In a climate where employability is a big indicator of graduate success, Brian Hipkin asks whether the value of education within the university experience as a whole has been compromised
I have spent the last couple of months not thinking about the world of higher education (HE), and am now having a profoundly 'Specsavers' moment as I try to make sense of exactly what is going on in the sector.
We have never had so much data, never so many areas to focus on and measure - value for money (VFM), student engagement, teaching excellence and employability. There are also so many imaginary battle lines - widening participation versus grade inflation, to snowflake or not to snowflake, and academics versus support staff. Not to mention the 'three amigos' of TEF, REF and KEF, and finally the lion that is yet to roar, LEO.
We are about to enter our second summer of uni-bashing from the press, with vice-chancellors' pay still being a proxy for the value for money debate. We have both a new secretary of state and the Office for Students (OfS) locked into the debate about value for money in higher education. A review of fees is taking place against this background and, as sure as night follows day, notions of VFM will run like lettering through the stick of rock that will be the final report.
Don Quixote's windmills were perhaps more firmly rooted in reality than some of the issues that today surround UK HE. Of all these, the one with the most chimeric qualities is VFM. Like many things that we are not quite sure what they are, in the absence of any hard facts the easiest thing is to repeat what others have told us. If all you have read about over the past couple of years is that a university education represents poor VFM, it's no wonder that such sentiments are repeated come survey time.
The vast majority of students do not hand over large wads of cash every year out of their own pockets, so when we discuss tuition fees, it would be far more realistic to talk of debt (and the ability to repay that debt) as this is the lived reality. While the VFM debate hangs limpet-like to the topic of tuition fees, in the context of our consumer society it should instead be firmly attached to the cost of student living. Sadly, we are now too far down the line for such a transfer to take place.
Although the Zeitgeists that are shaping UK HE today would not be out of place in Alice in Wonderland, we must understand where they came from and what a central role they now play in shaping HE strategy - even if the outcome is a freeze frame of increasing panic over uncertainty.
Despite this, there are some rays of sunshine. The VFM debate, TEF, Graduate Outcomes and LEO have all become intertwined in such an inexorable way that those working in HE careers and/or employability are today's Sancho Panza to their vice-chancellor's Don Quixote.
The census point is slipping away from the influence of careers teams, and closer towards skills gained in early-stage career choices
The VFM debate is based on a wholly unbalanced equation. On one side sits the cost of the tuition fee loan - which, in reality, is the cost of repayment including interest over a 30-year period and something that can be very precisely calculated. On the other sits a big fat unknown - what will the impact of having to repay all this money be on my life? One side of the equation is a clear figure in pounds and pence, giving it a measure of value in the world of 'now', while the other is based in pure futurology. It should therefore be of little surprise that graduate earnings have been drafted in, to create a numerical peg on which some balance can be created within the equation.
However, while future earnings are exactly that, something in the future, it is hardly surprising that the point at which those earnings are measured is falling further and further into the future - from DLHE's six months and Graduate Outcomes' 15 months to LEO's three and five years.
The census point is slipping away from the influence of careers teams, and closer towards the skills gained in early-stage career choices.
In our brave new world, employability is (for good or ill) going to become a major indicator of VFM, teaching excellence, resilience, engagement and much more. All these factors can be bundled together and reduced down to a single unit of measurement - income.
On a final note, I have reread this column and realised that I have been able to write about the central concerns of HE in this country while hardly needing to use the word 'education' at all. Go figure.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of HECSU/Prospects
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