News round-up: Universities are hoarding £44bn in reserves – but the cost of a student loan will rise

Universities now hold three times as much in reserves as they did in 2011-12, just before higher tuition fees were introduced

Universities sit on £44bn after tuition fee increase

The Times, 27/04/2018, Rosemary Bennett

Universities are ‘hoarding’ £44 billion of reserves, more than the entire annual schools budget, according to a report on their finances. University wealth has ballooned since tuition fees were trebled in 2012. Budget surpluses in the last academic year amounted to £2.27 billion across the UK’s 164 universities, more than double the £1.11 billion surplus in 2011-12, the year before the higher tuition fees came in. Total income last year was £35.7 billion, up about a third since 2011-12.

However, it is the reserves that are most striking in the annual sector accounts, published by the Higher Education Statistical Authority (HESA). The year before tuition fees rose to £9,000, reserves stood at £14.7 billion. In the 2016-17 academic year they were worth £44.27 billion.

Nick Hillman, chief executive of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said that with so much uncertainty around the future of university finances, accumulating reserves was sensible and likely to continue.

Student loans: mother threatens court action which could save graduates thousands

The Daily Telegraph, 27/04/2018

Students paying eye-watering rates of interest on their student loans could gain a reprieve as the Government faces possible legal action.

After taking advice, a mother of two, whose twin daughters both went to university, has written to education secretary Damian Hinds challenging the official interest rate. She suggests the current rates could be a breach of the law.

I thought US universities were driven by profit – until I moved to the UK

The Guardian, Higher Education Network, 27/04/2018, anon

Anonymous academic blogs about the transition from US higher education to working in a UK institution and the extent to which the UK university sector is market-driven and run on a corporate model.

Why we should bulldoze the business school

The Guardian [journal], 27/04/2018, Martin Parker

Feature about business schools and why they should be abolished: “Business schools have huge influence, yet they are also widely regarded to be intellectually fraudulent places, fostering a culture of short-termism and greed. […] Many business school professors, particularly in north America, have argued that their institutions have gone horribly astray. B-schools have been corrupted, they say, by deans following the money, teachers giving the punters what they want, researchers pumping out paint-by-numbers papers for journals that no one reads and students expecting a qualification in return for their cash (or, more likely, their parents’ cash). At the end of it all, most business-school graduates won’t become high-level managers anyway, just precarious cubicle drones in anonymous office blocks.”

Student complaints about UK universities growing, says watchdog

The Guardian, 26/04/2018, Richard Adams

Complaints to the universities watchdog are on the rise again, with unhappy students receiving a total of more than £650,000 in refunds and compensation last year.

The annual report of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator showed that an increasing proportion of complaints were from students dissatisfied with poor facilities, and with course content differing to what was originally offered. Complaints also arose over a lack of teaching and supervision.

Overseas students more likely to appeal UK university decisions

Times Higher Education, 26/04/2018, Jack Grove

OIA report reveals payout of almost £50k to an international PhD student kicked off their course.

Foreign academics ‘in debt’ after paying thousands in UK visa fees

Times Higher Education, 26/04/2018, Rachel Pells

Big hikes in visa, right to remain fees bring ‘under the radar’ issue to fore and prompt post-Brexit worries for EU staff

Drugs ‘used by two in five students’

BBC News, 26/04/2018, Sean Coughlan

About two in five students are drug users, says a study from the National Union of Students. But the students’ union argues that students should not be disciplined for ‘drug-related behaviour that does not constitute a criminal offence’.

The most widely used drugs, in a survey of 2,800 students, were cannabis, ecstasy, nitrous oxide and cocaine.  A formal warning was the most common disciplinary action taken by universities over drug use.

The NUS report found drug use to be ‘a common, although infrequent, behaviour’ – with 39% of students using drugs, and cannabis by far the most widely used.

A further 17% had used drugs before, meaning 56% in total had at some time tried them.

UK universities use business schools as cash cows

Financial Times, 25/04/2018, Jonathan Moules

The number of UK universities offering business degrees has increased by 44 per cent in the past nine years, as they try to boost their finances with revenue from business students.

Some 102 UK institutions offered business degree programmes in 2009, the first year the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the business school accreditation body, started compiling national figures. That number has now risen to 147. Of these, 31 have received prestigious AACSB accreditation, compared with 13 in 2009.

‘Graduate premium’ holds steady despite rising student numbers

Financial Times, 24/4/2018, Gavin Jackson

A rapid increase in the number of students going to university in the UK has done little to reduce the difference between graduate earnings and non-graduate earnings, according to figures published on Tuesday by the Department for Education.

Working-class students pay premium for being poor, report says

The Guardian, 23/04/2018, Sally Weale

Working-class students are penalised by a ‘poverty premium’, often paying higher costs to continue studying in a university environment in which they may feel isolated and as though they do not belong, according to a report.

Research for the National Union of Students finds that student expenditure routinely outstrips income from loans, leaving many whose parents cannot afford to subsidise them without the means to pay for basics such as food and heating.

Fees for halls are often unaffordable for those struggling on maintenance loans, with many universities setting rents above inflation to generate additional income, the study claims.

It quotes the results of a freedom of information request by the University of East Anglia students’ union, which found that more than 20 higher education institutions generated more than £1,000 profit per bed space a year.

Ministers under fire as student loan interest hits 6.3%

The Guardian, 18/04/2018, Richard Partington

Ministers are facing renewed criticism over university funding after an increase in student loan borrowing costs using a ‘flawed’ measure of inflation. The interest rate on loans for students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will rise by up to 6.3% from September, up from the current 6.1% for anyone who started studying after 2012.

The change is a consequence of the increase in the retail price index (RPI) for last month to 3.3% from 3.1% in March a year ago. The government links the interest rate on student loans to the RPI reading for March each year, plus 3%.

Economists have long criticised the government for using RPI, which is typically higher than other measures of inflation and fails to take into account some forms of household costs. The RPI lost its status as a national statistic in 2013 and the Office for National Statistics advises against its use.

 

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A conflict of interest: the statutory instruments shaping the Office for Students

On Monday, the Labour Party tried unsuccessfully to block the legislation that would enable the new Office for Students to regulate universities. Professor GR Evans takes a look at the arguments

During the debates on the Higher Education and Research Bill, members of the House of Lords repeatedly expressed concerns about the way statutory instruments (SIs) might be used to develop the regulatory framework of the new Office for Students (Ofs). A statutory instrument is a form of subordinate legislation created by a minister, normally to provide detailed regulations under an Act of Parliament. Parliament may object but it is usual for an SI to pass into law unchallenged.

There were assurances that Parliament would be able in principle to challenge even an SI subject only to the negative procedure, under which it becomes law unless there is an objection from either House.

On 23 April the approval of a Statutory Instrument for OfS was tested for the first time. On behalf of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner begged to move:

“That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (Consequential, Transitional, Transitory and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2018 (S.I., 2018, No. 245), dated 26 February 2018, a copy of which was laid before this House on 28 February, be annulled.”

There was a modest burst of press coverage before the debate in the Guardian and on 23 April, but no interest was shown in the defeat of the motion that evening. The thrust of the argument was the claim that the Office for Students had designed into it a number of conflicts of interest, outlined as:

“What do the Government believe the role of the new Office for Students should be – an independent regulator, a funding council, a validator of degrees or a body to micromanage universities? How will a university know when it is dealing with the regulator, a funding council or the voice of Government?”

The debate, perhaps predictably, became an opportunity for some scattergun point-scoring on familiar concerns, the UA92 university academy (a planned private-public partnership that will offer vocational degrees) and the granting of permission to use the university title, no-platforming, value for money, vice-chancellor pay, degree apprenticeships, further education, membership of UK Research and Innovation from the devolved administrations, the level of interest on student loans.

Countering the motion were some strong pragmatic arguments, for example:

“…without this agreement there is a risk that universities will not receive crucial grant funding. These transitional regulations enable the OfS to allocate £1.3 billion of teaching grants. Without this legislation, there would be no means to give out those grants and no provision to offer access agreements to support disadvantaged students in the next academic year”

and:

“[If] the Office for Students is abolished, my understanding is that there will be no fee cap at all on providers, so all providers will be able to raise their fees. There is a control on fees at the moment because of the Office for Students”

and:

“Does my hon. Friend agree that we cannot amend SIs? We can only vote them down, and then the Government must table another one. We did not invent that process for this occasion.”

The motion was defeated by 291 votes to 221.

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News round-up: The pensions strike is over, and the OU vice-chancellor resigns

Academic staff have voted to accept an offer to reopen negotiations with employers, and the position of the OU’s vice-chancellor finally becomes untenable

Student nurses face financial hardship over loan error, says nursing body

The Guardian, 16/04/2018, Patrick Greenfield

Hundreds of student nurses whose loans and grants have been cut off or reduced because of administrative errors are facing financial hardship and in some cases may not be able to continue their studies, nurses’ leaders have warned.

UK university strike action to end after staff vote to accept offer

The Guardian, 13/04/2018, Richard Adams

The strike action that hit 65 universities across the UK this year is on hold after staff voted to accept an offer to reopen negotiations with employers over their pensions.

The ballot of 50,000 University and College Union members in higher education found a substantial majority in favour of accepting the offer, which establishes a joint committee of experts to evaluate pensions provided through the University Superannuation Scheme (USS).

The Open University gave millions of Britons a second chance. Now it needs one itself

The Observer, 14/04/2018, Will Hutton

One by one, the great institutions that bind Britain together are being allowed to fray, weaken and decline. They may do good and even vital work, but whatever their purpose – from the system of legal aid to the Open University – they are under siege. Britain might be substantially richer than it was 40 or 50 years ago but the national narrative is that organisations once energetic and growing are now unaffordable. The overriding moral imperative is to lower allegedly insupportable taxation, not to create public goods or sustain the institutions that bind.

Open University vice-chancellor resigns

BBC, 13/04/2018

Open University vice-chancellor Peter Horrocks has resigned after a vote of no confidence by academic staff.

He said he was “ready to move on” but added the OU faced “a scale of challenge that is unprecedented”.

The university, which has suffered a collapse in student numbers, aims to save £100m from its £420m annual budget by cutting courses and staff.

Student suicide increase warning

BBC, 13/04/2018, Sean Coughlan

The suicide rate among UK students is higher than among the general population of their age group, claim researchers.

The study, to be presented next month at the International Suicide Prevention Conference in New Zealand, has analysed figures for student suicides between 2007 and 2016.

Why are students faking attendance? They feel cheated by the system

The Guardian, 13/04/2018, Anonymous

My university has introduced a new method of monitoring student progress, a digital apparatus for tracking class attendance. Instead of students putting their initials on a register, they tap their ID cards on a card reader. The lecturer then navigates the university website to retrieve the tally – which is far more cumbersome than glancing at a sheet of paper. But that’s not the worst problem with the new system.

Chief executive of defunct English regulator paid £178K on early exit

Times Higher Education, 12/04/2018, John Morgan

Hefce’s Madeleine Atkins received payment in lieu of salary for remainder of contract, but declined ‘redundancy payment’

Universities urged to collaborate for fairer salaries

Financial Times, 09/04/2018, Robert Wright

A leading campaigner for women in academia has demanded that institutions collaborate to make their salary structures fairer after analysis of the gender pay gap at England’s top universities revealed vast variations. Alice Chilver, founder of When Equality, a women’s higher-education network, was speaking after figures from the Russell Group of elite universities in the UK revealed that median pay at the most unequal institution — Durham University — was 29.3 per cent lower for women.

 

Increasing numbers of weak A-level pupils graduating with firsts 

The Times, 05/04/2018, Nicola Woolcock

More than one in six university students with poor A levels graduated with a first-class university degree last summer, according to recent figures.

Over a quarter of all students were awarded a first and more than three-quarters attained a first or a 2:1.

Figures from the Office for Students showed that 95 per cent of entrants with three A* grades at A level graduated with a first or upper second-class degree last summer. However, 67 per cent of those with CCD grades or below at A level also achieved a first or 2:1, raising questions regarding degree grade inflation.

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News round-up: A new higher education regulator is launched and pension strikes continue

The pensions dispute rumbles on, the OfS admits to making a mistake over the Toby Young appointment, and the OU vice-chancellor faces a vote of no confidence

Universities give out unconditional offers like candy, say head teachers

The Times, 31/03/2018, Rosemary Bennett

Universities have been told to stop dishing out unconditional offers “like candy” by teachers who say they are damaging the education of thousands of teenagers.

Sixth-formers need to have targets to help them to stay focused in the final months of their A levels, the teachers say. Those who do not need specific A-level grades to get into university tend to struggle to revise over Easter and fail to consolidate their subject knowledge. They then underperform in their exams and arrive ill-prepared and poorly motivated for their degrees.

Elite universities are selling themselves – and look who’s buying

The Guardian, 30/03/2018, Grif Peterson and Yarden Katz

Last weekend, while media attention was focused on the March for Our Lives protests across America, a militarised police force blocked the road leading up to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, one of the university’s most famous laboratories, for a special guest. The guest – the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman – visited both Harvard and MIT on his first official tour of the US. Saudi officials boasted about the visit, posting photos of Bin Salman with both Harvard provost Alan Garber and MIT president Rafael Reif on social media.

Open University chief to face vote of no confidence

The Guardian, 29/03/2018, Diane Taylor

Staff at the Open University are tabling a vote of no confidence in its vice-chancellor, Peter Horrocks.

Horrocks has come under fire over plans to axe staff and cut courses, which were first revealed in the Guardian last week.

The plans include reducing the number of courses, qualifications and modules by more than one-third as well as axing many lecturers – the workforce budget will be cut by £15m-20m. The university is launching a voluntary redundancy programme on 9 April.

Cambridge University says exams can be shortened due to disruption caused by lecturers’ strike

Daily Telegraph, 29/03/2018, Camilla Turner

Cambridge University has announced that exams and finals can be shortened because of disruption caused by the lecturers’ strike.

The university has sanctioned the removal of questions on material that has not been taught due to cancelled classes, and decreasing the number of questions set.

Academics feel besieged and aggrieved

Times Higher Education, John Gill, 29/03/2018

The Office for Students comes into force on 1 April. This is also Easter Day and April Fool’s Day. You decide which is the most relevant.

To take the first of these, it would be a mistake to think that this is a resurrection of the Higher Education Funding Council for England – the insistence that the OfS is a different beast is not just public relations guff.

UK university staff to vote on latest pensions offer

Richard Adams, The Guardian, 28/03/2018

The bitter dispute between universities and their staff over pensions may soon be resolved, after staff were asked to vote on the latest offer to renegotiate the changes being proposed by employers.

University watchdog’s regret over Toby Young appointment

Katherine Sellgren, BBC News Online, 27/03/2018

The chairman of university watchdog, the Office for Students, says he has “learnt a lot” from the controversial appointment of Toby Young to its board.

Sir Michael Barber told MPs it was a mistake not to look more closely at the journalist’s history on social media.

Free speech at UK universities is being shut down, MPs warn

ITV News Online, 27/03/2018

Free speech at UK universities is being put at risk, MPs and peers have warned.

A new report argues that free speech on campus is being hampered by factors such as intolerant attitudes and unacceptable behaviour, red tape and a lack of clear guidance.

It warns that whole universities cannot be “safe spaces” and they must be places where unpopular and controversial ideas can be heard and debated.

Universities asked to open more post-16 maths free schools

Schools week, 26/03/2018, Pippa Allen-Kinross

Universities are being sought by the government to open specialist post-16 free schools to encourage more pupils to study maths at A-level.

The government will also provide £350,000 dedicated funding every year to each existing and future maths school to support outreach work with local schools and colleges, schools minister Nick Gibb will announce today.

‘Genie out of the bottle’ on casualisation after pension strikes

Times Higher Education, 21/03/2018, Sophie Inge

The increasingly bitter dispute over university pensions marks a seminal moment for UK higher education that will lead to further demands to tackle casualisation and marketisation in the sector, academics say.

After 14 days of escalating strike action at 65 universities over plans to cut the element of the University Superannuation Scheme that guarantees members a certain level of income in retirement, debate is already widening from pensions to the state of British universities as a whole.

Open University plans major cuts to number of staff and courses
The Guardian, 21/03/2018, Diane Taylor

Open University chiefs are planning significant reductions in the number of courses the institution offers and the number of lecturers it employs, the Guardian has learned.

Last June the OU, established in 1969 and the largest university in the UK, announced it needed to cut £100m from its £420m -a-year annual budget, but specific detail of where the cuts would fall was not made public.

Universities review scheme blackhole sums

FT Adviser, 20/03/2018

Universities UK (UUK) and the University and College Union (UCU) have agreed to set up an independent panel to review the valuation that put the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) deficit at £6.1bn.

According to Alistair Jarvis, UUK chief executive, “concerns have been raised over the way the scheme has been valued, which has led some to question whether there is, in fact, a very large deficit”.

University regulator is ‘Office for State Control’, say critics

The Guardian, 20/03/2018, Anna Fazackerley

University leaders this week described the government’s new regulator, the Office for Students, as the ‘Office for State Control’, warning it would prove disastrous for higher education and was ‘dangerous for democracy’.

The OfS is already mired in controversy thanks to the short-lived appointment of Toby Young to its board, which sparked a storm of public protest. But it has emerged that Universities UK, the umbrella group for vice-chancellors, didn’t challenge Young’s suitability for the role because it feared annoying the government.

John Arnold, professor of medieval history at Cambridge University, says the OfS’s predecessor, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, was seen as a forum for discussion between government and the sector. ‘Now we are in an apparently antagonistic relationship with a market regulator. Even if you were to pretend universities were selling a commodity, I don’t see how anything people only ever buy once can possibly respond to market forces.’

 

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What is teaching intensity – and how do you measure it?

The government believes that university courses can be rated according to the level of teaching intensity they provide. Professor GR Evans detects a lack of joined-up thinking

“Prospective students deserve to know which courses deliver great teaching and great outcomes – and which ones are lagging behind,” said the minister for higher education launching a consultation on the new subject-level teaching excellence framework (TEF) on 12 March. He also announced a competition for designing apps, to enable students to find the answers quickly on their smartphones.

The subject-level TEF will be designed to rate the lifelong “value” to a future employee of choosing a particular course at a particular provider. The model is essentially one of efficient “delivery” by the provider. As planned it does not factor in assessment of the part the student plays in acquiring the learning.

Among the proposals in the government consultation document is the addition of a “supplementary” measure of “teaching intensity”, on the hypothesis that:

“…excellent teaching is likely to demand a sufficient level of teaching intensity in order to provide a high quality experience for students”.

The idea that a student is entitled to a number of hours of actual teaching or feedback from academic staff in return for the fee paid was first floated in a series of Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) publications. It had the attractiveness of simplicity and it encouraged students to complain that they were getting too few “contact hours” a week for their high tuition fees.

In 2011 in an effort to clarify matters, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) published helpful guidance entitled Explaining contact hours. However, expressions of student disquiet about getting “value for money” when fees are so high have grown still louder since. In December 2017 the Education Select Committee held its first evidence session in a Value for money in higher education enquiry In January 2018 the Office for Students (OfS) commissioned “a major piece of research” on value for money. The theme, in the form of the call for “teaching intensity” has now been taken up in connection with planning for a subject-level TEF.

What responsibilities do students have?

This raises one of the central questions arising from the design of the TEF in general. How far in higher education should the student actively meet the “teacher” half way in “learning”, rather than merely receive the instruction delivered? Student contracts commonly list what the provider and the student are respectively expected to do. For example, that the student “will take responsibility for [his or her] own learning and development, working in partnership with staff to become a self-reliant, independent learner” is an expectation in Bristol University’s student agreement. But this reciprocal requirement of student participation does not seem to be measured in the planned subject-level TEF.

It seems that independent study may not in the end be included, because as the consultation suggests:

“…it does not actually measure what teaching a student is receiving (and hence does not measure value for money) and is more dependent on the student than on the provider. Furthermore, it is difficult to reliably collect data on students” independent study.”

Yet the detailed TEF Guidance for providers in its version released in January 2018 goes in some detail into the complexities of the ways student response to teaching may take place, including, for example, the problem of “asynchronous online teaching” were a student may visit the online teaching at any time and perhaps many times and the teacher may not be present at all. Is this a contact hour (or hours)? How is it to be measured in terms of “value for money”? How is its “intensity” to be quantified?

The lack of joined-up thinking with work in progress part 1: learning gain

The first and most basic test of teaching is likely to be whether students complete their courses and gain the relevant qualification. Non-completion has become a troubling feature of higher education statistics, notably in a series of Public Accounts Committee and National Audit Office reports on alternative providers. Nothing appears to be proposed in the TEF plans to test whether there is a correlation between the quality of teaching and whether or not students graduate.

Learning gain in English higher education, a recent progress report from Hefce, describes what has been achieved so far since the project was launched in 2015. It is recognised that this needs to be tied into the TEF, so Hefce suggests that a Learning Gain Toolkit could provide “tested methodologies for institutions to undertake their own learning gain measurements and to demonstrate the outcomes through assessments such as the TEF.” However the project includes plans for “the use of data not just for improvement, but also for student information and performance incentives, which are the focus of TEF”.

There is now a body of “analysis of the learning gain activity identified within TEF year 2 submissions”. Hefce notes that so far this yields “little evidence that could be used across a range of providers to demonstrate learning gain”.

“Learning gain” is not defined solely in terms of knowledge and skills acquired by the student through the teaching received. It has a broader range:

“…learning gain has been understood for the purpose of HEFCE”s work to relate to the changes in knowledge, skills, work-readiness and personal development during a student’s time in HE.”

“Content knowledge” is what “students traditionally acquire “through their classes and other study at university”. But “skills and competencies can be either discipline-specific or non-discipline-specific.” “Work-readiness relates to concepts of employability” rather than to the student’s capacity to leave a university ready to work for his or her living.

As to measuring the results, Hefce has been trying out a “National Mixed Methodology Learning Gain project (NMMLG) “in which students at 10 selected institutions are completing a series of repeated online assessments throughout their course.”

Here there has been experimental testing to see whether students show they can do better after more time and teaching.

The “learning gain” project has taken seriously the role of students” engagement with their learning” and has also explored “the influence of students’ backgrounds on their learning outcomes”:

“This activity is particularly important in the context of the extension of access agreements to include successful participation in the duties of the Office for Students and the context-specific student outcome measures used in the TEF.”

The arrival of learning analytics in HE has not been uncontroversial. Tracking students’ activity for their own good clearly raises ethical questions. Hefce suggests that:

“…this is enabling institutions to draw on increasingly sophisticated student data (such as, for example, real-time data on engagement and granular information about learning outcomes), to inform learning and teaching maintain an up-to-date understanding of potential connections between learning analytics and learning gain, we are liaising with Jisc, which is particularly active in this area of work.”

The lack of joined-up thinking with work in progress part 2: teacher “qualification” in higher education

There is as yet no suggestion that teaching should be observed or particular methods stipulated in the subject-level TEF. The Technical document (Consultation) recognises that it is “the right of providers to decide how teaching should be carried out” and promises that government “is not beginning with a view on whether certain types of teaching methods are better than others.

On the other hand, considerable effort has been put into encouraging teachers in higher education to gain an appropriate qualification. The Institute for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education set up in the wake of the Dearing Report had a short career. It was replaced by the Higher Education Academy (HEA), which is now to be amalgamated with two other sector bodies into a new entity to be called AdvanceHE.

Its chief executive, Alison Johns, who comes to the post from a career at HEFCE and most recently the role of CEO to the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, told Times Higher Education that she envisages its having a role complementary to that of OfS:

“Having a friendly, supportive organisation as a counterweight to the tougher OfS oversight will be crucial for the health of UK higher education, Ms Johns explained, as it ‘provides confidence to students, government, banks and all sorts of stakeholders that institutions can run themselves effectively’”.

She acknowledged that “the fate of the HEA’s work” is “likely to generate the most discussion”. It has just reached 100,000 teaching fellows:

“That is one hell of a community of professional practitioners and it demonstrates that individuals and universities care about teaching,” she said.

Nevertheless there is clearly uncertainty about the future of the HEA and therefore of the long-term value of an HEA “teaching fellowship”.

Don’t encourage students to rely on this dubious measure

So neither any basis for measuring the “intensity” of teaching nor any way of checking what the student does with provision of teaching on the course “bought”, by way of “learning”, seems to be being factored into the planning for the subject-level TEF. When it is recognised that with a casualised academic workforce one year’s rating may give no reliable indicator of what might be expected from the same course in successive years, subject-based TEF ratings seem likely to remain a measure of dubious value to the students who are being encouraged to rely on it in choosing a course.

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This month in animal research 0318

A selection of the news items we covered in our social media this month

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Who needs external examiners? We do

UCU has asked external examiners to resign in support of the strike over pensions. But what exactly does an external examiner do? Professor GR Evans reflects on the value of an undersung role

On 15 March the University and College Union (UCU) asked external examiners to “resign” in support of the strike over proposed USS pension changes:

“UCU said external examiners resigning would cause universities a number of specific problems around the setting and marking of exams. External examiners agree the setting of questions, moderate exam results and ensure that institutions’ assessment procedures are rigorous.”

It was reported on 23 March that “more than 600 external examiners” had recorded their resignations in a public document circulating on social media’.

Are external examiners necessary?

External examiners provide a means of ensuring that there is reasonable comparability of standards among degree-awarding bodies.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) published guidance on the role of the external examiner in 2004. A version updated in 2011 is now online. This explains the way the external examiner provides a check without interfering with the academic autonomy of the degree-awarding body:

“External examining provides one of the principal means for maintaining UK academic standards within autonomous higher education providers.”

It is also explained that external examiners do more than moderate examinations. They help the provider improve its examining practice:

“Based on their qualifications and experience, they are able to provide carefully considered advice on the academic standards of the awards, programmes and/or modules to which they have been assigned, and can offer advice on good practice and opportunities to enhance the quality of those programmes/modules.”

They help to ensure comparability of standards with other providers:

“They are also able to offer an informed view of how standards compare with the same or similar awards at other higher education providers (primarily in the UK, and sometimes overseas as well) of which they have experience.”

The Higher Education Academy published its own handbook for external examiners in 2012, in collaboration with the QAA.

Important work then, but not perhaps one for which there are many keen candidates. It is not surprising that attracting enough appropriately-qualified and experienced individuals can prove difficult. External examining is needed at a time in the academic year when an examiner is likely to be under marking pressure in his or her own institution. It is burdensome. It can involve some tension where an external examiner finds it necessary to press for recalibrations or revisions of marks awarded by the internal examiners. It is not likely to boost the examiner’s own career.

The Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee called in 2009 for the creation of a register of external examiners. The evidence it had heard suggested to it that:

“… the problems of the external examiner system at present can be summarised as:

• the remit and autonomy of external examiners is often unclear and may sometimes differ substantially across institutions in terms of operational practices;
• the reports produced by external examiners are often insufficiently rigorous and critical;
• the external examiner’s report’s recommendations are often not acted upon—partly because their remit is unclear; and
• the appointment of external examiners is generally not transparent.”

Why no national pool?

The Dearing Report had recommended in 1997 that the sector “create, within three years, a UK-wide pool of academic staff recognised by the QAA, from which institutions must select external examiners”. That recommendation had never been implemented and the Select Committee wanted to revive it:

“We strongly support the development of a national ‘remit’ for external examiners, clarifying, for example, what documents external examiners should be able to access, the extent to which they can amend marks – in our view, they should have wide discretion– and the matters on which they can comment. This should be underpinned with an enhanced system of training, which would allow examiners to develop the generic skills necessary for multi-disciplinary courses. We conclude that higher education institutions should only employ external examiners from the national pool.”

In the absence of a pool, individual universities continue to make their own arrangements. At Durham, for example, there are detailed rules for the selection and appointment of external examiners.

The proportion of first-class degrees awarded has been rising. Whether this is a consequence of the manipulation of the algorithms used by examiners to calculate a student’s final mark, has become contentious. The potential role of external examiners in helping to moderate such activity is obvious but has been difficult to monitor in the continuous absence of the proposed ‘pool’ arrangement.

A project on degree standards, running from 2016 to 2021 has been ‘managed’ by the Higher Education Funding Council England (Hefce) on behalf of all the UK funding councils. It is not yet clear how the Office for Students will approach the questions that continue to surround the operation of the external examiner system.

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