Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 12 APRIL 2000
DR ROGER
BROWN AND
PROFESSOR ROBIN
MIDDLEHURST
160. But on the one hand are we suggesting in
higher education these packages with more emphasis on a non face-to-face
content? Are they, because of the pressures of a mass higher education
system because it is cheaper, basically, not to have a human being
in a face-to-face relationship, or is it that we are pursuing
these because they provide a better education?
(Dr Brown) It is a mixture but may I pick you up on
the cheaper point? Such studies as have been done on on-line provision,
and there was a study conducted in Illinois quite recently, did
not find it any cheaper.
161. That is a good answer, thank you. Professor
Middlehurst?
(Professor Middlehurst) Our evidence also in the report
that I referred to earlier was that it is definitely not cheaper
though, and we urge caution on this, we have to be careful about
passing the costs on to the students—the costs for the equipment
for example, the materials and so on. At the moment the design
of on-line courses is extremely expensive and then there is the
infrastructure that is required both for design and delivery and
ongoing updating and on-going support for the students, so there
is no evidence, I do not think, either from industry that uses
on-line training, or from education that are getting into that—except
for industry when you are bringing the people from one country
to another, for example. So it may be cheaper to have on-line
education in-country, which may have an impact on our overseas
students.
Charlotte Atkins
162. Are you saying the initial costs are more
expensive? Surely over time those costs will go down. Clearly
the initial costs of setting up a course on line of all the equipment
and all the new technology and every institution to do their own
must be expensive but presumably universities and colleges are
doing it because in the long term they expect it to be cheaper.
(Professor Middlehurst) There is considerable debate
because it points in two directions. It is cheaper if you can
get mass markets—perhaps—but very big markets and
then you are in competition with other countries for that. On
the other hand, the customisation and the speed at which knowledge
changes actually puts pressure on to continuously update which
is expensive.
Chairman
163. This is fascinating. What you are saying
in a sense is what we have seen where mass education has progressed
very fast. In the United States, for example, one did see cheap
options being introduced like post-graduates teaching rather than
qualified academic staff and using tests that can be marked by
computer in the first and second year of American university students.
So in mass education there is a thrust, is there not, to cheapen
because of the numbers and the problems of financial resource.
But you are saying with IT you do not think this is part of that;
you think it is part of a diverse and different quality of education?
(Professor Middlehurst) I think that the expectation
is that it will lead to cheapness. The evidence as it stands at
the moment is that that is not the case. Over time, as the technology
gets cheaper, perhaps as the design of courses gets cheaper, one
could envisage, for example, that a lot of changes to courses
can be done on an on-going basis, for example, but at the moment
where you have a kind of mass production function, such as the
open university has, the cost of a whole degree course on-line
is in the order of 1-2 million pounds.
Dr Harris
164. I am not surprised by that answer—that
it is not necessarily cheaper. I remember from my own experience
getting nurses to do things that doctors did was actually better
but more expensive and I suppose one might argue that the best
way of getting cheap education is to pack more people into a lecture
hall. In that sort of traditional education model, lectures and
tutorials, is there a danger in your view that a continued expansion,
particularly at a lower unit of funding of expansion, can impact
on the quality and has impacted on the quality of teaching and,
of course, the learning experience?
(Dr Brown) I would say it has but I would say it is
very difficult to find firm evidence to that effect. You were
asking quite rightly about the student experience. What has had
the most impact in my view about the student experience is that
increasingly students nowadays are working. The student genuinely
full time is almost an endangered species. Most of my students
are working in the bars and clubs of Southampton. That has an
inevitable impact on, for example, the ability to return assignments
on time, the ability to find time to see tutors and things like
that. I do not want to over-state it because I worked in my holidays
when I was at university but the pressure students are under now,
having to earn money to keep themselves going, many of them having
family commitments and things of that kind, impacts upon the ability
of students to take advantage of the opportunities that universities
and colleges offer.
Charlotte Atkins
165. Is it making them poorer students as a
result?
(Dr Brown) It goes in both directions because I should
also say that many of my students are far more mature, more self-confident
and challenging than I think I can recall being as an undergraduate.
Many of them are very demanding students but the demand is related
to I think an overall lesser amount of study time.
166. Do you think it makes them more discerning—the
fact they are effectively having to go out and pay for their own
courses?
(Dr Brown) Some of them certainly are, yes.
167. Do you think also that maybe disillusionment
or inability to cope means they are more likely to drop out? What
is your view in terms of balance?
(Dr Brown) You are bound to have increased drop out
rates if your system becomes less selective and you only have
to compare our system compared with the system on the continent
to find that is the case. Within that, I think the introduction
of fees, for example, has worked in both directions. On the one
hand I think it has definitely discouraged people from certain
groups such as mature students. On the other hand, it makes the
students more determined to hang in there because someone is paying
their fees and they want to succeed on the course. It goes in
both directions and, frankly, we have not had the system in this
country long enough to know what the longer term impacts are going
to be.
168. We were told that the drop-out rate stayed
remarkably stable. Is that your experience?
(Dr Brown) Well it was relatively stable until recently
but my impression from the statistics published each year in the
public expenditure survey show that retention rates are now beginning
to worsen.
169. Do you have figures on that?
(Dr Brown) You probably have the advantage on me but
I am pretty sure that for many years the Department's annual reports
show there was not much variation in retention rates over the
years but that they are now beginning to worsen.
Chairman
170. The point Charlotte was bringing to your
attention was made on Monday by the CVPC policy director that
things still have not changed significantly.
(Dr Brown) I personally would be surprised at that
but I do not have the statistics in front of me.
Dr Harris
171. My impression is the same as yours and
I was somewhat surprised by the answer the CVPC gave, but I want
to explore this a bit further. I want to come back to the problem
of working students but when I asked you whether there was any
evidence that quality was affected by increasing the number of
students in a lecture hall or, at least, the number being taught
at a lower cost than the existing cost per student, there was
no evidence of that either way. Do you think that is because universities
do not want to do the research which might show that they are
offering a poorer quality and that it might happen but it is who
blinks first to say their quality has dropped?
(Dr Brown) I think that is certainly the case. The
fact that institutions are in competition with one another means
that no Vice Chancellor is going to do a Gerald Ratner frankly.
With the concurrent competition between institutions and the emphasis
upon compliance with external quality arrangements, it is very
difficult for institutions to say honestly, "The quality
of our provision is not as good as we would like it to be or not
as good as the quality of the institution up the road". It
is very difficult to have that kind of honesty when you know that
what you say will affect your student recruitment. At the end
of the day we are all basically learning businesses. In an institution
like mine, unless we recruit enough students with the required
qualifications we are not going to be in business and that very
much drives a lot of this. That is the reality of it.
Chairman
172. Are you saying that with the QAA and with
the interlocking examination system and external examination system,
despite those cautions and that monitoring process, you believe
there is an overall sliding quality of qualifications?
(Dr Brown) Because, if I may say so, Chairman, there
has been no worthwhile study which I have ever seen which attempted
to track quality and higher education on a longitudinal basis.
All the apparatus of quality is about comparative provision—one
institution against another, an institution against its own objectives.
I am not genuinely aware of any study which attempts to track
quality over a period. It would be very difficult to do in the
same way it is difficult to track the performance of school examinations
over a period and the difficulties there. At an institutional
level it is not done very much either, beyond perhaps a comparison
with the previous year's cohort and a particular subject and things
of that kind. It is one of the big absences we have. We have a
lot of resources devoted to quality assurance but very little
of it is of that kind.
Dr Harris
173. Your previous answer is very worrying.
It may well be that quality is dropping but no one will admit
it, and we cannot get quality and honesty in higher education
because of competing business. Looking at this dropout rate, your
answer to Charlotte Atkins' question suggested that there may
be an increased likelihood of dropout for people who worked more
and that may be associated with people who had less funding but
there may be an increased stay-on rate for people who are paying
tuition fees because they may be paying for it and therefore they
may get value for money which will mean people who are means-tested
will be better off, in fact. Is there any research showing where
the dropout and retention rates vary across the income divide?
(Dr Brown) I am not aware of it. A few years ago Professor
Mantz Yorke of Liverpool John Moore's University did a study for
the funding council about retention, and all I can do is refer
you to his study. It is the most recent authoritative study I
am aware of which looked at the reasons behind people dropping
out. Also, dropping-out, non-retention, is a very, very complicated
subject. There are many reasons why students drop out and if he
does it is not necessarily a bad thing—either for the student
or for the institution concerned. That is why I would urge some
caution about the actual statistics. It is really what is behind
the statistics that is really important and I do not think anybody
really knows, to be honest.
Chairman
174. I am glad you said that. In my experience
we need a much more relaxed attitude about this and people should
be expected to come into higher education, maybe go out for two
years and then come back. But what they get during their time
at university is important and it is portable and can be recognised
when they are at a time to do so—especially with the more
mature students. I have to pin you down before we move on and
ask this: what you were saying about quality is not based on research
carried out by anyone in your institution but a gut intuitive
feeling, is that right?
(Dr Brown) That is correct. As I say, no one has been
more involved than me in quality assurance in the past ten years
or thereabouts and, as I say, I am not aware of any worthwhile
studies in Britain anyway which have looked at the question of
whether quality has improved or deteriorated or standards have
improved or deteriorated, in that period.
(Professor Middlehurst) I would briefly just like
to distinguish between the quality of student experience and the
standards of programmes. Student experiences will be very different
and their quality of life in an institution will differ—sometimes
for good reasons, sometimes for less good reasons—but I
think one has to distinguish that between quality of outcomes
in terms of the degree achieved. Students can achieve a degree—the
London External Examining Board, for example, provides no teaching
at all and students can take that external examination—that
is similar to on-line learning. We have to be careful about that
very important distinction.
Helen Jones
175. How accountable then do you think universities
and higher education institutions are generally for the quality
of the student experience? If a student has a grievance about
the quality of experience they are receiving maybe about the teaching
or about the resources available to them, how do they pursue it?
(Dr Brown) That is a very good question. First of
all, most institutions do take quality seriously and would take
quality seriously even if it were not for all the external regulatory
apparatus. However, it is true to say and the evidence suggests
that the ways in which institutions respond to complaints about
quality provision is very variable. As you know, there is a proposal
that there should be some independent element in the way in which
institutions look at complaints against the quality of their service
and I personally would favour that very much. It is quite difficult
to see how one can have that independent element particularly
in institutions such as the traditional university which have
visitors to deal with complaints of that kind but, in my view,
some independent scrutiny is necessary—not least to protect
the institution itself so that it itself can be seen to have handled
a student complaint fairly. It is a patchy picture.
(Professor Middlehurst) May I add this: the kind of
contract, if you like, between the student and the institution
is not always set out clearly in terms of what can be expected
and what you might seek in the future as institutions decide to
offer different forms of education is to set out very clearly
what can be expected and what can be expected for a certain price.
176. Do you think that will become more necessary
as the student body is changing so rapidly? To put it in blunt
terms, an 18-year-old at school might be prepared to accept what
someone going back to university in later life with experience
of a working environment might not be prepared to accept. How
do you think visitors will have to change to accommodate those
expectations?
(Professor Middlehurst) They have to change their
teaching practices but this also has considerable implications
for the quality of their buildings and the nature of their buildings,
or they may have to use, as we do, alternative accommodation—accommodation
provided by others, not necessarily inside the university but
in local learning centres around the university. It does have
consequences. Teaching adults and teaching adults who have been
used to different kinds of facilities has a lot of consequences
for customer care.
(Dr Brown) Can I just enter one note of caution in
this: whilst I generally think that more could be done in this
area, I am somewhat cautious about the whole area of academic
appeals. In other words, I genuinely believe that only academic
staff can make judgments about the worth of a student's academic
achievement. My worry is if you put everything into the complaints
area, you will end up students negotiating their classes of degree
with their tutors. There is no doubt an academic, somewhere on
this planet, who thinks that is a very good idea because there
always is someone to support an idea of that kind but I think
there has to be an area where the institution preserves its sovereignty,
as it were. How you distinguish those academic matters from broader
matters of student learning is very difficult, but I do think
you have to preserve that academic sovereignty, otherwise it becomes
devalued.
Chairman: We have a lot of ground to cover and
I really want to move on. I will allow Helen a very quick question
but let's have shorter questions and shorter answers, please.
Helen Jones
177. I accept what you say about the academic
sovereignty but there are lots of other areas—mature students,
students with family commitments—who will not be prepared
to accept, for example, lecturers turning up late. Do you not
have to get to grips with this?
(Dr Brown) Yes, but no one has yet mentioned the question
of the staff of the institutions. You asked Professor Middlehurst
about borderless education and about the quality of student experience.
The biggest challenge in higher education in my view is to get
the staff to see themselves essentially as service providers.
That is the big challenge and we have not achieved it yet.
Mr Marsden
178. That brings us very neatly on to the questions
I want to ask about the relationship between teaching and research
and then to the quality of that research and how that feeds into
the process. Perhaps I can put this to both of you. Why is it
that teaching in higher education seems to have failed to benefit
from research into pedagogical higher education activity but also,
more broadly, into research?
(Dr Brown) You want short answers and obviously we
can provide further information in written form if that is helpful.
My argument would be that, over time, teaching and research which
originally were seen to be integral parts of what the university
provided have become detached and separate activities. In many
institutions they are conducted by separate people in separate
places and, therefore, if you are going to tackle the interrelationship,
which is a justification for having both activities in higher
education, you have to find conscious ways of getting back in
touch with one another again, and the Alan Jenkins article you
referred to earlier is one set of ideas about that.
(Professor Middlehurst) It is also a question of professionalism
and focus. One of the reasons behind Roger's comment was that
if you are assessed on research and teaching separately, then
you are likely to have to expend resources there but the overall
emphasis on professionalism in research and professionalism in
teaching implies you have to spend a lot of time on pedagogy in
order to be able to teach properly and on the research side in
research training in order to be able to deliver on the research
side. So it is not just a question of drivers, as Roger is indicating,
though they are undoubtedly there. It is also the nature of being
professional in either area that drives you to focus.
179. But is the fact that they are assessed
in separate boxes or looked at in separate boxes detrimental to
the process?
(Professor Middlehurst) Yes.
(Dr Brown) Definitely.
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