HE IN THE COMING YEARS

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HE IN THE COMING YEARS

• George MacDonald Ross
• School of Philosophy
• University of Leeds
• Networking for Administrators
• Tuesday 8 February 2005

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Programme

• Recruitment
• Quality
• Degree classification
• Research
• International issues
• E-learning
• Resources

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Recruitment

• Top-up fees
• Fair access
• Employment Equality Regulations

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Top-up fees

• New entrants 2006
• Bursary schemes (more complicated admissions
  procedures)
• Possible recruitment problems for non-vocational
  subjects
• Students as customers more complaints

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Fair access

• The Schwartz report
• A-level scores discriminate against the
  educationally disadvantaged
• Additional selection criteria needed
• Difficult to reconcile with Post-Qualifications
  Admissions

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Employment Equality Regs

• Illegal to discriminate against applicants
  because of faith or belief
• Reasonable accommodation must be made (holy days,
  prayer rooms etc.)
• Same applies to employees
• Possible implications for the teaching of
  sensitive areas

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Quality

• QAA institutional review
• Teaching quality information
• Programme specifications
• Progress files

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QAA institutional review

• The QAA monitors internal subject reviews no
  less paperwork
• Some institutions even more rigorous than the QAA
• In a few years the HEFCE may adopt something like
  the lighter-touch Scottish system

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Teaching Quality Information

• Institutional review yields little information
  about individual depts
• TQI will make additional information available on
  the web
• Statistics supplied centrally
• Summaries of externals reports
• Summaries of internal reviews
• Outcomes of questionnaires completed by
  final-year undergraduates

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Programme specifications

• Programme specifications should already be in
  place
• Confusion about who they are for (Students?
  Employers? Reviewers?)
• Many are unsatisfactory
• There may be increasing pressure for them to be
  re-written when new benchmark statements are
  produced

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Progress files

• These should be in place by 2005/06
• Implementation so far is very patchy
• They work best when tutors are enthusiastic, and
  when they are an assessed part of a skills module
• Minimalist approaches geared towards CVs and
  references may also be effective

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Degree classification

• Consensus that the current system is on its way
  out
• Unlikely to be replaced by the American grade
  point average
• The front-runner is a transcript giving details
  of grades in each module, plus accreditation of
  skills acquired, plus information from the
  progress file

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Research

• The RAE 2008 will be a major preoccupation, and
  it will generate paperwork
• It will be more difficult to get academics to
  focus on teaching and administration until it is
  over
• But publications on pedagogy are admissible

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International issues

• The Bologna process
• European degrees to be harmonised by 2010
• Could be changes to the 1-yr MA, the credit
  system, and quality assurance
• General Agreement on Trades and Services (GATS)
• Government subsidies to HE could breach rules on
  fair trade
• Increased competition from foreign or indigenous
  for-profit HE institutions

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E-learning

• Heavy pressure to increase the amount of learning
  delivered electronically
• Implications for support staff
• Less paper
• More complex procedures for authenticating and
  archiving student work
• Potential for more automated recording of
  submissions and marks

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Resources

• Most of the material in this presentation is
  covered in greater detail in my Update on
  External Pressures on Teaching, Discourse 4.1,
  2004, 38-56. See http//prs.heacademy.ac.uk/journa
  l/
• (available shortly)

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The PRS Subject Centre

• We are available to provide advice to anyone in
  the HE sector, although our main expertise is in
  philosophical and religious studies.
• Email us at enquiries_at_prs.heacademy.ac.uk

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Thank you for listening

• George MacDonald Ross
• Director
• Subject Centre for
• Philosophical and Religious Studies
• of the Higher Education Academy