Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
MONDAY 9 MARCH 2009
PROFESSOR PAUL
RAMSDEN, MR
PETER WILLIAMS
AND MR
ANTHONY MCCLARAN
Q360 Dr Harris: Mr Williams, we are
a science committee, partly, as well as innovation, universities
and skills. Do you share the feelings we might have about science
degrees being awarded for homeopathy, for example, or would you
accept it for astrology next?
Mr Williams: This is one of the
questions about standards, is it not? I have said somewhere else
that we do not want the standards of yesterday, we want the standards
that are relevant today and I think that communities are going
to have to decide whether homeopathy is an appropriate subject
to be studied in higher education. I do not myself think it is
QAA's role to determine which subjects are or are not appropriate.
Q361 Dr Harris: What about higher
education, because clearly you could look at the history of it,
for example, and theology is studied and there is a lot of scientific
matter there, and I am asking whether a BSc should involve reference
to the scientific method and experiment, at least as a core principle
and not the rejection of that as the core of the subject?
Mr Williams: I think it is for
the higher education and scientific community itself to determine
the process it is prepared to accept as being genuine for its
own purposes. If that scientific community collectively says that
a particular subject area like, as you rightly say, astrology,
is not appropriate, then it should not support it.
Q362 Dr Harris: But if the university
is desperate to get students in—we have just discussed this,
Parliament has never voted for this but there is a market in higher
education—and they just want to attract students and they
find it easier and cheaper, i.e. more profitable, to attract students
to a BSc in alternative medicine rather than experimental chemistry,
then they will do it and the fact that there is some professor
of the Royal Society huffing and puffing is not going to stop
them. Are you going to stop them?
Mr Williams: This is not something
for QAA. This is not QAA business. QAA does not exist to regulate
the scientific method and its application. That is something for
the academic community to do and I think if the academic community
says that we should not have degrees in homeopathy—which
presumably are legal, because homeopathy is legal, astronomy is
legal, so it is not breaking any law -
Dr Harris: It is not the degree, it is
the BSc. I thought the Quality Assurance system would say that
a BSc leads someone through the process with an understanding
of science and scientific methods. So we can have Bachelors of
Art and we have theology degrees, but science is science. Surely
there must be some way for you to interact with this question,
otherwise it is meaningless?
Q363 Chairman: We are back to square
one really, are we not, Peter, to the point where we started on
this whole argument of what is this role, that if institutions
can in fact do all this process themselves, what is your point?
If you cannot intervene on such a fundamental issue, where can
you intervene?
Mr Williams: What we can do, and
our reviewers would do, would be to go and look at a programme
in something like homeopathy, how that had been approved, why
that had been approved and what the scientific rationale behind
it had been. We cannot stop the universities offering degrees
in subjects they want to offer. They are unfettered in what they
can offer.
Q364 Dr Harris: They could call it
a doctorate even if it is a three year Bachelor degree -
Mr Williams: No, because that
falls foul of the framework. The framework requires a certain
level of engagement over time.
Q365 Dr Harris: But you would expect
the external examiner to pick this up -
Mr Williams: If I were the reviewer,
if I were an auditor on this one, I would want to see the external
examiner's report. I would want to see what the external examiner
is saying about this and how the university had responded to it,
but there is a limit to the powers which an organisation like
ours, without legal powers to close things down, can exercise
in these areas.
Q366 Chairman: But should you have
them?
Mr Williams: Well, it would be
an extremely powerful power, to close things down. Take higher
education, or take our powers. It is well outside what has been
allowed to us. I would be very wary about giving the power to
close things down.
Q367 Dr Harris: Are you a mature
enough organisation to handle that power, or do you think it is
too much power for an organisation like yours?
Mr Williams: No, what of course
we could do—it would be a nuclear option and so the danger
is that we would not actually do it very often, we would not exercise
the power.
Q368 Dr Harris: You are not doing
anything very often at the moment, it is established?
Mr Williams: No, not at all. I
think that is a very unfair analysis.
Q369 Dr Harris: You have done a couple
of things in FE[2]
that were powerful but nothing in HE?
Mr Williams: No, no, no. A lot
of our power is the power of influence and fear. I think when
I was here last time I pointed out some of the consequences of
the work we have done. It is universities losing their credit
rating, which is very serious for them, vice-chancellors resigning.
These are things which we have to be very careful about. We are
not in the business of destroying universities or higher education
activities. It is not our objective to destroy them
Chairman: I am sorry, Dr Harris, I have
got to stop you there. This is really exciting stuff and this
is just the worst afternoon we have to be short of time, but I
am very anxious to hear from Professor Ramsden before he leaves,
so five minutes on each of these last two questions and I am going
to reverse them, six and five.
Q370 Mr Marsden: I will not get into
whether every Bachelor of Science is a good scientist any more
than a Bachelor of Arts is a good artist. Professor Ramsden, if
I can come to you, your Academy was set up in 2004 and you have
joined it as its first Chief Executive. Not least if you were
here for the earlier session and heard some of the discussions
about the balance between research and teaching, does it not seem
sometimes as if you are David throwing a few sling shots at Goliath?
Professor Ramsden: It could sometimes
seem like that, but my view is that there is no natural divide
between teaching and research and education. I think we heard
Professor Alderman say earlier on that it was an ideal that there
should be a link between the two things. I think it is an ideal
and it is an ideal I very much respect. One of the things we have
tried to do is to encourage the links between teaching and research.
I am sure that good teaching is informed by research and that
students have the experience of being taught by people who are
scholarly or inspirational, who are keen, and I think that is
very, very important in higher education. To continue to answer
your question, I think it would be inappropriate to set up a natural
divide between the research and the teaching function. Most people
go into academia, I certainly did because I was interested in
finding things out, on the one hand, and interested in sharing
them with other people as well, and I think that is a very important
part of the quality of the student experience to have that.
Q371 Mr Marsden: Again, as I said
to an earlier witness, that is a very nice, slightly Utopian view,
but what do you do at the hard edges? What do you do, assuming
you agree with what Professor Alderman said earlier about the
brilliant researcher who is a hopeless teacher? Do you just say
that does not matter, or do you try and put him or her under more
pressure to become a better teacher, or what?
Professor Ramsden: In my view,
it matters very much because that researcher will probably agree
with what I said, that he went into academia not just to do research
but also to share his knowledge, his experience and his inspiration
with other people. I believe that is a very important part of
what all academics should do. It is obviously up to universities
to encourage that. My view is—and it is anecdotal evidence—that
they do encourage it, but we encourage it from the Higher Education
Academy's point of view by working with the higher education sector
to develop a national professional standards framework for teaching
which all academics are expected—and it is self-regulating—to
rise up to.
Q372 Mr Marsden: So we have now got
a bit of what you are doing, which is—how can I put it kindly?—focussed
on recidivists, useless researchers who really ought to be good
at teaching?
Professor Ramsden: No, I do not
think a deficit model of teaching is really a very effective one.
I am very concerned to ensure that most people in academia want
to be good at teaching, they want to teach students and to encourage
them and enable them to do that through the kinds of programmes
we accredit and the support and the workshops that we provide
through our subject centres..
Q373 Mr Marsden: Can I just move
on and ask you, as I say, you are in your fifth year now and according
to HEFCE, these latest accounts, you have got £21.9 million
from them for 2007/2008. If I was a nasty person at the National
Audit Office and I was doing an audit of you, how would you actually
say the £24 million (or thereabouts) you received from the
taxpayer is actually making a difference? Can we see a quantitative
difference over the five years of your existence, between the
quality of teaching and raising the status of it from what it
was beforehand?
Professor Ramsden: That is a very
good question because it is very difficult to make that connection,
because what we can do with our £21 million is relatively
small compared with what universities can do with their much larger
pots of resources. I think there has been an improvement in that
standard of teaching in higher education over the last five to
ten years, or the thirty years the Chairman was talking about.
The extent to which the Academy can say it has achieved that and
encouraged that, I think is a difficult question to answer.
Q374 Mr Marsden: Do you see yourself
as the grit in the oyster, and if you are the grit in the oyster
who are the people who are producing the pearls?
Professor Ramsden: I think what
we have done is to operate to produce an accreditation framework,
and we accredit now over 200 programmes in higher education and
continuing professional development things for universities, and
that has undoubtedly had an effect on enhancing the standard of
teaching in universities. The evidence is there in the students'
views, in what people say, in the Quality Assurance Agency's reports.
Q375 Mr Marsden: Just coming to the
end on this, you talk in your submission statements about bringing
out the best learning experience and environment for students
but I am right, am I not, in thinking that on a regular basis
you do not actually engage directly with students? You take evidence
and surveys, and all the rest of it. Is that a big weakness in
what you are trying to do, or do you have plans to have a more
regular engagement with students, or what?
Professor Ramsden: The short answer
is, yes, we work at multiple levels, we work with higher education
institutions, with universities and colleges, with individual
academics and at policy level, but we also increasingly work closely
with students. For example, in governance terms we have the President
of NUS, who is a member of our board -
Q376 Mr Marsden: Is he or she a typical
student?
Professor Ramsden: I think I will
have to leave Wes Streeting to answer that for himself, but he
certainly is representative of a very large group of students
-
Q377 Mr Marsden: The point I am making
is that any individual, however gifted, however representative,
is no substitute, as we have discovered in our other sessions,
for bringing together a clump of students from very diverse and
different backgrounds and I am just suggesting to you that that
might be a useful part of your useful agenda.
Professor Ramsden: I agree, and
we try to do that through our subject centres in particular, and
we work very, very closely with students in many different ways
and we also work at different levels with the NUS and with other
groups of students. As I said again in my submission to the Secretary
of State, I think we need to engage more with students through
not only the higher education academics but also institutions
to do that because they have a very, very big part to play in
enhancing quality and I think we need to use that resource.
Chairman: We will come back to Graham
because degrees mean an awful lot to students.
Q378 Graham Stringer: They do. Mr
Williams, in your evidence you say, "It would be a serious
mistake to confuse a flawed classification system with falling
academic standards," and you also claim that all students
reach a basic and appropriate standard. How can you be so sure
if we are dealing with what you accept is a flawed system that
basic standards are reached?
Mr Williams: I think we have to
take away the red herring of degree classification because I do
not think degree classifications tell us anything and I have gone
on record to say that. I think they are misleading and not at
all helpful for the reasons Professor Burgess was talking about
and there is nothing new in that, nothing at all. I think the
proxies for knowing that the standards are being achieved are
largely because of the (up until now anyway) very high level of
graduate employability.
Q379 Graham Stringer: That is a pretty
odd sort of criterion, is it not?
Mr Williams: Well, it seems to
me to be a very fashionable criterion.
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