Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
WEDNESDAY 12 APRIL 2000
DR ROGER
BROWN AND
PROFESSOR ROBIN
MIDDLEHURST
180. Talking about current means of funding
and assessment, I want to tease out your views on the research
assessment exercise. It has been said, not least in the papers
you have submitted to us, that research is multi-dimensional and
that the RAE is probably inappropriate for any areas of research
because of the side effects created by it, which is a very strong
view. What effects does the research assessment exercise have
on diversity in the present system and how do they recognise,
or not, broader aspects of achievement such as teaching?
(Dr Brown) The answer to the second question is they
do not although pedagogical research will now be included in the
next RAE. Personally I do not contribute much weight to that because
I do not see how the panel will be able to tackle it. On the first
point there is no doubt that the research assessment exercise
is the biggest single factor preventing the system from becoming
genuinely diverse because reinforces the sense of academic drift
that you would find in most higher education systems than you
would certainly find in the UK. In other words, if you look at
many of the former polytechnics, which I used to know well because
I was the chief executive of the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics,
many of them are now pursuing an upward research mission and that
has changed the nature of what they do. There is no evidence of
that—that is my view—but I think that is what is happening
and, therefore, the research assessment exercise reinforces the
primacy which many academic staff and academic managers would
want to give to research for other reasons.
(Professor Middlehurst) There is no recognition of
teaching per se in the RAE; it is not designed for that, and it
recognises a very particular kind of research, research which
leads to publications in academic journals—not research
and consultancy, research and development and research linked
to vocational work. It cuts out large amounts of research. All
the EU-funded research, for example, is not covered.
181. Pressing you on that, because it relates
to the future competitiveness and promotion of enterprise in universities
and, indeed, to your own latest report on borderless universities,
the Science and Technology select committee concluded when they
looked at the RAE a couple of years ago as part of the report
that it was in danger because it did not recognise collaboration
and was hindering work in science and technology areas particularly
in universities and linking with businesses. Do you share those
views? If so, are there ways in which the current RAE or a successor
to it could be changed?
(Professor Middlehurst) It does do that, it does prevent
diversity, it does prevent looking at collaborative research,
it also is very subject disciplinary specific and the important
research very often takes place across the boundaries under inter-disciplinary
work where you are dealing with that kind of research. I would
certainly say that needs to be looked at. We have to remember
what the RAE was set up for—to be selective. It was not
designed to spread money around the system. If you try to have
different categories of research, you would have to address that
selectivity process.
182. On that point, what happens to the funding
that universities get from the RAE? If I am a bright young researcher
and I have published the articles which get my university a 4
or 5, do I see the benefit?
(Dr Brown) If I may say so, the irony is that the
evidence shows that the funds do not go to the departments that
gain the high ratings in the first place so after you have done
all this great galumphing of assessment panels and so on, it does
not go to the winners within the institutions. Can I just make
two quick points on your question? First of all, I agree with
Jonathan Adams and others who have written that the problem with
the research issue and collaboration is not on the supply side
with the university but on the demand side with industry, and
I do speak with some experience from being in the DTI on that.
Secondly, the only way to get over the disbenefits of the research
assessment exercise is by having an integrated assessment method
that looks at both teaching and research in an academic department
and looks at all the activities of the academic department—not
something artificially called "teaching" and something
artificially called "research". Otherwise you will not
do it.
183. Do you think there are signs that HEFCE
and the DFE are beginning to come round to that?
(Dr Brown) There are beginning to be straws in the
wind and I understand that this is a possibility amongst the options
emerging from the fundamental review on research which you will
no doubt be asking the Funding Council about.
Chairman
184. This is a pretty damming piece of evidence
from you on the current standing of the research assessment exercise.
You seem to be saying that it diverts, affects teaching quality
and it affects the learning experience of students.
(Dr Brown) There is some evidence that the research
assessment exercise over time has improved the quality of research
that is being done in British universities but my argument is
that that is being achieved at too high a degree of cost and my
argument now is that if you need to continue with research selectivity
it should only be in those disciplines and kinds of research where
there is an absolutely overriding case that you need to be selective
in the way in which you allocate resources, ie expensive research
and expensive research teams, and I believe that is a minority
of academic activity in a minority of institutions.
185. So you are calling for a total re-ordering
of research assessment priorities?
(Dr Brown) Yes, because the biggest single issue and
the question you have been raising is the whole question of the
relationship between teaching and research and it needs an absolutely
fundamental look-at.
186. Before we leave teaching I have to ask
you, in terms of the Institute for Learning and Teaching, very
early on in this evidence we asked you questions about the quality
of teaching and the competence to teach. Are all the universities
going to subscribe to the Institute's doctrines and decisions?
How are they going to be reflected? How many institutions do we
have? 150?
(Dr Brown) Getting on for 200.
187. It goes up any time anyone gives evidence!
(Dr Brown) 172 Robin tells me, but it is also open
to people teaching higher education courses in further education
colleges as well, so that is another 100 institutions or so. First
of all, institutions have no role in relation to the ILT. The
ILT will be—and already is—a membership organisation.
It will depend upon individual teachers and lecturers, if they
wish to become members of it or not. Some institutions, like mine,
are encouraging them to become members by paying their first year's
subscription and joining fee; others are very much leaving it
to the individuals concerned as to whether they take part. I have
to say that the institutional response is very mixed so far. Some—like
mine—are encouraging people to belong; others are not doing
very much.
Mr O'Brien
188. I was very interested, Dr Brown, when you
mentioned the equivalence in your mind between what is now happening
in higher education and business and the analogy and I just wanted
to explore that a bit. Helen Jones did touch on the issues of
accountability and covered some of the ground we were wanting
to address but how helpful is it to think in terms of higher education
establishments being, if you like, businesses where the students
are the customers? What is the genuine sense of pressure and drive
about failure versus success? In a business that fails it is pretty
obvious—you go out of business.
(Dr Brown) There are cases which illustrate that there
are many parallels. I was involved when I was Secretary of the
Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council in helping to close
a college that had lost its accreditation from a professional
body. Since the institution was a monotechnic, that was the end
of that institution. We have seen Thames Valley University go
through some very difficult times recently and the questions of
viability there, and at some point it was decided that it was
perhaps better for the institution not to continue in that form.
So I think there are real pressures of that kind and there have
been a number of institutional mergers where in reality it is
not a merger but a takeover of an institution that was failing.
We have seen that even more in the further education so I think
it is real and as an institutional head I can say I am aware of
those sort of pressures. The more general philosophical point
is that higher education is like a business only up to a point
because whereas with a business, on the whole, what it produces
is relatively clear to inspect, I do not think anyone really agrees
what the outcomes of higher education are. All the time we are
dealing with proxies. What a student demonstrates on an exam paper
may not reflect all the learning they have achieved. They might
not be aware of the learning they have achieved until some time
after. Is the purpose of higher education to turn out graduates?
To turn out qualifications? To turn out well-rounded people? People
with technical skills, and so on. There is no consensus upon that
and that is why it makes it very difficult. Martin Trow once said
a higher education is a process masquerading as an outcome, and
that is one of the dangers with an outcomes-focused approach but,
inevitably, as we are driven down the competitive business road,
we will be forced to specify our outcomes and measure it in some
way. The trick is to do it in a way that is not simply reductionist
and throws the baby out with the bath water, and you lose the
point of why people are in higher education in the first place
which basically is to learn.
189. Professor Middlehurst?
(Professor Middlehurst) Yes. Again, the Borderless
Education Report is the source of this but a considerable concern
is that the public responsibilities towards those students that
are funded in large part by the state or, indeed, the whole of
state funding are increasingly under pressure as higher education
is forced to look for alternative sources of income to become
more business-led, and the balance of that activity on the activities
of staff. One of the reasons that people are out there earning
money is because they have to keep their institutions and their
units going and, if the state is paying 70/80 per cent of the
whole cost of the institution and the students, then a certain
kind of higher education can be expected, but there is a consequence
as institutions are driven more and more to be businesses and
the proportion of their funding comes from somewhere else and
it comes both in terms of how much accountability to the state
is possible and desirable, and how much is it necessary to go
down the commercial route and have commercial quality and commercial
responsibilities which require a certain amount of freedom.
Mr Marsden
190. And commercial subject matter?
(Professor Middlehurst) Yes.
Mr O'Brien
191. Can I ask a supplementary in terms of research
and the growing disparity between teaching and research? It seems
to me there is an in-built tension between students as customers
and students as products. If we are moving to this outcome-based
assessment and we close routes to the quality issues as well,
where do you see the trend going in terms of the way that tension
will play out because it is one which could get in the way of
a lot of the better achievements necessary in higher education?
(Professor Middlehurst) The tension varies for different
institutions. The other point, just to add to the picture, is
the widening participation agenda and that social agenda for institutions—either
institutions as a whole or institutions individually—and
the question of whether the business side, the commercial side,
will pay for that kind of an agenda. There are some very serious
questions that as a nation have to be addressed in terms of how
far you can push universities and colleges to be run like businesses,
to act as commercial businesses and what the consequences are
state-side.
(Dr Brown) There is a great danger that you will not
do any thinking unless there is an income stream attached to it.
The Secretary of State's recent speech set out a series of demands
that higher education should meet, but the one demand you have
to meet is to be a centre of creating knowledge and disseminating
knowledge. If you lose that for its own sake you will not be able
to do the other things and the baby will have gone out with the
bath water.
Chairman
192. In response to an earlier question you
did say there was a problem. Did you say that university teachers
or researchers or institutions see what they provide as a service.
(Dr Brown) I was thinking particularly of staff attitudes
which are, I think, generic really—that not enough staff
see themselves as service providers.
193. That is the sort of language of business,
is it not?
(Dr Brown) It is but that is exactly the nature of
the problem. We as institutional managers, and Robin manages a
unit at the University of Surrey, see the point about service
but not everybody in the institutions does.
Valerie Davey
194. Enhancing the quality of education must
be a remit and that means a total education in the life-long learning
agenda of this government. Can I ask you very specifically what
universities are doing; what they could do; what they should do
to improve standards in schools?
(Dr Brown) First of all, universities are in a way
involved already through teacher training—I do not know
whether you had that in mind as part of what you were talking
about—and you could also argue that universities are involved
through examination boards because universities are still involved
in the examination boards, for example. What universities could
do far more than they have done up till now is make quite explicit
when people are applying for higher education what the particular
things are they are looking for, and it may be that the reforms
taking place in the 60-90 curriculum will assist with this. In
other words, a broader range of data upon which decisions are
made. The admissions tutor in higher education is one of the great
black boxes in higher education—nobody quite knows what
goes on with the admissions process. You see the outputs but how
fair it is, how rational it is, is a good issue. More generally,
universities and institutions could be more aware of the changes
taking place in the schools, the changes in the school curriculum,
and things of that kind. There is a big issue there because the
emphasis in the school curriculum—there are different tendencies
but one emphasis is to broaden the school curriculum whereas,
of course, what many universities want are people who have specific
requirements that they can feed straight into a degree course.
There is the same issue in the schools as there is in higher education
as to what is the appropriate form of qualification that you should
have; should everybody be doing a classified Honours degree? Should
everybody be doing an `A' level or some variant of it? So I think
there are ways in which the universities could influence what
happens in schools but also perhaps they should not influence
what happens in the schools too much because not everybody is
going on to higher education, and what particularly universities
want to do may not be appropriate for all the students who are
in secondary or primary education at the moment.
195. I am interested that you are still looking
at schools as providing you with students.
(Dr Brown) You asked me quite concretely what the
universities could do and I am reflecting the university perspective,
that is the primary way in which they interact with schools.
196. I find that deeply disappointing. In many
of our cities a university building is alongside some of the most
deprived and under achieving schools that we have, does that not
strike you as an anomaly?
(Dr Brown) Universities are doing things. My institution
has contacts with schools, it has links with schools. We have
a summer schools for pupils from the school, together with Southampton
University. There are things of that kind. I was trying to answer
your question in general terms. There are some specific things
that are happening.
197. Is the motivation simply to ensure that
universities get better quality students and that the qualifications
dove-tail with the first year of the undergraduate course or is
it a general acknowledgment, as I would hope, to ensure that that
quality of education which you are seeking to provide and generate
in universities is seen within the schools, for their staff, for
all the on-line contacts which there could be. Perhaps I should
move on to Robin Middlehurst, given her education ideas that perhaps
there is a great deal more from a different perspective which
could be done?
(Professor Middlehurst) There is undoubtedly more,
it means re-conceptualising what universities can do in relation
to schools. I would say that they do a couple of other things.
In some cases they have a fairly good programme of students working
in schools and helping children directly and on the other hand
we, on the research side of my school of education, have a lot
of teachers undertaking research and development work. We also
have projects actually under the university for industry, which
involve the local colleges and some local schools, which is providing
training, if you like, in IT skills. In terms of community education
there are also projects which would involve the families of the
school, the wider community as well as bright teenagers who could
learn new skills and as well as teachers who could learn new skills.
There is a wider picture but I would not say that it is widespread.
The role of universities in relation to schools would need some
thinking about.
(Dr Brown) Can I just add as an institutional head
that the funding for these activities comes off our resources
for teaching. We are not funded for extensive activities of this
kind, which are very staff intensive. If we are to do more of
this kind of work we have to have the funding for it.
Valerie Davey: I do not think it is one-way
traffic. I really do think schools have a lot to offer universities.
It is that dialogue, it is that understanding, it is that sharing.
Yes, I accept there is an element of cost but the loss is to the
whole community. The majority of people still think of universities
as ivory towers. That is a cliche that most of us have discarded
a couple of decades or more ago. For many people who never stepped
into their local university it is up there, out of the way. While
communities feels like that then the majority of those young people,
for whom access ought to be the next progression, it will not
happen. It is perception. It is integration. It is a recognition
both ways which I hope more universities will understand.
Charlotte Atkins
198. What worries me about the involvement of
universities in schools is that they tend to pitch their activities
at the top brightest ones, maths master classes, sometimes summer
schools, who pick the more able. What, in your view, are the years
at which universities should pitch their appeal? Should they be
looking at the middle group of students from non-traditional backgrounds,
who would not necessarily aspire to go to university but, in my
view, are the ones that would benefit the most from some sort
of out-reach work from the local university, given that so many
pupils now choose to go to their local university.
(Dr Brown) On the first we know that many pupils make
their decisions about what to study when they are deciding on
their GCSEs.
199. Or before.
(Dr Brown) Or before. You have to go quite far back
into the education frame in order to have that kind of information.
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