tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/hefce-3103/articlesHEFCE – The Conversation2015-11-09T17:25:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/504332015-11-09T17:25:11Z2015-11-09T17:25:11ZExplainer: new-look regulation on cards for higher education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101285/original/image-20151109-29297-1o8nefu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How will regulation be tied to funding in future?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lecture via Matej Kastelic/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Universities in the UK face a shakeup in the way they are regulated if proposals set out by the government in a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/474227/BIS-15-623-fulfilling-our-potential-teaching-excellence-social-mobility-and-student-choice.pdf">new green paper</a> go ahead as planned.</p>
<p>Alongside plans for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-teaching-excellence-framework-will-work-50323">Teaching Excellence Framework</a>, to reward those universities home to the best teaching, the government aims to remove the long-established ties between regulatory authority and how much each university receives from the state. Instead, higher education is moving to a position found in many other sectors – where regulatory agencies operate under clear legal purposes, irrespective of how much money they hand out. </p>
<p>Personally, I welcome the proposal to merge the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) into a new Office for Students (OfS), and also to require institutions to make provision for consumer protection for students in the event of closures. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/hec/research/report-regulating-higher-education">Higher Education Commission</a>, whose inquiry and subsequent <a href="http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/hec/sites/site_hec/files/report/333/fieldreportdownload/hecommission-regulatinghighereducation.pdf">report</a> I co-chaired with Lord Norton in 2013, strongly argues for such measures. The move towards a more level regulatory playing field for providers, so that alternative providers are treated in ways similar to the well-established institutions who get their funding from HEFCE, is also strongly supported by the Commission. </p>
<h2>New ways to award degrees</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101284/original/image-20151109-29326-1szjnfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101284/original/image-20151109-29326-1szjnfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101284/original/image-20151109-29326-1szjnfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101284/original/image-20151109-29326-1szjnfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101284/original/image-20151109-29326-1szjnfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101284/original/image-20151109-29326-1szjnfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101284/original/image-20151109-29326-1szjnfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Alternative providers could get an alternative way of handing out degrees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frannyanne/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>The green paper actually goes further than the Commission did here. It rather imaginatively explores ways in which alternative university providers may be able to achieve degree-awarding powers and university title more readily and independently than now.</p>
<p>The paper’s proposal to consider the creation of an awarding and validating body that hands out degrees – without having to pass through a conventional university – is redolent of the approach of the old <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/cicp/main/validation/awards-and-aftercare/cnaa-pro-forma-verification/about-cnaa">Council for National Academic Awards</a> (CNAA). This worked well for the polytechnics in the 1970s and 1980s in guiding them to governing autonomy, degree-awarding status, and eventual university title. This suggestion should do much to speed up the competitive strength of the alternative providers as desired by the government.</p>
<p>Whether such a body is best situated within the new Office for Students, as proposed by the green paper, is more debatable. Perhaps it would be better if such an agency had clearly-defined autonomy and organisational “clean hands”, away from the other pressing concerns of the OfS. </p>
<h2>Not radical enough?</h2>
<p>In many ways, the document is rather conservative and could have taken the opportunity to highlight more radical options. For example, perhaps the Student Loans Company could also be folded into the OfS so that the money is commonly located. </p>
<p>There is also no real hint of the government’s view on whether the <a href="http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en">Quality Assurance Agency (QAA)</a> – which currently monitors quality in universities – should be abolished or retained. The green paper argues that, as a sector-owned body, it has no real authority or responsibility for QAA (leaving this matter to HEFCE and, in future, the new regulator). But this is rather ducking the issue. It is an important policy matter that we need to hear more about publicly from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).</p>
<p>The green paper also, commendably, aims to free up institutions that became universities after 1992 – known as post-1992 universities – to dissolve themselves and to transfer their assets. No doubt the aim is to aid mergers and possible amalgamations, including with new alternative higher education providers. </p>
<p>BIS suggests that the current “public interest” provisions in governance arrangements will still be required. Rather bizarrely, however, it suggests that if a university was not meeting this public interest, the sanction would be an impact on “continuing grant funding” for an institution. Yet, with the thrust of the green paper moving the sector away from regulatory authority that is linked to funding allocations, this is jarring.</p>
<p>The green paper also suggests that responsibility for the allocation of teaching grants, currently held by HEFCE, could move more directly to BIS rather than to the new OfS. This would enable government priorities to be reflected in any funding decisions.</p>
<h2>Ghosts in the green paper</h2>
<p>It is worth noting that the ghosts at this feast of a green paper (it is stultifying in its length), are the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/spending-review-launched-by-chancellor">Comprehensive Spending Review</a> and Autumn Statements to be made by chancellor George Osborne on November 25. </p>
<p>Questions remain on whether there are any assumptions being made in BIS and the Treasury about the savings that may accrue from the creation of the new OfS. There is also a possible danger that planned reductions in expenditure could restrict the regulatory functions and powers of the new regulator. </p>
<p>The proposals suggest institutions will pay for their regulation through a subscription model. BIS estimates that this will save £25m, perhaps a rather modest if unwelcome contribution by the higher education sector to reducing the national public expenditure deficit. </p>
<p>Although we find that regulators in other sectors, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-versus-public-interest-in-battle-over-press-regulation-50114">the press</a>, are often funded through a subscription or levy on those being regulated, this is often accompanied by at least a modicum of co-regulation between the agency and the sector itself. </p>
<p>In this instance, the government envisages the OfS as operating much as HEFCE has done, as a statutory body with the “intermediary” role very much balanced towards the interests of government. If institutions – as subscribers – start to pay for the privilege of being regulated, will the OfS regard institutions as its “customers”? After all, this is the overall tenor of the higher education reforms. </p>
<p>In which case, how much is the regulatory function likely to be compromised by customers being “at the heart of the system” and bridling at any regulatory reining-in of their activities?</p>
<p>You take consumerism far enough and you can begin to regret what you wished for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger King is affiliated with the Higher Education Commission and was co-chair of its inquiry 'Regulating the new landscape of higher education. He is also chair of the board of governors at UK College of Business and Computing (UKCBC), an alternative provider. </span></em></p>A new government green paper has proposed a raft of reforms for regulating higher education.Roger King, Visiting Professor, School of Management, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/453242015-07-31T05:24:58Z2015-07-31T05:24:58ZHow to value research that crosses more than one discipline<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90135/original/image-20150729-30886-12gv2ze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Academics need to work together to solve the world's big problems. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lightbulb via Ruslan Grumble/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until the early 1900s, scholars took it for granted that they could draw on any area of knowledge to inform their thinking on the major questions of the day. Medieval polymaths such as <a href="http://womenshistory.about.com/od/hildegardbingen/a/hildegard.htm">Hildegard of Bingen</a> (medicine, linguistics, botany, art, philosophy and music) opened the door to Victorian scholars such as <a href="http://www.aspall.co.uk/our-story/family/temple-chevallier">Temple Chevallier</a> (astronomy, theology and maths) and <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Young">Thomas Young</a> (medicine, physics, music and Egyptology).</p>
<p>In the last century, however, the emergence of multiple disciplines and the exponential development of specialist knowledge, has discouraged such carefree grazing across academic terrains. The application of free-market ideologies to the higher education sector in the 1990s has positioned academic disciplines in competition with each other for resources. </p>
<p>Speed and measurable research outputs – such as the number of journal articles or books an academic publishes – are valued higher than deeper efforts to unravel less quantitative complexities. The world wants “practical” answers, and “value for money” – now. Many academics have internalised the pressure to police disciplinary boundaries, and keep their heads down and in their faculties. </p>
<h2>Big questions require teamwork</h2>
<p>However, two things have become very plain. Today’s big questions <a href="https://theconversation.com/multi-discipline-courses-will-help-solve-emerging-global-problems-30557">require a genuine integration</a> of diverse understandings: obvious examples include environmental change, social and political conflict, the use of genetic modification in medicine or agriculture. And sharing knowledge across disciplinary boundaries has other benefits: not only providing transformational fresh thinking about complex problems, but adding creatively to the strengths of single disciplines too. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90136/original/image-20150729-30862-czd7dm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90136/original/image-20150729-30862-czd7dm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90136/original/image-20150729-30862-czd7dm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90136/original/image-20150729-30862-czd7dm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90136/original/image-20150729-30862-czd7dm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90136/original/image-20150729-30862-czd7dm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90136/original/image-20150729-30862-czd7dm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Putting physics to work to tackle cancer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cancer cell via jovan vitanovski/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>A new report, prepared by publishers Elsevier for the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE), has found that interdisciplinary research is <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/Year/2015/interdisc/Title,104883,en.html">increasing in intensity</a> in the UK. </p>
<p>There is a new impetus for this kind of research, both by individual scholars and, increasingly, through collaborative teamwork. The “medical humanities” are bringing historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars together with neuro-scientists and psychologists to work on issues such as why and how people <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/hearingthevoice/">hear voices</a>. Scientists collaborating with medieval historians and theologians have been inspired to re-analyse <a href="http://ordered-universe.com/">perceptions of colour</a> as well as clarifying pre-modern science history. New ways of thinking about cancer are emerging from the joint efforts of <a href="http://physicsandcancer.org/">physicists and medical scientists</a>. </p>
<p>But how do we know what “good” interdisciplinary research looks like? Academics and those seeking to evaluate their work are hampered by a century of fragmentation and a lack of criteria with which to answer this question. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) continues to assess the outputs of research, such as journal articles, according to disciplinary categories. </p>
<p>Another recent <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/Year/2015/analysisREFimpact/">report</a> from the HEFCE showed that interdisciplinary research is now the major basis of required case studies used to demonstrate the “impact” of research. Yet a <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/rsrch/REFreview/Interdisciplinarity/">subsequent analysis of the REF</a> revealed that academics remain anxious about submitting outputs, such as journals articles and books, for evaluation that don’t fit into a single discipline. The Elsevier report <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/HEFCE,2014/Content/Pubs/Independentresearch/2015/Review,of,the,UKs,interdisciplinary,research/HEFCE2015_interdisc.pdf">found that</a>: “most interdisciplinary research has a lower citation impact than other publications”.</p>
<p>With little consensus about assessment criteria, funders of research have sometimes eschewed interdisciplinary programmes because of their lack of capacity to evaluate them. Universities are also unsure how to evaluate interdisciplinary career patterns, and many publishers prefer to stay in safe disciplinary territory. There is a paucity of peer reviewers with experience in this area. Interdisciplinary REF submissions, funding proposals and research outputs are often sent to academics whose response is either “I can only evaluate a bit of this” or “why doesn’t this do what I do?” </p>
<p>But interdisciplinary research is only worth the extra effort it requires if it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. And much of it does: there are exciting interdisciplinary projects forcing their way up between the cracks in the concrete across academia. The UK funding councils are onto this: many are now establishing working groups to seek better ways to evaluate – and value – interdisciplinary research. The Academy of Medical Sciences launched a <a href="http://www.acmedsci.ac.uk/policy/policy-projects/team-science/">working group on “Team Science”</a> in 2014, and the British Academy <a href="http://www.britac.ac.uk/news/news.cfm/newsid/1272">recently began</a> a major consultative exercise. </p>
<h2>New ways of evaluation</h2>
<p>Earlier this year, to contribute to this process, Durham University’s <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/">Institute of Advanced Study (IAS)</a> invited interdisciplinary experts and representatives from across the funding councils to a workshop to draw up some criteria for evaluation and methods for applying them. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/?itemno=25309">a new report</a> drawing on this collaboration, we have set out some criteria and questions to consider at each stage of the interdisciplinary research process, from project development right through to evaluation of output. We argue that it’s important to allow researchers time to work with academics in other fields and give them access to training if needed. We have also raised questions about what happens when one discipline dominates an interdisciplinary project, and how that can be justified. </p>
<p>Institutional support also needs to be improved, including making sure centres and institutes that carry out interdisciplinary research are adequately valued and resourced by university management. Our report also proposes a few changes to the REF, such as identifying interdisciplinary experts and trialling a dedicated panel to assess research that is deemed as crossing more than one academic discipline. </p>
<p>We are now even more convinced that imagining interdisciplinary research as a kind of superstructure creating “bridges” between disciplines is misguided, and merely affirms their differences. Interdisciplinarity lies not above the academy, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/interdisciplinary-research-must-sit-at-the-heart-of-universities-31937">in its very foundations</a>. In this sense it is supportive of – rather than a challenge to – more specialised areas of knowledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45324/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom McLeish receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Templeton Foundation</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veronica Strang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We need to know what ‘good’ interdisciplinary research looks like.Tom McLeish, Professor of Physics and former Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Durham UniversityVeronica Strang, Professor of Anthropology, Executive Director of Institute of Advanced Study, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452522015-07-29T05:20:53Z2015-07-29T05:20:53ZHard Evidence: are universities strapped for cash?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89929/original/image-20150728-7650-1m0yvcb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are universities counting their pennies?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Education fund via Lucian Milasan/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>English universities have known since June that there would be cuts to higher education funding. Now the amount and detail of the savings have been disseminated to universities: the sector must make a <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2015/CL,192015/">total saving of £150m</a>. Some have argued this is evidence that the sector is in “<a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/blog/perpetual-financial-crisis-uk-higher-education">perpetual financial crisis</a>”. So what are the likely impacts of the latest round of cuts on universities and how will they manage their finances? </p>
<p>At first sight, the English higher education sector seems to have had reasonably steady income over the last few years. As the first graph below shows, in the period after the financial crisis, universities’ real income initially rose. Despite a dip between 2009-10 and 2011-12, it has been slowly rising since but has yet to recover to pre-2010 levels. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89937/original/image-20150728-7662-1vx2lwj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Income of English universities, £ billions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_pubs&task=show_pub_detail&pubid=1719&Itemid=286">HESA, Finances of Higher Education Providers</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Prepare for volatility</h2>
<p>It is important to look at the detail of where the £150m of cuts will now fall. The savings are to be made in the 2015-16 financial year (April to March), which overlaps two academic years 2014-15 and 2015-16. This means that universities are suddenly having to deal with a loss of income which they had expected to receive for both for the current academic year and the next. Government funding, which has historically provided universities with financial certainty and stability, is no longer a reliable source. </p>
<p>All cuts will come from the recurrent teaching grant, while universities’ grant for research will remain ring-fenced. Let’s take a step back and see how the importance of the recurrent teaching grant has changed in the composition of universities’ income over the past few years. From the second graph below we can see that in 2008-9, grants from funding bodies, which for English universities comes largely from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), were 33% of the sector’s total income. By 2013-14, following the introduction of undergraduate tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year in 2012-13, this percentage had dropped to only 18%. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89945/original/image-20150728-7668-1y9wppi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HESA, Finances of Higher Education Providers</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>At the same time, the money set aside for teaching within grants from the funding body has fallen from 65% of the total in 2008-9, to 51% in 2013-14, as the third graph below shows. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89946/original/image-20150728-13261-1xk4f64.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HESA, Finances of Higher Education Providers</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gauging student demand</h2>
<p>The flip-side of this is that tuition fees have become more important – rising from 32% of English universities’ income in 2008-9 to 47% in 2013-14. This move means universities are ever more open to the vagaries of market demand. Tuition fees come from undergraduate and postgraduate courses, both from home and EU students and those from overseas. </p>
<p>These overseas students have been a particularly lucrative source of income for universities as there is no cap on their numbers or the fees that they can be charged. But the overseas market is becoming increasingly competitive (for example, there was a <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201426/">2% drop in international students</a> in the UK between 2011-12 and 2012-13) and this source of funding is becoming less predictable. </p>
<p>Because of this, the domestic student market is becoming more and more important to universities. But population changes in the UK mean that there will be fewer 18-20 years olds to take up places at university – <a href="http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/hec/sites/site_hec/files/report/391/fieldreportdownload/hecommissionreport-toogoodtofail.pdf">a fall of more than 12%</a> in 18-24 year olds is forecast between 2012 and 2021. So the tuition fee income on which universities have become much more reliant is, like government funding, likely to be volatile.</p>
<p>The chancellor <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/undergraduate-numbers-cap-to-be-abolished-osborne/2009667.article">George Osborne’s decision</a> to lift the cap on the number of students each university can admit, which comes into effect from September, could offer a glimmer of hope for universities. Universities can now recruit as many extra students as they want with the appropriate qualifications. When the plans were announced, it was originally intended that any extra student recruited would mean that the university would receive both the tuition fee and the usual associated HEFCE funding allocated to each student. </p>
<p>However, if we look at the detail of the £150m cuts, as set out in the table below, we can see that the money set aside by HEFCE for the increase in student numbers has been cut to achieve the overall saving.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89951/original/image-20150728-7671-w7dmvm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sources of HEFCE’s savings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2015/CL,192015/">HEFCE</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So universities can indeed increase the numbers of students they enrol (for example, through the clearing process after A-Level results are announced in mid August) – but institutions will only receive the tuition fee for these extra students, rather than any government funding. In the short term, at least, the temptation for universities will be to recruit extra students only from low-cost subjects, such as the humanities, to cross-subsidise students in the high-cost subjects, such as science.</p>
<h2>Test of resilience</h2>
<p>The higher education sector is in a potentially precarious situation with possibly large fluctuations in demand (and hence funding) from one year to the next. Are universities resilient enough to withstand these fluctuations? HEFCE’s own forecasts of the financial health of the sector between 2013-14 and 2016-17 <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201426/">emphasises</a> the need for strong liquidity – the number of days for which a university’s cash reserves would cover their expenditure. As a sector, liquidity has strengthened over the recent years of uncertainty, as the graph below shows, but the forecast is for this to fall and for borrowing to increase. As HEFCE points out, this is “an unsustainable trajectory”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89947/original/image-20150728-13261-v0xcuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Net liquidity and cash flow 2006-7 to 2016-17.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201426/">HEFCE’s Financial Health of the Higher Education Sector: 2013-14 to 2016-17 Forecasts</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps more worrying, is that the picture for the overall sector conceals vastly different effects for different universities when it comes to student demand. Although the average increase for the sector in both domestic and EU students between 2012-13 and 2016-17 <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201426/">is predicted</a> to be 5.5%, some universities could see numbers decline by more than 20%, while at others they could increase by more than 40%. </p>
<p>The irony of these cuts, however, is that they fly in the face of the laudable proposals made in June by the universities minister, Jo Johnson, for universities to be ranked and rewarded for their teaching excellence. Paradoxically entitled: “<a href="Teaching%20at%20the%20heart%20of%20the%20system">Teaching at the heart of the system</a>”, Johnson’s speech announced the development of a new Teaching Excellence Framework to shore up the quality of university teaching. </p>
<p>Yet teaching quality will be the first casualty of the changing funding regime as the lack of certainly in long-term planning will lead universities, in pursuit of flexibility, to employ more staff on short-term contracts. Some may even consider closing departments which experience dips in student demand and cannot be sustained.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill Johnes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As universities swallow a £150m cut to their teaching budgets, are they in a stable financial position?Jill Johnes, Professor of Production Economics - Strategy, Marketing and Economics, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/393512015-04-07T10:04:35Z2015-04-07T10:04:35ZExplainer: how much state funding do universities get?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76794/original/image-20150401-31299-k7is0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">UCL sits solidly in the top ten of universities who receive the most research funding. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/34517490@N00/15211679532/sizes/l">nicksarebi</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The sums have been done. In 2015-16, <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/Name,103785,en.html">£3.97 billion</a> will be flowing into the coffers of England’s higher education institutions, up slightly from <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/Name,94011,en.html">£3.88 billion</a> the previous year. The amount each higher education provider will receive from the government has just <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/Name,103785,en.html">been announced</a> by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and some institutions will be getting much more than others. </p>
<p>Tuition fees reform in 2011 means that universities now have to meet the cost of teaching <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-more-concerned-with-student-numbers-than-government-grants-23102">from student fees</a> rather than government grants – so research and related activities now take a large proportion of the funds HEFCE hands out. This year they have allocated £1.558 billion to research, with a further £160m for knowledge exchange and £52m for “transitional” funding for research. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/Name,103785,en.html">Transitional funds</a> are allocations for one year only to mitigate the effects on institutions of two changes which have been introduced: the removal of special funding to protect science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) research and the effects of a decline in funding aimed at supervising research degree programmes. </p>
<p>The teaching funding is still substantial – at £1.418 billion – but is used mainly to support high-cost subjects such as STEM, work in some small specialist institutions and to provide some support to widen the participation of socially disadvantaged students in higher education. </p>
<h2>Two types of currency</h2>
<p>To academics, the grant allocations for research represent higher education’s “second currency”. They sit below the pecking order of the scores each department gets in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/qanda-what-is-the-ref-and-how-is-the-quality-of-university-research-measured-35529">Research Excellence Framework</a> (REF) process of evaluating the quality of research across the UK – which represents a “first currency” of reputation. But for the people whose job it is to manage the budgets, that order of importance is reversed.</p>
<p>It should be remembered that there is not a direct correlation between a university’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/oxbridge-and-london-retain-grip-on-university-research-prowess-35650">overall score in the REF</a> and the money it receives. The size of the institution and <a href="https://theconversation.com/game-playing-of-the-ref-makes-it-an-incomplete-census-35707">numbers of staff submitted</a> for the REF represent an important intervening factor. Where institutions have reduced the numbers of staff submitted to the REF exercise in order to achieve a higher score – by focusing on their “research elite” – the result may be a higher REF score but lower research funding as a result of the smaller staff numbers submitted. These universities have opted for more reputational currency over financial currency. </p>
<h2>Top ten on research funding</h2>
<p>So who gets the most money? Looking at the “top ten” institutions in terms of research funding, there are no great surprises. Oxford, University College London and Cambridge top the list. The table below lists the ten institutions which received the largest sums of research monies from HEFCE alongside the total funding they received from HEFCE for teaching. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76643/original/image-20150331-1263-1ao7fbr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/Name,103785,en.html">HEFCE</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These ten universities are getting more research money from HEFCE than they are receiving money for teaching, although for six of the ten, <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/winners-and-losers-in-hefce-funding-allocations/2019306.article">this represents a drop</a> over the funding levels achieved from the previous REF in 2008. However, many institutions still get more teaching funding than research funding. </p>
<p>For example, the Open University receives £66.4m for teaching (the highest of any university) against £8.8m for research; Plymouth University receives £20.9m for teaching against £8m for research; and Liverpool University £33m against £28.2m. But of course, with the fees regime, all institutions are receiving only a small proportion of their teaching budgets from HEFCE. </p>
<h2>Money brings forth money</h2>
<p>The research allocations can be viewed in two ways. They are a reward for research outputs already achieved, at the same time as being the basis for research outputs to come. Top research universities produce more high-quality research in part because they receive more money to do so – and money brings in more money. Although the HEFCE research allocations do not include the substantial sums for research awarded by the research councils and other sources, there is generally a correlation at the institutional level between research funding obtained from HEFCE and research funding obtained from other sources. And HEFCE remains the largest single source of research funding in the sector as a whole.</p>
<p>There is a shift going on in the relationship between public and private funding sources for research and teaching: public money is shifting more and more towards research. But this does assume that a substantial proportion of government-backed student loans do actually get repaid eventually, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26688018">an assumption that is looking increasingly fragile</a>. Over the longer term, it seems likely that the public funding of teaching in higher education will remain substantial, whether by accident or design on the part of government. </p>
<h2>Scale and diversity</h2>
<p>Leaving aside purely private providers, more than 130 higher education institutions and 200 further education colleges are in receipt of some funding from HEFCE – although in the case of the colleges this is only for teaching rather than research. </p>
<p>While the major research institutions can be clearly identified, with three institutions each in receipt of more than £100m and a further three institutions in receipt of more than £50m for research, the rest of the research funding is very broadly spread. There are 27 institutions each in receipt of more than £10m for research and 47 institutions each receiving more than £1m.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2015/CL,032015/">HEFCE continues</a> to fund “selectively, focusing on world-leading and internationally excellent activity”. With 80 institutions in receipt of substantial research funds from HEFCE, in most cases augmenting them with funding from diverse other sources, the extent and diversity of higher education’s research functions are considerable and widely spread.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Brennan has received funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and other national and international research funders. This article reflects his personal views.</span></em></p>Which higher education institutions get the most money and why?John Brennan, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Research, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/393492015-03-27T16:54:33Z2015-03-27T16:54:33ZWhat REF case studies reveal on measuring research impact<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76255/original/image-20150327-16090-2zvdcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Proof that research leaves a mark. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Impact via Phatic-Photography from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Understanding and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-impact-of-impact-on-the-ref-35636">rewarding research impact</a> – where research has benefits or makes broader contributions to society outside higher education – has never been as topical or important as it is today. Now <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/Name,103729,en.html">a new study</a> into the way universities achieve research impact has shown there is no simple way of measuring the diversity of that impact or calculating its value.</p>
<p>The UK undertakes a systematic evaluation of university research every five years – the largest research evaluation exercise of its kind anywhere in the world. In 2014, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/qanda-what-is-the-ref-and-how-is-the-quality-of-university-research-measured-35529">Research Evaluation Framework (REF)</a> assessed universities on the basis of the quality of research outputs, vitality of the research environment and, for the first time, the wider impact of research. </p>
<p>The weighting for the impact assessment part of the REF was 20% of the total assessment – influencing the allocation of around <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2015/CL,032015/">£1.6 billion worth</a> of public funding over the next five years.</p>
<h2>Mining the REF case studies</h2>
<p>Impact in the REF was assessed through the submission of case studies using two criteria: reach – the spread or breadth of influence or effect on the relevant constituencies, and significance – the intensity of the influence or effect. The case studies, <a href="http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies/search1.aspx">now available via an online database</a>, provide an extraordinary resource for those interested in analysing knowledge translation and research impact. </p>
<p>Our analysis of the 6,679 non-redacted case studies identified a number of observations. The impact of UK research is truly global with every country in the world mentioned. Different types of universities specialise in different types of impacts. For example, the larger universities made a disproportionate contribution to impact topics such as clinical guidance and dentistry, while smaller institutions specialised in areas such sport, regional innovation and enterprise, arts and culture. The research underpinning impact is multidisciplinary and the benefits arising from that research have many different kinds of impact at once.</p>
<p>The bulk of analysis of the case studies was undertaken using text-mining techniques – the analysis of data contained in natural language text. There were some 6.2m words in the case studies submitted to REF, and by removing words such as “and”, “but” and “or” we were left with 3.7m words. </p>
<p>This text-mining exercise led to the identification of 60 impact topics or areas where research influences society, such as medical ethics, climate change, clinical guidance and women, gender and minorities. The text mining was supplemented by “deep mines” where more than 1,000 case studies were read to provide a deeper picture of the data.</p>
<p>The case studies provide a rich resource, demonstrating the breadth and depth of research impact – in a way that has not been revealed before. Universities claim changes and benefits to the economy, society culture, public policy and services, health, the environment and quality of life. </p>
<p>To pick just two from a multitude of examples, one <a href="http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=29573">case study from UCL</a> highlighted how a series of platinum-based lung cancer trials has led to “wide-scale changes in clinical practice”, while another <a href="http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=43596">from Lancaster</a> focused on the impact of fathers and the family unit, led to a “tenfold increase in funding for work with fathers in Children’s Centres”. </p>
<h2>Metrics for impact remain a challenge</h2>
<p>Although an incredibly rich resource, there are challenges in using case studies to measure research impact and improvements that could be made for the next REF in 2020. We discovered the case studies contained more than 3,700 individual pathways to impact – thus presenting a real challenge to anyone interested in producing metrics on impact. Qualitative case studies capture the diverse connections between research and society and it’s difficult to reduce this diversity to numbers. </p>
<p>The numerical evidence supporting claims for impact were also diverse and inconsistent, suggesting that the development of robust impact metrics is unlikely. While the impact case studies provide a rich resource for analysis, the information is collected for assessment purposes and may need to be aligned for further, fruitful analysis purposes. </p>
<p>For example, different universities used different ways to measure the same thing when trying to show impact. Financial information was expressed in various currencies – and researchers used different metrics for expressing online statistics such as downloads and page views.</p>
<p>We initially thought it would be possible to use case studies to estimate the returns on investment from research – for example, by calculating wealth or jobs created, or health benefits or lives saved. But early on in our analysis it became apparent that such an approach was not feasible, because of the large volume of inconsistently used numerical data.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76273/original/image-20150327-16124-1i7i42e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76273/original/image-20150327-16124-1i7i42e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76273/original/image-20150327-16124-1i7i42e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76273/original/image-20150327-16124-1i7i42e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76273/original/image-20150327-16124-1i7i42e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76273/original/image-20150327-16124-1i7i42e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76273/original/image-20150327-16124-1i7i42e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No impact case study looks the same.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Different pills via Vorobyeva/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One area of future research could be to look at the language and sentiments used in different case studies and by different disciplines. By reading large numbers of case studies, the contrast between the empirical language of scientists and the more descriptive tone of some humanities scholars became clear and we need to understand further how this relates to the types of impact reported.</p>
<p>There are a few “tweaks” that can be made to the process to help address these challenges and, while metrics are important, we shouldn’t lose sight of the power of the case study. It is also important that we don’t overly restrict researchers in how they can demonstrate their impact – especially when such a broad range of disciplines is included.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39349/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Grant has led a number of evaluation projects for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), who organised REF, and receives research funding from various organisations including the Department of Health and Medical Research Council.</span></em></p>The diversity of research impact makes it tricky to measure in numbers.Jonathan Grant, Director, The Policy Institute and Professor of Public Policy, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371872015-02-06T12:41:23Z2015-02-06T12:41:23ZHow the REF’s regime of excellence is changing research for the worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71243/original/image-20150205-28618-1lcii73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Research excellence can be self-selecting. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Excellence via Pan JJ/Shutterstock </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There can be little doubt that the research environment in universities is changing: it is now less a collegiate community of scholars than a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dark-arts-of-academia-and-why-journals-must-do-more-to-tackle-the-problem-35796">competitive game of winners and losers</a>. This transformation manifests in all sorts of ways, most notably in the rise to prominence of national research audits such as the recent <a href="http://www.ref.ac.uk">Research Excellence Framework</a> (REF) – the mechanism that provides the backbone for the way <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2015/Higher%20Education%20Funding%20Letter%202015-16.pdf">UK government spending</a> on science and research in higher education is allocated.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/management/2015/01/22/how-do-you-win-the-research-game-hide-the-results-you-dont-like">recent article</a> by two professors at the University of Leicester drew attention to game-playing by business schools in the REF. They point out that submission rates for staff under the Business and Management Studies category differ dramatically between university departments, ranging from over 95% in some cases to less than 5% in others. </p>
<p>The upshot is that a business school that deems the majority of its staff “research inactive” can appear higher in the official rankings than a business school that submits, on principle, all of its academic personnel. Simon Lilley and Martin Parker underscored the absurdity of this situation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Imagine if a school only submitted data about the pupils who got As, or a hospital could choose not to report death rates, or a local council could mention all the emails they’d sent while ignoring all the bins they didn’t collect. Then you get the basic idea.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such tactics serve no other purpose than to inflate a department’s “grade point average” and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/dec/23/ref-uk-research-excellence-getting-better-higher-education">accrue considerable financial and symbolic capital</a> as a result. Similar <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-impact-of-impact-on-the-ref-35636">game-playing around “impact”</a> is now coming to light as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/game-playing-of-the-ref-makes-it-an-incomplete-census-35707">findings of the REF</a> are scrutinised further.</p>
<p>This puts into question some of the assumptions made in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ recent <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2015/Higher%20Education%20Funding%20Letter%202015-16.pdf">grant letter</a> to the Higher Education Funding Council, which claims that the REF has “demonstrated substantial improvements in the UK’s research quality and delivered compelling evidence of the impact of research”. In fact, what the REF demonstrates is the ability of universities to massage the stats in their favour.</p>
<h2>Scholarship in the shadow of excellence</h2>
<p>Selectivity doesn’t just apply to the way departments engage with the REF in a competition for funding and resources. It also concerns the way individual academics relate to their own research to secure career advantages and peer esteem.</p>
<p>To a certain extent, research audits like the REF are imposed on scholars by governments and universities. But our recent research shows that senior academics are <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12053/full">voluntarily modifying their behaviour</a> in line with the instrumental logic of “research excellence”.</p>
<p>Increasingly, academics are more likely to work on “hot topics” that have a greater chance of being published. By the same token, academics may abandon fruitful research projects that are seen as unsuitable for top-rated outlets. This suggests that supposedly “neutral” and “objective” measures of research quality – such as journal rankings and other metrics – are playing an active role in shaping standards of scholarship, and not always for the better.</p>
<p>In a curious twist, scholars’ subjective view of research quality may differ greatly from official forms of evaluation. For example, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12053/full">one professor</a> we interviewed described his own publication in a leading management journal as “awful” and “disgusting” as a piece of scholarship. Another admitted that a lot of papers in top-ranked management journals are simply not worth reading – his own included. Such behind-the-scenes confessions are a far cry from the bombastic rhetoric of the REF, which in 2014 classified <a href="https://theconversation.com/oxbridge-and-london-retain-grip-on-university-research-prowess-35650">three-quarters of research submitted</a> to the exercise as “world leading” and “internationally excellent”.</p>
<h2>How to become less excellent</h2>
<p>The emphasis on rankings and league tables creates a climate in which the question “where do you publish?” has become at least as important as the question “what is your research about?” We feel it is time to reevaluate our orientation towards scholarship in a rapidly changing academic environment.</p>
<p>Of course, one solution would be to transform the structures that create incentives for academic behaviour. As a means to allocate university funding on an equitable basis, the REF is riddled with problems. It is little wonder that <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/careers-at-risk-after-case-studies-game-playing-ref-study-suggests/2018086.article">some have called</a> for the REF to be completely overhauled to minimise institutional game-playing, or even <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/dec/15/research-excellence-framework-five-reasons-not-fit-for-purpose">scrapped entirely</a>. But large bureaucracies, such as <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk">HEFCE</a>, are notoriously difficult to change. This is why it is equally important to consider the role that individual academics can play in challenging the status quo. </p>
<p>An academic might begin by reflecting on how the managerialist regime of excellence has come to shape their own research interests and personal ambitions. They could then start raising uncomfortable questions about their motivations for working on certain topics, with certain co-authors and for certain journals. Becoming “less excellent” – and hopefully also a better scholar – involves recognising how one’s own scholarly ethos has, over time, become distorted by the external demands of research audits and journal rankings.</p>
<p>Social psychologist Michael Billig provides a striking example of such self-reflection in his 2013 book <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/learn-write-badly-how-succeed-social-sciences">Learn to Write Badly</a> when he takes himself to task for caring about his own citation rates. With remarkable candour, he admits being proud when his citations rise and insecure when overtaken by his peers: “Do I really care about the numbers? Yes, I must do. What a knob head.” </p>
<p>If more academics were to ruthlessly interrogate their own research values and vices in this way, then we may once again be able to pursue scholarship beyond the tyranny of excellence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There can be little doubt that the research environment in universities is changing: it is now less a collegiate community of scholars than a competitive game of winners and losers. This transformation…Nick Butler, Postdoctoral researcher, Lund UniversitySverre Spoelstra, Associate professor, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/369982015-01-30T18:38:42Z2015-01-30T18:38:42ZState funding to universities is stable, but questions remain over uncapped student numbers<p>In the run up to a general election, it would be unusual to spot radical shifts in the government’s higher education policy. The latest <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2015/Higher%20Education%20Funding%20Letter%202015-16.pdf">annual grant letter </a>that the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) send to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) meets these expectations with little that is truly eye-catching or especially novel. </p>
<p>Pride of place goes to reaffirming the government’s view that plans to abolish the cap on the number of people who can attend university from September 2015 is an “historic step” which implements the vision of 1960s <a href="http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/robbins/robbins1963.html">reformer Lord Robbins</a> “that university places should be available to all who are qualified by ability and attainment to do so.” </p>
<p>The level of government funding to universities remains broadly unchanged – with a budget of £4.01 billion for 2015-16, compared to £4.09 billion in 2014-15. With an estimation that universities’ income from fees will rise from £7 billion to £8.1 billion, this puts their total pot at an estimated £12.1 billion, up from £11.1 billion in 2014-15. But BIS has made a point of not setting out funding beyond 2015-16, saying it will be dependent on the next spending review. </p>
<p>In the light of statements by UCAS in the last few days, showing <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/undergraduate-applications-hit-record-number-says-ucas/2018255.article">increasing applicants to university</a> in 2015-16, the government’s estimations of student number growth and of more applications from low-income applicants could well be realised. But there will be consequences. </p>
<h2>Who benefits?</h2>
<p>With projections for full-time undergraduates rising – although <a href="https://theconversation.com/enrolments-slide-further-for-forgotten-part-time-undergraduates-36325">part-time numbers are falling off a cliff</a> – there are three major concerns. First, how likely are these additional students (and the taxpayer) to benefit from going to university or college? The Australian government’s <a href="http://www.hepi.ac.uk/2014/08/07/hepi-publishes-detailed-study-removing-student-number-controls-australia-mean-england/">withdrawal of student number controls </a> a few years ago is instructive. It has led both to more undergraduates but also an increasing number with low-entrance qualifications. </p>
<p>Research <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news87871.html">evidence</a> suggests that many of these relatively poorly qualified entrants will struggle to finish their degrees, or at least with good outcomes. In England, many are likely to find themselves adding to the existing third of undergraduates who are in “non-graduate” jobs. The economic pay-off – the reason why most students go to university – will probably be small. If so, this would be a waste of their time and money, plus that of the taxpayer. More vocational and apprenticeship opportunities should be developed instead.</p>
<h2>Impact on learning</h2>
<p>BIS is also encouraging HEFCE to continue its work on learning outcomes – or “learning gains” in the latest grant letter – and a programme for refining and testing new indicators of university quality, including on graduate earnings. The question then will be whether if such work shows that abolishing student number controls leads to little “added value” in learning, or hardly raises salaries, would the cap on student numbers come back – particularly in the light of continuing tight fiscal constraints. </p>
<p>The BIS letter rather supports this possibility by also emphasising new pathways into higher education through the expansion of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-apprenticeships-guide-for-employers">Higher Level Apprenticeships</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cable-new-generation-of-national-colleges-will-lead-revolution-in-hi-tech-skills">National Colleges</a>. Yet <a href="https://theconversation.com/apprenticeships-are-attractive-to-young-people-but-employer-demand-is-less-clear-cut-28827">employers’ needs</a> for high levels of technical expertise might best be served if apprenticeships were considered more a pathway into employment than into higher education. </p>
<p>Second, it is not clear whether increasing demand for higher education in the era of £9,000 fees is really a “free choice” similar in kind to many other consumer decisions. The publicly funded student loan system means that high fees do not diminish demand. Students from even quite deprived backgrounds pay them because they can defer loan payments. Besides, if offered a chance to study for a degree without the up-front costs, and in line with family and school expectations about the need to get a professional or creative job that is less likely to be automated out of existence, what else are they expected to do? Switch to bricklaying?</p>
<h2>Fee deregulation on the horizon</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70645/original/image-20150130-25912-16u3omt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70645/original/image-20150130-25912-16u3omt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70645/original/image-20150130-25912-16u3omt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70645/original/image-20150130-25912-16u3omt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70645/original/image-20150130-25912-16u3omt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70645/original/image-20150130-25912-16u3omt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70645/original/image-20150130-25912-16u3omt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will fees be deregulated?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-133816019/stock-photo-piggy-bank-and-books-objects-isolated-over-white.html?src=t-TB6i7ba6HSTPtHMVO7-A-1-27&ws=1">Lukiyanova Natalia / frenta</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Third, given that in England we tend to follow Australia’s higher education reforms, perhaps buoyant student demand will reinforce arguments for “full fee deregulation” – removing the £9,000 annual cap on fees. The Abbott Government in Australia is <a href="https://theconversation.com/higher-ed-bill-explainer-what-will-pass-and-what-will-be-blocked-31019">currently</a> foregoing a proposed AUS$2 billion worth of cuts to higher education in order to swing political support towards abolishing the cap on tuition fee levels. Recently, <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/australias-move-to-scrap-fee-caps-could-see-england-following-suit/2013461.article">some vice-chancellors in England</a> have argued for similar deregulation here. </p>
<p>Given that we are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/top-universities-refuse-to-reveal-how-they-are-spending-tuition-fees-9958264.html">not sure</a> how universities spend their income, it is not clear that a fair slice of this added funding will not be siphoned off to support an institution’s research, rather than its students. Whether students would be happy to have their fee payments support the country’s research effort should not be taken for granted. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, “fee deregulation” is never quite as it says on the tin. In Australia, the government’s <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r5325">legislation</a> includes a significant cap on prices by <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/review-constraints-unclear-davis/story-e6frgcjx-1227198701229?nk=c4b1950aec5f358d7c040525b984251b">requiring that universities charge domestic students less</a> than they charge international students. Limiting the level of loan finance for students, whatever the fee levels, may also act as a “soft cap”. </p>
<p>The 2010 <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31999/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf">Browne review</a> of higher education funding for the UK Government offers a further source of restraint. We could “tax” the level of fees above a certain point, returning the amount to the public purse. At least this might exert pressures for increased efficiencies on universities and colleges. </p>
<h2>Could fees be pushed down?</h2>
<p>Currently – and this is reflected in the grant letter – all the discussions are focused are on the student “demand” side and the impacts of policy reforms on these consumers. But rather than permitting large or regular increases in university charges – in a market where price signals are badly skewed by the availability of publicly supported student finance – we need more assurance that universities are justifying these increases through better organisational performance and cost-effectiveness.</p>
<p>In such a context, we might find that fee deregulation could lead to lower fees – not so much in the elite universities, but elsewhere, as online and low-cost providers increasingly challenge traditional university business models. Global competition, from computer-savvy for-profit conglomerates, might offer the best chance for fee deregulation to drive charges down rather than always up.</p>
<hr>
<p>Next read: <a href="https://theconversation.com/abolishing-cap-on-student-numbers-is-a-good-use-of-government-money-24430">Abolishing cap on student numbers is a good use of government money</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger King was the co-chair of the Higher Education Commission inquiry 'Regulating the new landscape of higher education'.</span></em></p>In the run up to a general election, it would be unusual to spot radical shifts in the government’s higher education policy. The latest annual grant letter that the Department of Business, Innovation and…Roger King, Visiting Professor, School of Management, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/301252014-08-05T13:09:48Z2014-08-05T13:09:48ZTaking on student debt would be a corruption of university ideals<p>The funding of higher education is a mess, and it is getting messier. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28528824">New proposals on the table</a> to allow universities to take on the debt burden of their own students could have profoundly worrying consequences for who gets to go to university. </p>
<p>A lot has changed for universities in the past 40 years. Once upon a time, universities enjoyed what was quaintly called “quinquennial” funding – in other words, they knew five years ahead what state funding they would receive via the arms-length <a href="http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/details/redirect/?CATID=872&CATLN=2&CATID=872&CATLN=2&accessmethod=5&j=1">University Grants Committee</a> (UGC). That guarantee crumbled during the inflation of the 1970s.</p>
<p>But, if the actual money could no longer be guaranteed, at least the funding system was fairly stable. After a wobble when former polytechnics were incorporated into the university system in the early 1990s, the method of funding higher education settled down. Overall, student numbers were controlled; successful universities could bid for extra places; and excellence in research was rewarded. Most of the money was still channelled through the <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/">Higher Education Funding Council for England</a>, the UGC’s successor, although (modest) fees were reintroduced.</p>
<p>Until 2010. That saw the introduction of the current pseudo-market system following the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31999/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf">Browne report</a> on higher education. Student fees shot up to a maximum of £9,000 and direct funding to institutions was cut (completely for the humanities and the social sciences). The new system was hailed as a “paradigm shift”.</p>
<h2>A broken system</h2>
<p>Only four years later it is clear this system <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-public-funding-bleeds-away-universities-consider-their-future-24932">isn’t working</a>. First, it has sowed the seed of massive <a href="https://theconversation.com/widening-access-to-university-entrenches-social-class-attitudes-to-student-debt-24755">indebtedness</a> among graduates. We should remember the Americans first introduced systematic loans in 1962; today student debt in the United States stands at <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/aug/14/hi-tech-mess-higher-education/?pagination=false&printpage=true">more than $1 trillion</a>, and exceeds credit card debt. That is where we are heading.</p>
<p>Second, the new funding system has produced serious turbulence, as universities that don’t really want more students have expanded and those that do have been forced to contract (threatening their long-term viability in some cases). The pattern of institutions that has been relatively stable since the 1960s (give-or-take some changed labels) is threatened. </p>
<p>Private, for-profit institutions of marginal worth have also been allowed into the higher education “market”, raising the <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-regulation-still-needed-to-prevent-cashpoint-colleges-27293">spectre of rip-offs of public funding</a> (already duly noted by the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/22/watchdog-investigate-private-colleges-potential-misuse-millions">House of Commons Public Accounts Committee</a> but ignored by ministers). The government has actually made things worse by weakening the instruments, notably HEFCE, that might have brought some order to the approaching chaos. With less funding, it has less influence over the behaviour of institutions. At the same time, the government has also failed to establish a fit-for-purpose regulatory regime. </p>
<p>But, third, the new system is heading for bankruptcy because almost <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-new-student-loan-system-more-progressive-than-its-predecessor-25468">half of the loans students receive</a> to pay their fees will never be recovered, leaving the tax-payers with arguably an even bigger bill than before.</p>
<h2>Unpalatable to sell loan book</h2>
<p>Massive student debt and sustained institutional turbulence, leading to the inevitable closure of some universities, can be ignored – for now. So it is this third flaw of the student finance system – the cost of student loans to the state – that is now concentrating political minds. </p>
<p>The Coalition government first toyed with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-government-shouldnt-privatise-the-student-loan-book-22784">idea of “selling” the student loans</a> book to the banks (or indeed any financial institutions – Wonga perhaps?). That hasn’t worked for two reasons. The first is it is widely recognised that the loan book could only be “sold” on such financially disadvantageous and risk-free terms that the arrangements would be difficult to defend (or, in reality, save a penny of public money). </p>
<p>But the second, and decisive, reason is that, after the scandal of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/royal-mail-row-shows-we-still-dont-understand-markets-26027">give-away Royal Mail privatisation</a>, the appetite for a repeat simply does not exist. It seems that the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/privatisation-of-student-loan-book-to-be-scrapped-9617742.html">business secretary Vince Cable has now backed away</a> from the idea in this parliament.</p>
<h2>Academia to take on the debt?</h2>
<p>Then in late July, the former <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28528824">universities minister David Willetts</a> floated the extraordinary idea that universities themselves could take on the debts incurred by their own students. Precisely how they would fund such high levels of additional debt has not been explained. Oxford might be able to raise the finance, although this would crowd out far more urgent (and academic) investment. But the urban universities that have done all the heavy lifting in terms of expanding opportunities for disadvantaged students would face punitive charges.</p>
<p>Under such a scheme, perverse incentives would proliferate. Students with less lucrative career prospects (like those in the humanities), or who were perceived to be more likely to drop out (like women or working-class students), or who were less likely to receive “good” degrees (like students from – most – ethnic minorities) would become less attractive. Their opposite numbers – posh, privately educated, white, male students (aiming at careers in business and the “traditional” professions) – would become more attractive to universities.</p>
<p>There are two fundamental, and principled, objections to such a scheme. First, far from widening participation in universities, it would narrow it – thus reversing a century or more of social and educational progress. Universities would not be meeting the legitimate aspirations of all citizens in a liberal democracy, nor building the human capital all 21st-century advanced economies need. Instead, such proposals would amount to reverse “affirmative action” – with a vengeance.</p>
<p>Second, it would require universities to admit students no longer solely based on their academic merits and potential but according to their ability to pay back their loans. </p>
<p>It would be like if doctors no longer treated their patients solely according to their clinical needs but according to their ability to pay (but maybe that is just down the line if the current government is re-elected?). It is difficult to imagine a greater corruption of academic ideals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Scott is Chair of Council at the University of Gloucestershire and trustee of the Higher Education Policy Institute.</span></em></p>The funding of higher education is a mess, and it is getting messier. New proposals on the table to allow universities to take on the debt burden of their own students could have profoundly worrying consequences…Peter Scott, Professor of Higher Education Studies, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/249322014-04-15T10:43:51Z2014-04-15T10:43:51ZAs public funding bleeds away, universities consider their future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46383/original/k6jjxwy5-1397487957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clouds ahead for university managers. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ejpphoto/2385300784/sizes/o/">EJP Photo</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Spring in UK universities sees the funding letter drop on the mat of the vice chancellor’s lodge and like an English April, no two years are the same. </p>
<p>Coalition ministers are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/putting-students-at-the-heart-of-higher-education">keen to tell us</a> that the present funding regime is designed to encourage universities to rebalance their activities away from the pursuit of research excellence towards undergraduate teaching. In reality, the outcome of their policies has been <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news86801.html">a reduction in both teaching funds</a> (for this year and next) and research funding – the five-year real-terms freeze is in fact a 12.5% reduction. </p>
<p>While the free-market Tories and orange-book Liberals of the coalition have sought to shrink other parts of the state, they have found it more difficult to contract the university sector.</p>
<p>There would seem to be a dawning recognition that this outcome is less desirable than previously thought and that the quasi-public-private entity of the university may in fact be part of the solution in an economic recovery. </p>
<p>As a result of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/22/poorest-students-face-350m-cuts">significant rise in funds</a> drawn down from the student loan book by private providers for mostly sub-degree qualifications, the government was required to <a href="https://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news85409.html">make an immediate in-year correction</a> to its university budget of £570m for this year, and a further £860m for 2014-15. It is this latter cost reduction that is reflected in this <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news86801.html">year’s funding letters</a> universities received from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).</p>
<p>HEFCE has attempted to spread the pain across the sector: while science and research have had their budgets ring-fenced, there has been a 5.9% reduction in teaching budgets. Higher Education Innovation Funding, known as enterprise funding, has been upheld but some student bursaries have gone, as a complex mix of students from the old and new fee regimes move through the system. </p>
<p>Compared to other aspects of public spending in this parliament, the present fees and funding dispensation for universities is often thought of as relatively benign, if not outright generous. However, this latest round of cuts points towards further trouble ahead. </p>
<p>It is now recognised, almost, universally that <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-need-more-than-a-pledge-to-reduce-student-fees-25186">this funding regime is not sustainable</a>. This year the department for business, innovation and skills, asked the <a href="http://andrewmcgettigan.org/2014/04/02/the-costs-of-revisions-to-estimated-repayments-for-existing-loans/">Treasury for an additional £5.46 billion</a> to cover its departmental expenditure limit as a result of the shortfall in student loan repayments.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46382/original/9ntkt43g-1397487935.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46382/original/9ntkt43g-1397487935.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46382/original/9ntkt43g-1397487935.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46382/original/9ntkt43g-1397487935.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46382/original/9ntkt43g-1397487935.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46382/original/9ntkt43g-1397487935.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46382/original/9ntkt43g-1397487935.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wishful thinking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisangle/3488869231/sizes/o/">chrisangle</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the previous three financial years, similar allocations were requested to a total of £7 billion. It is hard to imagine that such bailouts will be allowed to continue unchecked after the May 2015 election. </p>
<p>There is a very real risk that any future adjustment in the department’s expenditure will be reflected in a sharp correction in university budgets. This might be the last fair weather letter from HEFCE to vice chancellors for a while.</p>
<h2>Limit to demand</h2>
<p>However, in his <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25236341">pre-budget statement</a> the chancellor George Osborne committed to an additional 30,000 student places this year in advance of <a href="https://theconversation.com/abolishing-cap-on-student-numbers-is-a-good-use-of-government-money-24430">removing student number controls</a> altogether from 2015. Depending on the mood of the electorate this promise may never be realised, because <a href="https://theconversation.com/abolishing-cap-on-student-numbers-is-a-good-use-of-government-money-24430">Labour is unlikely</a> to carry through with it. </p>
<p>It is to be paid for by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-government-shouldnt-privatise-the-student-loan-book-22784">sell-off of the student loan book</a>. Details of the proposal remain sketchy. It is not clear how this unlimited expansion is to be squared with on-going cuts to the higher education budget.</p>
<p>Two things, however, are clear enough in this scenario. First, there is a natural limit to the demand for full-time undergraduate education in England. The promise of continued enlargement for universities is curtailed by demographic considerations and the majority of any future expansion will come at sub-degree level offered by alternative providers. As with this present round of budget cuts, the growth of the private and for-profit sector may continue to bleed funding away from the established university sector. </p>
<p>Second, as the different funding streams allocated by HEFCE continue to shrink, <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-more-concerned-with-student-numbers-than-government-grants-23102">universities will become more and more addicted</a> to the undergraduate loan book. This will put pressure on the recruitment scramble across the sector. </p>
<p>It will result in homogenisation for some and a squeeze on less competitive institutions that will be driven to seek alliances with further education colleges and the alternative providers of low-cost education.</p>
<h2>Short-term thinking</h2>
<p>Mass higher education is just plain expensive. The present funding regime is an attempt to produce an impossible outcome: to avoid the state paying for a very important, necessary and expensive activity of which the state is a primary beneficiary. </p>
<p>Student loans, <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-new-student-loan-system-more-progressive-than-its-predecessor-25468">graduate taxes</a> and all such variations will always be expensive options. As long as we persist with trying to pay for higher education through debt accumulation, off-ledger accounting, and technocratic fixes, the question for the sector will continue to be that of the sustainability of the funding system. </p>
<p>But this is the wrong question to ask. As vice chancellors sit down to deal with their spring funding letters they should not ask themselves how much money the sector is about to receive, but rather what sort of sector do we want to become? </p>
<p>We are now entering into short-term thinking mode a year out from a general election. Perhaps the unpleasant correction that might follow will compel us to address this more significant question and to recognise that universities need to get back in the queue for money from the public purse of direct taxation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin McQuillan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spring in UK universities sees the funding letter drop on the mat of the vice chancellor’s lodge and like an English April, no two years are the same. Coalition ministers are keen to tell us that the present…Martin McQuillan, Dean, Faculty Of Arts & Social Sciences, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/247552014-03-27T14:54:35Z2014-03-27T14:54:35ZWidening access to university entrenches social class attitudes to student debt<p>There are class tensions existing very close to the surface of the government’s policy to increase the number of students from disadvantaged areas going to university. <a href="http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2397&Itemid=141">New data shows</a> that the number of first-time undergraduates coming from lower-class backgrounds was at 32.3% in 2012-13 – the highest level recorded. The data, released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, also shows that 89.3% of students came from state schools, and that 10.9% came from neighbourhoods less likely to participate in higher education. </p>
<p>No university <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/widening-participation-in-higher-education">has the choice any longer</a> about whether or not to make available an increasing number of places for students deemed to be less likely to go to university. Without demonstrable progress against some <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/wp/">fairly easy-to-grasp criteria</a>, an institution runs the risk of the government removing its right to price undergraduate programmes at £9,000 per year. </p>
<p>In the current funding climate, universities and further education colleges now have to <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news86801.html">share a diminishing pool of £3.88 billion for 2014-15</a>, taking the hit of an average 5.9% reduction in their teaching budgets. At the same time, the total allocated for student opportunity funding – to provide additional support to widen access to university for disabled students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds – has gone up 7.2% from 2013-14. This <a href="http://www.nus.org.uk/en/news/press-releases/nus-responds-to-hefce-funding-allocation/?load=6&top=237">has been praised</a> by the National Union of Students. </p>
<p>The danger here, however, is that widening participation might collapse into a bureaucratic rather than an educational exercise, in which all pretence to be genuinely embracing social mobility might be washed away by the need to tick the right boxes and to show that the right quotas have been hit. </p>
<p>The bottom-line calculations allowing universities to survive the harsh necessities of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/osbornes-attack-on-public-servants-wont-work-15575">retrenched public sector</a> therefore have two distinct dimensions. They are at once both the means for universities to ensure that they remain viable business concerns and the means for students to first learn what it is to live a life in debt. Choosing to act out the former market relationships forces others to act out the latter.</p>
<h2>Engineered for financial literacy</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-we-stop-worrying-about-university-application-rates-22412">new student fees regime</a> should be seen as a relatively straightforward exercise in social engineering. Loss of faith in financial markets in the wake of the ongoing economic crisis might have been expected to lead to a change of perspective through which more and more people tried to construct their life paths with as little assimilation to finance as possible.</p>
<p>However, this would have translated into a reduction of the flow of savings on which functioning financial markets rely. What better way is there of ensuring that new attitudes towards finance do not undermine the reproduction of financial markets than creating a new generation of people for whom working-age life will now be dominated by trying to roll over one form of debt into another so that eventually it might all be wiped out?</p>
<p>Higher education is instilling into young people an approach to the future which involves calculations not about how much studying for a degree might be worth to their personal development, but about how much holding a degree certificate will be worth to their long-term labour market prospects.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/32409/11-944-higher-education-students-at-heart-of-system.pdf">Government policy documents</a> now routinely reposition the choice to enter higher education as an investment in future enhanced earnings capacity – and the urge towards greater financial literacy is supposed to help young people see the wisdom in such a decision. </p>
<p>Greater <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/financial-literacy">financial literacy</a> does not seem, in general, to be something to object to, as more knowledge is always likely to be better than less. </p>
<p>But some young people will always be better placed than others to access credit on more favourable terms. Some <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-postgraduate-study-still-just-for-the-elite-23265">will have access to the “Bank of Mum and Dad”</a> so that they can start their post-university life with a clean slate. And young people’s social background may well in any case influence the way they view the merits of debt-based investments in their future. </p>
<h2>Different views on debt</h2>
<p>Debt is without doubt a class issue. The <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/op.php?isbn=9780520068261.">historical middle-class experience of debt</a> much more typically resonates with images of opportunities: of taking control of one’s future by using credit flows to plot a route to the reproduction of middle-class status in later life. Nothing here appears to be overtly threatening. </p>
<p>But the <a href="http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/welcome.jsp?action=search&type=isbn&term=0199263310#">historical working-class experience of debt</a> responds to rather different stimuli. The campaign to make credit an acceptable part of a modern financial system was one of the most important 18th-century struggles through which a series of bourgeois virtues first came to prominence within the economy. </p>
<p>It is arguable whether working-class communities have ever had the success of that struggle extended in their direction. Debt for them conjures images of the bailiff, of the loan shark, of the late-night escape from unpaid creditors and of the prospect of an ever-tightening spiral towards immiseration. What might look like an opportunity from one side of the class divide looks anything but from the other.</p>
<p>These are the barriers to social mobility that official widening participation practices have to confront. Who would want to argue against extending access to higher education across many more sections of society? Certainly not me, having been a “non-standard entrant” into higher education myself on almost all the relevant social indicators.</p>
<p>But when asking the subsidiary questions of “on what basis?” and “to what end?” are we widening participation to university, the picture becomes considerably murkier. </p>
<p>The task ahead is to find ways of making student debt much less obviously a class issue – and this means doing more than simply recycling some fee income as bursaries. The fact that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jun/10/ban-payday-loans-advertising-campus-nus">payday loan companies</a> have tried to establish a presence across UK campuses shows just how much attention needs to be paid to avoiding situations in which widening participation increases rather than reduces social vulnerabilities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Watson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for his ongoing Professorial Fellowship project: <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/clusters/ipe/rethinkingthemarket">http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/clusters/ipe/rethinkingthemarket</a>.
He is a member of the two UK professional organisations covering his academic subject area: the Political Studies Association and the British International Studies Association.</span></em></p>There are class tensions existing very close to the surface of the government’s policy to increase the number of students from disadvantaged areas going to university. New data shows that the number of…Matthew Watson, Professor of Political Economy, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/231022014-02-17T14:55:46Z2014-02-17T14:55:46ZUniversities more concerned with student numbers than government grants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41588/original/87js9zm2-1392394593.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The customers are always right. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Ison/PA Wire/Press Association Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I recall the time some years ago when the possible introduction of student fees was being debated and a government decision was imminent. I was attending a seminar on the subject organised by a think tank. The higher education minister of the time was also present. One of the opening speakers began the proceedings quite frankly: “Let us be quite clear. Public funding of higher education represents a transfer payment from the poor to the rich.” The minister nodded. Debate over. Fees were duly introduced and have remained with us ever since.</p>
<p>Student fees have risen dramatically under the present government, to the extent that the grant allocations to universities by the <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/">Higher Education Funding Council for England</a> (HEFCE) may no longer seem particularly significant. </p>
<p>A much higher proportion of the higher education institutions’ incomes, used for teaching, will now come via the student fee route. Student numbers have become the most critical factor. And despite the introduction of high fees, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25432377">enrolments appear to be increasing</a>. With the government’s decision to <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/undergraduate-numbers-cap-to-be-abolished-osborne/2009667.article">remove controls on student numbers</a>, we can expect a growth in supply of student places in coming years.</p>
<p>Questions remain concerning where the places will be, what subjects they will be in, and who the extra students will be. These can only partially be answered through the <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news85409.html">government’s recent letter setting out funding levels for next year</a> and the much-anticipated response to it by HEFCE. </p>
<p>As has been the case previously, there will be grant support for more expensive degree programmes, notably in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects, and for “widening participation” students, from under-represented groups.</p>
<h2>Who will buy?</h2>
<p>As the English higher education system shifts from public to private funding, so the importance of consumer decisions substantially increases. Here, relevant consumers are not just students, but parents, their employers and others who may assist in paying the fees.</p>
<p>The government’s grant allocation, to be administered by HEFCE, for the coming year contains no great surprises. There has been an overall reduction in <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2014/grantletter/grant_letter_annex2.pdf">funding levels in 2014-15 from £5 billion to £4.1 billion</a>, reflecting general government policies about deficit reduction rather than any specific policy about higher education.</p>
<p>But the grant reductions may be less significant to higher education institutions than the way the market operates, and the effects of the government’s encouragement of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/207128/bis-13-900-privately-funded-providers-of-higher-education-in-the-UK.pdf">private new providers</a> to enter that market.</p>
<p>There has been a steady growth in the number of new private institutions offering mainly first degrees in business and information technology subjects. This is not unique to Britain. In general, new private providers in other European countries have a relatively problematic status in where they lack the power of tradition and research-based reputation.</p>
<h2>Where, not what, you study</h2>
<p>As in most countries, British higher education has become more differentiated in recent years. This partly reflects growth, partly demand, and partly the effects of government policy. The British system is widely regarded as one of the world’s most steeply stratified, where the issue of where you study may be more important than what you study. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41685/original/cf6ysdhq-1392629475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41685/original/cf6ysdhq-1392629475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41685/original/cf6ysdhq-1392629475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41685/original/cf6ysdhq-1392629475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41685/original/cf6ysdhq-1392629475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41685/original/cf6ysdhq-1392629475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41685/original/cf6ysdhq-1392629475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Universities need to be top of their game.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Nottingham Trent University</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How changes in funding arrangements will affect this differentiation is currently unclear, but it is a question of considerable significance in the long term. There is speculation about “weak” institutions “failing”, while other institutions expand some of their provision. Such is the operation of markets. </p>
<p>The problem with the higher education marketplace is that the similarities and differences between what is on offer at different institutions are by no means clear. There are reputational difference between institutions, to be sure, but how these relate to differences in the educational experiences on offer is much less clear.</p>
<p>Alongside the differentiation of provision of higher education, there is considerable diversity in the demand for it. Questions of what to study and where to study are answered differently by different people in different places. </p>
<p>The answers depend on institutional reputation and location, subject interests and career plans, social networks and domestic commitments. Student choices do not simply follow the reputational hierarchies <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-rankings-dont-tell-you-about-university-excellence-18704">suggested by rankings and league tables</a>. Some students do, but others may not even be aware of them and will have their own priorities.</p>
<p>Widening participation students, in particular, are more likely to want to study locally, often because of existing domestic or employment commitments. Their opportunities are limited to what is available near their homes.</p>
<p>They may also be more concerned about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-government-shouldnt-privatise-the-student-loan-book-22784">debt implications of taking out the loans required by high fees</a>. Even though the policy on loans is currently flexible in ways which are meant to reflect differences in the future circumstances of different graduates, it seems unlikely not to influence decisions by many potential students about what, where and whether to study.</p>
<p>One final factor in the unknown future of higher education is the effect of new forms of course provision, shaped by the application of learning technologies, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-room-for-sloppiness-in-online-classroom-21861">Massive Open Online Courses</a> and other global initiatives. These bring a new, cheaper product into the higher education marketplace, and may provide yet another element in its increasing differentiation.</p>
<p>The shift from government grants to student loans in the funding of higher education reflects a shift in emphasis from its social benefits to its individual benefits. Whether future decisions shaped mainly by the latter will result in changes and possible reductions in the former remains a key question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23102/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>
Professor Brennan retired from his full-time professorial position at the Open University in 2012. He is currently self-employed. Over the last year, he has received funding from the European Commission and from LSE Enterprise (for whom he has undertaken another EC project plus one for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills).</span></em></p>I recall the time some years ago when the possible introduction of student fees was being debated and a government decision was imminent. I was attending a seminar on the subject organised by a think tank…John Brennan, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Research, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.