A question of support

I read with interest David Maguire’s article for HEPI Learning from lockdown: harnessing tech to improve the student experience. The article recognises that a great deal has been achieved in moving teaching online for the final part of the academic year. The transition has gone some way to overcoming institutional inertia and has resulted in a growth in confidence in the use of technology in teaching. Although some of that improvement in confidence will result in an increasing use of technology in teaching, that does not necessarily guarantee quality online teaching. And as many have pointed out, what is deemed acceptable in an emergency will not be acceptable for “normal” operations. 

The development of effective online learning requires a clear pedagogic approach, careful instructional design and a method for development and teaching. This will clearly take time – will academic staff be given the time to consider how they might design their courses differently? Will they have access to a strong team of pedagogic experts and learning technologists to provide advice and guidance? Will consideration of how the course will be assessed influence the design of the module? 

It is not always easy to predict how technology may be used by its target audience. The advent of lecture capture did not lead to mass desertion of lecture theatres as some predicted but saw students review lectures to reprise content to improve their understanding, whether at the time or as part of their revision for course assessment. They accessed lectures from their mobile devices wherever they were – on the bus, at home or in the refectory. As the lectures were available 24 hours a day, students accessed them as and when they wanted. The same will be true of online learning aspects of a course. Students will have the flexibility to study when they want and many will build their study around other aspects of their lives. This brings further challenges to the institution – will there be an expectation amongst the student body that support (be it technical or academic) be available 24/7 like the content? If not, how will you manage expectations and deliver a quality student experience to those who are working more flexibly than in the past? 

Technology certainly can help institutions deliver an outstanding education experience. But there remains a risk that a lack of support for academic staff in transitioning their courses to a new environment and for the students using the material, the experience will be lacking and students may well question the value for money of their courses. 

Now is the time to push forward with digital transformation

This time last year there was evidence that universities and colleges were starting to invest in their digital estate. In many cases the investment was long overdue – many administrative systems were well past their use by dates and needed replacing but in other cases, institutions were taking the opportunity to enhance their service provision and improve the student experience. Now we are in a very different place with a great deal of uncertainty arising from the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated financial fall out. It isn’t clear that the academic year will begin in September at all, and if it does begin then how much of the teaching will be delivered online. There is an expectation that international student numbers will fall dramatically and there is uncertainty about how the admissions process will be completed for home students. And yet, against this background, there are arguments for continued investment in digital transformation within institutions.

The rapid switch to home working will lead many institutions to revisit their business continuity plans. Key to this will be support for remote/home working. Moving an entire institution to work online has been a massive undertaking for all institutions and for many it has been a matter of learning as you go along. Those lessons learned need to be documented and incorporated into future business continuity plans. Once the dust has settled, it will be worth reviewing the software that was rapidly implemented to establish whether there are any adjustments that need to be made to improve the service, and to harvest the good practices that users have adopted and learnt as they have grown used to the new ways of working. The net result should be better services used in a more effective way.

It is clear from the move to remote working that it is something that requires support and policies. This is not just guidance on how to effectively use the technology (for example, how to chair and take part in virtual meetings) but also how to manage your own work/life balance and how to ensure that your staff and colleagues are coping in these difficult times. It is hoped that this will persist beyond the lockdown period. I believe that there is growing recognition that the situation prior to the pandemic where employees were ‘always on’ is not sustainable; recognition of this will follow with an improved work/life balance, less commuting and recognition that home working can be an effective contributor to employee wellbeing resulting.

The current situation has highlighted the importance of systems resilience and reliability. As a result, I expect there to be a continued move towards cloud deployment of key business systems. The volume of systems in use to support any single institution continues to present a challenge; those systems need to be well integrated to ensure that the whole IT systems architecture provides effective support to the institution.

The move to home working and online teaching has necessitated some innovative thinking and should be a key driver for digital transformation within an institution. Many were already looking at the use of artificial intelligence to automate processes and to provide virtual assistance through chatbots and other interfaces. The current crisis should accelerate development in this area.

Much of the teaching has been moved online in order to complete the current academic year. Further it is being suggested that online delivery is the only way that the academic year can begin in September. Whilst there is likely to be some acceptance that delivery developed in response to an emergency might be a little rough around the edges, it is unlikely to be the case for future development. The development of effective online learning requires a clear pedagogical approach, careful instructional design and a method for development and testing. Some institutions will look to develop online courses in order to continue to attract international students and so generate much needed income. What is clear is that any new online learning developed for September will need to be of high quality; any roughness that was tolerated as part of an emergency response will not be acceptable as institutions will be perceived to have had the time to develop a quality product. This will require investment to support the development of materials (both in terms of personnel and physical infrastructure such as studios, etc), and to provide academic and technical support to the online cohort. The latter will need to be available 24/7 to provide synchronous support to international students.

Many courses cannot be delivered entirely online – practical aspects need to be integrated into teaching. Some of this can be delivered through augmented or virtual reality but some will rely on practical experience. Institutions considering further adoption of online teaching in September, either as an interim measure or as part of a new pedagogical approach, will need to consider their teaching strategies on a course by course basis and ensure that the strategies proposed are coherent and are appropriately resourced.

The uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has heightened the importance of accurate data and the need to use it effectively in planning and forecasting. The situation is unusual in that recent years’ data will have little bearing on the coming year. It may be possible to draw on some of the experience from the financial crash in 2008 when modelling the take up of university places this academic year, but the current lockdown has added a further complication and the impact of an extended lockdown is not understood. It is possible that, as a result of the pandemic, some who would not have considered further study at 18 enter university this year. The use of learner analytics to identify those struggling, either academically or mentally, will be critical to supporting these students. Those institutions considering adopting a wholly online approach for all or some of their provision may also consider the use of student data to develop adaptive pathways through courses to better support those with different learning styles. Similarly, there is an opportunity for institutions to consider different ways of assessing progress; the era of the three hour examination may have finally come to an end.

Against all this background of potential change, there remains the need for institutions to manage their data securely and to maintain individuals’ privacy. Investment in information security should be maintained and the role individual members of staff play in maintaining security should be emphasised as part of home working policies and processes.

So investment in digital transformation should be one area that institutions should consider maintaining, if not ramping up. Naturally the level of investment will depend on the institution but there is scope for ensuring that the infrastructure, policies and personnel to support home working are in place, that innovation continues to automate processes and to provide intelligent interfaces to resources, that there are clear pedagogic strategies for learning backed up by appropriate support models, that effective use is made of the data held, and that the information is held securely and privacy maintained. It is not the time to cut IT spend.

The return of Stats101

Alex Usher’s recent article on WonkHE considers the options for universities for starting the new academic year. In my view it is increasingly unlikely that any form of face to face learning will take place in September so, if there is no universal decision to move to a January start date (one option Usher suggests), there needs to be effort put into developing online content for the first term.

In 2006 the Government were heavily promoting shared services and a think tank of experts from the sector convened to consider the possibilities. One of the proposals was affectionally referred to as Stats101. The proposal recognised that many institutions run a series of similar introductory courses in the first year of an undergraduate degree course – Introduction to statistics for non-statisticians being a prime example. The thinking was that, rather than each university continuing to maintain its own versions of these introductory courses, a single instance for each could be shared. The expectation was that the load would be spread – one institution would develop Stats101, another would develop Social science 101 and so on. The proposal was not pursued in the end – there was simply too much vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

However, is now the time to revive the idea for online versions of these courses? Or, since we have a world leading distance and online learning institution here in the UK, would it make sense for institutions to work with the Open University to repurpose (or just use) their content, transferring credit where necessary? That would then free up staff to develop the more specialised online courses for returning second and third year students so that a September online start is feasible.

Balancing Agility, Openness, and Security

Universities and colleges harbour a great deal of sensitive data which should be protected. But they are also encouraged to be open and make maximum use of the data they hold through personalisation and open access to research data. How do institutions balance the need to be open and yet secure?

The challenges to provide effective services for the research community whilst supporting open access are many and varied. Researchers need access to both short term storage and computational resources but the requirements of research funders are moving towards long term preservation and archiving.
There is resistance to openness – researchers see the data as ‘theirs’ and there is a reluctance to place data in institutional repositories until all the research opportunities have been realised and the results published. Open access to research data requires that data to be tagged with appropriate metadata in order for that data to be discoverable. However few researchers possess the skills to tag their data and there are few incentives for them to do so.

The demand is for easy to access services provided free of charge at the point of use. Whilst a number of institutions are starting to provide high volumes of storage for their researchers, there are few, if any, effective costing models for long term storage and preservation. [The absence of a cost effective model provides the opportunity for a shared service; it is hoped that Jisc’s embryonic Research Data Shared Service will provide an effective solution for the sector.

Where there are no centrally provided services or where researchers find those services too difficult or too costly to use, researchers sought alternative solutions. These included free or low cost cloud services to store and share data, cloud services for computational resource, and the use of ‘personal’ devices such as removal hard disks or memory sticks. Information security rarely features in decisions to use easily accessible cloud services – this is due in part to the ease with which such services can be purchased but is also indicative of a lack of awareness amongst researchers. This challenge has now been recognised by many institutional IT services who are now providing supported access to cloud storage solutions and computation.

Data management is relatively immature within institutions. There is growing recognition that the data and information that an institution holds are assets and that poor management of those assets represents an institutional risk. However, a one size fits all approach is not appropriate – information and data needs to be classified to determine the level of security that needs to be applied to it. The HESA Data Futures project and HEDIIP before it has surfaced the lack of maturity in this area. Although there has been some improvement, we are still some way from data management being an established discipline.

Effective support of research and research data management requires a cross institutional approach yet this is not readily understood by senior university management. This is all the more frustrating given that a briefing paper jointly produced by UCISA, SCONUL, RLUK, RUGIT, ARMA and Jisc highlighted the need for an institutional approach over three years ago. A lack of understanding is sometimes reflected in diktats being issued and a resultant poor take up of services. Meeting the demands of both researchers and research funders requires resourcing, both in terms of staffing and services, and an understanding of how cloud services can be used effectively to meet the storage and computational demands securely. The planning process needs to be responsive to long term trends but also to changes in policy and legislation and technological developments that may require quicker response.

The threat of cyber attack is a major concern; there is growing evidence that state sponsored attacks primarily aimed at securing research outputs and institutions’ intellectual property are on the rise. Yet the threat often comes from within as a result of a lack of awareness and poorly maintained systems within the institutional perimeter. It is important that all staff in the institution realise and accept that information security is their responsibility. The institutional management need to recognise that information security is an institutional issue and requires a coordinated and risk based approach. Where there are policies established to mandate information security awareness training for all staff, it may be necessary for senior institutional management to oversee the enforcement of that mandate, although such enforcement may be detrimental to building understanding and acceptance of individual responsibility.

In conclusion, managing the conundrum of being open in a secure environment requires effective governance, and a central coordinated approach to support of research and information security. There is likely to be no one solution applicable to every research discipline but shared services such as Jisc’s RDSS (now the Open Research Hub) should have a strong role to play.

Strategic questions:

How mature is your institution’s information management capability? Does your institution have a business classification scheme? Are records management processes embedded in normal operations?

How influential is your internal audit function in determining or supporting information security policy and implementation?

What mechanisms do you have to learn from information security incidents, whether internal to your organisation or external?

Do you have an institutional approach to research data management?

Student support – the key to successful analytics

The driver for many institutions’ use of analytics has been improving retention. The worried well, high achievers looking to improve may also benefit from monitoring their own performance. But is that a lost opportunity? Can improvement be achieved across the board?

The recent report from UCISA and Sero HE The truth about data and analytics notes that institutions’ primary aim of investing in learning analytics is to improve retention. Interventions triggered as a result of students failing to meet prescribed checkpoints lead to a discussion with the student as to the reasons for their lack of engagement and, generally, a subsequent improvement in student performance. But is an interventionist approach the only way? Are there ways to improve the performance of all students rather than focus on those at risk of failing?

Temple University in Philadelphia takes a different approach. Their Fly in 4 programme was devised to improve both retention and the number of students graduating in the minimum four years. The drive for the programme came from the top – Temple’s President wanted an initiative that focussed on affordability as a result of on time graduation.

A cross-campus partnership was formed to deliver the initiative including staff from the student admissions, finance, student support, marketing and IT departments. The partnership first considered student behaviours and institutional barriers to progression and on time graduation. This review led to some process improvements and eradication of inconsistencies in the application of policies across the institution. With regard to student behaviour, it was recognised that it was relatively easy for students to drift; those who made a commitment to their studies were more likely to graduate on time.

The result was effectively a contract between the student and the institution. Each student makes a number of commitments to study and check in at key stages. This clearly places a high demand on advising staff and requires an investment in those resources to ensure that the programme is going to be effective. Advising staff were engaged in the programme at an early stage and throughout its development to shape messages and identify strategies to monitor checkpoints. On the other side of the contract, the institution commits to providing the necessary academic programmes and advice and support.

Fly in 4 has been a success with retention rates improving and numbers graduating in four years increasing. The initiative is not compulsory but over 90% of first year students signed up and are achieving demonstrably better results. It caters for all students and not just those at risk of failing or dropping out. The Fly in 4 agreement heightens student awareness of their responsibilities as well as identifying how the University will support them through the process.

Although data underpins the initiative, it is clear that student support is the key element in the programme. Without that support, the initiative would founder and the advising staff were engaged at all stages of the project to help drive success. Senior executive support led to a coordinated programme with the necessary resources for support. The Truth about data and analytics report identified the need for senior leadership and recognised that the deployment of analytics required much more than deploying a technical solution. The Fly in 4 initiative shows how a data approach, underpinned by strong support, can deliver improvements across the piece.

Key messages:

• Senior executive support is essential in developing data driven approaches to student performance;
• Data driven approaches need to be underpinned by quality support mechanisms;
• A ‘contract’ between the student and the institution improves student understanding of their responsibilities.

A rocky road ahead…

“Times of unprecedented change”

“Challenging economic climate”

Looking back at a number of the reviews of the political landscape that I’ve written over the years, the two phrases above appear with almost monotonous regularity. And they are just as appropriate today as they have been in previous years. However, what is new is that before both the direction of change and the reasons for the economic challenges were known. The big difference today is that result of the referendum on 23 June has thrown uncertainty into the mix. Uncertainty, not just in the higher education sector, but across the whole country as the process to leave the EU begins.

The Government have sought to reduce some of the uncertainty by guaranteeing that EU students that are currently studying in the UK and those that will begin their courses in the coming years will continue to receive funding for the duration of their courses. Similar guarantees have been made for Horizon 2020 research funding. However, what is not clear is what the impact of Brexit will be on the future recruitment of students from the EU or on research funding. It is unlikely to be good news.

The current analysis is that the Government appears to be favouring a hard Brexit with tighter controls on immigration. The dominance of immigration as an issue in the referendum campaign and subsequent policy has been reflected in the statements from the Home Office suggesting further clampdowns on international students. Regardless of the actual policy that emerges, the rhetoric is damaging – a fall of 10% in the numbers of Indian students is evidence of that. It was not by accident that the Indian Prime Minister linked trade agreements with relaxation of visa requirements but although Theresa May stated that talented workers would be welcome, her response regarding students was lukewarm at best. It would appear that the lady is not for turning.

This is all set against the rather gloomy background of HEFCE’s assessment of the financial health of English universities released this week. The picture is likely to be similar in universities in the other countries of the UK. The forecast, made before the referendum, suggests falling levels of surpluses (and in some cases significant deficits), more borrowing and falling levels of cash reserves. The report notes that universities were looking for an increase of fee income from overseas students (of close to 30%), and for growth in home and EU students of over ten per cent by the 2018/19 session. In the current circumstances it is unlikely that either will materialise; a period of budgetary constraint will be the consequence. This will place an even greater emphasis on efficiencies and effective use of data in planning.

The Higher Education and Research Bill (HERB) is entering the Report stage before its third reading in the House of Commons. The Bill has seen a number of amendments as it has passed through the Committee stage but these have not radically changed the direction of the Bill. The Bill advocates the abolition of the English Funding Council (HEFCE) and the establishment of the Office for Students (OfS). The importance of the role HEFCE play in monitoring the financial health of the sector has been recognised in an amendment that proposes this role transfers to the OfS.

There is a great deal of focus on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), particularly the link to fee increases. Although the TEF will initially apply to English universities, similar measures in the past have been adopted by the other countries in the UK so it would not be a surprise if in future years the TEF becomes applicable to all UK institutions.

The governance arrangements for higher education are also changing. In addition to HEFCE’s transformation into the Office for Students (and universities moving under the Department for Education), there are reports of the Welsh funding council being absorbed into a new Tertiary Education Authority and of the Scottish Funding Council being merged into a ‘super-quango’ with a number of other bodies. Both add to the uncertainty in the sector.

Finally one change that we do know about is that the UK will be implementing the EU General Data Protection Regulation before we leave the EU. Although much of the focus has been on the scale of the fines for breaches, GDPR represents an opportunity for organisations to improve their data and its management. UCISA has set up a website to highlight resources and activities that inform and support our members in their implementation of the Regulation.

There are difficult and challenging times ahead. Universities will need to make good use of the data they have to try and predict the effect of changes and plan accordingly. They will need be more agile to deal with the changes that are known as well as those that are yet to emerge. The sector has been resilient at times of uncertainty in the past and many will see opportunities to reshape their offering and operating model to adapt to the new environment. IT will be at the hub of that change.

Scotland and Brexit

I attended a seminar yesterday considering the impact of the Referendum result in Scotland. As UCISA is a UK wide organisation it is important to understand the range of views across the UK and the potential impacts on the devolved nations. In Scotland, along with Northern Ireland, the majority cast their votes in favour of remaining in the EU. Nicola Sturgeon has made the Scottish Government view clear – they wish the majority view in Scotland to be respected and for Scotland to remain in the EU. To what extent that can be achieved isn’t clear, partly because the new cabinet at Westminster is still defining its approach to leaving the EU.

The lack of clarity stems from before the referendum. There was no White Paper to outline the proposed action in the event of a vote to leave – this contrasts with the approach taken with the Scottish independence referendum where options for both outcomes were known. Further it has become evident that there were no plans or contingencies for a leave success. It isn’t clear how the exit will be triggered or who needs to be consulted – and this might not be clear until a number of legal challenges have been addressed later in the year. Finally, the notion of leaving the EU means different things to different people – there remains a great deal of negotiation between constituents within Government for a clear picture to emerge.

What are the options for Scotland? Given that there appears to be reluctance to hold a further referendum on independence, it will probably be limited to trying to influence a move to a least worst option. David Davies, in his address to Parliament on 5 September, stated that the devolved administrations would have an important role to play (but that they would have no veto). So Scotland will need to lobby hard for a softer Brexit with continued access to free trade against the hard line Brexiteers within the UK Government. An alternative might be for Scotland to build stronger relationships with the EU post exit in certain areas such as agriculture or higher education. However, this may require a further Scotland Act to devolve more powers to Holyrood in order to be achievable. A further option could be for Scotland and Northern Ireland, as the two nations within the UK that voted to remain, to take over the UK’s EU membership but the constitutional challenges that would present within the UK makes that extremely unlikely.

The result of the Referendum on June 23 will have an immediate impact even before negotiations begin. The demands placed on the Civil Service to inform the negotiations and manage the process will cost, both financially and in terms of time spent away from business as usual. So it may be prudent for those organisations that receive direct or indirect Government funding to budget for a reduction in income. Further, it may mean that some issues that might have occupied parliamentary time will be pushed further down the queue.

So what will be the impact on higher and further education in Scotland? Whilst education remains a priority for Holyrood, it is way down the list in the Westminster Government’s Brexit considerations and it will be some time before the full impact is understood. The risk to research through the loss of EU funding and collaboration opportunities is well documented. In the short term, there is the risk of further reduction in central funding and a risk to student numbers. Brexit has given added impetus to the Home Office perspective on international students and the potential damage to applications from beyond the EU. EU student numbers may also decline amidst the uncertainty.

UK universities and their representative bodies will need to be effective in lobbying and influencing Government over the coming months and years. In the short term this will be needed to remove uncertainty (for example, reassuring EU students applying now for 2017 that their fees won’t rise during their course); longer term it will be needed to ensure the continued global success of the sector. What is clear is that the uncertainty means that universities will need to plan for a range of potential scenarios – the need for quality data and systems to support this has never been greater.

The current environment

I write a briefing for exhibitors at the two biggest UCISA events – UCISA16 is taking place next week so here’s my take on the current political factors affecting the sector…

The run up to the General Election in 2015 saw very little in the form of legislation and little change in the sector. The year since has been far busier with the publication of the Green Paper Teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice, the introduction of the Counter Terrorism duty on higher and further education institutions (the PREVENT duty), the drafting of the Investigatory Powers Bill and consultations on the information provided to students and the HESA Data Futures programme. The proposals within the Green Paper require refinement – it is not clear what the impact will be on institutions and it is anticipated that there will be further consultation during 2016. Although the Paper only applies to higher education in England, it is probable that a number of the measures proposed will also be introduced in time in the other countries of the UK.

The publication of the Green Paper in November demonstrated that the Westminster Government is looking to shape the English Higher Education sector rather more than it has in the past with emphasis on teaching excellence, better information for students and widening participation. The Green Paper contained little detail and it is not clear how soon detailed proposals will be presented. The BIS Select Committee, whilst welcoming the approach in principle in its recent report, urged caution over the pace of implementation, noting that the second stage of the Teaching Excellence Framework “should only be introduced once Government can demonstrate that the metrics to be used have the confidence of students and universities”. The Green Paper also noted that universities needed to be more accountable for how student fees are spent. This reflects a theme first visited in a Private Members Bill tabled by Heidi Allen, Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire so it is perhaps not surprising to see elements of her proposals feature in the Green Paper.

Despite the emphasis on a light touch approach, it is evident that universities and colleges will need to make effective use of data in order to meet the anticipated requirements of the Green Paper. There are a number of other developments that will place similar demands on our institutions. The HESA Data Futures programme is seeking to redesign and transform the collection of student related data. The programme is in its early stages with a recent procurement to appoint an organisation to design and deliver the future business process, technology and application architecture. UCISA will continue to ensure that suppliers of student records systems are engaged with this initiative. Further, the Higher Education Commission’s report From Bricks to Clicks notes that data analytics has the potential to transform the higher education sector, but cautions that UK institutions are currently not making the most of the opportunities in this area.

There continues to be funding pressure on all UK higher education institutions. In Northern Ireland funding has reduced by 28% in real terms since 2010/11 leading to downsizing by the universities in the province. In Wales, a cross-party review of higher education funding and student finance arrangements is due to report in the autumn. Although funding cuts proposed by the Welsh Government have been rescinded, it is likely that there will be some rationalisation within the sector over the coming year. The Scottish Funding Council has also cut the level of funding with some institutions noting that continued cuts put “pressure on institutional viability”. In England, the introduction of competition has resulted in some big winners and losers – those institutions which have seen a fall in student numbers are now having to cut their cloth accordingly. In the Further Education sector, the outcome of the Area Reviews is expected to be mergers between further education colleges.

There may be a lull in the development of policy as elections for new administrations in Scotland and Wales take place in May followed by the referendum on the UK’s EU membership in June. It remains to be seen if changes in the constituency of those Governments are reflected in changes in education policy. It goes without saying that a vote to leave the EU will also have a significant impact on universities and governmental policies. 2016 promises to be an interesting year.

Higher, Further, Faster, More – an opportunity missed?

There was much chat online yesterday about the Policy Exchange’s report on improving higher level professional and technical education Higher, Further, Faster, More. Whilst the report sets out some significant challenges and is fairly wide ranging in its recommendations, the focus has, perhaps inevitably, been on the financial implications for the higher education sector. The report proposes significant cuts to central higher education funding with the funds being diverted to further education. The suggestion is that institutional reserves could be used to meet all or some of the costs of funding high cost subjects and widening participation.

The response from the higher education sector was to defend the current funding regime and to highlight errors in the financial aspects of the report. This isn’t entirely unexpected – in these financially challenging times any organisation or body whose funding is threatened is likely to react in the same way and attempt to protect what it has. The question is how that message is interpreted elsewhere. The sector has a reputation in the Treasury for being feather bedded and reference to the reserves held by the sector, whether accurate or not, will do little to refute that reputation. Further it is easy to dismiss responses suggesting maintaining the status quo and even those highlighting errors in the report (‘they would say that, wouldn’t they?’) even if the arguments are strong and factually correct. There is, however, little doubt that the FE sector in England is in financial dire straits and something needs to be done. In the circumstances looking at the pot a seemingly rich relation has is natural.

It is not a matter of ‘either/or’ for the higher and further education sectors – they fulfil different needs and the country needs both. What has been missed is the opportunity to highlight the areas where universities and FE colleges are already working together, to address some of the challenges highlighted in the Policy Exchange report. At the recent HE and FE Show, Stephen Jones from BIS advocated the need for HE and FE to work more closely together and gave a strong hint that this need would be part of upcoming reforms. There is evidence of collaboration and working towards common goals. Maddalaine Ansell, the Chief Executive of the Universities Alliance, highlighted several in her presentation at the same conference – collaborative approaches supporting the local communities’ needs. And yet there was little mention of such collaboration in the responses to the report that I’ve seen.

A protectionist approach is sometimes needed but here was an opportunity to demonstrate that the higher education sector is aware of the challenges that FE faces, is aware of the need to develop skills for UK business and industry and is taking steps to meet those challenges and requirements. An opportunity to demonstrate that universities are at the heart of regional economies, working with local FE Colleges, to help meet the needs of the local communities. An opportunity to demonstrate that the sector is in tune with Government policy and thinking. An opportunity missed.

Horses and water…

Every year a certain amount of Parliamentary time is dedicated to Private Members’ Bills. These are opportunities for individual MPs to present legislation on practically any topic. This year’s crop illustrates the wide variety – we have bills on riot compensation, exemption from hospital parking charges for carers, and Highways (Improvement, Traffic Regulation and Traffic Management). Amongst the list is the Higher Education (Information) Bill being presented by the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, Heidi Allen.

The summary of the Bill indicates that it is “to require information to be made available to prospective undergraduate students about what is provided to students for the tuition fees charged, how tuition fee resources are expended and what is expected of students; to establish transparency in how tuition fees are spent; and for connected purposes”.

There are a number of potential issues here and I’ll say now that I am not privy to what will be included in the Bill so all of this is guesswork. We’ll hopefully know more when the Bill gets its second reading on 23 October. Firstly, there is the level of detail required – are universities going to be expected to provide such detail on a course by course basis? There would seem little value in the Bill if it didn’t and so the assumption is that it will be expected that there will be different costs for different courses. So costs such as Estates, IT, the Library and indeed academic time will need to be apportioned across different courses. The cost to universities in calculating and providing this information will increase depending on the level of accuracy required.

If, on the other hand, all that is required are aggregate costs then there seems to be little value to the applicant. There will still need to be some apportioning of costs (how much academic time is spent on teaching activities compared with research for example) and as such institutions will need to justify how they have split such costs if they are to avoid accusations of top loading the tuition fee spend.
Regardless of the level of detail, there will be a cost to the universities of putting this information together. However, I would question how much use applicants make of the information that is already available to them. I know of several 18 year olds that are (hopefully) heading to university in September and none have made use of the Key Information Set in making their choices. I realise there is an element of horses and water here but is there any evidence that providing this information will really lead to a significant number of applicants being influenced by how their money is spent?

I am not against transparency and I do believe that there is value in demonstrating how income from course fees is spent. However, I am not convinced that there is a strong business case for providing such information, nor do I believe that it will radically change the way that applicants make their choices. Regardless of the level of detail provided, there will be a cost to provide it, as there is a cost of meeting the requirements of other legislation. How many institutions will be open enough to include a line detailing the cost of providing the information required?