Professor Madeline Atkins once told me a story – as a very senior academic in a University in England she took an interest in the end-of-year art shows, which tended to colonise strange parts of various university buildings and the surrounding city. She was slightly taken aback to see a sealed box on a staircase with a small window, through which a male student could clearly be seen masturbating.
Said student was, she claimed (in jest, I suspect…), only awarded a 2:1 for their work. A first would only have been awarded if he’d managed to ejaculate. (He did actually get a first…)
I wonder if, being faced by the continued prevarication of (male) Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers over a Grant Letter which does not reach a satisfying conclusion, Professor Atkins in her new role of HEFCE Chief Executive was reminded of this strange episode. The Grant Letter arrives late and leaves a lot left undone, itself public evidence of a private self-indulgence. And the ever-vigilant Registrarism reminds us that this doesn’t usually happen.
Of course, it is also a seminal letter for another reason – it is the last that is likely to have any meaningful direction as regards mainstream HE teaching funding. As the final year of “old regime” supported students proceed (with my best wishes!) towards graduation, HEFCE becomes – in effect – a special investment company using government funds to buy or subsidise various services provided by independent bodies, which include universities.
So “mainstreaming” of funding is perhaps inevitable as the overall resource allocated by HEFCE drops. The loss, in particular, of ring-fenced widening participation grants expresses a fervent hope that the “market” will itself be a mechanism that provides equality of access – Osborne’s (as yet) uncosted commitment to an end to student number caps demonstrate an eagerness to move away from ensuring that certain groups have access by making access universal.
HEFCE – then – have the difficult task of ensuring that whoever decides to enter the market provides education of a required quality. New entrants – excepting those that have the level of corporate backing that allows them an easy start – are faced with the prospect of being entirely at the whims of the student market, competing against a large number of general and specialised institutions which have a long-standing track record of delivering student success. Even the corporate behemoth beneficiaries run a risk of staining a broader reputation.
Thus the “regulatory burden”, long an agenda as a sop to Vice-Chancellors who would prefer all their funding in a brown paper bag as non-sequential notes , becomes a sink-or-swim game that only experienced and tenacious higher education administrators are able to play. Chuck in Willetts’ desire for a “level playing field” and you risk annoying the Russell group on the one hand and seeing students hard-done-by on the other. So much of HEFCE’s work over the next year will concern which hand to use and how often.
STEM remains a priority investment, as do small and specialist institutions, and “widening participation” (though not via a named ringfenced fund). The lack of ministerial instruction here give HEFCE the opportunity to make evidence-based intervention in these areas, which could potentially be very interesting. The largely toothless OFFA would likely be a part of the later priority, though I would hope that we would see a revitalised HEFCE policy-making function that whacks OFFA into a more pro-active role.
Research (QR) support is again focused on the best-of-the-best – leaving research-led teaching reliant on institutional cross-subsidy and the continued likelihood of academics to work evenings and weekends. I’m reminded of the criticisms that Brian McVeigh (2002) made about the higher education system in Japan :
What some foreign observers fail to understand is that unlike the problems found in higher education in other places, the poverty of teaching and learning in Japan’s higher educational system is widespread, profound, systematic, and deeply structural. What we have is not mere weaknesses at some sites, but organized hypocrisy. In a word, failure is institutionalized, and institutionalized in such a way that schooling can be called ‘simulated’ (p22)
Increasingly the average undergraduate pays top dollar for teaching offered by post-graduate students or itinerant short-contract teaching-only academics – divorced from the spirit of intellectual enquiry that is open to an vanishing number of full-time (not “tenured” mind you, just with a contract of full-time employment) staff lucky enough to sit in a department that receives funding.
A simulated taste of intellectual inquiry and collegiate support. Are we turning Japanese? I really think so…
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