Government reform of Higher EducationFurther written evidence submitted by the Economics Network, University of Bristol

The Planned Abolition of the Subject Centres: Why they Should be Retained to Support HE Learning and Teaching

Summary

The 24 subject centres of the Higher Education Academy provide valuable support to lecturers in their disciplines to improve the quality of teaching and learning. There is a large weight of evidence to demonstrate their success and how much they are valued by their subject communities.

However, the Higher Education Academy plans to cease funding subject centres and to provide all subject support by just 22 academics employed by the headquarters in York.

This model is untried and cannot replace the community hubs and the network economies of scale provided by the subject centres. The communities that have been built by subject centres will be destroyed and many of the resources on their extensive websites will be lost.

There is a strong case for legislation to protect the subject centres and for them to be funded directly by the four UK funding councils.

The 24 Subject Centres: Supporting Learning and Teaching in UK HE

1. The 24 subject centres were set up in 1999–2000 to support teaching and learning in UK higher education. Each one is for a specific discipline or a small number of related disciplines (eg the Physical Sciences Subject Centre covers Chemistry, Physics. Astronomy and Forensic Science). Between them the 24 subject centres cover all the subjects/disciplines. They are hosted in universities which are funded, via the HE Academy, by the UK’s four funding councils.

2. Being subject specific, each subject centre has built communities of lecturers who relate to “their” subject centre. Lecturers give voluntarily of their time and materials to their subject centre and they are comfortable engaging with teaching and learning issues with people from the same academic “tribe” who speak the same language. The subject centres are each led by a director who is well known and respected in his/her discipline and has an ability and reputation to build and manage networks.

3. The subject centres each have large websites of resources, share ideas and materials through wikis, run national, regional and departmental events, give awards, conduct surveys, engage with subject and professional associations and with employers, and are seen as a voice by lecturers for their subject community.

4. Subject centres have contacts in most academic departments and have many associates who work with them. They are respected by their communities and are the only organisations that directly influence teaching at the subject level. They have an international reputation and are seen globally as leaders in teaching/learning innovation and good practice.

What is Proposed by the Higher Education Academy

5. The HEA is faced with a 30% cut, phased in over three years beginning August 2010. The subject centres have already borne a cut of 15% this year and could easily bear the remaining 15% cut, even if there were no redistribution of funding from Academy York (which has more than 50% of the budget) to the subject centres.

6. Instead, the HEA executive has decided to abolish subject centres and this decision has been ratified by the Board. It plans to bring all subject support into the Centre in York (“Academy York”) and sever its relationship with host universities. It is our understanding that there will be just 22 academics at relatively junior level employed by York to provide subject support across all disciplines, with four senior academics as “faculty” leads.

7. It seems almost inevitable that subject specific support offered by the Academy in York will be much reduced and less embedded in their respective academic communities.

8. In practice this decision has been taken by Academy York and the Board, to which subject centres have had limited access. Unlike the Executive in York, subject centres cannot negotiate directly with HEFCE. No subject centre director has been consulted by HEFCE.

9. Host universities were informed of the decision of the HEA on 12 November. Grant funding will be withdrawn for hosting subject centres from 1 August 2011, although a small amount of “transition funding” will be available for up to 10 months beyond this. After this, subject centres will cease to exist.

Independent Reviews of the HEA and Subject Centres: Oakleigh and Challis

10. HEFCE commissioned an independent review of the HEA by Oakleigh Consulting which was published in 2008. It found that “Subject Centres are valued because they tackle enhancement from the “ground floor”, are practitioner-led, and by working within disciplines maintain a contextual focus that is highly valued.”

11. It described the subject centres as the Academy’s “flagship programme”, and stated: “It is clear that the discipline-led focus is highly valued by the sector, and the need for such a network in the future is, in our view, manifest.”

12. There was also an internal Academy review of subject centres led by Linda Challis. There was a concern expressed in the Oakleigh evaluation as to whether the balance of funding between subject centres was appropriate. However, in the Challis Report into subject centre funding, Implementing a new Subject Centre funding model, it was agreed that the subject centre coverage was appropriate and that new and emerging disciplines could be incorporated within one or more of the existing 24 centres. The Challis report resulted in a reallocation of funding between subject centres that reflected the size of their communities.

13. There have been various changes made within the management structure in Academy York since Oakleigh, most of which have made the Executive less acountable. The Senior Management team has been stripped of its monitoring and evaluation role. The Academy Forum, which gave an opportunity for Academy staff from York and the subject centres to meet and plan strategy was abolished in 2010. The Academic Council, which advised the Board, has also been abolished. There have been various reorganisations within Academy York, which have led to uncertainty and unclear lines of communication. The Instutional Partnership Programme, consisting of visits by an HEA representative to universities to consult with their senior management, has received much criticism by universities (and by the HEA Executive) as not being fit for purpose, with poor follow-up.

Internet Rankings of the HEA and the Subject Centres

14. Measuring the impact of teaching and learning initiatives is far from straightforward. There have been no randomised trials of the work of either the Academy or the subject centres. In the last analysis, evaluation involves a judgement about the effectiveness of these organisations.

15. However, there is one metric by which the HEA and the subject centres can be assessed. If you Google a subject name and “HE learning and teaching” or “Higher Education”, the relevant subject centre usually comes out top. Even if all you Google is the subject, the subject centre frequently comes within the top 10. These subject centre sites are known, respected and used around the world. They are a great window to UK HE and an area where the UK leads the world.

16. Despite Academy York receiving more than half of the funding, almost all online engagement is with the subject centres, which received about 16 million page requests in 2010. The Academy York site, by contrast, received less than 3 million page requests and within this figure the most popular page accessed on the York site is a the one linking to the 24 subject centres.

17. The Academy plans to shut down subject centre websites and bring across a subset of their resources to the Academy site.

18. This is likely to prove difficult. Academy York has IT systems that are incompatible with the web platforms used by the subject centres. Copying information onto the Academy York servers is not possible because of this incompatibility. Interactive resources developed by the subject centre, such as learning object repositories will require re-programming if they are to be hosted by Academy York. It is doubtful that this work will ever be completed. In practice, for most of the subject centre sites, much of this material will be lost.

Further Evidence

(a) Subject and professional associations

19. There have been letters in support of subject centres including from the following. These can be provided on request:

Association of Business School.

Society of Biology.

Conference of Heads of University Departments of Economics.

Royal Economic Society.

Education for Engineering (E4E).

Engineering Professors Council.

Royal Geographical Society.

History UK (HE).

Historical Association.

British Association of Sport and Exercise Science (BASES) Board

Institute of Hospitality.

Leisure Studies Association.

Committee of Heads of University Law Schools.

Legal Services Board.

Law Society of England and Wales.

University Council of Modern Languages.

Standing Conference of University Drama Departments.

Institute of Physics.

British Psychology Society.

Association of Professors of Social Work.

Cogent Sector Skills Council.

Royal Society for Public Health.

UK Centre for the Advancement of Inter-professional Education.

(b) Letters to the Times Higher Education

20. There have been several letters to, and articles in, the Times Higher supporting subject centres and highly critical of the decision to close them. These can be found at:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410541

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410580

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414089

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414393

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414397

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415132

(c) Online petition

21. Over 1200 academics have signed an online petition, which can be found at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/heasubjectcentres/

The petition reads:

We the undersigned, speaking from institutions across the country and from the perspectives of a wide range of disciplines, write to express our profound consternation at the decision of the Higher Education Academy to discontinue the funding of all Subject Centres from July 2011, replacing them instead with staff directly employed by the HEA. The success of the Subject Centres since their inception has been considerable. They have initiated a range of innovatory practices; funded the publication of valuable research into the nature and consequences of what we do; and articulated the views of the subject communities, both teachers and students, energetically and with clarity. In so doing, they have provided an invaluable (and previously unavailable) discipline-specific contribution to education and training for university teachers and have substantially increased both the profile and the prestige of teaching and learning in U.K. Higher Education Institutions. It is hard to think of other bodies more universally valued by the subject communities which the Subject Centres variously serve, and at this particular juncture, when Higher Education in the U.K. faces one of the severest challenges it has ever encountered, the work of the Subject Centres is more crucial than ever. Disbanding the Centres will do immeasurable damage to the cause of teaching and learning in subject communities throughout the country. We call upon the HEA to recognize the esteem in which the Subject Centres are held, to acknowledge the value for money that they provide, and to reverse its decision to discontinue their funding.

Many of the signatories have provided additional evidence and argument for keeping subject centres.

(d) Russell Group Pro-Vice-Chancellors of teaching and learning

22. A letter from 18 of the above was sent to the HEA Board strongly supporting the maintenance of subject centres.

(e) Chairs of subject centre Advisory Groups

23. A letter was sent to the Minister of State for Higher Education from 23 Subject Centre Advisory Board chairs. These Boards provide oversight from the perspective of subject communities on the work of both the HEA subject centres and the Academy at York and thus have a unique perspective on the recent HEA consultation on the implementation of a 30% cut in funding. They have neither a vested interest in the survival of the subject centres nor Academy York in their current forms.

24. In addition to their roles within their own subject communities, many of them are, or have been in the past, Faculty Deans and/or other senior officers within universities responsible for the delivery and enhancement of learning & teaching across a range of subjects and are thus able to bring a broad academic perspective to the challenges of subject-specific versus more generic engagement with our learning communities.

25. They argued that the work of the 24 subject centres, rooted as they are within disciplines, is essential to enhancing the student experience in UK universities. They were concerned at the proposed dissolution of the subject centres, the concentration of the HEA’s activities at the centre in York, and the proposal to engage all the subject communities via individual subject coordinators. They were unable to see how this new arrangement could replicate the cost-effective work of the subject centres, which are embedded in their subject communities and supported by a huge volume of voluntary contributions from academics rooted in their disciplines and committed to enhancing learning and teaching within those disciplines.

Network Economies of Scale and Subject Centres

26. Network economies of scale occur when people benefit from sharing infrastructure. The cost to a new entrant to the network is very low. Networks can include social networks, wireless service providers, common IT platforms – such as Windows or Microsoft Office applications – rail and air networks, power lines, eBay and the Internet.

27. Establishing networks involves relatively high fixed costs. In the case of subject centres, they are the human costs of painstakingly building and cultivating contacts and working with experts and innovators so that there is mutual trust and a willingness to engage with the network. The fixed costs thus involve investment in the members of the network. However, the marginal cost of joining a network is very low. What is more, those joining a network create an external benefit as they extend the network by allowing other users to interact with them.

28. The efficiency of networks tends to grow with the number of users: average costs tend to fall and benefits to users tend to rise. However, networks take a time to establish, which is why many dot.com companies ran at a loss for a few years. Networks require a critical mass of users to become viable. Once a network is established, such as Facebook, eBay or MS Office, it is hard for competitors to break into the market, as they would first have to build their own network.

29. The subject centres have established networks of academics as teachers of their discipline. These networks have become well established and as they have grown, so the benefits to those engaging with the networks have also grown. There are various factors that have allowed these networks to thrive. These include:

29.1The subject centre providing a credible hub, led by a respected academic in the field and embedded in a university department. Networks thrive better if there is a unique “selling point” and this concept of an established, well-informed and empathetic hub is crucial. A single peripatetic academic for each discipline, or fraction of an academic in many cases, as proposed in the new model, will not be seen as a hub for each discipline. Likewise the central Academy will not be seen as a hub as it is seeking to establish multiple networks from a single location with administrators who are not specialist by network (i.e. by academic subject) but by function across networks (eg events, periodicals and databases).

29.2A critical mass of resources that make using subject centre websites and submitting to them attractive to users. For example, sharing teaching resources becomes much more viable when there are many contributors of such resources. Subject centre websites each have hundreds or thousands of resources. The HEA, in abolishing subject centres, will only be able to transfer a relatively small subset of these in most cases.

29.3A critical mass of individual contacts, associates and attendees at events. By providing an agency service here, the subject centre, like an employment agency, allows personal contacts to be made and special interest groups to develop.

29.4First mover advantage. There were no other established “competitor” networks and thus subject centres have become the main way in which academics interact (outside their home institution) with other teachers in their discipline. Each subject centre is now well-known to a critical mass of academics in their communities and are seen as belonging to their communities. It will take years to rebuild even a subset of these networks in a centralised model and, given the inferior nature of the model, it cannot hope to have the same “buy-in” by the community members.

29.5Shared human capital and a collective memory. Subject centres have developed a “wisdom” from years of engagement with their communities – communities that differ considerably from subject to subject. Staff in subject centres know their communities well and their specific needs and this collective wisdom is passed to new members of subject centres by the remaining members when colleagues leave. In the new HEA model, there will be no collective wisdom developed by peripatetic single academics, supported by consultants bought in for particular tasks, that can be passed on to others when they leave.

29.6Being well established and well known to their communities, subject centres attract a large amount of free resources – both web resources and individuals’ time. They are thus efficient. The culture of giving has become easier to foster as the networks have grown and as there are more like-minded academics with whom to share. It will be hard to establish a replacement culture in a centralised model where the culture is not that of fellow academics from the same discipline.

29.7Subject centres tap into parallel networks of academics as researchers in their specialist field. Academics are used to relating in this way and belonging to such research networks has become a major part of their personal identity as an academic. Subject centres are thus an effective way of linking research and teaching as their specialist interest groups in sub-disciplines often closely align with research communities.

30. One of the key reasons for the success of the subject centre model is the quality of subject centre directors and the leadership they bring. They have a high profile in their communities. Because their views are respected, they are able to drive the teaching/learning agenda from the perspective of their discipline. Their academic credibility gives credibility to moves to improve teaching quality; it allows them to engage with academics who would not “take it” from generic educationalists or from an individual subject specialist in York in the proposed centralised model. Their connections within the discipline help them attract academics to give time and resources to their community and help the development of networks.

31. Their high profile within subject and professional associations allows them to influence policy at subject level and provides a key voice for teaching and learning within that discipline.

Why the Centralised HEA Model is Likely to Fail

32. The CEO of the HEA, Craig Mahoney, argues that subject support will be at the heart of the new Academy. That may well be an objective, but the centralised model is a much less effective way of achieving this objective than the subject centre model for the following reasons:

32.1Subject centres are led by a senior academic, respected by their community. These senior academics will be lost in the centralised model, to be replaced by 22 FTE academics, not at a senior level, co-ordinated by four “faculty” leaders. These people will report to the HEA management, but they can be based anywhere in the UK and much of the time will work from home.

32.2Subject centres have a team of other academics and dedicated administrators who know their communities well and engage directly with them. In the centralised model, there will be no other academics directly employed. Instead, use will be made of consultants. Consultants, however, do not have that same intimate knowledge of the communities from working within a subject centre. Also they are more expensive and hence a less efficient use of resources. What is more, administrators will not be subject specialists who know their communities well. Within the subject centres the staff fulfil a number of roles from academic to administrative. This gives great flexibility. This flexibility would be lost in the centralised model with greater specialism by function rather than by discipline.

32.3Subject centres are embedded in university departments. Their staff can thus move easily between teaching and subject centre work. It also gives them credibility with academics. A centralised organisation with a single academic, or fraction of an academic, representing the community will not have the same credibility.

32.4Subject centres are seen by academics and by subject and professional associations to belong to the subject community. There will be no similar sense of ownership of a centralised organisation.

32.5The Academy’s central organisation in York is not well known amongst academics. It will be hard to build credibility of the central organisation. Scrapping subject centres will cause further damage to the Academy from which it will probably be impossible to recover.

32.6The loss of human capital is likely to be immense. Virtually no subject centre director will remain and there will be virtually no jobs in York for other experienced subject centre staff.

32.7There is a fundamental tension at the heart of the Academy between assurance and enhancement. Assurance involves regulation and inspection to ensure quality. The QAA is the UK’s assurance agency for higher education and is a highly professional organisation that works closely with universities. Enhancement is about improving teaching quality, largely from the bottom up, through building communities of practice and by academics learning from each other. The Academy seeks to be both an enhancement agency (through its planned work at subject level) and an assurance agency by assuring new lecturer teaching qualifications against the Professional Standards Framework. By promoting its role as an assurance agency, it weakens its role in supporting lecturers. It seeks to be both policeman and friend.

32.8Subject centres have large websites. Migrating some of these websites to York will be impossible, given that across the subject centres there is a diversity of different platforms, with many of them using free operating systems, databases and software which are fundamentally different. The Web teams in York have admitted that they do not have the time or financing to recreate web pages from one platform in another. Interactive resources developed by the subject centres, such as learning object repositories and question banks, could not be copied over and would need reprogramming if they were to be hosted by York’s set-up. Such resources will thus be lost.

A Proposal for the Reorganisation of the HEA and Subject Centres

33. Outline structure:

Subject centres based in universities, as at present: the precise number to be decided, but preferably no fewer than at present and possibly up to 30.

A Generic Academic Unit providing generic support to subject centres and to the sector.

A small central organisation.

Location and structure

34. The existing subject centres would continue in order to retain their extensive human capital, symbiotic relationship with host HEIs, networks of contacts, associates and people with specific expertise, the goodwill of their communities, the brand advantage, and the cost advantage of tapping into university infrastructure. Some subject centres may re-locate to a new host university. It may be desirable to divide one or two of the larger subject centres in order to provide more focused discipline coverage. For example, when the History, Classics and Archaeology subject centre was divided into the three constituents the level of service increased dramatically.

35. The Network would have a main office, which could be in York or located in a university in order to gain from the synergies that that brings and the clear savings in costs. The main office would house a small Executive team and would manage cross-Network projects and activity. It would also liaise with funders, HEIs and other external agencies. This would be a lean and effective executive whose prime focus would be outward, not inward, looking. Small national offices in Cardiff and Edinburgh could be retained to co-ordinate activities specifically for the devolved nations.

36. Alternatively, the Executive could sit within HEFCE, with an officer in SFC, HEFCW and NI DoL. The funding could then be distributed directly to subject centres’ host universities.

37. There would be a Generic Academic Unit, about two to three times the size of a subject centre. This could be attached to a host HEI, perhaps currently hosting a relevant CETL or other generic unit. The prime function of this would be to provide generic support to subject centres and to the sector. It would consist of groupings of academics with expertise in specific areas: widening participation, internationalisation, e-learning, assessment and feedback, external examining, education for sustainable development, etc.

38. The Generic Academic Unit would also house a small project management team to manage national projects, such as the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme. Alternatively, such schemes could be run directly by HEFCE (as was NTFS originally).

Staff activity and management

39. Subject centre staff would continue to be employed by the host university, thereby maximising the opportunities for staff dividing their time between the subject centre and host university.

40. Subject centres would continue to be managed internally as at present, thereby minimising management costs, allowing flexibility of function and much greater responsiveness to the particular needs of discipline communities.

41. Subject centres would be grouped into four or five clusters, either regionally or in cognate groups. These would meet formally on a regular basis (say, three times per year). All the groups would be chaired by a member of the Executive, supported by an administrator and a member of the Generic Unit. All reporting would be to this group, and would be formative as well as summative. The process would ensure consistency of approach by subject centres and that they address current priorities.

Activity Management

42. A threshold level of service provision would be required of each subject centre and the Generic Unit.

43. The reporting to the regional groups (or cognate groups) would ensure the meeting of thresholds. By being formative, this reporting would inform planning and allow the sharing of effective practice across subject centres.

44. Subject centre directors would be accountable for the provision of each subject centre.

45. The Generic Unit and project teams would report formally to the Executive, and informally and formatively to the four regional groups (perhaps once per year). Cross-Academy projects would be managed by the project team in the Generic Unit.

9 March 2011