.8% of mobility activities were in Europe, with 18.5% in North America and 12.3% in Asia.

Consistent with findings from previous years the report confirms that graduates who had undertaken time abroad were more likely to be in graduate employment or further study, have a higher average starting salary and less likely to be unemployed than their non-mobile peers. Here are the stats:

Mobile graduates were more likely to obtain first-class honours or an upper second-class degree (91.6%) than non-mobile graduates (80%).
Six months after graduating only 3.1% of mobile graduates were unemployed, compared to 4.2% of non-mobile graduates.
Mobile graduates who were working in full-time, paid employment had an average salary of £23,482, compared to an average salary of £22,256 for non-graduates (a difference of 5.5%) six months after graduating.
Of all working, mobile graduates in the 2016−17 cohort, 78.3% secured a ‘graduate-level’ job within six months of graduating, compared to 73.2% of non-mobile graduates

You can explore more of the detail in the report here.

Research

Research England has published a delivery plan outlining how it will fund and support universities to deliver world-leading research and knowledge exchange. It sets out the research and knowledge exchange priorities and describes how Research England will work in partnership with other organisations such as the Office for Students. It’s one of 10 delivery plans published this week by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), outlining how UKRI will work with its partners to ensure that world-leading research and innovation continues to flourish in the UK. The 2019-20 plans highlight the areas of focus and key activities of UKRI’s nine constituent councils and its cross-cutting themes. The plans also detail UKRI’s approach to delivering the government’s target of 2.4% GDP spend on research and innovation by 2027.

Research England Executive Chair, David Sweeney, said: I’m delighted to set out in full, for the first time, the wide range of activity that Research England delivers as part of UK Research & Innovation, and our plans for the near future. The partnership between universities and UKRI is at the heart of the UK’s research and innovation success. Our Delivery Plan describes how Research England will have a key role, along with the other three devolved administration funding bodies, in supporting and building that partnership.

UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive, Professor Sir Mark Walport, said: The delivery plans announced today are the blueprints for UKRI’s ambition to deliver the future of research and innovation. They outline how we will address the major global and societal challenges of our time, catalyse collaboration and contribute to meeting the government’s ambitious 2.4% target. UKRI has had a strong first year – the Future Leaders Fellowships programme, the Strength in Places Fund and the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund are all examples of the difference we can make working together as one organisation.

Student Loans

The Student Loans Company have published stats on student loans in England. Key Findings:

The amount lent to HE borrowers increased by 8.4% to reach £16.2 billion in financial year 2018-19. The amount lent to FE borrowers decreased by 5.7% to reach £209.5m in financial year 2018-19.
Net repayments posted to customer accounts within HE increased by 8.0% to reach £2.5 billion in the financial year 2018-19.
The balance outstanding for HE loans increased by 16.6% to reach £121.8 billion at the end of the financial year 2018-19.
The average loan balance for HE borrowers in the 2019 repayment cohort on entry to repayment was £35,950.
The total number of borrowers still owing Higher Education loans increased by 6.0% reaching 5.3 million at the end of April 2019 compared to 5.0 million at the end of April 2018.

There was a parliamentary question on tuition fees (in light of Augar report) this week – the expected answer was given.

Q – Faisal Rashid: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if the Government will bring forward plans to reduce university tuition fees to £7,500.

A – Chris Skidmore: The independent panel’s report to government forms an important step in the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding. The government will consider the panel’s recommendations carefully and will conclude the review at the Spending Review. The government has not yet taken decisions with regards to the recommendations put forward.

Hate Crime and Sexual Harassment

Advance HE have evaluated the £4.7 million Catalyst funding which supported 119 projects (71 HEIs including BU) to tackle hate crime and sexual violence on campus. The OfS also published a news story publicising the evaluation and highlighted the following positive outcomes:

an increase in the reporting of incidents and evidence of a reduction in tolerance of hate crime
the positive impact of hiring specialist staff to support students facing harassment or violence
greater evidence of partnership working – with both students and external organisations – to tackle these issues.

Jim Dickinson blogged for Wonkhe to explore how concern for an institution’s reputation and other hindrances can stall initiatives to tackle hate crime, sexual misconduct and harassment.

Consultations and Inquiries

Click here to view the updated inquiries and consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

Equality and Diversity student data

The OfS published equality and diversity data on 1^st June. Findings include:

The proportion of full-time students aged 21 to 25 entering postgraduate study has been increasing (63.2 per cent in 2010-11 to 68.8 per cent in 2017-18), while those aged 26 to 40 have been decreasing.
Reporting of mental health conditions has seen a bigger increase than reporting of any other type of disability. The proportion of undergraduate entrants reporting a mental health condition has increased from 0.6 per cent in 2010-11 to 3.1 per cent in 2017-18.
During the last seven years, black students had the biggest increase in postgraduate entrance, rising from 5.7 per cent of postgraduate entrants in 2010-11 to 8.3 per cent in 2017-18.
Undergraduate entrants to STEM subjects (biological and sport sciences, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, engineering and technology, and computing) continue to be more commonly male than female. This is especially the case for engineering and technology (85.4 percent of students in 2017-18 were male) and computing (85.3 per cent).
In 2016-17 and 2017-18, less than 1 per cent of undergraduate entrants had a gender different from assigned at birth
The proportion of undergraduate entrants who have a parent with a higher education qualification is slowly increasing (41.9 per cent in 2015-16, 43 per cent in 2017-18). (0.9 per cent and 0.8 per cent, respectively).
In the academic year 2017-18, for undergraduate entrants, the most common religion or belief response was no religion (44.5 per cent) followed by Christianity (29.1 per cent). Information refused was the third most common response (10.4 per cent) followed by Muslim (9.3 per cent).
The proportion of students identifying as bisexual, gay man or gay woman/lesbian has been increasing slowly and in 2017-18, 5.4 per cent of undergraduate entrants identified as one of these sexual orientations.

Other news

Immigration: Last week we briefly mentioned Sajid Javid wants restrictions on international students’ visas lifted to enable them to work in the UK for two years post-graduation. Here is the Financial Times article if you would like to read more on this.

Senior staff pay restraint: Chris Skidmore answers a parliamentary question on VC pay restraint this week – and gives similar answers to his predecessor Universities Minister colleagues.

Carers Innovation Fund: the Government launched the Carers Innovation Fund competition which aims to support accessible, carer-friendly communities and public services and provides evidence on effective interventions to support carers. The Government is looking for creative and innovative models that look beyond statutory services to ensure that carers are:

better recognised and connected
better able to juggle working and caring
better able to look after their own health and wellbeing

Proofreading: The Times explore how paid for proofreading services are likely to blur boundaries into contract cheating by providing a similar service to essay mills. Of course the reader comments on the article are as entertaining as the text itself.

Environment: Greg Clark spoke about his proposed legislation which aims to reduce Britain’s contribution to global warming. The statutory instrument aims to amend the Climate Change Act 2008 with a legally binding net zero emission target by 2050. (The Committee on Climate Change have confirmed the target is feasible and deliverable). Greg also confirmed the Government would lead a Treasury review into the costs of decarbonisation. The Minister went on to call for international action from global partners and said that whilst the UK “retain the ability in the Act to use international carbon credits that contribute to actions in other countries” the Government want them to take their own actions and do not intend to use those credits. Many members across the House echoed the sentiments of welcoming the legislation wholly but pushed the government to do more to ensure targets were met across all areas. Greg Clark was pushed to ban onshore wind, however, he said this strategy was off limits and it allowed the UK to become a world leader in this area.

Local: Local MP Simon Hoare was elected as the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

Social mobility: Justine Greening attacked the Treasury this week stating system change is needed to achieve social mobility outcomes. After eight years in government, overwhelmingly as a Cabinet Minister and running three different Departments, my conclusion is that we effectively need to abolish the Treasury in its current form. What we have right now is dysfunctional and not fit for purpose. It does not achieve the transformation in opportunity and social mobility that Britain needs. Greening went on to state the budget statement held up “the best ideas” so that the Chancellor could personally announce them through the Budget. She described the spending review as ‘dysfunctional’ and isn’t a fan of Augar which she said: “managed to waste well over a year coming up with obvious conclusions about additional funding for further education, but no doubt the Treasury is delighted that it can kick the issue into the long grass for another 12 to 18 months.” She spoke passionately about different ways the Treasury has failed on policy ideas, before suggesting “breaking up the Treasury, perhaps splitting it into a Ministry of Finance and an Economics Ministry, while merging the former with some elements of the Cabinet Office and having it report properly to the Prime Minister, so that it genuinely delivers a Prime Minister’s strategy for our country.”

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

June 15, 2019

Key role of volunteers in the health system

BU research, Featured academics, international, open access, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

This week saw the publication of ‘Perceived barriers to accessing Female Community Health Volunteers’ (FCHV) services among ethnic minority women in Nepal: A qualitative study’ [1]. This article in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE highlights the key role volunteers play in delivering health services to minorities/the poorest people, especially in low-income countries like Nepal.

This paper studies community health workers in Nepal, who are known as Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs). To address this issue, we conducted a qualitative study to explore perceived barriers to accessing maternal and child healthcare services among ethnic minority groups in two different parts of Nepal with varying degrees of access to local healthcare centres. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty FCHVs, 26 women service users and 11 paid local health workers. In addition, 15 FCHVs participated in four focus group discussions.

A thematic analysis of the data identified five major themes underlying barriers to accessing available maternal and child healthcare services by ethnic minority groups. These themes include: a) lack of knowledge among service users; b) lack of trust in volunteers; c) traditional beliefs and healthcare practices; d) low decision-making power of women; and e) perceived indignities experienced when using health centres. The paper concluded that community health programmes should focus on increasing awareness of healthcare services among ethnic minority groups, and the programmes should involve family members (husband and mothers-in-law) and traditional health practitioners. Both the FCHVs and local healthcare providers should be trained to communicate effectively in order to deliver respectful care among ethnic minorities if we want to achieve universal healthcare coverage for maternal and child health in low- and -middle income countries.

The paper is based on the PhD research conducted by Dr. Sarita Panday in ScHARR at the University of Sheffield. Dr. Panday is currently affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Centre (APARC) at Stanford University in the USA. Her co-authors are Prof. Paul Bissell at the University of Huddersfield, FHSS’s Visiting Prof. Padam Simkhada at the Liverpool John Moores University and BU Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. This is the second paper from Dr. Panday’s excellent thesis, the first paper was also published in an Open Access journal BMC Health Services Research [2].

References:

Panday S, Bissell P, van Teijlingen E, Simkhada P (2019) Perceived barriers to accessing Female Community Health Volunteers’ (FCHV) services among ethnic minority women in Nepal: A qualitative study. PLoS ONE 14(6): e0217070.
Panday S, Bissell P, van Teijlingen E, Simkhada P (2017) The contribution of female community health volunteers (FCHVs) to maternity care in Nepal: a qualitative study. BMC Health Services Research 17(1):623.

June 11, 2019

Dr. Jaeyeon Choe publishing Special Issue- “Geographies of religion and spirituality”

BRIAN, BU research, conferences, Fusion, Global engagement, Impact, international, Knowledge Exchange jchoe

Dr. Jaeyeon Choe in Faculty of Management organised a panel session, ‘Geographies of religion and spirituality: pilgrimage beyond the ‘officially’ sacred’ at Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference in 2016 (https://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2016/09/04/geographies-of-religion-and-spirituality-at-royal-geographical-society-conference-london-2016/). Emerging from the panel papers, she successfully organised a special issue addressing the topic from cross-disciplinary perspectives in the Journal – “Tourism Geographies” https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rtxg20/current

Dr. Jaeyeon Choe with Dr. Michael Di Giovine (Associate Professor of Anthropology, West Chester University, USA) published an introduction paper as a part of the special issue:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616688.2019.1625072?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=rtxg20

The papers in this special issue, Geographies of Religion and Spirituality: Pilgrimage beyond the ‘Officially Sacred,’ are placed in the context of a comprehensive theoretical overview of the role that the sacred plays in shaping, conducting, controlling, and contesting pilgrimage. As scholarship examining the lived experiences of travelers has demonstrated, pilgrimages need not necessarily be religious in nature, nor be officially sanctioned. Rather, if pilgrimages are perceived as ‘hyper-meaningful’ by the practitioner, the authors in this special issue argue that a common denominator of all of these journeys is the perception of sacredness—a quality that is opposed to profane, everyday life. Separating the social category of ‘religion’ from the ‘sacred,’ these articles employ an interdisciplinary approach to theorize sacredness, its variability, and the ways in which it is officially recognized or condemned. Thus, the authors pay particular attention to the authorizing processes that religious and temporal power centers employ to either promote, co-opt, or stave off, such popular manifestations of devotion, focusing on three ways: through tradition, text or institutionalized norms. Referencing examples from across the globe, and linking them to the varied contributions in this special issue, this introduction complexifies the ways in which pilgrims, central authorities, locals and other stakeholders on the ground appropriate, negotiate, shape, contest, or circumvent the powerful forces of the sacred. Delving ‘beyond the officially sacred,’ this collective examination of pilgrimages, both well-established and new; religious and secular; authorized and not; the contributions to this special issue, as well as this Introduction, examines the interplay of a transcendent sacred for pilgrims and tourists so as to provide a blueprint for how work in the geography of religion and the fields of pilgrimage and religious tourism may move forward.

We hope all scholars enjoy the 8 papers, from 12 authors and 8 countries!

June 11, 2019

Newton Fund Institutional Links

Funding opportunities, Global engagement, international, Research news Eva Papadopoulou

Institutional Links provides grants for the development of research and innovation collaborations between the UK and partner countries. The British Council runs Institutional Links in partnership with research and higher education institutions globally.

We also deliver Institutional Links under the Newton Fund. Under the Newton Fund, Institutional Links grants facilitate research that tackles local development challenges such as extreme weather conditions, access to affordable health care, food and energy security.

These grants are funded under the Newton Fund, a UK Government initiative funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), together with partner funders from around the world. The Fund aims to promote the economic development and welfare of either the partner countries or, through working with the partner country, to address the problems of low-income and vulnerable populations.

Priority areas: Partner countries may specify priority areas and will only accept applications within these. Priority areas are listed in the guidelines document.
ODA requirement: All applications must meet the required relevance to economic development or social welfare.

Partner Countries

Brazil
Egypt
Indonesia
Thailand

Coming Soon

Colombia
Mexico
Philippines
Turkey

Eligibility Criteria

Leading or Established Researchers can apply to be Principal Applicants (as defined by the EC – download information here ).
Each proposal must have one Principal Applicant from the UK, as well as a Principal Applicant from the partner countries listed above.
Please download and view the list of eligible UK research institutions .

Other eligibility criteria apply – please see the applicant guidelines document.

Deadline

9 August 2019, 16:00 UK time

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact Alexandra Pekalski (apekalski@bournemouth.ac.uk)

June 11, 2019

Public Health, Mental Health and Mass Atrocity Prevention

BU research, international, Knowledge Exchange mklinkner

On 9^th – 10^th June, Dr Ellie Smith attended the “Public Health, Mental Health and Mass Atrocity Prevention” workshop. The event was held in New York, and was co-hosted by the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights and the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.

The aim of the workshop was to bring together a group of practitioners and academics with particular experience of working with conflict and trauma within the fields of psychology, psychiatry, public health and law, in order to explore the role of public and mental health strategies and approaches in mass atrocity prevention. The event was designed to encourage the exchange of ideas between intellectual fields and to begin to build a body of knowledge on the subject, intended to culminate in an edited volume. Dr Smith was presenting her work on the concept of “Justice” as viewed from the perspective of atrocity survivors, and in particular, the psychological notion of a “sense of justice”, including its constituent elements.

She is currently engaged as a Researcher with Bournemouth University on the AHRC-funded project “Mass Grave Protection for Truth and Justice”, led by Dr Melanie Klinkner @GraveProtection

June 7, 2019

BU collaboration with Symbiosis India on GCRF project

BU research, Featured, Fusion, Global engagement, international, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, Public engagement, Uncategorized sshanker

On behalf of Bournemouth University Dr Shanti Shanker and Prof Edwin van Teijlingen signed a research collaboration with Dr Anita Patankar of Symbiosis School of Liberal College (SSLC) in India. This collaboration is part of a Research England GCRF-funded project. Our collaborators in rural Ratnagiri District (Maharashtra) include Dr Shrutika Kotkunde, Dr Sachin Yadav and Dr and Mrs Reelkar to name a few.

Sheetal Astitva (meaning Calm Identity) is the name of our project which aims to understand the maternal health and state of neuropsychological rehabilitation in rural India.

Through Sheetal Astitva we will be developing a model of lay counsellors (LC) with focus to improve: a) Maternal mental wellbeing; and b) Neuropsychological rehabilitation and integrating a collaborative step care (CSC) intervention. The training will be adapted on empirical evidence and methods developed for India by Sangath (Shine et al., 2013).

One of intermediate outcomes of the project is to co-create a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in India with the partners to be ensure longer-term sustainability. Sheetal Asthitva will be working in India to improve maternal wellbeing and integrate neuro-rehabilitation in the community to enhance the quality of life and mental health.

If you are interested to know the updates, follow us on twitter: @AstitvaSheetal

We welcome Dr Gayatri Kotbagi as local collaborator, who will soon be joining BU as a post-doctoral research fellow on this project!

June 7, 2019

HE Policy Update for the w/e 7th June 2019

EU, humanities, international, policy, Student Engagement jforster

Is it only just over a week since Augar landed? Given the volume of commentary, it feels much longer. We are quite good as a sector at criticism and finding the potential problems and risks in things. As a HEPI blog says: “Last week’s Augar report divided opinion. At HEPI, we were at the more positive end of the spectrum, not least because the report addressed, in a serious way, pretty much all the points we had said it should. We were, and remain, determined not to fall down the biggest rabbit hole that has to be avoided when commenting sensibly on public policy: being unceasingly negative and refusing to recognise serious attempts to address genuine problems.”

Last week we stuck to the facts looking at the full set of recommendations and the content of the report, this week we look more at opinions in a report that may well not be implemented in full, but is unlikely to disappear completely.

One thing that everyone can agree on is that the implications of Augar are ominous for the Arts and Humanities – the (historian) Minister for Universities gave a speech on Thursday which we discuss below, with some reflections on what Augar could mean for Arts and Humanities subjects in universities. This update was getting so big, we have written about that in a separate blog here.

Augar – what next?

On Tuesday the Secretary of State of Education, Damien Hinds, made a statement on the Government’s review of post-18 education and its funding – the first review since the Robbins report in 1963 to look at the totality of post-18 education. Hinds said the Government will carefully consider the independent panel’s recommendations before finalising any spending review announcements.

A lot of the attention will be on what this report says about higher education, but the majority of students in post-18 education are not at university. The report identifies the importance of both further and higher education in creating a system that unlocks everyone’s talents. As the Prime Minister said last week, further education and technical colleges are not just places of learning; they are vital engines of both social mobility and economic prosperity. Colleges play an essential part in delivering the modern industrial strategy and equipping young people with knowledge and skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow. We are conscious of the need for reskilling and upskilling at a time when we are all more likely to have multiple careers during our working lives.
…Our higher education system transforms lives and is a great contributor to both our industrial success and the cultural life of the nation. It can open up a whole world of opportunities and broaden horizons. Whatever decisions we make about how best to take forward the recommendations in the report, it is vital that we support these institutions to continue to offer world-leading higher education to students in future.

Hinds went on to highlight the general importance of education to society, listing current government policy geared toward improving education. He said that is it right that contributions to the cost of higher education are shared between the taxpayer and the student. The Minister added that although 18-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds are now 52 per cent more likely to go to university than 10 years ago, progress is still required in levelling the playing field in higher education.

In keeping with the continued pressure for Government to improve social mobility Hinds said: The panel’s proposals on support for disadvantaged groups are an important contribution to the debate in this area. I very much welcome the focus that the panel has placed on making sure that all higher education is of high quality and delivers well for both students and the taxpayer. There are very high-quality courses across the full range of subjects—from creative arts to medicine—but there are also courses where students are less well served. I have also spoken in recent months of bad practices not in the student interest, such as artificial grade inflation and so-called conditional unconditional offers.

On implementation: The panel’s recommendations on student finance are detailed and interrelated, and cannot be considered each in isolation. We will need to look carefully at each recommendation in turn and in the round to reach a view on what will best support students and the institutions they study at, and what will ensure value for taxpayers. In considering these recommendations, we will also have regard to students currently in the system or about to enter it to ensure that any changes are fair to current and new cohorts of students. I am sure the House will recognise that this comprehensive report, with detailed analysis and no fewer than 53 recommendations, gives the Government a lot to consider. We will continue to engage with stakeholders on the findings and recommendations in the panel report, and we will conclude the review at the spending review.

The shadow secretary of state for education, Angela Rayner, responded, arguing the Conservatives have previously made terrible decisions regarding education. She intimated her belief that any adoption of recommendations will be deferred until the spending review, or the appointment of a new chancellor.

“Augar is the epitaph for Theresa May’s government…slow, wrong-headed, indecisive and, above all, failing in its central objective, to help level up Britain. As it stands, the Government have now wasted two years on a review to reach the blindingly obvious conclusion that, as the Prime Minister now admits, abolishing maintenance grants was a huge mistake.
Decisions need to be made on funding. The outgoing Prime Minister promised that austerity is over, but there is every danger it will continue in tertiary education. Presumably, the Secretary of State accepts that a cash freeze in funding for universities means a real-terms cut. Is the tokenistic fee cut pushed by the Prime Minister not the worst of both worlds, as institutions will have their hands tied on funding while students will still be graduating with tens of thousands of pounds of debt?”

She pushed the Secretary of State to assure the House that maintenance grants will be restored and that the cash-freeze for university’s will not have an equality impact burden – and that an assessment of this would be produced. She concluded that any shortcomings in the Augar review are a product of the limitations the Government has set on them.

The Secretary of State responded:

The hon. Lady asked me to commit to not playing off further education and higher education. I give her that absolute commitment. That principle is at the heart of the independent panel’s report: both routes of higher learning are essential for widening social mobility, for letting young people fulfil their full potential, and indeed for enabling our economy and our society to fulfil theirs.
We should not lose sight of the fact that we have a successful system in place, particularly for the financing of higher education. The hon. Lady and her Front-Bench colleagues constantly complain about it, but since the 2012 reforms, resource per student has increased dramatically, the living costs support available to disadvantaged students has risen to its highest ever level, more young people are going to university than ever before, and more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to university than ever before.

The Chair of the Select Committee on Education, Robert Halfon, raised the necessity of degree apprenticeships to ensure individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds gain the necessary skills to gain skilled employment. I welcome much of the report, particularly its strong emphasis on further education and technical education. Our Education Committee report talked about value for money in higher education and universities, focusing on skills, employability and social justice. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that the real engine of those three things is using funds to boost and put more emphasis on degree apprenticeships? They help people from disadvantaged backgrounds to gain the skills they need, they help us to meet our skills needs and they ensure that people are employed in properly skilled jobs.

Jo Johnson: The Augar review does not mention the teaching excellence framework. What use does the Secretary of State think the TEF will have in assessing which courses offer value for money for students and the general taxpayer? [Readers will remember that differential fees based on TEF outcome were thrown out of the HERA by the Lords.]. Hinds: The TEF is a very important reform and is part of the framework from HERA—the Higher Education and Research Act 2017—and the OFS that enables a much more holistic view of quality in higher education. It remains a central part of that architecture.

Carol Monaghan, the SNP Spokesperson for Education questioned whether the Government will make up any funding shortfall associated with a reduction in fees. Hinds responded that education equality in England is better than that of Scotland and all recommendations will be considered carefully.

Several non-Conservative MPs echoed Rayner’s arguments, questioning when grants would be reinstated or whether the Government will fund the shortfall in funding for disadvantaged students.

Thangham Debbonaire (Lab, Bristol West) raised a necessity for free or low-cost high-quality childcare to ensure more women can develop their potential within further education to ultimately close the gender pay gap. Hinds side stepped a direct response.

Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods: “…we want to hear a guarantee from the Minister that those resources will not come from higher education. We also want a guarantee that if tuition fees are reduced, any shortfall of money going to universities will be made up by teaching grant from the Government not just for science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, but for arts and humanities subjects, because they are also very important for our economy. If these proposals will eventually see their way into legislation—it is not clear to any of us how that would happen—is the Minister going to consult the sector widely so that he does not destabilise it further? We need those guarantees so that universities have certainty if they are to compete globally.”

Hinds: “The hon. Lady will shortly meet the universities Minister in her all-party group on universities and will have an opportunity to discuss some of these things further. She mentioned teaching grants. The Augar report recommends precisely that—that there should be top-ups, although not exactly the same for all subjects. Few people realise the extent of the teaching grant. It is £1.3 billion, with some 40%—two in five—of courses attracting some sort of teaching grant. What the report talks about is how we balance that correctly properly to reflect not only value but cost to serve, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien).” [So no guarantee then, despite his earlier commitment to “not playing off further education and higher education”.

Later in response to questions he also says: We must not allow different parts of our education system to be pitted against each other, and I can give him an absolute commitment not to do so. In fact, as he will know through his work, there is already a great deal of cross-over between what higher education institutions do and what further education institutions do, but they are both incredibly important parts of the overall system.

Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op): As I learned from the 10 years I chaired the Select Committee, we make most progress in higher education when we find a cross-party consensus, as anyone who looks at the Robbins report or subsequent reports, such as the Dearing report, will know. There is some good stuff in this report. ….let us build a cross-party consensus. I love the part about a new fund for lifelong learning. Tony Blair introduced one in 1997. It failed, but everybody knew we should bring it back to secure the future of further and higher education. So I say well done in part, but if the Secretary of State could keep a higher education Minister for more than a few months we would do a lot better.

Hinds: The hon. Gentleman was right about more than one thing—let us say several. He spoke of the local importance of universities not only to the cultural life of our towns and cities but to, for instance, local economies, business development, innovation, and research and development. He was absolutely right about that, but he was also right to speak of the importance of securing a degree of consensus about these matters. The last two major reports, the Browne and Dearing reports, straddled a change of Government. I hope that that will not happen on this occasion, but I think it right for us to have an opportunity, between now and the conclusion of the spending review, to engage in a good discussion with, among others, representatives of the sector and politicians on both sides of the House and elsewhere, because I think that such discussions help policy making to evolve.

Augar was mentioned in Wed’s Prime Minister’s Questions – Richard Graham (Conservative) made the case that the Government’s review into post-18 education should be “essential reading” for Treasury ministers before the Spending Review. He said that more funding for further education would be “very welcome”. Lidington concurred that further education plays a vital role in equipping young people with skills, but also providing a path towards higher education. He added that the Augar Review “provides a blueprint of how we can make sure that everybody can follow the path that is right for them” and its conclusions should be studied carefully before the Spending Review.

Augar – the critique

Wonkhe have centralised all their analysis and blogs on the Post-18 review and Augar – find it all here. Including this ‘lessons learned’ blog from crossbench peer Professor Dame Julie King (who was part of the previous Browne review) and says Augar is ‘damaging’ and that it does not propose fundamental transformation.

One concern has been the impact on social mobility. The Sutton Trust response is here:

The Augar Review’s headline proposal to reduce tuition fees to £7,500, alongside the reintroduction of maintenance grants, means that the overall student “debt” figure looks a little less eye watering. But the review also proposes lowering the repayment threshold from £25,000 to £23,000 (based on 2018 figures) and to extend the lifetime repayment period to 40 years from the current 30 years, all at interest rates which at present are around 6 percent. This means that lower and middle earners (like teachers and social workers) will end up paying more than they did before and for longer – and the wealthiest, who can fall back on support from parent or grandparents, can pay the fees upfront, or over a shorter period, and thus contribute far less overall.
This is why the Sutton Trust has always argued for means tested fees – so the poorest student are asked to pay less than the wealthiest- and we are disappointed that the Post-18 Review did not adopt this as a policy. It seems to us fundamentally unfair that, whatever the repayment mechanism, the son or daughter of a cleaner is asked to pay the same as the son or daughter of a stock broker.

Lizzy Woodfield, Policy Advisor at Aston University, wrote for Wonkhe on WP: “Government should undoubtedly run with reintroducing maintenance grants, but not so hastily that it overlooks commuter students. The continued freeze in per student funding risks further squeezing universities’ ability to maintain high quality student services, like careers and placements and additional learning support, which support retention, success and good graduate outcomes. Doing away with foundation years would be very ill-advised and would set widening participation back.”

In an article for Wonkhe on 4^th June 2019 , David Willets, the former Minister for Universities and Science, points out:

“The period covered by the LEO data is the ten years since the financial crash. Our research at Resolution Foundation has shown that this post-crash decade has been particularly bad for salaries, and even more so for the pay of young people. The real hourly pay of young people aged 18-29 fell by 9% in the four years after the crash – an unprecedented fall followed by a modest recovery. Unemployment was less bad than in previous recessions but – again – one group which did suffer increased unemployment was young people with lowest educational qualifications. Their unemployment rate increased from 68% to 56% after the crash whereas for graduates it only fell from 91% to 88%. It looks as if graduates traded down to less well-paid jobs, displacing the less qualified.
The LEO data excludes unemployed people so the only effect they show is on pay. You would not get any sense from the review that the British economy has just been through its deepest post-war recession – with big effects covering exactly the same period as the LEO data. By contrast that same decade did not see a significant increase in the number of graduates – indeed the rate of increase of people with higher education qualifications slowed down. So it is dangerous to interpret LEO data as telling us much about higher education when it may be telling us more about the post crash labour market.”

There is also a geographical effect. This has been raised by many in the sector before and I understand that there is some work looking at this in the context of the TEF (which is using median earnings as supplemental data in the subject level TEF pilot). The Office for National Statistics latest report on geographic mobility and young people (2012-2016) shows the change in average earnings growth for young people by local authority (see Figure 6). We wrote about some of these issues in our policy update on 6^th July 2018

Augar – what does it mean for the Arts and Humanities

In an interesting choice of headlines, the headline on gov.uk is “Science Minister hails the importance of humanities to society”. Of course his full title is Minister of State for Universities, Science and Innovation (and currently also Interim Minister of Stage for Energy and Clean Growth. Like his predecessor , Chris Skidmore has also taken several titles upon himself – Sam Gyimah was famously “minister for students” and Chris Skidmore has called himself “minster for the 2.4% [investment in R&D]” and “minister for EdTEch”. But most importantly, he adopted the title “Minister for the Arts and Humanities”. So what did this former academic and historian say on this vital topic at the meeting of the Arts and Humanities Research Council? The full speech is here.

So with all that in mind, we took a look at the implications of Augar for the Arts and Humanities. One narrative around the Augar Review is that it has embraced, and even validated the popular narrative about “mickey mouse degrees” and universities filling low cost, high volume courses, putting “bums on seats” to subsidise other activities, doing a disservice to “overqualified graduates” who are “saddled with debt” that they can never repay. This shocking state of affairs means that the government subsidy to higher education, in the form of direct funding and underwriting for the student loan system, in which 83% of students will not repay their loans in full, is misdirected and therefore the taxpayer is receiving poor value for money. And, the argument goes, it is not only the taxpayer who is being ripped off, but students are too. They are being tricked into taking courses that will not lead to better paid jobs but will instead leave them with student loans that will hold them back even further. These are the students who should be doing technical training, apprenticeships. They should be plumbers and bricklayers. They have been told that they will achieve social mobility through education, and it isn’t true. These narratives were not born with the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding in February 2018. They became sharper once the tuition fee cap was increased to £9000 and were heightened when Labour adopted a policy of abolishing fees. Jo Johnson raised them when launching the Green Paper in November 2015 that led to the Teaching Excellence Framework and the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. In just one example, many of the arguments were rehearsed by Jo Johnson as Universities Minister in a speech in February 2017. It all boils down to value for money.

But there is a terrific confusion here, as highlighted by the Minister earlier on. The talk in Augar is all about value for money subject level. But when people (including previous Universities Ministers (both Sam Gyimah and Jo Johnson) and the current Education Minister) talk about this, they talk not about the value of whole subjects, but of individual courses at individual universities. And so they talk about quality. But they don’t really mean quality either, because they talk about entry tariffs and outcomes and start talking about bums on seats. Which is the big give away. What they really mean is that they believe that there are too many students going to universities to do courses which are not aligned with the government’s priorities. This is about the government wanting to choose not to invest in subjects that they believe do not add value to the economy. Which is why Augar, which is all about money, has kept in the threat of a 3D threshold and/or a cap on student numbers (for some courses at some universities).

You can read more in our separate blog on this here.

Student Mental Health

The OfS have published details of the 10 winners of their Challenge Competition (investing £14.5 million) which aimed to achieve a step change in mental health outcomes for students.

The OfS new story says:

The proportion of full-time UK undergraduate students reporting mental health concerns when they enter higher education has more than doubled over the last five years.
Over 87% of students said they struggle with feelings of anxiety, and 1 in 3 experienced a serious psychological issue which required professional help.
OfS data shows that full-time students with a declared mental health condition are more likely to drop out, and less likely to achieve a first or 2:1 degree or secure good jobs after graduation.

This week they have released a news story focussing on Northumbria University which aims to reduce student suicide through utilising analytics and mining data (such as social media). Of course the scheme has to be data compliant and students have to opt in. Northumbria state that only 1 in 3 suicide deaths are known to mental health services. In response the researchers have developed an Early Alert Tool identifying students in crisis to sport early warning signs and to target intervention. (A little more information on the data triggers is here.) Northumbria’s project has been picked up by the Telegraph.

Projects in other Universities cover:

Transition from school to university – addressing the first year additional vulnerability something mentioned by the Minister in his recent speeches]
Mental health needs specific to international students [another thing mentioned by the Minister recently]
Advancing HE / NHS partnership working to improve support
Embedding mental health within a community approach, holistically incorporating police, local authorities and the NHS.
Developing a module for the PGCertHE to ensure that new academics, nationally, have the knowledge and skills to support mental health and learning through their teaching.
Creation of a ‘hub’ of qualified therapists and volunteers with mental health experience who will provide brief therapeutic interventions for students in comfortable, open-plan safe-spaces without the need for appointments or waiting lists.
Curriculum-based ‘mind management’ skills training (separate UG and PG courses) which use evidence-based approaches for improving emotion regulation and for managing common issues in student life (e.g. anxiety, stress, social isolation, managing expectations, imposter syndrome).

Nicola Dandridge, OfS Chief Exec, said:

Whenever I talk to students, improving mental health support is consistently raised as a priority. Universities and colleges are responding to the problem, but in too many cases students are having their experience of higher education blighted by mental ill-health. For many of these students, there is much more that we can do. Taking preventative action to promote good mental health is critical, as is taking a whole institution approach and involving students in developing solutions. In addition, the earlier we can identify issues developing, the more effectively we can give the vital support that is needed.
We know that many complex factors impact on students’ mental health and wellbeing, so addressing mental ill health is always going to be challenging. But universities and colleges are uniquely placed to rise to that challenge: through the expertise of their staff, insights from their own students, and their ability to bring groups and other organisations together to tackle complex problems in partnership.

The Independent covers the launch of the projects.

Tory leadership contest

From Dods:

Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow has dismissed the idea that Parliament could be prorogued in order to force through a no-deal Brexit. The idea that Parliament could be dissolved by a new Prime Minister, so that MPs could not take any legislative steps to block no-deal, was touted by ERG members and gained attention when leadership contender Dominic Raab repeatedly refused to rule out pursuing it. The Speaker yesterday, however, told MPs that it was “simply not going to happen.”
10 have confirmed that the Commons will be sitting when the new Prime Minister is appointed at the end of July, amid concerns that Parliament could have entered summer recess before this happens which would mean that the new PM could avoid a potential no confidence vote.
Theresa May will resign as Conservative Party leader today, but will remain on as Prime Minister until her successor is appointed in late July.
Boris Johnson will launch a judicial review today to challenge the private prosecution against him for the alleged offence of misconduct in public office.

Sarah enjoyed this Spectator article on the Tory leadership contest.

Parties don’t get rid of their leaders unless things are going very badly. But this Tory crisis is different in scale and size to anything we have seen in recent decades. The question is not whether the Tories can win the next election, but whether they can survive.
The dire state that the Tories are in hasn’t put anyone off running to be leader, however. We suddenly have the most crowded field we have ever seen in a leadership race. Whoever wins will become prime minister without having to go through a general election. It’s quite a prize. Given the unpredictability of Tory contests and the frontrunners’ ability to destroy each other, everyone thinks they have a chance.

It divides the candidates into two categories: the ‘full-blooded Brexiteer’ and ‘compromising cabinet members’. Then it explains the four challenges the Conservative leadership will need to deliver on:

The Tory party is attempting to answer four different questions in this contest.

The first is who can best get Britain out of the EU. This will require not just an ability to find a way to extract concessions from a recalcitrant EU, but also an understanding of how to get Britain’s departure through parliament.
Secondly, the Tories are trying to work out who is best placed to take on Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage. Given the parliamentary numbers, the next election is likely to come sooner than 2022 and so the Tories need someone who can fight on two fronts simultaneously.
The next question is who can come up with a new domestic agenda. The failure of Theresa May’s attempt to reinvent the Tories as a Christian Democrat party has resulted in a vacuum where Tory domestic policy should be.
Finally, the Tories must ask themselves who could best do the job of being prime minister.

The problem for the party is no one candidate is the best answer to all four questions. The Tories will have to make trade-offs to decide which qualities they regard as the most important.

Apart from their views on Brexit, the candidates are trying to differentiate themselves on other policies too. We pick out a few of both here but of course there is much more. Two dropped out this week – James Cleverly and Kit Malthouse. Nominations (which now require 8 MPs rather than 2) open and close on Monday. The BBC list is here. The Express have their take here Politics.co.uk have a detailed analysis of their policies on Brexit. And the (Boris Johnson banking) Guido Fawkes shows the state of support amongst Tory MPs .

Matt Hancock has pledged to re-implement a form of student nurse bursary if he succeeds as PM. Huff post reports: he said that he would offer new cash support for mature student nurses, and those specialising in mental health and community work, in a bid to fill staff shortages. However, he is clear it is about nursing dearth areas: ensure…in the areas of shortage we have that sort of targeted support that’s needed – so not across the full nursing training spectrum. He continues: There’s a question of how you make sure the money we’ve got goes as far as possible. There’s an overall shortage of nursing. It isn’t as big as the headline vacancy figures suggest. But there are acute shortages, especially in some specific areas like mental health nurses, and community nursing. And: I want to make sure that the approach we take is to support and incentivise people into those areas where we’ve got shortages. He also intends to tackle big business care providers for whom profit is a key objective.
Michael Gove has said that if it “finally comes to a decision between no deal and no Brexit, I will choose no deal”. However, he would be willing to delay Brexit beyond the 31^st October if a deal was in sight, stating it wouldn’t be right to ‘flounce’ out of the EU for a delay of mere weeks. Gove said that the deadline of 31 October was “arbitrary” and he was “not wedded” to it. That any delay would only be sought if a deal or breakthrough was on the horizon. This sets him against the other front runners, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, who have said that the UK will leave the 31 October under any circumstances.
Dominic Raab has repeatedly refused to rule out proroguing (discontinue) Parliament days before 31 October, which would in theory prevent Parliament from blocking a no-deal and see the UK crash out at midnight on the 31^st. This move would be completely unprecedented, and arguably unconstitutional. Sky News, Lewis Goodall has said such a move would be “a hand grenade into our constitution” and leadership contender Rory Stewart has said “it would be illegal…it would be unconstitutional and it would be undemocratic.”
Sajid Javid has said he supports Jo Johnson’s amendment to the draft immigration legislation to change post-study visas to encourage international students. He is, after all, Home Secretary, and since his appointment has been less than enthusiastic about TM’s “hostile environment”, dealing with the fallout from the Windrush scandal amongst other things. The FT article says: “Mr Javid has already announced plans to axe the net migration target — which has never been met — if he becomes the next Conservative leader and is now also supporting the move to let students stay for longer after they finish at university. Mr Johnson has forced the pace on the issue, tabling an amendment to the government’s immigration bill — designed to implement a post-Brexit visa regime — which would take students out of the net migration target. …In 2012 Britain cut the time that students can work after graduating from two years to just four months, although the government this year recognised that the new regime was causing problems and agreed to raise the limit to six months.”
Rory Stewart says his competitors’ claims they could negotiate a new Brexit deal before 31 October are “misleading” and there is “not a hope” a new deal can by deadline.
Behind its paywall, the Telegraph reports that Boris Johnson plans to spend at least £5000 on every secondary school pupil to “level up” Britain’s education system.

Cost of housing hinders employment prospects

The Resolution Foundation has published: Moving Matters – Housing costs and labour market mobility. The briefing doesn’t focus on the HE sector but that are some interesting findings that could be transferable.

Nationally changing areas to move for new employment and housing purposes has fallen. Unexpectedly the rate has particularly dropped within the younger age groups. The report notes this is surprising because young people are more likely to be graduates, non-UK born and private renters than in the past, changes that should have increased rather than decreased moves made for work.

Why?

Because moving area isn’t essential to get a job – “the variation between the employment rates observed across local authorities has reduced over time” – so it is possible for young people to obtain some form of employment relatively locally. This is not ideal for graduate outcome statistics as earnings are expected to be lower, the job likely to be less specialised or relevant to the degree. It becomes a compromise option – once that can be difficult to recover from financially in their future career (see this Policy Update page 6 – impact of recession on graduates) .
Moving isn’t as lucrative as it once was – “the ‘pull’ of more buoyant areas has fallen apace.. the difference in the average ‘wage premium’ achieved as a result of such a move has fallen since the turn of the century.”
High housing costs negate the wage premium – “private rents have risen consistently faster in higher-paying areas of England. Rents have risen by almost 90% in the highest-paying 30% of local authorities over the past 20 years, compared to just over 70% among the 30% lowest paying places. As a result, not only has the earnings boost of moving to a more productive area diminished as a result of closing wage differentials; so, too, has the broader living standards uplift once housing costs are taken into account. So for the young graduate quality of housing and lifestyle may well go down as the quality high cost rents are prohibitive.

The report notes that job + housing mobility rate have fallen over time and the number of relocations moving to lower housing cost areas (47%) has increased 6% in the last 15 years. It also highlights a rise in commuting time – which costs the individual both in time and money.

With the evidence showing that efficiently matching with job opportunities is especially important for young people at the beginning of their working lives, the intergenerational implications of this briefing note are clear. While two of the reasons we identify that potentially explain the fall in job-plus-residence moves can be viewed as positive, our findings about the way that rising housing costs are determining the behaviour of younger renters in particular is a real cause for concern.
..the evidence is clear that the real boosts to earnings are achieved by moving jobs. Critically, taking a new post in a different firm has a larger pay uplift than simply being promoted within the same organisation, and moving to denser, more productive areas comes with an even bigger pay premium. We know that job mobility is especially important at the start of one’s working life, when progression depends on testing out new roles and developing new skills. Moreover, an agile workforce is generally viewed as good not just for the individuals concerned, but also for the economy as workers ‘match’ more efficiently with business requirements.

You can read the detail of the full report here.

Spending Review

With Teresa May stepping down as PM and the Tory leadership race galloping along the Spending Review will be delayed and likely to be finalised between autumn and Christmas 2019. Liz Truss MP (Chief Secretary to the Treasury) was questioned by the Lords on the Spending Review this week. this is very important to the Augar review, as the government response will be timed to come out with it.

Here are the most interesting snippets:

Truss confirmed the Spending Review preparatory work had ‘already began’ with the Treasury having ‘written to departments asking for initial capital bids, human capital submissions and reform proposals’.
Lord Turnbull (Crossbench) asked whether the spending review was likely to prioritise ongoing austerity measures and the reduction of the deficit, or whether spending might be increased or taxes increased. Truss replied that the priorities were likely to continue to be reducing the national debt and maintaining fiscal discipline. However, the main priority was economic growth, and therefore spending and tax reforms would be directed towards that goal.
Lord Layard asked for the Treasury’s response to the Augar Review. Truss responded that FE needed reform and that there had been ‘problems with funding’. The Augar Review would be considered within the Spending Review, she said, though given the amount of public subsidy to universities, which was higher than in other areas, better value for money was crucial. She went on to state that she supported the notion of students contributing towards their own education and was not in favour of capping student places.
In response the Chair (Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, Conservative) voiced concerns that universities and university placements were being judged too narrowly on their value pertaining to economic productivity and not enough on whether they produced good quality of life.

Consultations

Click here to view the updated inquiries and consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

Other news

Degree Apprenticeships: The Augar Review, the Higher Education Commission, and budget concerns have all cast doubt on the effectiveness of degree apprenticeships during 2019. Concerns that it is not attracting the sections of the population who could benefit most from social mobility, that existing courses are being rebranded as degree apprenticeships to attract funding and are not truly in the spirit of the alternative route to higher qualification, that higher level provision is counter productively squeezing out lower level apprenticeship starts, that rurality and access remains an issue, and crucially that a high proportion of degree apprenticeship starts are not within areas that will help deliver the Government’s industrial strategy have all come to a head. This Wonkhe blog Post Augar, what will it take to reform degree apprenticeships? takes a gallop through the issues.

Gender employment gap: The BBC report on research which finds gender as the main factor in employment seniority, regardless of whether the female had children or not.

Soft power: It was good to hear Chris Skidmore publically acknowledge the importance of soft power through educating international students in answering a question on tuition grants for students living in Africa: Scholarships are a key part of the UK’s soft power, creating lasting positive relations with future leaders, influencers and decision-makers around the world. Many scholars funded by the UK go on to take up senior leadership positions in their home countries, and the strong bond they have formed with the UK enhances our direct and indirect influence abroad. This enhances our diplomatic work, our efforts in promoting increased trade and investment and supports our national security through increased goodwill and cooperation.

School absence policy debate: While it’s not strictly HE related the parents and carers among our readers might like to be aware of a Westminster Hall debate on school absences during term time. Here is the quick summary. Don’t go booking that term time holiday yet though!

HERA: The House of Lords approved a motion making ‘Uncontroversial’ amendments to the Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) relating to the registration and exemption status of some HE providers. You can read a summary here. As you will see some parliamentarians seized on the opportunity to ask what effects the Augar Review would have on matters under discussion.

FE: Parliament have published The Further Education Loans and the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2019. There has been a new regulation inserted which allows the Secretary of State to cancel all or part of a (FE) fee loan in certain circumstances.

TEF: Chris Skidmore answered two parliamentary questions on the TEF. He said the independent TEF review lead by Dame Shirley Pearce is expected to report in summer 2019. Also that the second pilot year of subject level TEF is drawing to a close and the OfS will shortly publish the findings. Skidmore confirms Government will await Dame Shirley’s recommendations, and take account of the evidence from the subject-level TEF pilot, before making a decision on the next phase of the TEF.

Sustainability: Transport Minister, Michael Ellis, has announced the new EU-wide fuel labelling system rolling out from this week which identifies how much of the fuel the drivers are using comes from renewable sources. Here is the news story which simply explains the change, and here is the campaign link.

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

May 30, 2019

HE policy update for the w/e 31st May 2019

EU, international, NHS, policy, Student Engagement jforster

We’re going early again this week as we have a big focus on this week’s big report, and we’re sure you all want to know (although there is a lot of coverage). There is other news as well.

Augar recommendations for the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding

So finally, the long awaited report has landed. Either it changed quite a lot in the last few weeks (no minimum threshold based on 3 Ds at A-level) or the leaks were inaccurate. Actually the leaks were pretty inaccurate, because although the £7500 tuition fee loan cap is there, there are recommendations to make up the difference. And that part was very badly trailed, probably because the recommendations are not simple and don’t make an easy soundbite.

The commentary will be extensive and you can read it for yourselves, we’ll give you some links below and recipients of Wonkhe and the Research Professional HE updates will get more in the coming days. In the meantime:

there is an excellent summary thread from Mary Curnock-Cook on Twitter
UUK’s response is here, describing it as a potential “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, with a list of concerns, including the top up grants, but also foundation courses, the risk of confusion, narrow conceptions of value, restrictions on diversity and choice and the impact on social mobility
The NUS response welcomes much of it but rejects the premise of “low value” courses
Wonkhe start their coverage with a short summary (there will be more) – Jim Dickinson has a blog about the hidden nuggets
HEPI have a couple of blogs on widening participation and scoring the report out of 10 on the points that HEPI had made in their response to the call for evidence (Score: 6.5/9, one they couldn’t mark)

We think that there is a risk with summarising and cherry picking the “most interesting” bits so we give you the whole set of recommendations below – with a little bit of commentary in places. There’s some context and narrative first, so skip down to the big table if you want to go straight to the recommendations.

The report defines the purposes of post-18 education – nicely pulled out in a tweet by Mike Ratcliffe.

And the principles:

In setting about our task, we have been guided by a set of principles. Some of these were self-evident to us at the start, others have been developed in the light of emerging evidence during the panel’s life. The principles and their rationale are set out below.

Principle 1. Post-18 education benefits society, the economy, and individuals. The potential benefits of an increasingly educated adult population have guided our work. But increasing the sheer volume of tertiary education does not necessarily translate into social, economic and personal good. That depends on the quality, accessibility and direction of study.

Principle 2. Everyone should have the opportunity to be educated after the age of 18.We have noted the disparity of resources between higher and further education and the steep decline in opportunities for education and training in later life. We have this in mind in seeking to create an integrated and sustainable post-18 system with opportunities for the whole population.

Principle 3. The decline in numbers of those getting post-18 education needs to be reversed. In many developed economies, increased participation in tertiary education has been associated with productivity growth over the past half century but in England – where attention has focused largely on degree-level study – the total number of people involved in post-18 education has in fact declined. This decline needs to be reversed urgently.

Principle 4. The cost of post-18 education should be shared between taxpayers, employers and learners. This was the defining principle of the seminal Dearing Report (1997) and continues to have resonance: the alternatives are simply inconceivable. Getting the taxpayer to pay for everything is unaffordable. Getting learners to pay all their own costs is unfair to those of limited means. Getting employers to pay for the whole system would put too much emphasis on economic value alone. A shared responsibility, in our view, is the only fair and feasible solution.

Principle 5. Organisations providing education and training must be accountable for the public subsidy they receive. The receipt of taxpayer funding, whether this is directly through grants or indirectly through forgiveable loans, carries with it the expectation of transparency and accountability for the purposes to which it is put and the outcomes that it delivers. There should be no sense of entitlement.

Principle 6. Government has a responsibility to ensure that its investment in tertiary education is appropriately spent and directed. The government should consider public spending on tertiary education alongside its spending on other parts of the public sector and should hold the sector accountable whilst respecting its intellectual freedom and academic autonomy.

Principle 7. Post-18 education cannot be left entirely to market forces. The idea of a market in tertiary education has been a defining characteristic of English policy since 1998. We believe that competition between providers has an important role to play in creating choice for students but that on its own it cannot deliver a full spectrum of social, economic and cultural benefits. With no steer from government, the outcome is likely to be haphazard.

Principle 8. Post-18 education needs to be forward looking. The future challenges of technological innovation, artificial intelligence and shorter job cycles will require greater labour market flexibility. The post-18 education system needs to respond to this: doing more of the same will not be enough.

Here is the summary of the proposals from the front of the report itself:

Strengthening technical education – England needs a stronger technical and vocational education system at sub-degree levels to meet the structural skills shortages that are in all probability contributing to the UK’s weak productivity performance. Improved funding, a better maintenance offer, and a more coherent suite of higher technical and professional qualifications would help level the playing field with degrees and drive up both the supply of and demand for such courses.
Increasing opportunities for everyone – Despite the very large increase in participation in higher education by young people, the total number of people involved in tertiary education has declined. Almost 40 per cent of 25 year olds do not progress beyond GCSEs as their highest qualification and social mobility shows little sign of improvement. Our recommendations seek to address these problems by reversing cuts in adult skills provision and encouraging part time and later life learning.
Reforming and refunding the FE college network – Further education colleges are an essential part of the national educational infrastructure and should play a core role in the delivery of higher technical and intermediate level training. Our recommendations are intended to reform and refund the FE college network by means of an increased base rate of funding for high return courses, an additional £1bn capital investment over the coming spending review period and investment in the workforce to improve recruitment and retention. Rationalisation of the network to even out provision across over-supplied and under-supplied areas, funding for some specialised colleges and closer links with HE and other providers would help establish a genuinely national system of higher technical education.
Bearing down on low value HE – There is a misalignment at the margin between England’s otherwise outstanding system of higher education and the country’s economic requirements. A twenty-year market in lightly regulated higher education has greatly expanded the number of skilled graduates bringing considerable social and economic benefits and wider participation for students from lower socio-economic groups. However, for a small but significant minority of degree students doing certain courses at certain institutions, the university experience leads to disappointment. We make recommendations intended to encourage universities to bear down on low value degrees and to incentivise them to increase the provision of courses better aligned with the economy’s needs.
Addressing higher education funding – Generous and undirected funding has led to an over-supply of some courses at great cost to the taxpayer and a corresponding under-supply of graduates in strategically important sectors. Our recommendations would restore more control over taxpayer support and would reduce what universities may charge each degree student. Universities should find further efficiency savings over the coming years, maximum fees for students should be reduced to £7,500 a year, and more of the taxpayer funding should come through grants directed to disadvantaged students and to high value and high cost subjects. [see CHAPTER 3 and in particular 3.2 to 3.5 below]
Increasing flexibility and lifetime learning – Employment patterns are changing fast with shorter job cycles and longer working lives requiring many people to reskill and upskill. We recommend the introduction of a lifelong learning loan allowance to be used at higher technical and degree level at any stage of an adult’s career for full and part-time students. To encourage retraining and flexible learning, we recommend that this should be available in modules where required. We intend that our proposals should facilitate transfer between different institutions and we make proposals for greater investment in so-called ‘second chance’ learning at intermediate levels. We endorse the government’s National Retraining Scheme, which we believe to be a potentially valuable supplement to college based learning.
Supporting disadvantaged students – Disadvantaged students need better financial support, improved choices and more effective advice and guidance to benefit fully from post‑18 education. Our recommendations would provide them with additional support by reintroducing maintenance grants for students from low income households, and by increasing and better targeting the government’s funding for disadvantaged students.
Ensuring those who benefit from higher education contribute fairly – Most graduates benefit significantly from participating in higher education – as does the economy and wider society. We therefore endorse the established principle that students and the state should share the cost of tertiary education. We support the income-contingent repayment approach as a means of delivering this fairly, with those benefitting the most making the greatest contribution. However, public misunderstanding is high and better communication is required, including a new name, the Student Contribution System. We believe that more graduates should repay their loans in full over their lifetimes, and recommend extending the repayment period for future students and effectively freezing the repayment threshold. These changes – with the reduction in fees – would apply only to students entering higher education from 2021-22 at the earliest: students starting before then would not be affected. Some aspects of the present system appear to be unfairly punitive and we recommend reducing students’ in-study interest charges and capping graduates’ lifetime repayments.
Improving the apprenticeship offer – Apprenticeships can deliver benefits both for apprentices and employers but there is evidence of a mismatch between the economy’s strategic requirements and current apprenticeship starts. Our recommendations, together with recent government reforms, look to make further improvements in the quality of the apprenticeship offer by providing learners with better wage return information, strengthening Ofsted’s role – and thus the quality of providers – and better understanding and addressing the barriers SMEs face within the apprenticeship system. We have considered how best to use the finite funding which is available for apprenticeships and recommend that apprenticeships at degree level and above should normally be funded only for those who do not already have a publicly-funded degree.

And the actual recommendations are at the back:

CHAPTER 2: SKILLS

2.1 The government should introduce a single lifelong learning loan allowance for tuition loans at Levels 4, 5 and 6, available for adults aged 18 or over, without a publicly funded degree. This should be set, as it is now, as a financial amount equivalent to four years’ full-time undergraduate degree funding. [This will be widely welcomed but has the potential to be very expensive if these loans turn out to be written off at high levels over time – the hope will be that these courses will directly lead to improved earnings and so there will be a better chance of repayment?]

2.2 Learners should be able to access student finance for tuition fee and maintenance support for modules of credit-based Level 4, 5 and 6 qualifications. [“bitesize” learning will also be welcomed as a solution for mature students to replace traditional part-time study which has collapsed]

2.3 ELQ rules should be scrapped for those taking out loans for Levels 4, 5 and 6. [this will be widely welcomed]

2.4 Institutions should award at least one interim qualification to all students who are following a Level 6 course successfully. [this is interesting]

2.5 Streamline the number and improve the status of Level 4/5 qualifications.

2.6 The OfS should become the national regulator of all non-apprenticeship provision at Levels 4 and above.

2.7 Government should provide additional support and capital funding to specific FE colleges in order to ensure a national network of high quality technical provision is available. Government should work with the OfS to determine how best to allocate this using, for example, quality indicators and analysis of geographic coverage. [this will be welcomed although the targeting and the suggestions of metrics (a TEF for FE?) may not be so welcome]

2.8 From 2021-22 the fee cap for Level 4 and 5 qualifications currently prescribed by the OfS should be £7,500 – the same as that proposed for Level 6 qualifications and in line with current arrangements for prescribed HE qualifications. Longer term, only kitemarked Level 4 and 5 qualifications that meet the new employer-led national standards should be able to charge fees up to the Level 6 cap and be eligible for teaching grant. From that point, any other Level 4 and 5 courses should have a lower fee cap.

2.9 The current age cap should be removed so that a first ‘full’ Level 3 is available free to all learners whether they are in work or not.

2.10 Full funding for the first ‘full’ Level 2 qualification, for those who are 24 and over and who are employed should be restored.

2.11 The careers strategy should be rolled out nationally so that every secondary school is able to be part of a careers hub, that training is available to all careers leaders and that more young people have access to meaningful careers activities and encounters with employers.

CHAPTER 3: HIGHER EDUCATION

3.1 The average per-student resource should be frozen for three further years from 2020/21 until 2022/23. On current evidence, inflation based increases to the average per-student unit of resource should resume in 2023/24. [the interesting part here is not the freeze, as that was expected, but the proposal for an increase in 2023/24. See page 93 of the report – “We believe that the gradual effects of a funding freeze would give HEIs time to rise to the challenge of greater efficiency and redesigned business models, whilst maintaining the quality of provision. However on current evidence we believe that attempts to generate further savings over this proposed funding freeze would jeopardise the quality of provision”.

3.2 The cap on the fee chargeable to HE students should be reduced to £7,500 per year. We consider that this could be introduced by 2021/22. [so no cliff edge this year, may affect student numbers next year as some defer. They say on page 210 that ALL policies embed in 2021/22 for new students so although it isn’t clear in the section, this would be for new students only. Also worth noting on page 205 they note that actually students may not be better off under the current scheme in the long run because of changes to repayments (see below) – but explaining that to students (and parents) will be a nightmare – the headline reduction will be what many people see]

3.3 Government should replace in full the lost fee income by increasing the teaching grant, leaving the average unit of funding unchanged at sector level in cash terms. [page 95 “We firmly believe that the total reduction in resources from the fee cut must be matched with an equivalent increase in average per student grant funding from the government, so that the average per student resource to the sector stays level in cash terms]

3.4 The fee cap should be frozen until 2022/23, then increased in line with inflation from 2023/24. [see 3.1 above]

3.5 Government should adjust the teaching grant attached to each subject to reflect more accurately the subject’s reasonable costs and its social and economic value to students and taxpayers. Support for high-quality specialist institutions that could be adversely affected should be reviewed and if necessary increased.

[The link to cost was well trailed in the press, but the Secretary of State focussed on the part about social and economic value to students and taxpayers – actually the report covers both. This is worth looking at in more detail – page 95/96 says that the current “system under-funds certain high cost subjects to the detriment of the economy in general and the government’s Industrial Strategy“, that “the current long-term taxpayer subsidy is poorly directed” and that “Government currently has very limited control over the substantial taxpayer investment in higher education”.
There is more detail of the analysis that they did on page 72.
They propose that the OfS should carry out a review of the funding rates for different subjects, having “regard to economic and social value and consider support for socially desirable professions such as nursing and teaching”, and then rebalance funding towards high cost and strategically important subjects and to subjects that add social as well as economic value”.
They go on: “we would expect some subjects to receive little or no subject specific teaching grant over the £7500 base rate” – and this is where they add in about specialist institutions offering the highest quality provision.
This is really interesting stuff – but it is not at all clear how this would work and how economic and social value would be evaluated. Anyone thinking that the debate over use of raw salary data in this process might be answered one way or the other by Augar will be sadly disappointed – the issue is put firmly into the hands of the OfS. See also pages 104 and 105 for the things they rejected
Critics of using LEO in this context will like this bit on page 87: ““Limitations of the IFS early-career earnings analysis….
- The data do not distinguish between full and part-time work, which is likely to affect comparisons of earnings between men and women, and they also do not cover the self-employed.
- The results we discuss are for earnings up to the age of 29 whereas the principal benefit in earnings for graduates tends to arrive in the following decade and thus we would expect full lifetime earnings for most graduates to generate higher premiums than those shown.
- However, the current data excludes the cost of foregone earnings during study and loan repayments after graduation which need to be taken into account for a full assessment of lifetime returns.
- Earnings are largely a product of the labour market for particular skills and qualifications and should not be regarded as a measure of teaching quality. They also vary according to location: a graduate working in an economic cold spot is likely to earn less than her or his counterpart working in a hot spot.
- However, if analysed with care, the data provide an insight into the early career financial consequences of degree study and will be a useful source of information for students, government and HEIs alike.”]

3.6 Government should take further steps to ensure disadvantaged students have sufficient support to access, participate and succeed in higher education. It should do this by:

Increasing the amount of teaching grant funding that follows disadvantaged students, so that funding flows to those institutions educating the students that are most likely to need additional support.
Changing the measure of disadvantage used in the Student Premium to capture individual-level socio-economic disadvantage, so that funding closely follows the students who need support.
Requiring providers to be accountable for their use of Student Premium grant, alongside access and participation plans for the spend of tuition fee income, to enable joined up scrutiny.

[Page 97 says that the current system prioritises access over successful participation, “fails to resource adequately those institutions that admit a large proportion of their students from disadvantaged backgrounds, relies on too limited an evidence base of what works best”. They want to “discard measures or prior academic attainment and area-based measures of participation” (goodbye POLAR) and look at individual measures of socio-economic disadvantage to ensure that support is better directed. They want a pupil premium style minimum sum for each student. They also say that all the other changes should not mean a cut in the overall levels of spend on disadvantaged students.]

3.7 Unless the sector has moved to address the problem of recruitment to courses which have poor retention, poor graduate employability and poor long term earnings benefits by 2022/23, the government should intervene. This intervention should take the form of a contextualised minimum entry threshold, a selective numbers cap or a combination of both.

[Here’s a threat, then. So 3Ds are not dead (see page 100 for the research), and neither are numbers caps. But imposed on a course by course basis for students that “persistently manifest poor value for money for students and the public”. They mention indicators such as employment, earnings and loan repayments. They suggest the caps would be time limited – capping the numbers of students eligible for financial support who could be admitted to the course” (see page 102).
So three years for the sector “to put its house in order”. That gives the government time to sort our technical alternatives and the impact would be offset but the uptick in demographics from 2021.]

3.8 We recommend withdrawing financial support for foundation years attached to degree courses after an appropriate notice period. Exemptions for specific courses such as medicine may be granted by the OfS. [People are asking questions about this – it’s odd at first glance. They say (page 103) that “it is not hard to conclude that universities are using foundation years to create four-year degrees in order to entice students who do not otherwise meet their standard entry criteria”. But is that a bad thing? The report concludes that it is a bad thing because of the fee and loan implications, and so it would be better to have access courses (usually in partnership with FE) on lower fees, better loan terms and a standalone qualification. They say have a two year delay on implementing this recommendation]

CHAPTER 4: FURTHER EDUCATION

4.1 The unit funding rate for economically valuable adult education courses should be increased. [no-one will disagree but it will be expensive. There’s a chart on page 124 which suggests what they mean by “economically valuable”. It means higher level courses, it seems]

4.2 The reduction in the core funding rate for 18 year-olds should be reversed.

4.3 ESFA funding rules should be simplified for FE colleges, allowing colleges to respond more flexibly and immediately to the particular needs of their local labour market.

4.4 Government should commit to providing an indicative AEB that enables individual FE colleges to plan on the basis of income over a three-year period. Government should also explore introducing additional flexibility to transfer a proportion of AEB allocations between years on the same basis.

4.5.1 Government should provide FE colleges with a dedicated capital investment of at least £1 billion over the next Spending Review period. This should be in addition to funding for T levels and should be allocated primarily on a strategic national basis in-line with Industrial Strategy priorities.

4.5.2 Government should use the additional capital funding primarily to augment existing FE colleges to create a strong national network of high quality provision of technical and professional education, including growing capacity for higher technical provision in specific FE colleges.

4.5.3 Government should also consider redirecting the HE capital grant to further education. [that’s interesting – they suggest that £1billion needs to be invested.]

4.6.1 The structure of the FE college network, particularly in large cities, should be further modified to minimise duplication in reasonable travel to learn areas.

4.6.2 In rural and semi-rural areas, small FE colleges should be strongly encouraged to form or join groups in order to ensure sustainable quality provision in the long term. [consistent with the pressure on schools and academies to combine]

4.7 Government should develop procedures to ensure that – as part of a collaborative national network of FE colleges – there is an efficient distribution of Level 3, 4 and 5 provision within reasonable travel-to-learn areas, to enable strategic investment and avoid counterproductive competition between providers.

4.8 Investment in the FE workforce should be a priority, allowing improvements in recruitment and retention, drawing in more expertise from industry, and strengthening professional development.

4.9 The panel recommends that government improve data collection, collation, analysis and publication across the whole further education sector (including independent training providers). [As noted above, perhaps an equivalent of TEF for FE and all the other related metrics – on top of Ofsted requirements where they apply. They compare this critically with schools as well as HE (see page 137)]

4.10 The OfS and the ESFA should establish a joint working party co-chaired by the OfS and ESFA chairs to align the requirements they place on providers and improve the interactions and exchange of information between these bodies. The working party should report to the Secretary of State for Education by March 2020. [These will be interesting interactions. The OfS is meant to be “light-touch” and “risk-based”, remember. But it would be good to see them take a more similar approach – as universities registering with the ESFA to provide apprenticeships are aware, the requirements are different]

4.11 FE colleges should be more clearly distinguished from other types of training provider in the FE sector with a protected title similar to that conferred on universities.

CHAPTER 5: APPRENTICESHIPS

5.1 The government should monitor closely the extent to which apprenticeship take up reflects the priorities of the Industrial Strategy, both in content – including the need for specific skills at Levels 3 through 5 – and in geographic spread. If funding is inadequate for demand, apprenticeships should be prioritised in line with Industrial Strategy requirements.

5.2 The government should use data on apprenticeships wage returns to provide accessible system wide information for learners with a potential interest in apprenticeships.

5.3 Funding for Level 6 and above apprenticeships should normally be available only for apprentices who have not previously undertaken a publicly-supported degree. [ELQ by the back door?]

5.4 Ofsted become the lead responsible body for the inspection of the quality of apprenticeships at all levels.

5.5 No provider without an acceptable Ofsted rating should receive a contract to deliver training in their own right (although a provider who has not yet been inspected could sub-contract from a high-quality provider pending their own inspection).

5.6 The IfATE and the DfE (through the ESFA) should undertake a programme of work to better understand the barriers that SMEs face in engaging with the apprenticeship system and put in place mechanisms to address these, including raising awareness of the programme and making the system easier to navigate.

5.7 The IfATE improve transparency when processing standards that have been submitted for approval. Trailblazer groups and providers should have a clear indication of progress, available on-line, so they can start to plan, recruit and invest within workable timelines.

5.8 All approved providers of government-funded training, including apprenticeship training, must make clear provision for the protection of learners in the case of closure or insolvency.

CHAPTER 6: STUDENT CONTRIBUTIONS

6.1 Continue the principle of loans to cover the cost of fees combined with income-contingent contributions up to a maximum. [NB they have not looked at PG loans – see page 166]

6.2 Set the contribution threshold at the level of median non-graduate earnings so that those who are experiencing a financial benefit from HE start contributing towards the cost of their studies. This should apply to new students entering HE from 2021/22.Adjust the lower interest threshold to match, with the higher interest threshold moving by the same amount. This should apply to new students entering the system from 2021/22. [That’s a reduction from £25,000 to £23,000 at current rates. Note it went up to £25,000 from £21,000 in 2018 in a hasty attempt by the PM to appeal to the “youth vote” in a move welcomed by many (because the promised indexation for the threshold was abandoned) but also said to be regressive (because it reduced the total amount repaid by the highest earners). The proposal is that it should be a floating threshold, linked to median earnings, and not implemented until 2021/22, so they expect it would be £25,000 then and when the first cohort of students start repaying it would be around £28,000 (see page 170)]

6.3 Extend the repayment period to 40 years after study has ended so that those who have borrowed continue to contribute while they are experiencing a financial benefit. This should apply to new students entering the system from 2021/22. [This is the big change and is why the main headline fee cut does not save many students much overall]

6.4 Remove real in-study interest, so that loan balances track inflation during study. This should apply for new students entering the system from 2021/22. [This is a tweak, but an important one, because this is one of those optical things that makes students really cross, as they incur interest at 3% plus inflation while studying. A student on a maximum maintenance loan incurs £3800 in interest while studying on a three year course (see page 172)]

6.5 Retain the post-study variable interest rate mechanism from inflation to inflation plus 3 per cent. [Many have called for this to be scrapped but the report thinks that’s a trade-off not worth making. They also don’t adopt the arguments about moving away from RPI to CPI – some will be disappointed]

6.6 Introduce a new protection for borrowers to cap lifetime repayments at 1.2 times the initial loan amount in real terms. This cap should be introduced for all current Plan 2 borrowers, as well for all future borrowers. [This hasn’t been much covered in the press coverage so far – but it is interesting. It addresses the “squeezed middle” who pay back more slowly and thus pay back more than the highest earners. As the 40 year period makes that problem worse, this is a mitigation for it (see pages 174/5)]

6.7 Introduce new finance terms under the banner of a new ‘student contribution system’. Define and promote the system with new language to make clearer the nature of the system, reducing focus on ‘debt’ levels and interest and emphasising contribution rates. [Hurray, the rebranding. Widely anticipated although it will take a mammoth effort to change national cultural expectations on this after everyone from the PM down has banged on about student debt. This is a huge job.]

CHAPTER 7: MAINTENANCE

7.1 The government should restore maintenance grants for socio-economically disadvantaged students to at least £3,000 a year.

[This is really interesting, has been widely welcomed including by the PM who has taken the credit for it and blamed George Osborne and Sajid Javid for a mistake” in her statement this morning. The report says that this is a particular problem because of the assumption of parental support and that it impacts the choices that disadvantaged students make. But…is £3000 enough? The report says (page 192 “Combined with the reduction in the level of tuition fee recommended in chapter 3, this recommendation would see the maximum debt for a disadvantaged student on graduation from a 3 year degree decrease by £15,000, from approximately £60,000 to approximately £45,000”. They looked at the Welsh system and said it was not a priority for investment to make such a significant (and expensive) change).

7.2 The expected parental contribution should be made explicit in all official descriptions of the student maintenance support system. [Yes, alongside the other comms challenges, this is a big and important one.]

7.3 Maximum maintenance support should be set in line with the National Minimum Wage for age 21 to 24 on the basis of 37.5 hours per week and 30 weeks per year. [That’s a small cut outside London “We do not believe that students, who in practice are often studying for less than 37.5 hours, should receive a higher income than the minimum received by young people in full-time employment” (see page 193)]

7.4 In delivering a maintenance system comprising a mix of grant, loan and family contribution, the government should ensure that:

The level of grant is set as high as possible to minimise or eliminate the amount of additional loan required by students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The income thresholds within the system should be increased in line with inflation each year.

7.5 The new post-18 maintenance support package should be provided for all students taking Level 4 to 6 qualifications. The government should take steps to ensure that qualifications which are supported through the maintenance package are of high quality and deliver returns for the individual, society, economy and taxpayer.

7.6 The OfS should examine the cost of student accommodation more closely and work with students and providers to improve the quality and consistency of data about costs, rents, profits and quality.

[Interesting comments on page 196:

“We believe that HEIs retain a responsibility for overall student welfare and delivering value for money and that this extends to university accommodation, whether or not they are the direct provider.”
And “The public subsidy of student maintenance, much of which is spent on accommodation, gives the OfS a legitimate stake in monitoring the provision of student accommodation in terms of costs, rents, profitability and value for money”
Also “We suggest a detailed study of the characteristics and in-study experience of commuter students and how to support them better.”(page 195)]

7.7 Funding available for bursaries should increase to accommodate the likely growth in Level 2 and Level 3 adult learners.

7.8 The support on offer to Level 2 and Level 3 learners should be made clearer by both the government and further education colleges so as to ensure that prospective learners are aware of the support available to them.

And there’s more

There are also other bits that are not reflected in the many, many recommendations but may be seized on by Ministers and others. In the section on Market Competition, page 78, the report says that “‘post-18 education cannot be left entirely to market forces’.81 We have already established that England’s market in HE has produced substantial social, economic and personal benefits but have noted that price competition has not developed as was originally expected. This is rational behaviour in a market where price is taken as a signal of quality.”

It goes on:

“It is of concern to us that these marketing approaches sometimes include cash and in-kind inducements to prospective students to accept a place. It would be an unacceptable use of public funds for universities to recycle tuition fees, funded by state-subsidised income contingent loans, as gifts over which the state has no recourse. A recent study for Universities UK found “… perceptions that universities are becoming more like commercial businesses, driven by profit” and we would not be surprised if over-enthusiastic marketing had contributed to this perception. We further note three aspects of academic practice that could be interpreted as being a consequence of market competition.

Grade inflation. The growth in the proportion of first and upper second-class degrees awarded (see box) has been too great to suggest plausibly that it can be entirely attributed to a genuine improvement in the quality of students’ academic performance. It is not unreasonable to assume that part of the explanation is that academic assessment has become a means of reputational enhancement, albeit how this has happened is unclear.84 We note the intervention in March 2018 on this matter by the Secretary of State for Education.
Lower entry requirements. An increasing proportion of students with lower prior attainment are now attending university. We welcome this but not at any price. Low prior attainment, measured by A level and BTEC grades, is associated with dropping out from university studies, to the financial and often emotional cost of the student. From the 2016/17 cohort, as many as 12.8 per cent of students with UCAS tariff points between 0 and 100 (equivalent to D and E at A-level in the old tariff scheme), and 11.6 per cent of students with BTECs at any level, did not progress past their first year of a degree. This is about double the 6.3 per cent drop out rate for students as a whole. For the lowest attaining BTEC students the drop-out rates are well above 15 per cent. At fourteen UK universities, projections of the number of students likely to obtain a degree is below 70 per cent; the lowest has a degree projection rate of 51.7 per cent with 28.1 per cent of its students dropping out entirely rather than transferring or obtaining another award such as a Level 4 or Level 5 qualification.
Unconditional offers. Responsibly used, unconditional offers can have benefits, particularly in attracting students from disadvantaged backgrounds – but the emphasis has to be on ‘responsible’. We agree with the OfS that “Universities must not resort to pressure selling tactics in promoting unconditional offers”87 and we note the intervention in April 2018 on this matter by the Secretary of State for Education.

They don’t have a recommendation in this area, but they do use these examples as justification for why the system needs to change – and government given back more control through grants and targeting of funding.

There’s also a kick at TEF: “the use of metrics in the TEF process must be robust and command confidence. The Royal Statistical Society has raised concerns about the statistical validity of the current approach and the risk of the system being “gamed”.72 We await the outcome of the on-going independent review of the TEF, led by Dame Shirley Pearce, which is examining this and other issues.” It is really interesting to think about what, given this, they think will be the basis for their cost and value-based assessment for the top-up funding. They manage not to suggest anything. All they say about it is on page 75: “We expect this assessment to be contested within the sector. Typically, it has been resistant to measures of performance based on inputs (contact hours), outputs (student satisfaction) and outcomes (graduate salaries). There are undoubtedly weaknesses in all of these metrics, including the TEF framework which brings them together, but they give universities important information about their own performance and we encourage the sector to use them constructively.”

And what of employers? When interviewed during the process, Philip Augar made a lot of the role of employers in the system. In the opening principles, Principle 4 is “the cost of post-18 education should be shared between taxpayers, employers and learners”. But there is nothing new here for FE, lots of references to employers working with FE, and of course the apprenticeship levy.

They also address the unintended consequences in terms of the cross-subsidy for research funding (see page 93): “Universities in the UK educate the graduates, especially in STEM fields, needed to achieve this target. Our proposals on rebalancing funding towards high‑cost and high‑value subjects, discussed below, are intended to encourage this and are likely to result in more funding going to institutions with a strong research base. We also make recommendations to protect high quality specialist institutions. We recognise that there will be concerns about the impact of the resource freeze on some institutions with pockets of research excellence. We are of the view that it is for government, business and other interested bodies to fund research adequately and directly.”

So what now? The coverage will be excited and excitable. Justine Greening has already condemned the whole thing as regressive and called for a radical new student contribution system. But will a new leader of the Tory party take it up? Will it get lost in party politics and Brexit? Will it be too unattractive in terms of cost (remember the spending review) and not attractive enough in terms of attracting voters (young and older)?. They have costed it all (page 204).

We’ll just have to wait and see. But the main thing is that, despite several menacing bits, when taken as a whole it is not the nightmare scenario for HE that some were predicting, but neither is it a silver bullet. It’s complex, subtle and intended to work as a package – if existing or new leaders start cherry picking, there is plenty of potential for the nightmare to materialise. And the OfS have a LOT of work to do.

At a speech launching the review, Theresa May said: “I was not surprised to see the panel argue for the reintroduction of means-tested maintenance grants both for university students and those studying for higher technical qualifications. Such a move would ensure students are supported whichever route they choose, and save those from the poorest backgrounds over £9,000. It will be up to the Government to decide, at the upcoming Spending Review, whether to follow this recommendation. But my view is very clear: removing maintenance grants from the least well-off students has not worked, and I believe it is time to bring them back.”

On reforming tuition fees, she argued: “There is much to be said for the panel’s proposal to cut fees and top up the money from Government, protecting the sector’s income overall but focussing more of that investment on high-quality and high-value courses. I know there are some, including the Labour Opposition, who will reject this finding because they want to abolish fees altogether. Such a move would be regressive and destructive – hurting our institutions and limiting the opportunities for our young people.”

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner commented: “The report alone does nothing to address the burning injustices facing our education system. With no formal Government response, no extra funding and no guarantee that the recommendations will be implemented by her successor the Augar review epitomises May’s legacy as Prime Minister and this shambolic Tory government – all talk, empty promises and very little action.”

Speaking on LBC earlier, Chancellor Philip Hammond warned: “We won’t be able to prioritise every area. If we want to be able to spend some of that fiscal headroom that I have accumulated, we first have to get the Brexit issue resolved.”

By the way, as well as the report, there is a whole lot of supporting material including the outcomes of the call for evidence that informed the review. Some nuggets:

For student finance, more than half of students responding thought fees should be reduced or abolished. There was a mix of views from providers over whether the fees charged to students at present covered the cost of courses, with views further split about the advantages and disadvantages of applying differential fees for different subjects and how this might work. Student loans were seen by many as burdensome and off-putting, in particular for part-time and mature students. Many respondents suggested that means-tested maintenance grants should be reintroduced.
Respondents and respondent groups had a range of views of what constituted value for money in post-18 education including student experience, employability and commercial terms, as well as the wider benefits to society. Some questioned the need for the concept. HE providers and HE employees tended to favour value in terms of student experience and qualifications achieved, whereas students and graduates valued employability and the earnings advantage of a degree, seen as a return on their investment.
- Overall employability was perceived as the most important measure of value for money, followed by value to society and the student experience.
- Value for money was considered to be improved either if the cost of education to students is reduced, or if the quality of education and its contribution to the economy and to society is increased.
Respondents identified financial barriers as the most common difficulty for disadvantaged students, including debt (both real and the prospect of it), covering costs out of term time and inadequate maintenance support.

And the Tory leadership contest?

New potential candidates are joining the fray all the time. There are so many it is hard to work out what they all stand for. The whittling down process can’t start until after 10^th June. Until then we will have to put up with remarkably similar soundbites and some startling announcements as they try to be distinctive. 11 (or 12, or more) views to canvas on every issue that comes up from Augar to football to British Steel. Oh dear.

This internal squabble really matters – because whoever it is, is going to try and sort out Brexit and nothing else will get done until they do. The solution might be trying to create a cross party consensus to pass the Withdrawal Agreement legislation and leave with the PM’s deal in October (seems vanishingly unlikely). Or by going back to Brussels with a backstop unicorn and trying to renegotiate (surely even more unlikely than it was when Parlaiment voted on it). Or throwing the whole thing up in the air and asking for a long extension for a people’s vote (exceptionally unlikely because any candidate who would go for this will surely not be selected unless they are the last person standing). Or going for a no-deal Brexit by default, with no legislation if Parliament won’t play ball – surely very unlikely indeed given that this is the only thing Parliamnet agrees on. Any hint of this would surely spark another Letwin-style rebellion enabled by the Speaker (leading to what, though – there’s no time. And surely the EU wouldn’t grant an extension in these circumstances). The timing is critical, because the summer recess takes Parliament to the middle of September, unless they come back early.

And it may all be irrelevant. If the new leader faces a vote of no confidence fairly early on, and is someone that enough Tories can’t work with (whichever approach they are taking), will enough rebels back it and force a general election? Then surely the EU would grant an extension. And all bets would be off, although it seems pretty likely that a general election would lead to another hung Parliament, probably very hung indeed, with a fair number of MPs for the Brexit Party (unless the new Tory leader wins them over) and more Lib Dems and Greens. So then it would all be about coalitions. Tricky.

So who could it be? The BBC have a list although Philip Hammond hasn’t ruled himself out and isn’t on the list yet. There are some predictions and some more details on The Week here

EU student fees and finance after Brexit

After the recent storm when it was pointed out that EU students would at some point after Brexit stop being eligible for tuition fee loans and “Home” fee status, Chris Skidmore this week confirmed that the current arrangements would continue for students starting courses in 2020-21, continuing the “one year at a time” approach that has been adopted since the EU referendum.

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore said: We know that students will be considering their university options for next year already, which is why we are confirming now that eligible EU nationals will continue to benefit from home fee status and can access financial support for the 20/21 academic year, so they have the certainty they need to make their choice.”

“Work to determine the future fee status for new EU students after the 2020/21 academic year is ongoing as the Government prepares for a smooth and orderly exit from the EU as soon as possible. The Government will provide sufficient notice for prospective EU students on fee arrangements ahead of the 2021/2022 academic year and subsequent years in future.”

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

May 28, 2019

CoPMRE Spring Visiting Faculty morning – Surgical Futures

BU research, conferences, Fusion, Global engagement, Impact, international, Knowledge Exchange, NHS, Research communication, Research news, Uncategorized adixon

CoPMRE held its Spring Visiting Faculty Morning at the EBC with a theme of Surgical Futures. One of our guest speakers was Dr Jason Moore, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University (USA) who presented his research on how robotics can enhance the training of future surgeons. He discussed the mechanical development of an advanced robotic medical simulation training system which allows the user to virtually practice on a diverse number of human anatomies whilst offering guided feedback. . A full report for this event can be found here VF Report Spring 2019

The next event will be held on 3rd December 2019.

May 24, 2019

HE Policy update for the w/e 24th May 2019

EU, hate crime, humanities, international, policy, Student Engagement jforster

We usually post these early on a Monday morning so you can all catch up before you start the week, but we write them on a Friday – these days they can be out of date within 10 minutes, let alone after a weekend. So this week we are going early!

EU election results will be announced on Sunday. In BCP the turnout was 36%. In Dorset it was 41.2%. While these are not spectacular turnouts, they are higher than some were expecting.
The PM has announced that she will step down and that the leadership contest will start on 10^th June (which means the positioning etc that had already started will now intensify massively and candidates will only start being eliminated formally after 10^th June). We have more below.
And in “legacy” territory – the Augar review may be published next week.
Expect “ground-softening” over the weekend – probably as painful as it sounds.

Augar rumours – the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding.

The Augar review may be published next week. Remember, it’s the review of an advisory panel. The Department for Education will have to respond (was planned for the Autumn) and it is dependent to a certain extent on the Comprehensive Spending Review (not yet started). Whoever gets the top job may have other priorities than implementing its recommendations. And if whoever gets the top job really messes things up, there might be a general election before the end of the year.

However, once the recommendations are out, it will be very hard to put them back into the box, so hold on to your hats. Personally I’m expecting a very complex and detailed set of recommendations – not just a simple cut to headline tuition fee loan amounts (although that may be the starting point).

Damien Hinds is already positioning. How to read this?

“universities that are shown to offer a poor economic return for their degrees will not be able to charge £9,250 a year”….” Instead, a lower fee of around £7,500 is expected to be announced by Philip Augar’s review” [note it’s a recommendation not an announcement]
“the Education Secretary argued that under the current £9,250 a year tuition fee system there is “no distinction” between courses that offer a high return for graduates and the economy and those that do not”…targeting “low value, low quality” university degrees – “the move is likely to crack down on creative arts and media studies courses from lower tariff universities”

So does this mean fees set by subject? But it sounds more complex than that – how do you address the low quality, low value bit of this?

This could imply an uplift on a £7500 base for the “high value, high quality programmes” within a subject based on a metric linked to either “quality” [defined how?] or outcomes [aka graduate salaries or a basket of outcomes measures?]. If so, let’s hope it is based on data that takes into account background, context (eg geography and the state of the economy) and prior attainment of students, and not just raw salaries.
Any uplift could be in the form of a government grant or an increased fee cap funded by a tuition fee loan. The latter seems to add a level of complexity for applicants and a set of strange incentives [pay more for sciences] so a government grant/loan to the provider seems more likely – perhaps with further strings attached?
Or does it mean something else? “he said too many universities were being “incentivised” to expand courses that cost little and offer poor prospects to students in a bid to generate income”

This is the “bums on seats” argument. So that sounds like instead of being based on outcomes, a fee cap might be linked to cost? Probably not, it probably means quality and outcomes again. There will just be [slightly] less incentive to offer these courses and pack the bums onto seats once the fee cap is reduced. This is playing to the proponents of the “too many students are going to universities” argument by linking high volume and low cost to poor quality – which doesn’t necessarily hold true.

But on top-ups, the article says: “Universities have argued that any cut in tuition fees should be topped up by the Government, but Mr Hinds suggested the sector had not been forced to bear the brunt of cuts as other areas of the public sector had since 2010.” “If you look back since the financial crash in 2007/08…it has been difficult for the public finances. We’ve protected the five to 16 schools budget, we’ve protected the health budget but for everywhere else there have been tight times. For universities they haven’t had that same tough, tight times,” he said.”

So no top ups then? But if that is the case, how is the Minister going to achieve the differentiation that he seems to want? I think this is just an argument against universal top ups – and there will be some, just limited, linked to metrics and with strings attached as described above.

It’s all a bit of a muddle. We may see as early as Sunday….

Grade Inflation

In November 2019 QAA ran a consultation on degree classification and academic standards (here is BU’s response). You can read an analysis of the consultation responses here, and this week the outcome report has been published: Degree Classification transparency, reliability and fairness – a statement of intent. It sets out a statement of intent by which HE institutions will ensure academic standards are protected. It also calls on English universities to publish a degree outcomes statement. The statement should report on an internal institutional review which will self-judge whether the Quality Code and the OfS’ registration conditions relating to qualifications are being met.

A common degree classification framework, which will act as a reference point for providers by describing high-level attributes expected of a graduate to achieve a particular degree, is also in development. The descriptions formed part of the consultation and are currently being refined ready for publication by the UKSCQA in the summer.

Finally the report sets out the sector level actions to ensure the conventions and practices are refreshed and remain current.

Nicola Dandridge, Chief Exec of OfS, welcomed the report and said: “This is a welcome statement of intent which shows that universities recognise the need to ensure that degree standards are maintained, and can be trusted by students and employers alike…Our own research on this issue showed that there has been significant and unexplained grade inflation in recent years. The Office for Students has been clear that measured but decisive action is necessary to ensure that students, graduates and employers have confidence in the manner in which degrees are awarded.”

Brexit and the government….

Well, this is out of date the minute it’s written. The Withdrawal Agreement Bill is now completely irrelevant until after the Tory leadership contest. There is time for one of those and then who knows what before Hallowe’en and the default date for leaving the EU without a deal. Everyone assumes that either a no-deal advocate will win – and ignore the wishes of Parliament and let us default out of the EU – or that whoever wins will have to ask for yet another extension while they sort out a new arrangement or try to persuade the EU to change the backstop etc.

Key EU figures have spoken out against the Conservative leadership squabbles restating that the EU will not reopen negotiations with the new Conservative Prime Minister. Ireland’s deputy PM, Simon Coveney, said: “the personality might change but the facts don’t”. Coveney said: “The danger of course, is that the British system will simply not be able to deal with this issue…even though there’s a majority in Westminster that want to avoid a no-deal Brexit, and that is why over the summer months we will continue to focus significant efforts and financial resources on contingency planning to prepare for that worst case scenario.”

The BBC explain the process here:

Candidates need two MP proposers to back them for leader;
Tory MPs then vote and the candidates with the lowest votes are eliminated until two candidates remain;
A postal vote ballot is then held on these two candidates with the rest of the Tory membership. The winner of this becomes Conservative leader.

Current likely candidates: Jeremy Hunt, Amber Rudd, Liz Truss, Sajid Javid, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom, Matt Hancock, Penny Mordaunt, Tom Tugendhat, Michael Gove, Esther McVey, Sir Graham Brady, James Cleverly, Kit Malthouse, Mark Harper, Rory Stewart. A recent YouGov poll reveals Boris Johnson is the most popular Conservative candidate among the party members with a lead of 18 points.

With a change of party leadership and PM we may see some policies being pushed and others dropped. The Times have an interesting piece sharing a survey of 858 Conservative members’ opinion on key manifesto pieces such as same-sex marriage, HS2, economic policy, and avoiding an early general election.

Finally, a cascade reshuffle has been announced to replace Andrea Leadsom:

Mel Stride,the current Treasury minister, will become leader of the Commons replacing Andrea.
Jesse Norman, currently the transport minister, will replace Mel Stride as financial secretary to the Treasury and paymaster general.
Michael Ellis, currently a culture minister, replaces Jesse Norman as transport minister.
Rebecca Pow joins the government to replace Michael Ellis as culture minister.

T Levels

The Government have announced the package of measures to support employers to deliver T-level industry placements. The T Level placement will be at least 315 hours (approximately 45 days) allowing students to build the knowledge and skills they need in a workplace environment. The package includes:

New guidance to support employers and providers to offer tailored placements that suit their workplace and the needs of young people. This will include offering placement opportunities with up to 2 employers and accommodating students with part time jobs or caring responsibilities.
A new £7 million pilot scheme to explore ways to help cover the costs associated with hosting a young person in their workplace such as equipment and protective clothing.
Bespoke ‘how to’ guides, workshops and practical hands-on support for employers – designed alongside industry bodies to make it as easy as possible for them to offer placements.

T levels begin rolling out in across the first three study areas in September 2020 (digital, education, construction). The announced pilot scheme will start prior to the 2020 roll out. From 2021 Health and Science T levels will be introduced, followed by legal, finance/accounting, engineering and manufacturing, creative and design in 2022. Bournemouth and Poole College are listed as one of only 20 providers who will run the first T level projects. The Government also aims to attract 80 industry experts to teach within the T levels sector.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said: T Levels represent the biggest shake up to technical education in a generation…Industry placements will provide businesses with an opportunity to attract a diverse range of talent and build the skilled workforce they need for the future. To make a success of T Levels, we need businesses working in partnership with us and colleges. Industry placements will help young people build the confidence and skills they need to get a head start in their careers and they’ll help businesses maximise their talent pipeline for the future.

Matthew Fell, CBI Chief UK Policy Director, said: There has long been a need for an increase in prestigious technical options after GCSEs that parents, teachers, and businesses understand. This package of measures to help employers deliver placements is welcome, because if T Levels are going to be a success they will require long-term commitment from Government. Support will be most needed for small and medium-sized businesses, so special attention should be paid to these firms.

Mature Foundation Year Phenomenon

Last week we told you about how access courses are declining whilst foundation years are on the rise and explored the student outcomes for these differing routes (see here, pages 9-10).

HESA have analysed data from 2010/11 to 2017/18 to find clues about disadvantaged students who undertake a foundation year. Foundation years have taken off in increasing numbers since 2014/15, in particular London sees significant growth in foundation year numbers. Click here for the interactive chart to explore the interactions between disadvantage and young/mature.

The analysis uses the index of multiple deprivation to measure disadvantage and find that across England the number of entrants to a foundation year from the most disadvantaged areas has grown by 7% – making it 32% of the total entrants. However, the effect is greater when only the most disadvantaged mature students are explored up by 12% to 41% of the total entrants. Mature students seem to account for the significant rise in foundation years – it can be seen most prominently in the London only data.

HESA say:

The Office for Studentshas said that reversing the decline in entry into higher education among mature students and especially those from less privileged backgrounds is a vital part of ensuring more equality in access to higher education. Much of the current debate has been around what modifications are required within part-time study and student finance to help achieve this, given such courses are taken predominantly by older students.

The above narrative suggests that foundation years could also be a useful way of helping disadvantaged mature learners return to study. In both countries, we found that much of the increase in mature entry in recent years is accounted for by a small number of institutions. Hence, future research may wish to explore how these universities have managed to buck the wider trend of decline, as this may improve sector understanding of what is needed to support mature and/or disadvantaged individuals into higher education.

Graduate Outcomes

Wonkhe report on the graduate recruitment company who have published Working with class: The state of social immobility in graduate recruitment. Wonkhe state the report finds over a third of 18-25 year olds are put off joining a business if they perceive the workforce to be made up predominantly of middle and upper-class employees – equating to 2.5 million young people. The report argues that this is costing businesses and the wider economy £270 billion per year. The research also found two thirds (66%) of graduates felt they had to change “who they are” to “make a good impression” during an interview and the majority (64%) said they weren’t able to express themselves as individuals during application processes.

Wonkhe also have an interesting and short blog on what the graduate outcomes metrics aren’t measuring despite the data being available. What about graduate job satisfaction? explores the old DLHE question examining why the graduate chose the job they were doing and the nearest equivalents in the Graduate Outcomes survey which asks whether the graduate’s current activity fits with their future plans, is meaningful, and utilities their degree learning. The author calls for TEF and league table compilers to pay more attention to this richer source of graduate outcome information.

Disadvantage – access, participation and success

A parliamentary question on opening up disadvantage data to support university admissions receives the usual ‘not yet’ response:

Universities: Disclosure of Information

Q – Ben Bradley: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with the Office for Students on the transmission of data on applicants’ pupil premium status and ethnicity directly to universities in order to support universities’ work on widening participation and access.

A – Chris Skidmore:

Widening access and participation in higher education is a priority for the government. This means that everyone with the capability to succeed in higher education should have the opportunity to participate, regardless of their background or where they grew up.
We have made real progress in ensuring universities are open to all, with record rates of disadvantaged 18-year-olds in higher education. However, we know there is further to go to maximise the potential of the talent out there, so it is vital that we build on this progress.
Higher education providers need to use good quality and meaningful data to identify disadvantage in order to effectively address disparities in access and participation in higher education. We encourage institutions to use a range of measures to identify disadvantage, including individual-level indicators, area data (such as Participation of Local Areas, Index of Multiple Deprivation or postcode classification from ACORN), school data, intersectional data such as Universities and Colleges Admissions Service’s (UCAS) Multiple Equality Measure, and participation in outreach activities. To this end, we are working with the Office for Students (OfS), UCAS and sector representatives to further explore how we can support universities to improve and enhance access to data.
We want institutions to consider a broad range of information in their offers, including the context in which a student’s results were achieved. We are committed to helping universities progress in their efforts to improve access and successful participation for under-represented groups.

And while we’re talking of Chris Skidmore, he has had a temporary promotion to cover for Claire Perry, Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth. Chris will retain his Universities Minister portfolio whilst attending Cabinet on Claire’s behalf.

Minimum salary threshold

Politics Home reports that Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, will remove the £30,000 minimum salary threshold for EU migrants wishing to work within the UK. All media sources are drawing on a letter than The Sun obtained in which Sajid wrote to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) recommending they reconsider the wage threshold and address regional wage discrepancies. The Sun report Sajid also said he wants EU migrants to receive exemptions for a range of professions and for new entrants and inexperienced works to be paid less.

The MAC’s £30k policy brought the wage requirement for EU in line with that required to be achieved by international migrants and said it would also help to boost wages for UK workers. Prior to the £30k policy announcement (see Immigration white paper, Dec 2018) it was reported that there was heated opposition to the policy in the cabinet from both the Chancellor and the Business Secretary (Greg Clark). As a concession to the opposition it was agreed the Minister (Sajid Javid) would consult with business on the final level of the salary threshold. Politics Home state: “Saj is basically telling the MAC to go away and do their work all over again. He knows Theresa is off and he’s cashing in.”

The leaked letter states: “The Government is committed to engaging extensively over the course of this year before confirming the level of the minimum salary threshold.” It is believed the MAC are due to reopen the salary threshold discussions and report back to Sajid Javid at the end of 2019.

Apprenticeships

The Public Accounts Committee have published a progress review on the apprenticeships programme, raising concerns over low take-up, unambitious targets and poor-quality training.

It argues that the DfE has failed to make the predicted progress when launching apprenticeship reforms in 2017. The number of apprenticeship starts fell by 26% after the apprenticeship levy was introduced and, although the level is now recovering, the government will not meet its target of 3 million starts by March 2020. The committee moreover concludes that the department’s focus on higher-level apprenticeships and levy-paying employers increases the risk that minority groups, disadvantaged areas and smaller employers may miss out on the benefits that apprenticeships can bring.

The report also finds that the Department underspent the programme’s budget by 20% in 2017-18, but employers’ preference for higher-cost apprenticeships means that the programme is expected to come under growing financial pressure in the coming years.

Other news

Smart dorms: Accommodation provider UPP are considering trialling new technology and research initiatives as part of a smart property technology push. UPP said: “We have an aspiration to create smart communities within our bedrooms and our accommodation, and we want to support universities’ smart agendas…One of the ideas that we’re following at UPP is, how can we get virtual assistants into our rooms? How can we use smart technology in the lights and so on?” UPP state that students want more control over their accommodation, such as how much energy they use, and that new technology could help monitor student wellbeing, for example registering how often students leave their rooms. They are encouraging suppliers to see university accommodation as a “testbed for…their new gadgets”, which could help keep down costs for students renting the rooms. Research Professional have the full article here.

FE funding: Education Select Committee Chair Robert Halfon joins the call for FE providers to be funded fairly. Writing in Politics Home he states:

When delivered well, skills, education and apprenticeships provide a ladder of opportunity that allows anyone, no matter what their background, the opportunity to secure jobs, prosperity and security for their future. This is important for two reasons: to address social injustices in our society and to boost productivity in our country. Getting this right benefits everyone, and colleges are the vanguard in our fight to achieve this.
Despite delivering fantastic outcomes for their learners and meeting our skills needs, colleges get a raw deal in funding terms. According to the IFS, 16-18 education “has been the biggest loser”, with spending per student falling by eight per cent in real terms since 2010/2011. For too long, Further Education has been considered the ‘Cinderella Sector’.

The Education Select Committee has been: examining the potential for a long term, ten-year vision for education investment that recognises the vital contribution from our colleges…The benefit that colleges bring to individuals, communities and our country transcends party politics and referendum lines.

Antisemitism: Universities were reminded of their responsibilities to tackle religious-based hate at the end of last week. This Government news story tells of potential indirect discrimination after a University Jewish society was expected to fund a £2,000 security bill to run an event.

Careers Hubs: Dorset LEP has been successful in a bid to establish a Careers Hub. In 2018 Careers Hubs were trialled through first wave providers who reported over performance against the measured careers education targets:

outperforming the national average on all 8 Gatsby Benchmarks of good careers guidance;
58% of Careers Hubs provide every student with regular encounters with employers;
52% provided every student with workplace experience (work experience, shadowing or workplace visits).
Improvements were strongest in disadvantaged regions.

The press release describes the Careers Hub model:

Careers Hubs bring together schools and colleges with employers, universities, training providers and career professionals to improve outcomes for young people. There is a focus on best practice and schools and colleges have access to support and funding, including an expert Hub Lead to help coordinate activity and build networks, a central fund to support employer engagement activities, and training for a Careers Leader in each school and college. Employers are vital to the Hub model’s success, with all Hubs required to demonstrate strong engagement amongst local businesses and a clear plan for increasing employer engagement

Carolyn Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, said:“Firms can sometimes struggle to engage with the schools and colleges that need their support. It’s therefore hugely encouraging to see more Careers Hubs on the way. There is no doubt they will play a pivotal role in helping employers get more involved.”

Poverty: The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, published his final report into extreme poverty and human rights (including taking account of 300 written consultation responses). You can read the full report here, or you can contact Policy for a shorter summary and recommendations if this topic is of interest. The report sets out a bleak picture of poverty levels in the UK and draws a direct parallel between the rise in poverty and the Government’s austerity agenda:

“Close to 40 per cent of children are predicted to be living in poverty by 2021. Food banks have proliferated; homelessness and rough sleeping have increased greatly; tens of thousands of poor families must live in accommodation far from their schools, jobs and community networks; life expectancy is falling for certain groups; and the legal aid system has been decimated”

“The bottom line is that much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.”

The Government have responded pushing back on the report calling it a “barely believable documentation of Britain” and stating that “all the evidence shows that full-time work is the best way to boost your income and quality of life.”

Industrial Strategy: The 5 universities in the West Midlands have jointly published a report raising awareness of the value and contribution they make to the Government’s Industrial Strategy. Deborah Cadman, CEO of the West Midlands Combined Authority, said: “The West Midlands is the first region to work with the UK Government to develop a Local Industrial Strategy and the region’s universities are at the forefront of the vital link between innovation and industry. Their research and development reaches far beyond the laboratory and lecture theatres. By driving the local economy and improving everyone’s lives, they are already addressing the UK’s future challenges.”

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

May 21, 2019

Erasmus Exchange: Reframing sociological understanding of suicide in Italy

Global engagement, international Brian McNulty

The Napoli Gate of the medieval town of Lecce, Italy

FMC Principal Academic, Dr. Ann Luce was invited, along with Prof. Debbie Holley, HSS, to share their respective research during a series of seminars and workshops at the University of Salento, Italy.

As part of of the exchange is building capacity, Dr. Luce was invited to promote her new book and share her significant body of work on suicide and its reporting in the media. Italian sociologists, Prof. Ferdinando Spina and Prof. Marta Vignola invited Dr. Luce to deliver a research symposium to Masters of Sociology students, so they could better understand the role of the media in suicide representations and framing for society at large.

While there, Dr. Luce was interviewed about her new “Responsible Suicide Reporting” model. The podcast is available in both English and Italian.

Dr. Luce was able to spend some time with the Director of the Department of History, Society and Human Studies, Professore Ordinario di Geografia Economico-Politica, Fabio Pollice, and presented him with her newly published book, “Ethical Reporting of Sensitive Topics”

Dr. Luce worked extensively with our host, Prof. Enrico Ciavolino, an expert psychometric statistician, who was able to offer advice to Dr. Luce about new methods of interrogating data from social media sites, in collaboration with Prof. Ferdinando Spina, an esteemed sociologist studying criminology and media.

For further information on suicide, ethical reporting, and media, please contact Ann at: aluce@bournemouth.ac.uk

May 20, 2019

Interactive Learning at the University of Salento, Italy

Global engagement, international Brian McNulty

Prof. Debbie Holley from HSS and Dr. Ann Luce from FMC, recently visited the University of Salento, Italy on an Erasmus exchange. They delivered interactive and creative learning workshops to Masters students in Psychology, Sociology and Statistics as part of the Department of History, Society and Human Studies exchange programme.

The subject for the session was to model methodologies for drawing out sensitive narratives as a possible interview method. The workshop focused on building with bricks, and invited the students to consider and reflect how they would use this in their own work.

Drawing on the appreciative inquiry position, established at BU by Head of Service Excellence, Susanne Clarke and Dr. Curie Scott, programme leader for the PGCert, the students followed the stages of the model and applied it to their own writing practices. Moving on from this, Prof. Holley and Dr. Luce led the students with their professors on a journey through the technology of the future. In this session, students were encouraged to consider the influences of rapid technological change on their futures and the impact this will have on their learning. A hands-on session was provided, with the students having the opportunity to try out firsthand the use of google cardboard and 360 degree video.

For further information on the content of the two workshops, please contact:

Prof. Debbie Holley, HSS: dholley@bournemouth.ac.uk

Dr. Ann Luce, FMC: aluce@bournemouth.ac.uk

May 20, 2019

Podcasts, Creativity and Collaboration with University of Salento, Italy

Global engagement, international Brian McNulty

Professor Debbie Holley and Dr. Ann Luce recently visited University of Salento, in Lecce, in the Puglia region of Italy as part of the BU ERASMUS exchange programme. This is a follow on from a pedagogy/ technology and statistical exchange that started a number of years ago with Prof. Holley’s previous institution. A part of of the exchange is building capacity, and FMC Principal Academic, Dr. Luce was invited to come and share her significant body of work on suicide and its reporting in the media. Italian sociologists, Prof. Ferdinando Spina and Prof. Marta Vignola invited Dr. Luce to deliver a research symposium to Masters of Sociology students, so they could better understand the role of the media in suicide representations and framing for society at large.

Prof. Spina and Dr. Luce exchanged their most recent books and began scoping a research collaboration into looking at cross-cultural representations in British and Italian media.

Prof. Debbie Holley led an interactive seminar around creating narratives in healthcare, using building blocks similar to Lego. Using creative methods, she challenged the students to consider how to work with vulnerable groups discussing sensitive topics. The underlying philosophy was originally developed by Head of Service Excellence, Susanne Clarke and Dr. Curie Scott, programme leader for the PGCert.

Prof. Holley and Dr. Luce led a workshop for Masters in Psychology, Sociology and Statistics students entitled: “Technology Enhanced Learning: Ideas for 21st Century Learners”, which discussed the future of technology and the accelerated speed of change and the implications for students and their future employment. As part of this session, students were invited to interact with google cardboard and to consider co-creation as part of their future learning plan.

The podcast team hard at work! From L-R: Prof. Enrico Ciavolino, PhD candidate, Paola Pascoe, Prof. Debbie Holley and Dr. Ann Luce

In addition to their teaching activities, Prof. Holley and Dr. Luce spent time writing and creating materials for podcasts in collaboration with PhD candidate, Paola Pascoe, who translated and narrated the podcasts in Italian. The podcasts focused on Prof. Holley’s work in augmented reality, and Dr. Luce’s focused on the creation of her new “Responsible Suicide Reporting” model. Both podcasts will be disseminated widely through professional Italian networks by our hosts.

Podcast 1: Prof. Debbie Holley on Augmented Reality

(Italian) available here

(English) is available here

Podcast 2: Dr. Ann Luce on her “Responsible Suicide Reporting” model

(Italian) available here

(English) is available here

For further information about ERASMUS exchanges, please talk to the BU Global Engagement team.

May 15, 2019

HE Policy Update for the w/e 17th May 2019 (a bit early)

Business Engagement, EU, Impact, Industry collaboration, innovation, international, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, policy, Public engagement, Research news, Student Engagement jforster

This week’s policy update is an early (almost) mid-week treat. There will be a bumper edition next week.

The Minister defends universities

Chris Skidmore was in front of Education Committee on Wednesday at an accountability hearing. You can watch it here. In the parts we watched, he answered questions on encouraging apprenticeships, and while he agreed, he also countered by talking about placements and sandwich years as another way to support employability. He also defended “post 92s” as being world class and criticised those who leap to conclusions based on whether universities are in the Russell Group or not. And he said that teaching was important and a focus only on research (and negative press about institutions) was not helpful.

On the Augar review his advisor said it is not finalised yet and the Minister said he hasn’t seen a draft. He expects there will be changes “within the financial envelope that has been set”. He also says the terms of reference remain the same for the review. That’s important because (set before the ONS decision on the deficit) they said:

The Review recommendations will be consistent with the Government’s fiscal policies to reduce the deficit and will not place a cap on the number of students who can benefit from post-18 education. Student contributions towards the cost of their studies, including the level, terms and duration of their contribution will be considered.

Separately he has given his second speech on research, which we cover in the next section, but he also delivered a speech on ‘going global’ in higher education, outlining his vision for the sector. In this speech he repeated a lot from other recent speeches and announcements, but also talked about TNE (trans national education) with enthusiasm and international research collaboration. He spoke of UK students becoming truly global citizens (and he didn’t say that they were citizens of nowhere). I think international student loneliness and mental health will be picked up increasingly alongside the other mental health stories. He mentioned “Step Change” and the University Mental Health Charter.

I was particularly shocked to learn, when I gave a speech at a Wonkhe conference on the ‘secret lives of students’ earlier this year, that over 15% of students said they felt lonely on a daily basis. And the figures were worse for international students. In fact, 20% of international students said they do not consider themselves to have any true friends at university. So, they can lack support networks and be more likely to have concerns over their mental health. That is why we are working closely with UK universities to embed the ‘Step Change’ programme within the sector, which calls on higher education leaders to adopt the mental health of students and staff as a strategic priority.

We remain open to exploring participation in the successor scheme to the current Erasmus+ Programme. But, as a responsible Government, we are also considering a wide range of options with regards to the future of international exchange and collaboration in education and training. This includes a potential domestic alternative to the Erasmus+ Programme. The potential benefits of the UK establishing its own international mobility scheme would include the ability to have a truly global exchange programme. And I will be driving forward this work in the coming months.

Research and research funding

New Research and Innovation Strategy: The Minister gave the second of his four planned speeches on research as the “Minister for the 2.4% [GDP investment in research and innocation]”. We reported last week’s in our update. This week’s was a little bit repetitive, if we’re honest [you can read the annotated version by HE for Research Professional here], but he did launch the International Research and Innovation Strategy which was trailed last week. As with all such documents it is long on images and rhetoric (and case studies) and short on specifics.

Some fun facts:

UK Global Research and Innovation – 6 per cent of global research publications are produced by the UK.

15 per cent of the world’s most highly cited articles come from the UK.

£23.7bn invested in R&I by UK businesses in 2017.

Top four in the Global Innovation Index.

Three universities ranked in the top ten globally.

Top ten in World Bank ease of doing business rankings.

There are seven themes each with a set of commitments:

A global partner: a partner for open, excellent and entrepreneurial research and innovation.

Our commitments:

One of our core objectives is to continue to collaborate with European partners on major science, research, and technology initiatives. We want to explore association to EU research and innovation programmes, including Horizon Europe and Euratom Research and Training, networks and infrastructure.

The new strategic partnership approach with Africa announced by the Prime Minister in 2018 is underpinned by a coherent cross government science, technology and innovation approach. …

We are creating a long-term research and innovation infrastructure roadmap, incorporating leading UK and international facilities as a cornerstone, to develop an effective strategy for future requirements and investment priorities.

We will use our extensive diplomatic networks, led by our Science and Innovation Network teams …. to enhance international cooperation, build partnerships and deliver this strategy.

We will work with our universities, research institutes, the academic and business communities to promote and facilitate international collaboration and use their networks and influence to build new partnerships that produce excellent research and innovation.

Bringing together the best talent from around the world

Our commitments

We are committed to funding research talent, including:

£1.3bn to attract and retain world class talent, through UKRI’s Future Leadership Fellowship and from the UK’s National Academies …
A new AI skills and talent package supported by industry funding and up to £110m government investment including: up to 200 new AI Masters places at UK universities; new PhDs for 1,000 students at 16 dedicated UKRI AI Centres for Doctoral Training; up to five AI research Fellowships created in collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute.

We are ensuring our visa arrangements support international researchers, innovators, their teams and their families.

A suite of UK based Fellowships for promising global researchers….

Commitments to build research capacity in partner countries and create a global network of promising early career researchers with links to the UK, including FLAIR Fellowships for African researchers.

Our Knowledge Exchange Framework will support closer working between industry and academia promoting a culture of continuous improvement in knowledge exchange.

Regional DFID technology acceleration platforms working with Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network …

The £900m UK Research Partnership Investment Fund.

A global hub for innovation

Our commitments

In the UK’s Industrial Strategy we have set out the goal of making the UK the most innovative country in the world by 2030.

We have established hubs of tech innovation throughout the UK that are world-leading. …

We are working towards a global digital marketplace supporting greater transparency in public procurement…

We have an extensive Catapult network …

We are extending Innovate UK’s Global Expert Missions and Business Innovation programmes …

Through the UK Chairmanship of and participation in EUREKA we are working with members to develop a global framework for business-led R&D and innovation collaboration, and have committed a further £20m to support international collaboration through EUREKA

Incentives and financial support

Our commitments

A £20bn, 10-year Patient Capital Action Plan, including £2.5bn for British Patient Capital to drive £7.5 bn of investment into innovative high-growth potential SMEs.

The upper limits on the Enterprise Investment Schemes and Venture Capital Trust investment reliefs were doubled from April 2018 for knowledge-intensive companies.

British Business Bank’s Enterprise Capital Funds programme …

We will work with businesses, our leading universities, research institutes and UK Research & Innovation to make the UK an even more attractive location for R&D activity. …

Global Entrepreneur Programme helps overseas entrepreneurs and early stage technology businesses that want to relocate to the UK.

R&D Tax Credit relief for SMEs and R&D Expenditure Credit …

A global platform for the technologies of tomorrow

Our commitments

We are bringing forward plans to transform the UK’s regulatory system to enable innovation…. including through a Regulators’ Pioneer Fund to support regulator-led initiatives.

We will work with other countries to develop a balanced and fit for purpose international intellectual property framework that maximises the benefits of innovation and creativity. We are establishing a new partnership with the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to develop regulation ….

We will promote better governance frameworks around the globe through the FCO‘s network of overseas posts, and BSI’s leadership role in European and international standards.

We will provide a safe and secure environment for research and innovation through physical and cyber protection.

A partner for a sustainable future

Our commitments

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund …

The UK’s commitment in law of 0.7 per cent of our Gross National Income to Official Development Assistance ….

We have invested across government in targeted programmes for international research and innovation for sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals.

We are committed to bring a whole of government approach to maximise the impact of international collaborative programmes…..

An advocate for better research governance, ethics and impact

Our commitments

The UK will play a full and active role in the global governance of scientific research and innovation organisations through critical global fora [there’s a huge list]

New Inquiry into Research Funding: The Science and Technology Committee have launched a new inquiry to assess the impact of potential changes in funding on the ability of UK universities to conduct high-quality research.

The committee will begin taking oral evidence on 21^st May 2019 and will likely cover;

What proportion of England and Wales’ overall science research is done in universities? How much of that is funded directly by universities?
Has the establishment of UKRI affected the way in which universities apply for funding for research? Have the changes been beneficial?
The Government have committed to a target of 2.4% of GDP to be invested in research and development by 2027. What will be the balance between investment in research-active universities and industry? What are the expected changes to research funding in universities?
Would the reduction or abolition of tuition fees impact funding in such a way as to affect the ability of universities to conduct high-quality scientific research?
If Brexit led to a reduction in EU students studying in England and Wales, would that affect science research capabilities in universities?

CBI report on R&D: The Confederation of British Industry has published a report on the ‘Changing Nature of R&D’, which highlights that despite the Government’s aim of raising R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027, it is not expected to reach this level until at least 2053. As part of this, the CBI has called on the Government to commit to making a number of commitments to enhancing the UK’s research and innovation ecosystem:

The Government should agree to setting out a comprehensive and future focused road underpinned by commitment to increasing public funding,
The Government should include measures to increase the number of businesses utilising the potential of data and analytics to at least 3%
This can be achieved by delivering a ‘competency building’ package to support businesses to understand and unlock value from their data.
The CBI calls on the Government to simplify the process behind businesses ability to navigate innovation and support productive partnerships.
This can be achieved by establishing a new ‘business advisory group’ for UKRI.
Implementing a business development and outreach for Innovate UK
Increase visibility and simplicity of government and university innovation support.
The CBI added that the UK should consolidate its position as a global leader in data-driven R&D by setting out ‘ambitious and creative policy’
As part of this, the Government should deliver the world’s most ‘competitive R&D tax credit by ensuring that it recognises the growing importance of data-driven R&D’
The Government should also help businesses embrace experimental policy approaches.

Knowledge Exchange

Last week we mentioned that UUK and GuildHE consultation on the draft Knowledge Exchange Concordat, linked to the KEF. RDS will be leading on preparation of a BU response.

A joint UUK/Research England working group has developed a Knowledge Exchange Concordat for universities and colleges in England. UUK are doing the consultation with GuildHE for Research England. The PDF consultation document is here

The Concordat aims to:

help higher education institutions and their staff and students enhance clarity of mission
give partners an accurate representation of the approaches and strengths of individual higher education institutions
provide clear indicators of their approaches to developing and improving performance
give governing bodies and government broad confidence in the activity that is taking place in higher education institutions

Principles – The eight guiding principles are:

Mission: Knowledge exchange is a recognised part of the overall university strategy. We have a clear understanding of the institutional role and the purpose of KE and whom the intended beneficiaries are.
Policies: We have clear policies on all the types of KE that we undertake and we ensure they are understood by staff, students, collaborators and beneficiaries.
Engagement: We have clear access points, engagement mechanisms and policies developed to suit the needs of a wide range of beneficiaries working with institutions as publicly funded bodies.
Working effectively: We make sure that our partners and beneficiaries understand the ethical and charitable regulatory environments in which our institution operates and we take steps to maximise the benefit to them within that context.
Capacity building: We ensure that our staff and students are developed and trained appropriately to understand and undertake their roles and responsibilities in the delivery of successful KE.
Recognition and rewards: We recognise the achievements of our staff and students who perform high-quality KE activities.
Continuous improvement: We proactively strive to share best practice with our peers and have established processes for learning from this.
Evaluating success: We undertake regular institutional and collective monitoring and review of our strengthening KE performance using this concordat and through regional, national or international benchmarks to inform the development and execution of a programme of continuous improvement.

For each principle, a set of possible enablers is proposed. These are examples of good practice and give an indication of the sort of activities that could contribute towards the achievement of the aims of the concordat. They should not be considered as a prescribed set of activities and they do not represent a checklist against which universities can be judged.

Universities that sign up commit to:

Making it clear to staff, students and partners what they will do, what they expect within universities and how they expect to work with partners
The regular evaluation of approaches and processes to ensure continuous improvement in what is done
Adopting the principles outlined in the KE concordat as a framework for effective knowledge exchange
Publicly committing to the KE concordat
Conducting an evaluation of their KE strategy and practice, using the KE concordat
Producing and publishing a short action plan that identifies priorities, good and innovative practice and areas where improvement is needed
Considering and responding to feedback and advice from the Independent Panel.

Graduate Outcomes

The Resolution Foundation published Growing Pains – the impact of leaving education during a recession on earnings and employment. It explores the severe effect experienced by those leaving education during the 2008-09 recession and highlights that the negative effects were enduring – around 6% less hourly pay for graduates (20% less for sub-HE qualification) with these effects continuing for 6 years and the likelihood of graduates to be in a low paying occupation rose by 30% (and continued for 7 years). The report says:

…we find that people ‘trading down’ in terms of the occupations they enter after leaving education, coupled with pay restraint in mid-paid roles, are main drivers of poor pay outcomes for those entering the labour market in a recession.
Students graduating during the 2008 financial crisis aftermath experienced higher unemployment and poorer job prospects than their slightly younger peers. The report also highlighted that those who opted to taker a lower paid job (rather than unemployment) during their early career were blighted by poor future earnings trajectories and their job prospects to break into higher skilled more lucrative employment were damaged.

Inequality – a report and a new review

The Institute for Fiscal Studies and Nuffield Foundation have launched a report into Inequalities in the twenty-first century: introducing the IFS Deaton Review.

You can read the report here. It is only 34 pages long and an interesting read. Some points here:

Income inequality in the UK is high by international standards. Of other major economies, only the US has higher income inequality. However, Inequality in total net household income has changed little since rising sharply in the 1980s. The UK system of state transfers – especially tax credits – has been very successful at mitigating rising inequality.
Deaths from suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related liver disease have been rising among middle-aged people in England – similar to (though on a smaller scale than) what has happened in the US since the turn of the century, where the trend has been shown to be concentrated heavily among the lower-educated population. In the UK, this new trend has contributed to a small rise in middle-age mortality overall in the last few years, bringing to an end decades of continual improvement.
Women’s employment has risen dramatically from 57% in 1975 to 78% in 2017. But whilst white British women have nearly closed the employment gap with men, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are half as likely to work as men of the same ethnic group.
The gender hourly wage gap is strongly associated with childbirth and rises from less than 10% at the point of childbirth to 30% 12 years after the first child is born. This reflects an extraordinary lack of earnings progression for mothers, particularly those who work part-time.
There are stark geographical inequalities in the UK. Average weekly earnings in London are 66% higher than those in the North East. Men in the most affluent areas can expect to live nearly 10 years longer than those in the most deprived areas, and this gap is widening.
Inequalities in different dimensions – income, work, mental and physical health, families and relationships – are likely to reinforce one another. Inequality cannot be reduced to one dimension and is instead the culmination of various forms of privilege and disadvantage stemming across wealth, politics, social networks and cultural capital.
The last few decades have seen profound changes in the labour market. Earnings growth at the top has vastly outpaced growth in the middle, whilst real earnings have actually fallen for lowpaid men (Blundell et al., 2018).
Globalisation may have further exacerbated inequalities in earnings: competition for internationally mobile executives drove up top incomes, whilst import competition and offshoring put pressure on working-class jobs.
Union membership has declined dramatically over the last few decades. At the peak of union density in the 1980s, every other British worker belonged to a union; today, only one in four British workers do. In the private sector, that figure is less than one in seven. Falling union membership may have removed constraints on wage dispersion, increased the share of surplus going to executives, or more generally reduced the political clout of ordinary workers against other dominant groups
The share of all turnover captured by the largest 100 firms in the UK has risen by more than a third since the late 1990s. The average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company is now earning 145 times the average salary, up from 47 times in 1998.
Many of the sources of the divide are indeed global, but levels of inequalities vary greatly between countries. Government policies can play an important role in responding to structural forces and mediating their damaging effects on inequality. In some cases, government policies may themselves be the culprits for rising inequalities. Differences in tax and benefit systems will lead to different patterns of inequality. Education policy also plays a role. The vast inequalities by education in the US – in health, deaths of despair, marriage and life satisfaction – may partly reflect a large gap in earnings between high- and low-educated people, which has been rising since the 1980s.
High-quality vocational education can improve prospects for those who choose not to go down an academic path, and retraining can help workers displaced by globalisation and technological change.
Stronger trade unions can tip power back towards employees – in the Nordic countries, between 52% and 86% of all employees belong to a trade union
The report sets the stage for a 5 year review be chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Prof Sir Angus Deaton and is expected to be the UK’s biggest analysis of inequality.

A brief Brexit mention

Over last weekend Kier Starmer, Shadow Brexit SoS said no deal would be passed by Labour MPs without a confirmatory Brexit referendum. Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson spoke on Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday to reiterate this message (although in a toned down version). Starmer said on Sunday that cross-party talks would end this week unless an offer or breakthrough occurred.

On Saturday Tony Blair took to the Guardian stating Labour should never have put itself in such a position of destructive indecision. His article aimed to encourage everyone to vote (against Brexit extremism), arguing that the final decisions in Westminster on the Brexit deal will be influenced by the European election results.

Damien Hinds appeared on Sunday’s Andrew Marr show and said that the European elections could be an ultimate protest vote opportunity.

Theresa May is expected to set out the timescale for her departure when she meets the 1922 Committee (Conservative backbenchers) on Thursday.

And as we go to press [early this week] the government is saying that they will put the EU withdrawal legislation before Parliament in early June, by-passing the meaningful vote. They have said that before. A helpful summary from Dods:

Labour has confirmed it would not back this deal without a cross-party deal agreed, and ERG Whip Steve Baker said bringing the Bill back would “eradicate the Government’s majority” by alienating the DUP and Brexiteers: “Unless she can demonstrate something new that addresses the problem of the backstop, then it is highly likely her deal will go down to defeat once again.”

The UK needs to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in order to move onto the next steps of the Brexit phase and to take the UK out of the EU in UK law. The legislation would make the citizens’ rights part of the agreement directly enforceable in UK courts, and set their relationship with the EU’s Court of Justice, as well “divorce payments”, and give effect to the so-called backstop plan for the Irish border.
The Bill will be amendable and without substantial changes or cross party breakthrough then it is very unlikely that the Bill will pass. The rationale behind the move by May might be that the deadline for a new vote could inject a sense of urgency into cross-party talks, or it could be an attempt to fend off calls for her to immediately stand down as PM. She is due to appear before the 1922 executive committee tomorrow and was expected to set out a timeframe for her resignation.
If the Government loses the vote in June then it will make May’s premiership as Prime Minister increasingly untenable. Downing Street have confirmed that if the vote is lost again then the UK is either set for a no deal on the 31 October or a revocation of Article 50.

Access and Foundation courses

The OfS have published a report on these courses.

For the past few years the number of students studying Access to Higher Education Diplomas… has been declining, while the number on integrated foundation years has been increasing. This means that in 2017-18, the number of entrants to Access courses was approximately equal to the number of entrants to integrated foundation year courses. The number of entrants to Access courses declined by 18 per cent between 2012-13 and 2017-18, from 36,880 to 30,410, while the number of integrated foundation year entrants almost tripled from 10,430 to 30,030.
This report shows that there are similarities between Access to Higher Education Diplomas and integrated foundation year courses, but also important differences. In particular, the wider geographical spread of Access courses means they may be suitable for a wider range of potential higher education students and enable progress on to many different courses, whereas foundation years may be more likely to attract students with a higher level of commitment to taking degree-level study at a specific provider.

The key findings of this report are as follows:

Two-fifths of Access students held a qualification equivalent to A-levels before taking the course, compared with four-fifths of foundation year students.
Most Access course entrants were over 21, whereas the majority of those starting foundation years were 20 or younger.
Access courses were almost entirely taught at further education colleges, while integrated foundation years were predominantly taught at higher education institutions.
This means that students usually had to travel further to take a foundation year than an Access course.
Subjects allied to medicine were the most common subject area for entrants to Access courses, whereas business and administrative studies were the most common for integrated foundation years.
The proportion of students who progressed to a degree programme in the four years following an Access course (62 per cent) was lower than the proportion who progressed after a foundation year (79 per cent).
Students from both courses sometimes went on to a degree course after two or more years, rather than immediately.
The proportion of entrants who progressed to degree-level study has remained broadly stable over time for both types of course.
Students who started without A-level or equivalent qualifications had a lower rate of progression to degree-level study (55 per cent for Access courses, 61 per cent for foundation years), than those with A-levels (71 and 89 per cent respectively).
Those who progressed to full-time degree-level study after a foundation year were more likely to complete their degree within four years (63 per cent) than those on a degree after an Access course (53 per cent).
Of those who qualified with a degree, a slightly higher proportion of Access course students achieved first or upper second class degrees(70 per cent) than those who studied a foundation year (67 per cent).

FE funding

The Education Policy Institute published a report on 16-19 education funding trends and implications. Some highlights are below. It is relevant to the Post-18 review because of the funding pressures and also to the debate on university admissions and access and participation.

Funding trends in sixth forms and colleges

Between 2010/11 and 2018/19, real terms funding per student in school sixth forms, sixth form colleges, and further education (FE) colleges declined substantially, by 16 per cent, from £5,900 to £4,960. This is twice the rate that the overall schools budget fell by between 2009/10 and 2017/18 (8 per cent).

Funding in school sixth forms declined by 26 per cent per full time student from 2010/11 to 2018/19. In the further education sector (sixth form colleges and FE colleges), funding declined by 18 per cent per full time student. Within this, funding for sixth form colleges fell faster than in FE colleges.

Despite funding being shifted towards disadvantaged students over this period, students in all institutions have experienced real terms funding cuts.

16-19 education has been the biggest real terms loser of any phase of education since 2010/11, but it has also suffered from a long run squeeze in funding: 30 years ago, 16-19 funding was far higher (almost 1.5 times) than secondary school funding, but is now lower.

Provision in sixth forms and colleges

Students in 16-19 education are receiving fewer hours of learning: learning hours with a teacher for students in all institutions fell by 9 per cent between 2012/13 and 2016/17. The deterioration of 16-19 institutions’ finances may exacerbate these trends further.

This fall in taught hours is particularly prominent in academic subjects: level 3 subjects (A level or equivalent) have seen a sharp decline in hours by 21 per cent between 2012/13 and 2016/17.

For academic subjects, there has been a large decline in AS provision, which has not been offset by rises in the number of hours elsewhere. This may raise concerns about the curriculum becoming even narrower: upper secondary education in England is already narrow compared to leading education nations in the OECD.

Policy recommendations

The government should urgently review the adequacy of 16-19 funding, to understand whether current funding rates are jeopardising the sector’s financial sustainability.

The government should assess the impact of 16-19 funding changes on curriculum breadth, ensuring that young people have a good choice of high quality post-16 academic and vocational qualifications.

The government should review the impact of funding changes on disadvantaged students and consider whether funding is supporting the government’s aim of narrowing the attainment gap.

Rethinking student loan communications

Martin Lewis, MoneySavingExpert.com, has been a vocal contributor to the student loans debate calling for both reform, greater understanding (e.g. of parental contribution) and for the way student loans are talked about to be changed to aid understanding. Martin Lewis is concerned that the word ‘debt’ is described puts off those from lower income backgrounds from considering university – stalling their chances at climbing the social mobility latter. He has collaborated with the Russell Group to pilot a new student loan statement named the Graduate Contribution Statement. He says the current student loan statement is not fit for purpose and the new statement aims to inform people of their personal situation whilst using this information to illustrate how student loan repayments really work over the short and long-term – cutting through the confusion. The report describes the features of the new statement:

Focuses on repayments to be made, more than the debt. For the majority of university leavers, their outstanding ‘debt’ is a mostly meaningless figure that bears only a loose resemblance to what they need to repay. However, this figure, and the interest added, is the primary data given on the current statement – leaving many unnecessarily scared.
Details how the repayments actually work. (The 9% above the threshold, currently £25,725 (in England & Wales) for 30 years, unless they clear the debt before that.) One of Martin Lewis campaigning points is to ensure this is well understood. He says:… whether you owe £10,000, £50,000 or £3 million – with a £30,000 salary, you repay £385 a year. The only impact the size of the ‘debt’ has is whether you’ll clear what you owe before it wipes.
Explains what contributions are made each month, and over the year. It shows how much graduates are actually repaying now on a monthly basis, instead of a long list of figures.
Predicts the total cost of higher education. As it’s predicted that 83% of university leavers will keep paying for the full 30 years, the total cost is often not related to the debt. The statement estimates the total amount they will repay within the 30 years, both in cash terms and real terms while factoring in inflation – based on their earnings trajectory.

The Graduate Contribution Statement was tested in an online survey of 5,796 students, former students and parents, some institutions (such as students unions) as well as in a series of student focus groups.

96% of respondents said the new information is clear
90% said the statement helped them understand the student finance system
91% success rate achieved when respondents were tested to ensure they really did understand the more complex information correctly

Here is an example of the new statement.

The report from the pilot statement will be presented to the Government, and to Philip Augar (Post-18 HE Education and funding review).

Martin Lewis said:

“The current student loan statement is a blunt, misleading tool that is financially dangerous. It prompts often-unnecessary fear and distress from some of the millions who receive it. And worse, as it’s a gateway document, this reverberates across society, and therefore risks wrongly deterring many from a future of higher education.
For the majority of university leavers, their outstanding ‘debt’ is a mostly meaningless figure that bears only a loose resemblance to what they need to repay. However, this figure, and the interest added, is the prime data covered on the current statement.
In fact, a more accurate name for the student loan system would be a ‘graduate contribution’, as what counts most isn’t what’s owed but what’s repaid, which depends almost entirely on earnings. Yet the last year’s annual repayment is only mentioned in passing, and there’s no attempt to explain total repayments over the life of the loan.
Focusing on the wrong info can have damaging consequences for individuals. One woman told me how the fear of the growing interest on her statement meant she used an inheritance to overpay thousands. But as she was in a low-earning profession, with little likelihood of ever clearing much, her overpayment wouldn’t have any impact on what she’d repay in future – so she’d simply flushed the cash away.
Therefore, with the Augar report on further and higher education due, we are urgently calling on it and the Government to look at using our statement as a basis to redesign the official statement. This would improve understanding and decision-making for past, present and future students alike.”

David Thompson, Senior Policy Analyst at the Russell Group, added:

“The feedback it [the new statement] received through both our online survey and the focus groups we conducted was overwhelmingly positive. Respondents praised the new, expected lifetime repayments feature and the improved information about the 30-year forgiveness period as particularly helpful. I hope that the Department for Education and the Student Loans Company can act swiftly to adopt the best features of our proposed new statement. Doing so would not only be in the clear interest of graduates currently receiving statements, but may also help reassure both current and prospective students about the way student finance really works.”

Wonkhe Daily

If you’d like to receive the Wonkhe daily policy summary email you can sign yourself up here – it’s free for BU staff and students!

Other news

Funding: Late last week the OfS announced the £1.24 billion recurrent grant funding for HE providers which supports high quality teaching and learning. The budget has increased by 1.5% (+£19 million) from the 2018-19 level. Notable is the increase (4.7%) to £713 million for the high cost medicine, science, technology and engineering programmes. £337 million for boosting equality of opportunity and promoting greater choice in HE, of this £60 million is dedicated to the National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP). It is stated that the OfS will be reviewing the funding method in the future to ensure the post-19 education and funding review outcomes are addressed.

Wonkhe report on the for-profit providers that will receive the direct grant in 2019-20. that £10 million has been allocated to 25 providers that are being funded directly by the OfS for the first time in 2019-20. These include the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM), a music college owned by Sovereign Capital; Arden University and the University of Law, both owned by for-profit group Global University Systems; SAE Education; and Pearson College – all of which were previously able to access student loans but were not previously in receipt of direct grants.

FE/HE Collaboration?: New Chief Exec of the University Alliance, Vanessa Wilson, previously Commercial Director at UK Sport, blogs for Wonkhe drawing parallels between elite sports and the HE sector:

I see a close alignment with universities’ and colleges’ shared mission to fight for equality of opportunity and social justice, along with a collective goal to give universal access to great teaching, training and opportunities, regardless of gender, background, age, ethnicity, ability or disability.
We need a coherent, cohesive and integrated system, with long-term investment across early years, schools, colleges, adult education and our universities. And on tertiary education, we need cross-party consensus, a joined-up strategy and commitment on the way forward, not continually chopping and changing policy direction – another reason why the long delay in Augar being published is so frustrating.
On the divide between FE and HE she says: I am genuinely surprised by the extent the two sectors allow ourselves to be played off against one another, getting into a bidding war rather than arguing for sustained funding across the board. People, whether doing a college course or university degree, have the same aspirations, ambitions and ability to succeed.

Immigration: Ex-HE Minister, Sam Gyimah, spoke in defence of Universities in the Financial Times: I know from my time as a minister that no one in government ever took a decision deliberately to undermine the competitive position of our universities. Speaking of how the immigration policy is detrimental to universities Sam continued: you get a barely noticeable process of de-prioritisation, in which strategic decisions follow the path of least resistance. And in the current anti-elitist climate it is unfashionable to defend universities… Even in a successful sector you need to keep swimming to stay afloat — we assume our universities will continue to do well because they have always done so. This is alarming.

Gyimah highlights how the Netherlands will have the most English speaking universities in the European block and that others, worldwide, will seek to exploit the gaps we open as Brexit concludes. He says ‘we’ (presumably the Government and universities) have to be become more adept at global outreach and play the long game. Sam urges Government to bring together migration policy with export opportunities, the potential for young Britons to live and study abroad and moves to make it easier for our universities to expand overseas. Our reputation as an educational superpower is based on attracting the talented and the entrepreneurial...if we are to succeed as a country that lives by its wits and stands at the forefront of science, technology and learning, then a world class university sector must lie at the heart of a positive vision of Britain’s future.

OfS Pilot Postgraduate survey: A Wonkhe blog highlights a pilot OfS survey on the postgraduate experience outside of the standard NSS realm. It includes new questions on pre-course information and expectations, how cutting edge the programme offer is, whether there is engagement with experts in the field but from outside the HE sector (fitting with a key message in last week’s Universities Minister’s speech – which wanted to see more PhD graduates pursing a research career in industry), plus mental health questions. In the blog Jim Dickinson speculates what it could mean for the future of the NSS and concludes: The morphing of NSS into a tool that can test things that OfS thinks are important like VFM or student wellbeing is well under way. And whilst to date it’s mainly been used by OfS within the TEF, it’s starting to become clear that NSS will soon be a much more wide ranging tool for testing OfS’ success at meeting its objectives.

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

May 13, 2019

HE policy update for the w/e 10th May 2019

Doctoral College, ECR Network, EU, Fusion, Impact, Industry collaboration, innovation, international, Knowledge Exchange, policy, Research Concordat, Research news jforster

Research

The Universities Minister, has delivered the first in a series of four planned speeches on how the UK can best achieve its ambition to invest 2.4% of GDP in R&D by 2027. It was a surprising speech in some ways, short on announcements, although there were some, and long on wishful thinking. We’ve pulled out some bits below. For a healthy dose of cynicism/realism we recommend the annotated version by HE for Research Professional.

Investment – To achieve our target of 2.4%, total UK R&D investment would need to rise to around £60bn in today’s money. More than double our current investment levels. This would require us to have invested an additional sum of over £80bn cumulatively each year from 2017 across the public and private sectors.

People – It doesn’t matter how much money we pump into R&D over the years ahead, it won’t make the intended difference if we don’t have the right people in place. Ensuring a strong pipeline of talent will be essential for bolstering the UK’s research prowess. We are also going to have to substantially increase the numbers of people we have working in R&D in the same period – perhaps by as much as 50%. To put that in figures, that means we need to find at least another 260,000 researchers to work in R&D across universities, across business and across industry.

International staff and students – We are making it easier for international graduates to move into skilled work. International students studying for undergraduate level and above will be able to apply for a visa three months before their course finishes – enabling them to take up skilled work after their degree. They will also be able to apply for a skilled work visa out-of-country under the same preferential conditions as they would experience if they were to apply for a visa in-country. In addition, a reformed sponsorship system will provide a simplified and more streamlined system. This will be less burdensome for employers and will enable businesses to harness the talent they need more easily. We set out a clear ambition in our International Education Strategy earlier this spring: to grow the numbers of international students studying in UK universities to 600,000 by the end of the next decade.

Supporting Researchers

Our current research culture relies on dominant power structures, where doctoral candidates and post-docs are largely dependent on supervisors or PIs for references and progression. This puts the power firmly in other people’s hands. Is it any wonder, then, that less than half of doctoral researchers report they would be likely to disclose any mental health and wellbeing issues to their supervisors? This closed culture urgently needs to change. So, I hope future joint work by the Office for Students (OfS) and Research England into the mental health and wellbeing of doctoral researchers can identify good practice to take forward in this area.

….the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, first launched in 2008. …I am pleased that an independent review of the Concordat has just taken place to ensure it is up-to-date to meet the needs of today’s researchers. And I look forward to seeing the revised version of the Concordat when it is published later this summer. As Universities and Science Minister, I am serious about taking the Concordat forward. And I am pleased to be hosting a high-level meeting with the Chair of the Concordat Strategy Group, Professor Julia Buckingham. Alongside Sir Patrick Vallance and other key sector leaders, to discuss how we can further improve research careers in the UK.

I also encourage the OfS, Research England, and UKRI as a whole to look more widely at how the implementation of current policies affect researchers on the ground. The three higher education excellence frameworks – namely the REF, TEF and the KEF – are all integral to the way we govern and fund higher education, science, research and innovation. But we need to make sure they are not disproportionately affecting early career researchers and putting extra strains on their work. The recent headlines about universities spending around £87m on non-disclosure agreements since 2017 doesn’t help us to project an image of a sector that cares for its employees.

Academia in industry

For too long, there has been a stigma in this country around pursuing non-academic research careers. So, we should never look down on early career researchers if they opt for a career outside academia. Rather, we should actively encourage our PhDs and post-docs to see the merits of pursuing an R&D career in other sectors and industries. For one, we need to stop talking about jobs outside academia as being ‘second choice careers’ or ‘Plan B options’. For our 2.4% target to work, we need people to be actively considering research careers across the entire science and innovation system.

So, isn’t it high time we start to better connect graduates with the evident skills gaps we are experiencing right across our labour market? Yet, this isn’t going to be easy when many of their main role models inside universities know very little about careers in industry. And are themselves either unaware or unconvinced of the strength of research positions outside academia. There are schemes that aim to address this issue – such as the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Visiting Professors scheme. This funds senior industry practitioners to participate in course development, face-to-face teaching and the mentoring of Engineering undergraduates at a host university. It is a great programme, but it is not widespread practice. The difficulties aren’t just on the side of universities. Some employers are unused to recruiting PhDs and don’t fully understand the benefits that those with higher academic qualifications can bring to their workforce. I think of this as the ‘graduate paradox’ – the higher the academic qualifications you have, the less professionally qualified you may seem. This, I feel, is a particular UK problem we need to address.

Gaps – We still have some way to go to eradicate gender pay gaps in the sector and increase the proportion of women in academic and research leadership. Not to mention the number of Black and Ethnic Minority role models that will inspire others and show them a research career can really be for people like them.

Additional points:

The 41 winners of the first ever Future Leaders Fellowships have been announced. The fellowships aim to develop early career researchers who will become world-leaders in their fields, intending for their research to maintain the UK’s reputation for being at the forefront of science and innovation. The winners share £40 million, with the scheme costing £900 million over 3 years. The projects funded include using cloud computing to monitor changes of all glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic and how children’s adventurous play can lower levels of anxiety in young people.
First call for the new Stephen Hawking Fellowships issued. Working with the Hawking family, UKRI will support up to 50 postdoctoral scientists in theoretical physics over the next five years.

Italian Partnership – Research England have announced their partnership with the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems, ANVUR, which will support research assessment and the evaluation of knowledge exchange in English and Italian universities. David Sweeney, Executive Chair of Research England commented: “ANVUR is at the leading edge in the international landscape of knowledge transfer assessment and it was very helpful to discuss Italy’s research evaluation.”

Master’s Loans

The DfE have published the Postgraduate Master’s Loan evaluation. The Master’s Degree Loan Scheme was launched by the Government in June 2016, and was the first time that Government provided finance to contribute to costs for postgraduate master’s study. The aims of the loan were to:

Increase take up of master’s courses
Enable progression onto master’s courses for those who could not afford to self-finance or would have to delay starting to save up for a master’s course
Improve the supply of highly skilled individuals to the UK economy

The evaluation follows up the first cohort of master’s students who started in 2016/17 with the new loan and found positive outcomes.

Data from the HESA Student Record shows that there was a substantial increase in the overall number of Master’s students enrolling at English HEIs. This growth was driven by a 36% increase in enrolments from England-domiciled loan eligible students. (However, these figures may be overinflated as 2015/16 master’s students may have deferred starting their study a year to benefit from the loan in the following year. The report notes BAME students were particularly likely to do this with 61% reporting they deferred entry specifically for this reason.)
Most HEIs interviewed (75%) said the number of enrolments from students onto courses eligible for postgraduate loans increased in 2016/17. Among those which reported an increase in numbers, the majority (84%) attributed this at least in part to the introduction of the Master’s Loan.
Students themselves confirmed the importance of the Loan in enabling them to study. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of students starting their course in 2016/17 felt that they would have been unable to undertake their specific Master’s course without the Master’s Loan, while around a third (36%) agreed that they would “never even thought about studying a Master’s” if the Master’s loan had not been available.
While there were no substantial changes to the age or gender profile of students, the proportion of Black students increased substantially between 2015/16 and 2016/17 (but see above).
Quicker – Analysis of the HESA student record indicates a trend towards a greater proportion of full-time study. While the proportion of loan-eligible England-domiciled students studying full-time remained relatively constant in the period prior to the introduction of the loan (at 54-56%), this proportion increased to 62% in 2016/17.
Sooner – 90% of master’s loan recipients “agreed that the Master’s Loan had enabled 14 them to begin postgraduate study sooner”. Students in receipt of the Loan were more likely to have progressed from undergraduate to postgraduate study within a year (48%) than those not in receipt of the Loan (23%). The main reason for this given by students in the qualitative interviews was that without the Master’s Loan, they would have had to spend several years building their savings in order to afford it
Students in receipt of the Loan were more likely to say that their main reason for studying was to improve their employment prospects (20% compared with 12% of those not in receipt of the Loan). Prior to loan introduction (2013/14 cohort) more stated their main motivation was interest in the subject.
Almost all students (94%) expected to receive at least one benefit as a result of their programme, five years after completing their study. 74% believed they would be earning more money, and a similar proportion (73%) expected to have more job choices. Being in a more senior role and being in a more specialist role were each mentioned by 70% of students, and 68% anticipated they would be in a higher pay band.
There was no change in the proportion receiving either funding from their HEI or funding from their employer to pay for tuition fees. Hence, so far, there is no indication of the Master’s Loan ‘crowding out’ other sources of funding.
70% of Master’s starters in 2016/17 also worked (35% FT, 35% PT) – it was only 58% that worked in 2013/14. The evaluation notes a higher proportion of starters in 2016/17 funded all or part of their tuition fees through employment than the comparator group of 2013/14. 52% of students stated that without the loan for their living expenses or fees they may not have been able to undertake the course. However, 46% would have self-funded or found other methods to fund their course leading to questions on whether the loan is providing funding for those who could have afforded the course anyway.
Interestingly (messages for UG differential fees perhaps?) were that 41% of loan students would have changed their study to afford a masters (a) 25% choosing a cheaper course, (b) 19% choosing a different course, (c) 22% choose same course but at a different institution. BAME students were most likely (33%) to change their plans.
The master’s loan contributes up to £10,000 towards the fees/living expenses of master’s study. However, most respondents stated it was not enough and the difficulties of working coupled with the intensity of master’s study meant they had to rely on parents to top them up financially. There are potentially messages in here about inclusivity, hidden barriers to disadvantaged students, and potentially an influence on dropout rates.
The evaluation suggested there is evidence that the Loan will help the sustainability of the HE sector. Most HEIs benefited from increased student volumes in 2016/17 and half reported that they believe the Loan will lead to increased revenue for them. There is evidence to suggest that it has benefitted medium-tariff institutions in particular.
There is some evidence that the Loan has had an effect of increasing fees for Master’s courses (HEIs more likely to report increases on these courses (57%) than on courses not eligible for fees (41%)). DfE note this may warrant further investigation.

TEF update

Do you know your pilot from your parliamentary review? What are the metrics used in the latest version of TEF and did you know that the criteria have changed? We’ve been updating staff at BU on the latest on the TEF, and on the staff intranet policy pages you can find links to our latest slides and a more detailed briefing note, as well as a link to BU’s submission to the Parliamentary review call for views.

Election fever

Everyone has a view on what happened in the local elections and what it means for national politics – it means get on with Brexit, it means abandon Brexit, it means everyone is just fed up and protest voting for smaller parties and independents…. Your policy team are a bit idealistic sometimes (despite watching a lot of politics), and we are subscribers to the “people are probably generally voting on local issues locally” theory. We hope so – because these local politicians will be responsible for things that will happen locally for the next 4 years. So feelings about the council mergers and hospital changes, for example, will have had an effect in Dorset and BCP.

Of course national politics will have had an impact. There may be a general dissatisfaction with the Conservatives and some of that may be Brexit-related, but it could also be driven by concerns about social care and local authority funding more generally. It doesn’t seem to make sense that across the country many people abandoned the Tories for the Lib Dems if they genuinely want a no-deal Brexit. They may have been formerly disaffected Lib Dem voters going home – but in that case they almost certainly don’t want a no deal Brexit. The focus on climate change recently will of course have helped the Greens – people voting for green candidates who will drive local changes.

If you want to look at trends, the Commons Library has a lovely map. Otherwise we suggest there is a huge risk in leaping to too many conclusions and we recommend everyone turns their mind to who they will vote for in the EU elections. There is still a chance that MEPs will take their seats and keep them for some time so they could have a voice in the EU Parliament. And here in the South-West we have some sparkling candidates. You can’t vote for them, though – because of the list system (see this Research Professional illustration if you missed it before). Tactical voting will be a thing in these elections.

Brexit is still missing

The impasse continues. It seems unlikely that there will be a breakthrough in the short term. It could be a long summer of speculation and not much happening until another frenzy of last-minute-itus breaks out in September ahead of the Halloween deadline.

Last weekend Theresa May came under further pressure to resign, or to state a specific date for her departure. TM at least thinks that the local election results were a verdict on how she (and Parliament) has handled Brexit. She apologised for poor Conservative local election results (the Conservatives lost 1,300+ seats) stating: It is clear that the voters delivered their judgment in large part based on what is happening – or not happening – at Westminster. And, as Prime Minister, I fully accept my share of the responsibility for that. Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab appeared in high-profile newspaper profile pieces over the bank holiday weekend with their families – not too subtle positioning for an upcoming leadership contest. The PM continues to refuse to set out a timetable for her departure and is unlikely to step down until the Withdrawal Agreement is passed. Her spokesperson said she is here to deliver Brexit in phase one and then she will make way for phase two.

It has been confirmed that the UK will participate in the EU elections. However apparently Theresa May intends to make a fourth attempt to pass her Brexit deal through Parliament ratifying the deal by end of June so that UK MEPs do not take their seats in July. Maybe.

Theresa May is expected to offer a customs union offer to Labour (for a temporary period); however, the Labour/Conservative front bench talks have extended beyond the original timescale and the issue of a second referendum continues to be a sticking point. There has been no breakthrough with the Government insisting the negotiations have been constructive and detailed, however, Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour) was critical stating the Government had made no movement on their red lines. Talks continue…

In the meantime:

The UK Government has signed a deal with Ireland to guarantee reciprocal Irish and British citizens rights are retained in each country in the event of no-deal.
EU Settlement Scheme: The EU settlement scheme is now fully open and live. The Home Office communications state that during the testing phase 95% of EU citizens were able to use the mobile app to prove their identity remotely within 10 minutes. The application link is here.

Mental Health & Well-being

HEPI have issued a policy note Measuring well-being in HE covering HE staff and students. They argue for a differentiation between mental health and well-being so that the sector can better consider and understand the broader overall health of staff and students. They recommend more data is collected and published, ideally the markers being consistent across the UK and multi-year for applicants and graduates (as well as students and staff):

“Consistency across the UK allows for comparison in well-being between the different regulatory and funding systems across the four countries. International measurements would similarly allow for comparison between different models of higher education. Data collectors should work together to enable tracking of cohorts, allowing us to track the same cohort of students and staff over time.”

Rachel Hewitt, HEPI, author of the Policy Note said: ‘If we are to get a grip on the mental health crisis in young people that is heavily impacting on universities, we need to be collecting the right information to understand it. At the moment statistics on well-being and mental health are often combined, despite these being two separate issues with different ways they can be tackled. For universities to take the necessary action to address this issue, they need to better understand what they’re dealing with.

It is shocking that we have no public information on the well-being of staff that work in our universities. If universities are collecting this information, they are not being open about what the results are showing. This is at a time when staff in universities continue to be under pressure, with increasing workloads and insecure contracts rife. We need a consistent, public dataset on the well-being of university staff.’

In the meantime, the role of sport at university has been highlighted: Wonkhe has two articles on sport via its new Student Union service. Ben Vulliarmy, CEO of the SU at the University of York, writes about their Varsity programme with Lancaster (by the way, congratulations to BU for this week’s resounding win against Solent in our own Varsity event – well played all). And Richard Medcalf of the University of Wolverhampton writes about the need for evidence if sport is to be taken seriously as a contributor to student (and staff) outcomes:

At Wolverhampton we’re trying a few small steps to make this happen. We’ve developed a university sports board to connect this agenda into the decision making bodies of the university. We’ve combined the academic provision of sport with the participatory and performance arms of our offer to students and staff, to align the intentions of both under one organisational framework. And, importantly, we’re attaching student sport engagement to our student records system so we can see if there’s any relationship between students who participate and the wider university KPIs.

Care Experienced Students

The Centre for Social Justice have released 12 By 24 revealing that despite 10 years of intervention still only 6% of care leavers are attending University. It states: Looked After Children aren’t less clever than other children they are just less lucky and a care leaver is more likely to end up in a prison cell than a lecture theatre. The publication aims to increase care leavers at universities to 12 by 24.

This report shows that too many young people growing up in care feel university isn’t for them. They told us it is simply not what happens when you leave the care system…Improving attainment at school will always be the best thing we can do to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds get on. This report sets out the extent to which care experienced children still fall behind their peers. The message from a roundtable of experts conducted during this report was clear: If we want to see more children from disadvantaged backgrounds accessing university and higher education, we need to engage our young people in care much earlier to ensure that where they have fallen behind, they are given the help they need to catch up. The evidence contained in this report shows that if we act early enough, we will see more young people leaving the care system and entering higher education. Among all the facts and figures, this report presents a simple challenge to government and the higher education sector to do more to help young people who have had the worst start in life to have the best future. Many universities are working hard to improve these figures, but this report shows that barely a third of universities have set out detailed plans to take action to change the number of care leavers on their courses.

The report goes on to state there is too much variability in the focus and efficacy of Universities care leaver support schemes. Pages 15 and 38 are key reading, chapter 6 sets out what support mechanisms universities are currently offering and chapter 7 describes the ‘gold standard’ the Centre propose and call on the DfE to endorse. Read more here.

There’s a HEPI blog by Steven Spier, Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University about their approach to care leavers (and estranged students).

Still no news from the Augar team

A Parliamentary question this week confirms (again) that it will be released “shortly”. We predict (based on our own speculation rather than inside knowledge) that it won’t be until after the EU elections. It could come quickly as a major distraction from the mess after that. Or not.

Q – Gordon Marsden: whether postgraduate (a) loans and (b) other financial assistance will be included in his Department’s response to the review of post-18 education.

A – Chris Skidmore: The government’s review of post-18 education and funding is looking at how we can ensure there is choice and competition across a joined-up post-18 education and training sector. The review’s focus includes how we can encourage learning that is more flexible (for example, part-time, distance learning and commuter study options) and complements ongoing government work to support people at different times in their lives. The independent panel will report shortly, and the government will then conclude the overall review later this year. We will not speculate about potential recommendations, as we do not wish to pre-judge the outcome of the review.

Welsh PG student finance: Wonkhe report that postgraduate students domiciled in Wales will benefit from the most generous postgraduate student finance package in the UK, according to a Welsh Government announcement this morning. The variable mixture of loans and grants available has risen from £13,000 last year to £17,000 from August this year. All eligible students will receive a non-repayable universal grant of £1,000, plus a means-tested grant of up to £5,885 for students with a household income of up to £18,370. A loan will also be available, taking the total support up to £17,000, and funds will be available pro-rata for part time students.

Consultations and inquiries

Click here to view the updated consultation and inquiries tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations or inquiries.

New consultations and inquiries this week: UUK and Guild HE consultation on the draft Knowledge Exchange Concordat, linked to the KEF. RDS will be leading on preparation of a BU response.

Other news

Financial Deficit: BBC report that the number of English universities in financial deficit increases.

Unconditional Offers: The Times reports that some universities have taken legal advice following Damien Hinds’ calls to stop “conditional unconditional” offers and reduce the number of unconditional offers made overall. HE policy legal commentator Smita Jamdar confirms that Ministers can guide but not instruct the OfS in this area and that guidance must not relate to the criteria for student admissions – something Sarah has heard the Universities Minister confirm in person. Some Universities are calling on UUK to seek a judicial review. The Guardian story is here and includes a defence of the practice as well as attacking Damien Hinds for his intervention.

Industry input: The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has announced that employers are being surveyed on what sorts of courses and skills they wish to see as part of ongoing plans to develop the University of Peterborough. The vision for the University is to be a trailblazer for other higher education institutions by embedding advanced technical learning within the curriculum. The aim is for the University to provide both the skills that local businesses urgently need, while also giving young people better access to well-paid, secure jobs and improved career prospects.

Mayor James Palmer said: “For the University of Peterborough to deliver on its ambition to be aligned with the needs of the local economy, we need to ensure we are reaching out to the business community to see what their demands and skills challenges are. The Combined Authority and its partners want the University to be turning out the kinds of skills that will allow our young people to hit the ground running in the 21st Century workplace. We know our economy has significant skills shortages, and a productivity gap, and so the input of local employers will be crucial in shaping the future of the University”.

Economic Justice: The Institute for Public Policy Research has published their economic justice report Prosperity and Justice – A Plan for the New Economy. It sets out a 10 point plan for economic reform and argues that economic policy should aim for both prosperity and justice. You can read a short summary of the report here. There are four recommendations relevant to the HE sector:

The government should introduce a ‘Technology Displacement Fund’ to support workers displaced by technology to be retrained and supported back into the labour market. diffusion of digital technologies across the economy.
Apprenticeships are important, but firms need to be able to deploy funds for a broader range of approaches to develop the skills of their workforces. They therefore propose that the current apprenticeship levy is abolished, and replaced by a ‘productivity and skills levy’
At the same time, there is an important opportunity to give workers a better means of increasing take-up of skills training by giving them more autonomy. They therefore recommend the introduction of Personal Training Credits, to provide low-paid workers and unemployed adults with up to £700 a year to invest in their own skills.
The adoption of a new immigration framework aimed at supporting the UK’s economic strategy as well as the vitality and cohesion of our communities and the dignity of migrants

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

May 12, 2019

BU papers on academic writing are getting read

BU research, Featured academics, international, open access, Publishing, Uncategorized, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Yesterday ResearchGate announced that the paper ‘Academic authorship: who, why and in what order?’ [1] has been read 1000 times. The paper addresses two related issues in academic writing: (a) authorship; and (b) order of authors. The issue of authorship centres on the notion of who can be an author, who should be an author and who definitely should not be an author. The paper reminds the reader that this is partly discipline specific. The second issue, the order of authors, is usually dictated by the academic tradition from which the work comes. One can immediately envisage disagreements within a multi-disciplinary team of researchers where members of the team may have different approaches to authorship order. Prof. Vanora Hundley is the lead author and the paper is co-authored with Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, both in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), and BU Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada. Padam is Professor of International Public Health in the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University.

Paper by Hundley et al. published 2013

This paper is part of a larger set of papers by academic in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences addressing various aspects of academic writing and publishing. Many of these papers are in Open Access journals, hence easily available across the globe for anybody with an internet connection. The series has covered papers on selecting an appropriate title for an academic paper, the role of the journal editor, the publication process and many more [2-9].

References

Hundley, V, van Teijlingen, E, Simkhada, P (2013) Academic authorship: who, why and in what order? Health Renaissance 11(2):98-101 www.healthrenaissance.org.np/uploads/Download/vol-11-2/Page_99_101_Editorial.pdf
Pitchforth, E, Porter M, Teijlingen van E, Keenan Forrest, K.. (2005) Writing up & presenting qualitative research in family planning & reproductive health care, J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 31(2): 132-135.
Hall, J., Hundley, V., van Teijlingen, E. (2015) The journal editor: friend or foe? Women & Birth 28(2): e26-e29.
Simkhada P, van Teijlingen E, Hundley V. (2013) Writing an academic paper for publication, Health Renaissance 11(1):1-5. www.healthrenaissance.org.np/uploads/Pp_1_5_Guest_Editorial.pdf
van Teijlingen, E., Ireland, J., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sathian, B. (2014) Finding the right title for your article: Advice for academic authors, Nepal J Epidemiol 4(1): 344-347.
van Teijlingen E., Hundley, V., Bick, D. (2014) Who should be an author on your academic paper? Midwifery 30: 385-386.
van Teijlingen, E, Simkhada, PP, Rizyal A (2012) Submitting a paper to an academic peer-reviewed journal, where to start? (Guest Editorial) Health Renaissance 10(1): 1-4.
van Teijlingen, E, Simkhada. PP, Simkhada, B, Ireland J. (2012) The long & winding road to publication, Nepal J Epidemiol 2(4): 213-215 http://nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/7093/6388
Pradhan, AK, van Teijlingen, ER. (2017) Predatory publishing: a great concern for authors, Med Sci 5(4): 43.

May 9, 2019

Floods and PTSD in India

BU research, international, open access, Publishing, Uncategorized, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Yesterday the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology published its latest issue which included the paper on ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among the Flood Affected Population in Indian Subcontinent’ [1]. This Short Communication is co-authored by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and two members of the Visiting Faculty in our Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, namely: Prof. Padam Simkhada and Dr. Brijesh Sathian. The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is an Open Access journal hence this paper is freely available for anybody with internet access to read.

Reference:

Asim, M., Mekkodathil, A., Sathian, B., Elayedath, R., N, R., Simkhada, P., & van Teijlingen, E. (2019). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among the Flood Affected Population in Indian Subcontinent. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, 9(1), 755-758. https://doi.org/10.3126/nje.v9i1.24003

May 7, 2019

Paper in top 30 most cited Journal Advanced Nursing articles

Featured, Featured academics, international, Publishing, Research news, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

BU’s Dr. Bibha Simkhada’s paper ‘Factors affecting the utilisation of antenatal care in developing countries: a systematic review of the literature’ [1] is currently the 27th most cited paper in the Journal of Advanced Nursing. This is great achievement considering that the journal has published nearly ten thousand articles since its inception (to be precise 9,847). The Journal of Advanced Nursing (published by Wiley) is one of the prestigious journals in the nursing field. This extremely well-cited paper was part of Bibha’s Ph.D. study at the University of Aberdeen. Dr. Bibha Simkhada is Lecturer in Adult Nursing in the Department of Nursing and Clinical Sciences. One of her co-authors also works at BU, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and a second co-author, Prof. Padam Simkhada from Liverpool John Moores University is Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences. The third co-author Dr. Maureen Porter retired a few years ago.

Reference:

Simkhada, B., van Teijlingen E., Porter, M., Simkhada, P. (2008) Factors affecting the utilisation of antenatal care in developing countries: a systematic review of the literature, Journal of Advanced Nursing 61(3): 244-260.

Category / international

Research Communications

Student Academic Experience Survey

The Minister speaks

Student Mobility

Research

Student Loans

Hate Crime and Sexual Harassment

Consultations and Inquiries

Equality and Diversity student data

Other news

Subscribe!

Partner Countries

Coming Soon

Eligibility Criteria

Deadline

Contact

Augar – what next?

Augar – the critique

Augar – what does it mean for the Arts and Humanities

Student Mental Health

Tory leadership contest

Cost of housing hinders employment prospects

Spending Review

Consultations

Other news

Subscribe!

Augar recommendations for the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding

CHAPTER 2: SKILLS

CHAPTER 3: HIGHER EDUCATION

CHAPTER 4: FURTHER EDUCATION

CHAPTER 5: APPRENTICESHIPS

CHAPTER 6: STUDENT CONTRIBUTIONS

CHAPTER 7: MAINTENANCE

And there’s more

And the Tory leadership contest?

EU student fees and finance after Brexit

Subscribe!

Augar rumours – the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding.

Grade Inflation

Brexit and the government….

T Levels

Mature Foundation Year Phenomenon

Graduate Outcomes

Disadvantage – access, participation and success

Minimum salary threshold

Apprenticeships

Other news

Subscribe!

The Minister defends universities

Research and research funding

Knowledge Exchange

Graduate Outcomes

Inequality – a report and a new review

A brief Brexit mention

Access and Foundation courses

FE funding

Rethinking student loan communications

Wonkhe Daily

Other news

Research

Master’s Loans

TEF update

Election fever

Brexit is still missing

Mental Health & Well-being

Care Experienced Students

Still no news from the Augar team

Consultations and inquiries

Other news

Subscribe!

Other services

Don’t miss a post!

Recent posts

Search by Category

Search by popular post topics