Because bestcourse4me is individualised data and delivered in the form of a pivot table, they appear to be able to calculate and publish what they like about us.  I spoke to HESA who assured me they have commitments to publish aggregate data 'responsibly' in certain ways and in accordance with HESA policy on rounding etc.   But I'm not prepared to sanction that degree of freedom, particularly as a small institution and to an organisation publishing on the internet where they don't show the volume of students/graduates for any of their measures.  

I don't see how an FoI request could be made for individual data on students, as in my opinion it could transgress the DPA in allowing identification of individuals.  But no doubt the lawyers could have a good look at this issue and charge us all a hefty fee each before telling us it's a grey area of the law and it's up to us whether we want to comply or risk the consequences.

This latest one is very murky waters indeed and I'm prepared to cope with an FoI when it comes in rather than hand over my data carte blanche.  Plus I'm going on leave today and really don't have any more time to spend on it ...

Mike


Mike Milne-Picken
Academic Registrar
Royal Northern College of Music
124 Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9RD
T (44) 0161 907 5331
F (44) 0161 273 8188
E [log in to unmask]
www.rncm.ac.uk



-----Original Message-----
From: Academic, financial or space planning in UK universities [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Graham Morrison
Sent: 29 July 2011 15:21
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: HESA request for data from Parthenon

Mike

Thanks.

My expert is advising me to withhold at least some of the bestcourse data, but I haven't absorbed the reasons yet

Graham Morrison
University of Cambridge
________________________________________
From: Academic, financial or space planning in UK universities [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike Milne-Picken [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 29 July 2011 14:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: HESA request for data from Parthenon

I've written to HESA withholding data from this one.  There's another one come in this morning (ref 31535) which includes similar data for bestcourse4me that you might all want to have a close look at (it's a pivot table with no thresholds/rounding on it, rather than already aggregated data as in the Parthenon request).  I'm also withholding our data from that one for what HESA say are good data quality reasons.

I recognise that the FoI can be used to obtain this data anyway but I want the users of this data to pause for thought and come up with something better, or at least acknowledge the exceptional nature of our data and the difficulty of its use in such a crude way.

If they have to put in an FoI request that will slow the thing down and force them to deal with individual institutions, or else think again.  I think the use of tariff and salary data is all getting out of hand and people are putting a spurious level of accuracy and emphasis on something that is not fit for purpose.  KIS is the next battleground over this.

I think I'm absolutely right on this (at least 69.67534% of the time, as Darrell Huff would say ;-) ).
Happy holidays!

Regards


Mike Milne-Picken
Academic Registrar
Royal Northern College of Music
124 Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9RD
T (44) 0161 907 5331
F (44) 0161 273 8188
E [log in to unmask]<BLOCKED::mailto:[log in to unmask]>
www.rncm.ac.uk


From: Academic, financial or space planning in UK universities [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Julie Leeming
Sent: 22 July 2011 14:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: HESA request for data from Parthenon

Hi

Are there any other HEIs out there who are concerned about the data request to HESA from Parthenon? This is the request which states the data will be used for "The creation of a value added table by HEI and subject" and will use entry tariffs and salaries.

I asked HESA for more information as I wanted to know if this value added would be akin to the Guardian value-added metric.

My concern is that this value-added is going to be calculated by the Parthenon group and not HESA, and so we won't know the methodology or results until it is published. I'm also concerned that the value-added won't be based on an individual students entry tariff and salary. The data requested doesn't even link cohorts of student.

James McLaren of HESA has sent me the following further clarification from the Parthenon group.

"I have spoken to Parthenon to ask for more clarification on how the data will be used. In essence they do not know yet exactly how the value added will be calculated as they first want to analyse the data and as such we would not be in a position to calculate it.

Our contact at Parthenon has provided the following summary on data usage...

"We will of course take advice from HESA about what the data will support - we have no interest in calculating bogus or unsound value added scores. Assuming we can get the data to work, we will

.         Model value added from the DLHE data against UCAS tariff

o   By course (because some courses will be more 'employable' than others). So we will compare say, English against Engineering across the country aggregated across all institutions

o   By region (because some regions have higher wage levels than others)

o   By course and by institution for key courses. Where there is sufficient data richness, we will compare course A at university X vs course A at university Y for the same / comparable UCAS scores.

.         We don't know exactly how we will present the data, because it depends on what the modelling gives us. However, our plan is not to produce a strict 'league table' but to bucket courses or institutions into bands. How finely we grade these bands depends on the level of precision the data will bear.

The issue of matching cohorts is one we'll have to look at closely. In the main, we believe UCAS tariff scores do not vary greatly from one year to the next for a given university (providing it has a large number of enrolments), but we will need to see the data to know how material this issue is. We will of course have full disclosure on the methodology and any potential issues it produces. ". " Julie

Dr. Julie Ann Leeming
Deputy Head of Planning,
Queen Mary, University of London,
W110 Queens' Building,
Mile End Road,
E1 4NS
020 7882 5393
__________________________________________________________________

The Planning Unit has a re-vamped website, please visit it at http://qm-web.planning.qmul.ac.uk/ (internal to QM staff only)