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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