I'm often (slightly) astonished when I see the publication of data and
commentaries about league tables in the Higher, TQA scores, strategies for
even more control over education, the dreadful insistence on 'comparability'
etc. It is even more astonishing that anyone takes them seriously, let alone
use this information to plan a national qualifications framework for higher
education . It just seems to me that while most of the data which are
displayed are accurate, they shouldn't be used to stand one institution up
against another. Each university is unique in its special characteristics,
thus this data is idiographic, and should be used only in relation to the
institution which generated it rather than being generalised, or used to
compare elements across the system.
There are few official figures which show how much academic time is taken up
in generating a 'Self Assessment Document' for TQA but I know of one example
where colleagues monitored the time they spent on producing the SAD in large
Psychology department in a post-92 university the south of England. It came
to the equivalent of 2 person years largely with no additional resources, no
assured recognition of lost teaching and research time (and, I suspect, no
thanks for it either).
I find the claimed rationale for a national qualifications framework
unconvincing and I don't believe at all that the claimed rationales for TQA
scores, Benchmarking etc. have a sound educational base but I can clearly
see the political and economic rationale behind these developments. Remember
that the original idea for comparing Biology at Keele with Economics at
Exeter came from a Conservative Secretary of State (Patten) in the early
1990's. It was idiotic then and, as Laurie Taylor pointed out in the Higher
last week, it's idiotic now.
Even comparing two apparent 'alikes' is problematic as demonstrated by the
two examples below. The data in example 1 are from HEFCE published papers
and THES tables printed on 23.4.99.
Example 1
I work currently in two universities, one (let's call it A) pre- 1992 and the
other (let's call it B) post-1992 in the current jargon. Both have strong
departments of Psychology recently TQA'd with very similar 'high scores'. So
which Psychology programme is better? We need some more 'data'.
University A has 12,000 students; University B has 24,000 students.
University A has 530 FT academic staff while B has 550 FT academic staff
Academic staff 'contact time' with students is for A c8 hours per week and
for B c16 hours per week
The SSR in A is 1 to 17 while in B it is 1 to 27 and rising
RAE average score for A is 3.2 while for B it is 0.8
Spending on computers in A is c£250 per student, while in B it is £120 per
student
% of Firsts and 2.1's about the same in both (50% and 47%)
Successful students from both Psychology departments qualify for British
Psychological Society membership and figures for 'employment within one year
of graduation' are pretty close in both (91% and 94%)
Summary:
Same number of staff;
Same % of 1's and 2.1's
100% difference in student numbers and SSR
100% difference in spending on computer resources
400% difference in RAE rating
etc.
So, which one is the better? Which one shold be rewarded? Which one punished?
Example 2
During the 1990's I worked in three different universities (UWE Bristol,
Sydney and Exeter) all of which had Engineering degrees which led to
chartered engineer registration. On the face of it entropy and enthalpy are
the same wherever you are in the world but the engineering graduates from
these three splendid courses were not the same. In general the students at
Exeter and Sydney could do the Maths; in general the students at UWE could
work the computer.
The National Qualifications Framework was cherry-picked from Dearing, as some
of us thought would be the case, and with all its ramifications and
consequences is merely a device to shift the balance of trust and control in
the direction of greater national regulation with a national curriculum for
higher education, and away from the autonomy and distinctiveness of the
individual institution (which many of us came into the business for in the
first place). As such it is a strike against what Ian Macnay ('Visions of
post-compulsory education' SRHE/OU 1996) has called 'the collegium' with
loose (national) control of policy definition and loose (national) control
of implementation , and in favour of the dead hand of (local) managerialism
with tight (national) policy definition and tight (national) control of
implementation.
You can keep it - I'm off to feed the sheep.
Trevor
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