Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 100)
MONDAY 23 MARCH 2009
PROFESSOR BERNARD
LONGDEN, PROFESSOR
LIN NORTON
AND PROFESSOR
MANTZ YORKE
Q80 Mr Marsden: To go back to the
first part of my question, is there anything that institutions
can do to help part-time students, as it were, to form closer
associations and bonds, or is it just intrinsic in the system
that it is going to be more difficult?
Professor Yorke: I think they
do in some areas. I have been looking latterly at foundation degrees,
where people do quite a lot of stuff in the workplace as well
as in the education institution, and you begin to get the response
from students that as much as they are getting out of this bonding
with others is the strength they get from working with other people.
That helps and sustains them and helps develop self-esteem, and
all the things that go with that. It does happen, but I think
probably the way you go about the teaching and learning, and the
student experience issue, plays a part in doing that. If you just
bring people in and lecture them and then they go away again,
they are not going to have much chance of making that bonding.
If they work in a group kind of way they are much more likely
to make that kind of bonding.
Q81 Chairman: One of the things I
found interesting about your evidence was the way in which the
course was delivered. You seemed to indicate, and tell me if I
have got this wrong, that if in fact you had a part-time course
which was constructed as a part-time course, which took into account
the circumstances of students, the fact that they worked part
time, had family commitments, and other things, that they seemed
to be more successful compared with those part-time students who
had to fit into the full-time course because that was what was
offered and yet that seems to be in contradiction to what we have
just been talking about, that richness of working alongside full-time
under-graduates. How did you come to balance those two sides in
that way?
Professor Yorke: I do not think
it is a contradiction; it is a difficulty in how you actually
operate. If you know in your full-time course that you have got
some part-time students you need to be alert to that and adjust
what you are doing as a teacher to cater for both groups and not
cater for the full-time people and leave the others as an afterthought
where they get messed up with schedules for assessment and things
like that.
Q82 Mr Marsden: Two quick final questions,
if I may, the first one to you, Professor Longden. We are having
this inquiry in the middle of the economic turmoil and recession
that we have, and it would not be unreasonable to assume that
we may have a much larger number of young mature students but
also a larger number of young part-time students for the foreseeable
future. Does that mean that the issues that face largely mature
part-time students at the moment are more intractable than those
that will face young part-time students?
Professor Longden: If you want
me to respond on evidence then I do not have the evidence for
that.
Q83 Mr Marsden: Do you have a view?
Professor Longden: I have a view
about it, yes, and I would say that the part-time students who
are mature students are coming in and give up a huge amount if
they are studying part time. Over 50 per cent of the students
are paying their own way in terms of fees so that is a big issue.
That is not the total cost. The other cost is the maintenance
that runs alongside it, buying the books, buying the various equipment
that is required for the course, travelling to the place, finding
parking spaces.
Q84 Mr Marsden: Practical things?
Professor Longden: Practical things
but they are disincentives for some people. I think the country
has to make a decision. Does it want more graduates contributing
to society or not? I have just come back from South Korea where
80 per cent of students at 18 go to university. We are lingering
around 43 per cent. It seems to me that either we want these students
to gain benefit from higher education or we do not, we appear
unsure what we do want.
Q85 Mr Marsden: I am going to stop
you there because I want to leave the last word on this section
with Professor Yorke. The implication of what your colleague has
said is obviously a big boost in numbers, but certainly most people
in the political sphere would think it is unlikely that you are
going to push beyond the 50 per cent full-time barrier at the
moment. In fact, it is inconceivable in the present circumstances.
Therefore should the forthcoming review of fees that we are going
to have be one that covers part-time students as well as full-time
students? Obviously there have been improvements in the situation
of part-time students over recent years but they are still in
funding terms second-class citizens, are they not?
Professor Yorke: I think it should,
full stop. There is another bit as well to that and that is looking
at what it is we expect people to do when they engage in higher
education. It is a broad big picture question. I go back to the
2003 White Paper which talked about[5]
not necessarily being the same as before, or whatever the words
were. I think higher education probably needs to think about different
ways in which it actually delivers because if you want lots and
lots of people into higher education and the money is tight, then
you are going to have to be clever and it is the being clever
bit that I think is the real challenge.
Q86 Graham Stringer: Should we be
flying the flags or should our brows be furrowing a little that
more students are getting a better class of degree?
Professor Norton: I think we should
be flying flags. There are a number of reasons and it is impossible
to disaggregate what the reasons are, but it could be that students
are far more committed, far more hard-working these days, and
they are far more strategic. They have a better understanding
of what is required in the assessment for their degrees. It could
be an indication that teaching quality has gone up. For those
reasons I think we should be flying the flags. One can have the
brows furrowed response in does this mean that there is a drift
in standards. In terms of classification of degrees, I know this
is another issue altogether, the Burgess Report and the Higher
Education Achievement Record is a very good initiative because
it broadens out exactly what students do in what areas, so the
question might be that simply trying to capture the whole of a
student's experience, performance and achievement in a single
degree classification is too broad an indicator of that student's
achievement.
Q87 Graham Stringer: Anybody else?
Professor Longden: I would say
fly the flags. It is interesting, I have a quote in preparation
for this, and it says: "Uninterested, apathetic instructors
who had little or no interest in their students' progress other
than ensuring that they did well their exams," and that was
in 1852 by Newman. I think we have moved hugely—
Q88 Graham Stringer: One would hope
so.
Professor Longden: One would hope
so, absolutely, so why should we not be progressing up and why
should there not be more students who are gaining access to university,
gaining the benefits and the opportunities that are being presented
to them, and benefiting from it and demonstrating that they have
the capability?
Graham Stringer: But it is rather surprising,
is it not, that as more students have access to university, not
just the absolute numbers of people getting firsts and 2:1s have
gone up but the percentage has gone up. Surely you must be worried
that there is a lowering of standards and grade inflation when
you see those two things together? It is not totally related but
it is something that I have looked at a lot recently. If you take
a normal distribution curve of academic achievements in literacy,
and take the bottom 23 or 24 per cent out, then you are basically
saying that almost everybody who can read is getting a degree,
so you must be worried about standards, surely?
Q89 Chairman: Professor Yorke, you
look puzzled.
Professor Yorke: I was just wondering
who is supposed to be answering, that is all.
Q90 Chairman: I have resolved that
problem.
Professor Yorke: I do not think
we should be too worried. If I was flying the flags I would be
looking up at the flags and the sky would be bright, so I would
have a furrow on my brow as well. The reason I have a furrow on
my brow is that if we have student curricula expressed in terms
of learning outcomes so students know what they are supposed to
do, which is no bad thing, they should know what they are expected
to do and they do it, fine. What may get missed is that they just
do that and we lose something from round the edges that is important
for the higher education experience, so it may be possible to
do rather better but on a narrower front, which is maybe what
we are seeing. It is part of the story and it is complex. You
have read the evidence that we have submitted, and it is a complex
story. That is one of the bits that I think may be important.
It is quite interesting if you look at the more recent data, and
I have looked at some more recently than the stuff I have been
able to send into the Committee—
Q91 Graham Stringer: Will you send
us that as well?
Professor Yorke: I can give you
the link to it. It has been published on the Academy website this
morning. I have done graphs of where different subjects have been
over 13 years and although they have been going up in the time
up to 2002, often it is the case that they have pretty well flattened
off thereafter. I wonder—and it is only speculation—that
it may be something to do with using learning outcomes and writing
curricula in those terms over that decade or so before, and now
we have got used to it, things may be flattening off a bit. That
may be part of the story, I do not know, but it seems to be one
big piece of it.
Q92 Graham Stringer: Why has grade
inflation been higher in the Russell Group of universities than
elsewhere?
Professor Yorke: I do not want
to use the phrase grade inflation because that has a pejorative
connotation and the complexity makes me reluctant to use it because
I do not want to assent to it. I do not know the answer as to
why it should have gone up in the Russell Group in that time when
it did. The suggestion was that it might actually be that their
entrance standards have gone up. The very limited evidence that
I was able to get on entrance standards, which was pretty vestigial,
suggests that it was not. It is perfectly possible to check it
out but is a rather complex statistical study using data to which
I do not have access. The Funding Council would have it if it
was to trawl through. Whether it is worth doing I am not sure.
Latterly that relatively sharp rise seems to have flattened out
and in some cases reversed a bit. I would be rather cautious about
using grade inflation in the Russell Group as an issue.
Q93 Graham Stringer: Is it not likely,
given that universities are competing heavily and actively for
the best students, which they are, that they are looking for a
relative competitive advantage by students looking at what the
outcomes in different departments in differing universities are,
and students can make a judgment about whether they are likely
to get a first or a 2:1. They can read the statistics as well
as you and I can.
Professor Yorke: Yes they can,
but they need to read them rather subtly because it depends which
subject you look at where the statistics come out. If you are
doing a mathematical subject, you tend to get more firsts and
more thirds, so if you are okay you pick that; if you are a bit
dodgy on that you might well do something else. The distributions
in the different subjects are so different. Going back to the
issue about standards of comparability there is a real problem
about comparing like with like.
Q94 Graham Stringer: Were you here
for the previous evidence session?
Professor Yorke: Yes.
Q95 Graham Stringer: You heard the
discussion we had about assessing standards and quality in the
previous evidence session. Do you think that the QAA is fit for
purpose? Do you think it should be extended or abolished? Do you
think its range should be increased, as we tend to do when regulatory
bodies are not doing quite what we expect, or do you think there
is no need for it at all and we should use something else?
Professor Yorke: I do not think
there is a need for a great change, to be honest, and the reason
for that is that there is probably, implicitly rather than explicitly,
more attention in the QAA work on standards than there was hitherto.
In the evidence session we talked about the QAA being process
driven rather than standards driven, but when you have got curricula
expressed in learning outcomes and you have benchmark statements
and things like that, you have begun to put standards into the
picture in a way that perhaps was not the case when the QAA activity
(under a different agency at the time) was actually started. I
think you have got something there. It is oblique rather than
direct but I do not think we really want the panoply of direct
inspection and perhaps national curriculum and things like that
to bring it on because that would make life extremely difficult
and fraught, and I do not believe would be very helpful to the
innovativeness of institutions.
Q96 Graham Stringer: A lot of the
dialogue this afternoon has been about dealing with, and quite
rightly so, independent institutions that are jealous about their
academic freedoms, but actually getting hold of hard evidence
about what is going on—and we are talking about standards
at the moment—is actually very difficult for us to recommend
to government what policies they should be pursuing. What do you
think we should do about that lack of evidence? First of all,
do you agree with that statement and, secondly, if you do agree
with it, what do you think could be done about it?
Professor Yorke: I will deal with
the second part of your question because I think there is something
that could be done. I have begun to scratch into it because I
think it is an issue that affects not so much the firsts/2:1s
issue but the honours degree/non-honours classification issue,
which I think is something rather left forgotten. I have been
looking at a particular data set which I have had given to me
and trying to follow what has gone through. I have gone right
back to the components that made up the module scores which are
then built up into the degree classification. The difference seems
to be early on and whether the student has passed the early module
or not is the thing, with performance perhaps on a marginal basis.
I think there is an issue about how you actually cumulate performances
together to make a pass or non-pass decision at the end of the
year, which ties in very much with the issue about completion
rates and continuation rates and so on, which ties in with statistics
and eventually funding. There is a whole range of issues there
that come together that are actually quite important. If we begin
to look a little bit more closely at what is going on within the
assessments and also within institutional assessment regulations,
because there is quite a lot of variation in that, as you will
perhaps hear on a future occasion, there are issues there that
I think probably need some looking at and probably some developmental
work. If we could get institutions having greater clarity about
what they are doing in the assessment arena, which is a difficult
and challenging arena, then we might actually do something to
help the system understand better what it is doing and therefore
have greater confidence in its outcomes.
Q97 Graham Stringer: That was a very
comprehensive answer to the second part of the question. To the
first part of the question do you think there is a sufficient
evidence base?
Professor Yorke: No, I do not
think there is. We can always get more evidence from various sources.
I think some of the things in which colleagues and I have been
involved help in that way. There is quite a lot of statistical
data around. I remember speaking to HEFCE some years ago and they
were saying, "We cannot analyse all this stuff, we just do
not have the person power to do it. Is there somebody else who
would be willing to do it?" It may well be that there are
possibilities for gaining more access to data sets and doing something
with them that might be helpful in answering the kinds of questions
that you have in the back of your mind.
Q98 Chairman: I was interested in
Sir David Watson, the Professor of Higher Education at the Institute
of Education, University of London who taught this quality agenda
of, as he called them, the "gangs" into which institutions
have put themselves, who have a greater interest in maintaining
the reputational range within that group of universities and that
that is what they see as standards. Do you share those views of
Professor Watson? Do you think he is right that organisations
like the Russell Group or the 1994 Group or the Million+ Group
are more interested in maintaining their reputation within those
groups than they are in the whole system and the competitive advantage?
Professor Longden: There are characteristics
that pull them together. If you take the Russell Group maybe you
would call them research intensive. There will be other groups
that will have less emphasis on the research and more on the teaching.
My institution would say it is teaching-led, research-informed,
and that makes it slightly different from many of the other categories.
If you go across to the States they acknowledge this and group
colleges and universities through the " Carnegie Classification
of Institutions of Higher Education", it enables them to
work comfortably. My university took a decision three years ago
to withdraw from publication of data to go out into league tables.
We took that decision because we thought that they were not helping
prospective students understand what our institution was about
by showing where we were in the rankings because we were being
compared with the top end of the Russell Group. It does not make
a lot of sense. It would have been much better to have checked
a whole lot of institutions, shall we call them "cathedral"
universities, who have very similar missions so that they could
share and be seen as a coherent, homogenous group. That makes
more sense than 130-odd institutions all trying to move their
positions up ranking orders.
Q99 Chairman: With the greatest of
respect, which means I do not agree, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor
and the two Vice Chancellors that you saw before all agreed that
the degrees you award are all exactly the same.
Professor Longden: Rankings do
not just measure the degrees. They measure a whole lot of other
values that somebody has determined and they add them all together
in a particular way to come up with a number which provides a
rank order. That is the thing that goes out to parents, it goes
out to students, and they look at that and they decide that institution
X must be the best institution because it is at the top of the
table, but it does not tell you very much about the subject in
that particular context. That really is the heart of the matter.
I am delighted to see developments like Unistats coming out of
UCAS. At least the data is there. I agree with Professor Gerald
Pillay when he said that we are probably overwhelmed with information.
That is really going to be our problem. How do we sieve it down
so that it becomes manageable and sensible for us to interpret.
Q100 Mr Marsden: Perhaps we should
be encouraging the Times to run subject tables every year
rather than university tables.
Professor Longden: Well, the Guardian
does.
Chairman: On that note and a plea for
more research what seems to be self-interest, if you do not mind
me saying, we come to the end of this session. We thank you very
much indeed. The session is suspended for 15 minutes.
5 Note from the witness: higher education is
being referred to here in this evidence Back
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