Proceedings & Transcript of the Sixteenth Public Conference
24th November 2001
Birkbeck College, University of London
Academia 2010: Views from the Next Generation
TABLE OF CONTENTS & SPEAKERS
Introduction: Higher Education in 2010
Sara Delamont, Convenor of SCASS
The proceedings of the 2001 SCASS conference make sobering reading. First, there is a report, prepared by Jennifer Birkett, of group interviews with research students, research staff and lecturers at the beginnings of their careers. These were conducted by SCASS activists in all types of higher education institutions, all over the UK. The picture is bleak: These scholars who are the future are disillusioned, unenthusiastic about the QAA and the recurrent RAEs, unsure if they can afford to work in higher education given the low salaries, and largely hostile to the 50 per cent participation target across the UK (Scotland has already achieved it). The report by Jennifer Birkett is followed by three largely optimistic statements by three Vice-Chancellors from core disciplines in the Scass area: Martin Harris, Roderick Floud and Bob Burgess. All were impressed by the evidence in the Birkett report, but saw things differently. Finally there are the personal views of some next generation voices, who reflect on the features of the work they love and hate, ‘live’ at the conference.
We are circulating a digest of these views widely: we hope you will encourage your senate, council and court to face up to the problems that are so apparent. If HE is to have a future, the next generation need to have their working conditions improved in a variety of ways, not just their salaries.
Professor Bob Burgess, AcSS
Vice Chancellor, University of Leicester
Like Martin Harris, I was very impressed with the background paper and
I thought that it demonstrated what social scientists and people drawn
from the humanities were very good at, namely a clear analysis of the
sector and a clear analysis of the organisation of higher education. I
think that is one of the reasons why, for the humanities and social sciences,
our moment has come. We have actually been campaigning for a whole series
of initiatives and targets to be achieved. One clearly was the shift from
an elite to a mass system of higher education and with it, increasing
participation in the system. This may be delivered by politicians as being
something new; it is not a new story as far as people in the arts and
social sciences are concerned. From our point of view, I think we have
to guard against the situation where all expansion occurs in the arts
and social sciences. But it is also important to make certain that we
promote what it is we have been championing over many years. But in that
sense, if we going to have a system with more students and more people
engaged in operating that system, what form might it take? I suppose if
we knew what it was going to look like in 2010 the sensible thing would
be to be doing it already! We would move into a situation where we could
meet the challenges. But what might some bits of the system look like?
First of all I think the notion that you need to get collaboration between
institutions and in particular institutions in large cities is a good
development, but I think that we have also got to explode the notion that
we are constrained by campuses. Do we need to think about virtual environments
and the way in which courses and expansion in the system can in fact be
achieved, not only by face-to-face tuition, but also through distance
learning delivery? How can on-line systems meet these challenges? One
of the things I think we should not trap ourselves into assuming is that
the kind of higher education system we all experienced, either as students
or as people working in the sector, should be replicated over the next
ten years. It is not more of the same. It is actually more that is of
the same quality. If we operate a mass system which is of lower quality,
then I actually think we have provided people with something which is
pretty second rate. It is important in quality terms. I also think it
is incumbent upon us to think innovatively about the ways in which we
can deliver higher education, both teaching and research, and how that
is going to require multimedia delivery both on and off campus. We also
need to think about cross fertilisation between different areas and how
we can begin to work creatively with business and industry.
The only thing that I reacted against badly in the background paper was the comment about there being “a great danger of higher education working with business and industry”. I actually think this is a great advantage but it must be on our terms, not that we merely become the handmaiden of business and industry. The key is how you get that balance right. Those in the social sciences and humanities are well placed to argue that case. But how can this happen? We need to think about what the student market might be. If you take the assumption that the retirement age for those people outside of higher education is lower than for those in higher education, then we will find relatively large numbers of people in the commercial sector taking early retirement. This constitutes another market where we can recruit people who wish to engage in higher education as a leisure time pursuit. But how do you contact people who may have read accountancy or physics when they were undergraduates in the sixties but may have over the years acquired a great interest say in fine art and now wish to read for a degree in the history of art? How you begin to tap into those markets? I do not think we have even begun to explore recruitment in some areas for some of our institutions.
We need to think about progression routes and how we can be innovative in attracting a wider clientele into higher education. We need to develop foundation degrees so they are an absolute resounding success. If we going to argue that there should be more postgraduates in the system and there should be more people engaging in higher degree work particularly at masters level, we need to ask, what are the ways in which you can step on and off the educational escalator and does all higher education work have to be completed in two or three year blocks? Can you have a system where over ten years you can collect a whole range of modules or granules of modules in order to trade them in for different qualifications en route? Can we think about accrediting work while not necessarily talking about terminal qualifications? This involves looking at education as a process and looking at ways in which you can step on and off the educational escalator.
We also need to think carefully about how, in delivering this new expanded system, we retain and recruit staff. One thing that strikes me very forcibly in the arts and social sciences is how, in terms of making higher education attractive, one of the most valuable commodities is time and how we need to maintain and deliver good sabbatical leave schemes within our institutions. This does not mean that you simply say to people. “Well you think up 500 words demonstrating what kind of project you want to do over a term, meanwhile your colleagues will carry all the work that you have done with no recompense going into the department.” because if you do this, you are simply relieving people over a 10 week period only to overload their colleagues. This means that when people return from leave, they will re-join that system. We have to think differently about it. Medics in the United States follow a six months on and six months off system so you focus on your service and then you have a block of time to focus on research. But how can that work for the arts and social sciences where we all need intensive periods of time to engage in the kind of investigations we do?
How far do we need to think about the kinds of infrastructure that we require? For example, how do you support research libraries? One of the things that has interested me greatly, is the call for evidence for the Research Libraries Support Group. We asked what kind of support is required for research libraries? The most difficult bit of evidence to get is what people in different subject disciplines want to have provided. How is it going to be different in the social sciences and humanities compared with the kinds of requirements in physics and astronomy for example? What kinds of resources do we need? These are some of the questions that I think social scientists and those from the arts are going to have to look at.
So what are the challenges and opportunities? First of all I think that the social scientists and those from the arts need to participate in the system and argue the case for further investment in the system. This is not just outside institutions, it is also inside institutions. I would also agree with Martin Harris that those in the social sciences and the arts need to argue for science to be properly resourced, because if science is not properly resourced those in the arts and social sciences will suffer in the process. From that point of view it is important to think about the social contexts in which people operate. For example, in what kind of context can world-class research and high quality teaching flourish? If you walk into a higher education institution how does it compare with the kind of facilities available to those who chose to work in business, industrial and commercial settings? Are second rate and tatty buildings the kinds of environments, which we think, are appropriate for people to work in? Personally I do not think it is appropriate. I do not think it is the image that we want for higher education.
I also think we need to consider the flexibility we want in the next decade in terms of the time to degree, the kinds of courses we provide, the kinds of areas that are put together and how links can be made across disciplines. In particular, how can you link the arts and the sciences? What links can be made between social sciences and science? But how can we begin to make those links? Doing science projects with support from ESRC can lead to EPSRC projects with colleagues in science and in engineering. This will release larger resources than could have been obtained in the social sciences. What kinds of training do we need to provide in the next 10 years? If we are going to have distance education, what kinds of training do we want for ourselves? What kinds of training do we want for our students? Is there going to be progression from undergraduate education to postgraduate work? We have begun to sort that out more clearly. But what after postgraduate education? Do we need postdoctoral fellowship schemes in order to make sure there will be continuity in appointments? But then if you have continuity of appointment up to the post doc period it does not seem to me to be appropriate to find people who are in their late thirties still on temporary contracts or fixed term contracts. From that point of view, I think Deans need to consider how we begin to put in place our successors to champion the cause of disciplines. This is going to come down to questions of pay and prospects and there is going to be a huge debate in the next few years on pay and conditions of service. We have to declare that there is a problem with regard to pay and conditions of service. So how do we begin to improve that and especially for junior colleagues? Is it sufficient to focus on pay or do we need to focus on the conditions under which people are working?
This brings us back to some of those questions about resources required to deliver the kind of system we have argued for and which I think we are beginning to get. We are beginning to see more people from different social backgrounds coming into HE. But who argued for that? It was research from the social sciences. Who argued the case for changing the gender composition in HE? Not just in higher education, but in education, that was research evidence from social science. When people tell me about equal opportunities in areas like GCSE and A/S, and A2 and how important it is to encourage people from different ethnic backgrounds, we need to remember that all this is based on social science research. One of the things we can begin to do is to explore some of the opportunities that are available in higher education to promote and develop the system, as we would want it. We have now reached the point where we are talking about a mass rather than an elite higher education system, greater participation, a variety of educational products, wider research opportunities and good links within the community. These are all exciting opportunities for the arts and the social sciences.
Professor Roderick Floud, AcSS
Chair UUK, Vice Chancellor of London Guildhall University
I add my thanks to those of my two colleagues for the preparatory paper
that was produced; I did find that very interesting. I will try and pick
up one or two of the things that Martin and Bob have said in the course
of the my remarks and perhaps particularly begin with Bob’s last
remark about the impact of social sciences. One of the things that really
pleased me about Estelle Morris’s speech at London Guildhall University
about three weeks ago, her first speech on higher education, was that
she began by talking about social class and educational opportunity. in
terms, which particularly please me because, it was actually my aunt (Jean
Floud) who wrote the first book on social class and educational opportunity
in the 1950’s. It’s good to see that we can now talk as social
scientists about issues like that rather than having to be mealy mouthed
about such questions as the relationships between social class and economic
deprivation and educational opportunity.
Our task this morning is to forecast the state of academia in 2010. Actually asking a historian to be a visionary is a very difficult question. Historians aren’t good at vision they are good at telling people what happened. But it seem to me, that rather than starting by thinking outwards from where academia currently is to where it ought to be in 2010, one perhaps as a social scientist ought to begin by asking what society will expect of us in 2010. If I can give some personal history, society’s expectations of higher education have changed enormously in the past twenty five to thirty five years and are likely still to change. I actually began my teaching career a year earlier than Martin about three or four hundred metres away from here at University College. When I began, after two years of research I didn’t have my PhD, I hadn’t published anything; I got a lectureship at University College London and I was expected to do four hours a week of teaching. That was not regarded as an unusual teaching load at University College London in those days, there was one distinguished professor in the department who had managed to negotiate a teaching load of two hours a week in each alternate year. I was expected at that point to complete my PhD and obviously to teach and so on but the main expectation on me, and I think the main expectation in the sense on Universities, at that time was research; teaching played a relatively minor role in it. I think I actually did attend the first ever course for universities teachers on how to teach which was laid on at the University of London in about 1967. But otherwise one was expected to know how to do it without being told how to do it.
So, at that point that society’s expectations of universities were really very low indeed in one sense. They were expected to do research and were expected to teach a small proportion of the population who were passing through ‘a rite of passage’, where it wasn’t actually expected that what they did at university would make a great deal of difference to them. It would sort them out possibly; it would sort them into people who were academics, which was of course was the highest thing that you could aspire too, or if you didn’t do that then you might go off into the city or into business or something like that. That was, certainly in the economics department at UCL, that was the hierarchy of aspiration. I have a very affectionate view of UCL I should say, I am just using it as an example.
So at that time society expected very little of higher education. Over the years the level of expectations of higher education has become enormously greater. In the course of the last few months we’ve had the impact of new ministers coming into office in the department of education and a new rhetoric coming from other parts of the government, from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor among others; what all the rhetoric reflects I think is the very substantial expectation of higher education. It’s important to remember that the pledge to increase participation to 50% was the first time that higher education has ever figured in the manifesto of a successful major political party in this country. It is a sign that the society’s expectations, government’s expectations are now, that we shall have a mass higher education system with the 50 per cent target reached in 2010. That has become part of the targets of ministers in relation to the treasury and the targets of civil servants in relation to their performance related pay. Therefore we’ve now got a situation in which a major target, a major expectation of higher education has become a very central part of government policy.
The overall rhetoric of government, is however very much wider. We are now expected, collectively, and apparently sometimes individually, all of us, to be good at widening participation, excellent research, equal opportunities, links with business and community, links with schools and colleges, contribution to local regeneration, contribution to local culture, contribution to local sport, and moreover, we are expected to be good at management and the governance of our departments/institutions. You can find all these expectations in the recent speeches from Margaret Hodge and Estelle Morris about higher education. If one believes in trajectories of public policy by 2010 we will be expected to do very much more. And in a sense that’s what one would expect because the move from an elite to a mass system really does mean that higher education becomes a different aspect of society. Instead of being something of a mystery and confined to a small number of people, it becomes a central part of people’s life experiences.
Managing those expectations is really the great task of the next eight or ten years of higher education. That is not going to be an easy task and there is a great danger; historians know that rising expectations lead to revolutions, and they lead to unintended consequences, and they lead to disappointment. The interest in higher education which we see from a wide range of people in government is in one sense a great opportunity for us, it is certainly an opportunity in the spending review that comes next year to try to attach some money to some of these expectations but it also clearly does have dangers for higher education and it is difficult for higher education itself to shape it’s future in these circumstances.
There are currently I am told 11 reviews relevant to higher education being undertaken in the department for education and skills and Hefce I know are conducting other reviews in the system. It is frankly very difficult indeed to forecast what the outcome of all these reviews will be. The leaks that are coming in The Guardian and THES illustrate the fact that in a sense everything is open. There are very, very major discussions taking place on the entire shape of the sector and about a whole range of other factors. So, forecasting what the situation is going to be in 2010 is I think is very difficult. We can begin by saying it is going to be very different from now and that it reflects a very important change in my view in what society expects of us.
I can’t resist saying something about federalism and mergers since part of my time at the moment is, being spent on Universities UK (UUK) and the other part on the potential merger of London Guildhall with the University of North London. I accept a great deal of what Martin has said but I have to say and he would expect me to say in the context of the proposed merger with the University of North London that I am bit sceptical about the viability of the federalist model. I have to particularly say that because having spent not only three years at University College but 13 years at Birkbeck, I have witnessed over that thirty-five year period the essential collapse of the best federal university in the world. The University of London was a federal university with an inter-collegiate teaching structure in which students were able to move from college to college to do special subjects or optional subjects and most of that has collapsed. Now, is it really feasible to resurrect it? I think probably not. Therefore one has to turn to other solutions. In our merger we’re trying to have a full merger rather than to have what I think is probably an unsatisfactorily halfway house of the federal situation.
There is one actual prediction and ambition that I wanted to mention for 2010. I hope we will get it before 2004 and that is I hope by that point we will have an arts and humanities research council. Therefore by 2010 that will be really well established and we shall be achieving at least equivalent funding for the arts and humanities to that achieved in the social sciences by ESRC. We will really have put Arts and Humanities Research funding and activity on the national map in the way I think it has been achieved by the ESRC in social sciences.
Professor Sir Martin Harris AcSS
Vice Chancellor, Manchester University
My brief was to not to talk about immediate issues such as the QAA and
RAE and I intend very much to follow that advice and talk about two or
three things that seem to me are likely to shape our environment as academics
and in particular as Humanities and Social Sciences academics over the
next few years, and it will be for you to judge whether you think that
vision is likely to come about or is so defective that we should seek
to move into a different direction. By way of prelude, can I say I was
very interested in the summary of the views s of younger colleagues, thanks
to everyone who put so much effort to achieve that. It is extremely interesting
as seen from the perspective from somebody who was a young academic in
post in the 1960s, the era after Robbins. The is a very great difference
between now and the near certainties, indeed the unquestioned certainties,
which were facing young academics at that time. There was one model, still
an elite model Oxbridge dominated, and when I was a young lecturer at
Leicester first you appointed staff, then you built a building and then
you admitted students. It is a very interesting sequence that seemed likely
to go for eternity. In fact it only went on for a small number of years.
And interestingly, I say to colleagues in the new universities, the distribution
of research money was still then largely formulaic. I mean if you started
in a new department or you appointed a group of staff then virtually per
capita the R money followed on a formula basis, it was a very different
world in which we started. I learnt very many years later that 1967 was
year it was absolutely easiest to become an academic and that naturally
was the year when I started!
I want to talk about the shape of the sector, so I am going to start at the outermost level of the facts that might influence where we go. In particular you will all have seen Estelle Morris talking about the need to have and to protect diversity within the sector. You will also have seen Sir Howard Newby’s views, which he expressed on many occasions before he became Chief Executive of the HEFCE and which he holds very strongly, that the current distribution of institutions, the currently banding of institutions is not appropriate. If you believe the latest stories in the THES, then you can see that view probably holds as high up as the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. There are those who think, that if we are going to move away from ‘a one size fits all’ funding methodology (and if we don’t we won’t get diversity or at least we won’t sustain it) then there need to be radical ideas afoot. Now that doesn’t mean radical ideas will actually be implemented, and I have seen this happen on many other occasions, but certainly there are radical ideas afoot.
Why might one be looking to sustain diversity of mission? Let’s just look at it in abstract first before we decide how we might do it. Why should we want to do it? I think the argument is fairly clear, that what the university sector has to achieve is not necessarily the same as what every particular institution has to achieve and it is the elision of those two things in casual analysis that seems to me lie at the root of many of the difficulties facing the sector. So, for example, the social inclusion agenda is an agenda shared as far as I am aware by 95% of my Vice Chancellor colleagues right across the spectrum of institutions. But stretching the ablest, stretching the very ablest to the limits of their ability, is also part of the agenda of a world-class university sector. So we have to have a system that can do both of those things. That doesn’t necessary mean that any one institution can do it in the same class at the same time to heterogeneous group of students but there is a spectrum of needs for our increasingly diverse students of a kind that in the Post Robbins era material simply didn’t emerge. It was just assumed that who was every student was admitted was capable of following a traditional academic degree taught in a fairly traditional way.
To take another obvious spectrum - and I’m deliberately exaggerating this to make my points. The university sector needs to sustain world-class research and by world I mean world class. People go around using ‘world class’ as though it means ‘pretty good’. They are not synonymous. This is a global market place now for research and the truth is that anybody wishing to commission research does not have to stay in the UK anymore. So if you want to be world class you have to be world class, but at the other end of the spectrum (and that is not an up and down spectrum but a side ways spectrum). There are many, many practical research projects going on in universities in all our towns and cities that are directly relevant to companies in and around the institutions or to the public sector in and around the communities of which that university is part. Working with SMEs, for example, solving their real problems is just as valuable but is not a synonym for a world-class research. There are all things, which the sector has to try to do. So it does not seem problematical in principle to say we should be looking to fund institutions in different ways to ensure that they do well what they do well and these will be different things in different institutions.
The problem comes as soon as you try to put this into practice because it isn’t as simple as saying there are two or three or four categories of institutions and that the colleagues within their institutions would agree that we are ‘X’ and they are ’Y’ and there are a ‘Z’. I immediately find that all the edges are fuzzy (which they are in every single parameter that you and I can discuss today) whatever the parameters are, they are fuzzy and they also vary as between different of parts of the same institution. At best we can categorise some part of an institution. Then moving towards a funding methodology that reflects those ‘different missions’ becomes exceptionally difficult and I put it to you that reason it has not happened is not because many people don’t think it is a desirable thing in principle but because it is extremely difficult to set up a funding methodology that rewards strength ‘A’ in one institution and strength ‘B’ in another institution and strength ‘C’ in another, particularly when they overlap and particularly when many institutions would be arguing, or many units of assessment will be arguing, that they are moving along a trajectory in a particular direction, they may be this now but in five years time they hope to be that and so on. So all of those things make it quite problematical and when Estelle Morgan said the other day ‘that she’ ‘wants to have funding methodology that sustains diversity’ I notice yet again that she even didn’t give an outline as to how that could be brought about. So there is something that seems to be a very real goal but I think we are far from seeing how best to achieve it. I think there are ways and if there is time in the questions session we might talk about it.
The other difficulty with doing what I just suggested is danger of ossification. If you look at the sector systemically in 2001 or any other year then a funding methodology which says “OK this is the profile of the institutions right now this is how it will be funded in future” ignores the obvious fact that institutions go up and down on whole variety of parameters at all times and I think everyone of us at some point, in our career has been in a institution which, had it been ossified at that moment would not have had the subsequent successes it has had. So I think wherever you are in the sector a system that says ‘ right that’s it and this is the system’ is something very weird.
The third which is, I guess, directly relevant to many of you is that we have to be absolutely sure that whatever happens to institutions, the career aspirations of young staff are not damaged; in other words there has to be sufficient mobility within our diverse sector so if a person’s career, aspirations change or achievements change or whatever, there is a way ahead that isn’t an unbridgeable chasm.
The last thing I’d say in this brief introduction is that the research categories that I have learnt to understand well in are based on the needs of big and expensive science (and I do accept that if you are going to fund telescope based astronomy or major bio-medical research then you do have to concentrate funding very heavily). It seems much less relevant and much less appropriate to use these categories in humanities and social sciences so there are some interesting points about there.
So having said that funding separate institutions by a very diverse methodology is not going to be easy, is there a way forward? This is where I think my views and those of Howard Newby have always been rather close. I am going to talk about big cities. I am going to talk about big cities not because I am unaware of institutions that are not in big cities but because 80% of our staff and 80% of our students are actually in big cities. So if I talk about big cities that’s is not because I am unaware that this model won’t absolutely fit every part of the UK. I think we have to move to some form of fairly explicit confederalism in our big cities. We have to be much more explicit about the relationship between institutions in our big cities so that we can gain the benefits of the concentration of very expensive research facilities. We can get the benefits from reduced overheads and administrative costs and we can generalise the best and let me just give you some Greater Manchester based examples of what I mean. Any university that seeks to do well in science needs expensive facilities. We have in Manchester University and UMIST and Manchester Metropolitan three sets of chemistry teaching laboratories all within fairly of each other. When one of those universities decided to refurbish fully very recently, it turned out that in a deal known to neither to the two vice-chancellors one group of chemists borrowed the facilities of the other for whole two terms and this had no adverse impact whatsoever on either University. Now I just put that to you. It’s a real example. In other words for two terms we managed without one complete set of chemistry teaching labs out of three. I put that to you as an excellent use of public money. If you can manage for two terms, perhaps you can manage forever with a bit of rationality. We already share all our library facilities, we share all our computing facilities. All of those things between three contiguous universities. What I meant about generalisation of the best is that clearly implies that every staff member and every student can have the level of service which is the best of whichever of those universities provides the best. Just one little anecdote. The assumption when we put our libraries together was that Manchester University’s library would be swamped. What you find is that our University library is indeed now made use of most by researchers but the undergraduates have found that next door in MMU the undergraduate library designed and set up for undergraduates is actually easier for them to use and the flow has been significantly in that direction. Two very different flows but everyone is getting better service than they were before, again an-over simplification but I think the point is clear.
So in the long run, say a decade hence, I would like to see in the great cities a loosely co-ordinated set of campuses, perhaps a City University of Greater Manchester, which might start at 16 and would have clear ladders of progression and where staff members might do much of their teaching in one campus but might if they were so motivated have access to the research facilities and join in the research activities in some other campus. I think this could work in all of our major cities and probably avoid the difficulties of ossification of either bits of institutions or crucially of individuals. At the end of the day academia is about men and women and they must always have opportunities to teach and research at the limits of their capabilities.
Two other things. A controversial statement perhaps but I think born out in my experience empirically is that Humanities and Social Sciences are best funded where science, engineering and medicine are flourishing, put this to you and I think my colleagues in Manchester would not dissent from this. It is often part of the job of a vice-chancellor from a Humanities background if the University is strong in science and engineering and medicine, to make absolutely certain that these subjects continue to flourish because if they don’t the costs the amount you need to subsidise medicine from French is a great deal more than you need to subsidise French from medicine, and if you look around the system where Arts Faculties are doing really well it is almost always where the big sciences are doing really well as well. It may be crumbs from a rich man’s table but something I think is something we all believe is that, our battles are not with our science, engineering and medicine colleagues. The better they do, the better arts and social sciences are typically going to do. One big example: the massive input of SRIF and JIF money to science and medicine in my university has enabled us to use our own money to build a new Music and Drama Building. There is no way we could have started to build that Music and Drama Building if it weren’t for the money poured in from other sources to resolve some of the health and safety issues in the laboratories because they would have always taken priority as they are the law of the land. So, make sure our colleagues flourish and we’ll flourish. Final point. If the RAE is going to get even more selective and all the signs are that it is, we do need to be aware that we must somehow not deny opportunities especially to young colleagues if that comes about, I think, going back to my confederal model, that’s part of the answer. Varied missions must maintain opportunities for staff and students and for the local, national, international stakeholders. The real question we might be asking is if very great selectivity is appropriate for science, engineering and medicine is it time to re-open the debate about whether those same categories are appropriate for humanities for social sciences? I have always had my doubts about that, and I was in on the very first RAE so back in the mid-eighties I am one of the guilty men. I have always had my doubts, it is a very balanced question but I think it’s a question you might want to come back to in the Spring when you see the effects of the distribution of resources that will emerge from RAE 2001.
Vicky Davies
Modern Languages – University of Ulster
My area is Modern Languages and I was to look at the bond between teaching and research. I actually split my thoughts into two. One is prior to getting a first job and the second section is when you get your first job. My first thought to myself, prior getting your first job if you are entering research in modern languages. “Why bother?” It is a valid point at the minute. Funding in Northern Ireland is biased towards students in sciences. They have an extra funding entitlement and the implication therefore for somebody going into arts, modern languages in my case, is that sciences are more highly valued from within academia itself and that arts research is somehow less important. If you do get over that barrier your PhD is insufficient. You would have to have an array of other research and that continues once employment in higher education is achieved. The problem is do you actually want to get into higher education? That is assuming that you want to go into higher education teaching. In the situation in languages, languages departments are being cut across the board and the number of languages students is dwindling: Who are you actually going to teach once you get there? So those are some of the considerations and also, if you’re going into modern languages - if you want to then teach in higher education then that’s fine, but what guidance are you given as a postgraduate student who does not want to enter teaching or enter higher education? So what guidance is given from a research perspective and what guidance is given from a careers perspective? Your choice of research is a catch 22 situation particularly in modern languages. If your research is literature based, where do you use it outside academia? And if your research is in area of applied languages it’s viewed within academia as being somehow “inferior” to literary topics. The notion seems to be being that able to speak French is somehow a happy by-product of understanding eighteenth century poetry, but it’s not actually any good in its own right. So the definition of research is not necessarily viewed in terms of its worth or benefit to students. For example, research into the pedagogy of language teaching versus literary topics: as far as academia is concerned literary topics are considered to be more valid and more worthwhile. So there is the conflict of perception between the RAE which tends to value the literary based topics, and the QAA notion of currency and innovation where research is supposed to directly inform and contribute to the teaching and learning experience of the student. You are in a catch 22 situation. You then get your first job in HE. You are coping with the transition of a sector which is moving into a more mass system. Where it is moving into something that’s run along the lines of a business where the student is a consumer. I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with that, but you are also working within a system which looks at an elite standard, so there is sometimes conflict there with people that you are working with. When you start your first teaching job the symbiotic relationship which you thought existed between teaching and research is somewhat rent asunder. Teaching becomes all consuming. It is something new, you have to write new lectures, you spend an awful lot of time doing that. New lecturers are also usually required to complete a formal teaching qualification within the first year of their new post, that’s also time consuming. Plus the fact that the course for the qualification that you are following takes place at the same time as you are teaching students. The assessment you have to do as part of that course happens at the same time you are having to mark the assessments that you are setting for your own students. So it’s an incredible work-load. There is an imbalance there. The administration of teaching takes forever. A- you’re new to it, so you don’t necessary know what you suppose to be doing, and B- there is a perception in some cases that much of the administration that’s been done within a culture of the university is being done to satisfy the constraints imposed by QAA. Colleagues of mine have got QAA subject review starting on Monday. The paperwork is immense. Whether it is all necessary I am not too sure. Some of it is, because some of it hasn’t been done. But there is an awful lot that it seems to be laying paper audit trails for the sake of it. So research in your new job takes a backseat for a couple of years, despite the pressure to complete your PhD if you haven’t done it. Plus, the pressure to fulfil RAE obligations because that was probably why you were employed in the first place. There is also the problem of research areas. I touched on it earlier: that you have the conflict between applied languages, research and literary based topics. You have interesting stuff that you may want to research, but it is not necessarily attractive to students. That is coupled with the imbued perception of what viewed from within academia as true or worthwhile, valuable research. Then you have the drive towards interdisciplinary research which has its own headaches, particularly if you are talking about a large institution where it is very difficult when you are doing all the other things, to go and actually meet somebody that might like to collaborate with you. So how do we cope? Basically it’s dependent on the individuality of line management. If you have a sympathetic line manager you are more like to be able to cope than not. Where you are allowed time to learn the ropes and still allowed teaching and research to proceed hand in hand if you are lucky, and also dependent on the sympathy and the kindness of colleagues, who are under the same pressure from QAA and RAE.
Margaret Forsyth
English Literature - Salford University and Edge Hill College
I have just completed my research in English Literature at Edge Hill College and currently teach at Salford University and at Edge Hill. I think my paper broadly is looking at very similar issues picked up by the last two speakers, but also thinking about consultation and recognition for part time tutors. Which I feel is a quite serious concern. I think firstly I would like to pick up on something on a comment made by one of the speakers in session one, about the experiences of teaching for the first time. From my point of view I find it very, very intimidating, I know that is a view shared by many of my colleagues. In the absence of formal training, teaching practices for newly emergent researchers going into teaching tend to be based on the experience of their own best lecturers and tutors. Ultimately one’s own teaching evolves over a period of time, but it is very much a case of trial and error and there are a very few opportunities to learn from the outset the very basics of how teaching and assessments should be carried out. I started teaching in my first year of research and have carried on ever since. I’ve taught between six and 15 hours a week, sometimes in more than one institution and that’s across of wide range of subjects and also trying to accommodate the teaching of those subjects to the different practices of a range of institutions. Now those hours of teaching, that are officially recognised as work, don’t reflect the amount of time spent in areas such as planning, preparation, assessment, or students study support. Part time tutors for example are still expected to offer office hours but in the different institutions that I have taught in, things like accommodation are very, very inadequate, where to you take those students when full time members of staff are using their facilities that they have? Also there is the issue that the amount of time spent with students isn’t covered by the amount of money you are paid. I think that also in the present situation where there is little movement job wise in colleges and universities as an effect of that fewer opportunities for a full time academic career. There is increasing pressure on part time tutors to carry out as much teaching as they can partly to make up the economic shortfall if you have financial considerations, working for six months, out of 12 months isn’t a very practical approach and certainly not one that’s supported by bank managers. But also there are other implications attached to that. There are implications for research. The presence of part time staff allows full time staff to carry out their own research activities but then the practicalities make that difficult for a part time tutor on a temporary contract to use their time in the same way. I think the other problem attached to that, that for part time tutors there is very little support in terms either of funding or facilities to pursue one’s own research. I know there is some concern at the moment about completion rates which has been raised this morning and recently I reacted with some horror to a suggestion that bursaries should be withheld until completion of the PhD. What are the financial implications for research students and in particularly for the older research students who may have family financial commitments? That is one issue that going to be addressed. Bursaries are not always adequate to live on, not always available and this again increases the pressure to teach and once again the teaching payments do not really reflect the work carried out and tend to dry up during holiday and assessment periods. On the issue of consultation I think which is all tied in to some of the points I have raised. There is very little or no recognition that part time staff are researchers too. There is no support in the field. Once research is finished research students, or ex research students, tend to fall into a state of limbo which is in the present climate going on for longer than one would normally expect. First time posts aren’t coming up that easily and so you are trapped in cycle of continual part time temporary contracts. The other issue of consultation which I would like to signal at this point is the fact that part time staff because of the nature of the work don’t always have access to those structures within the department that give a full sense of how that departments operates so you are always sort of existing on sort of margins of that department. In some institutions you are not even invited to meetings, which would help to develop fuller understanding of how structures work or policies and practices operate. The other area is the issue of induction courses. Full time members of staff, certainly in the institutions that I have worked in, have a period prior to starting their teaching and research, in which they take part in, induction processes. Those processes aren’t generally open to part time staff, in my experience, and that leads to significant gaps by part time staff to teach in an institution. I think really in terms of future directions we have to start thinking about ways in which we re-think the whole issue of teaching and research for newly qualified researchers. I think it is very, very difficult to expect a research student to launch straight into teaching and maintain their commitment to research as well without some sort of course that can help them at least get to grips with the basics of what teaching demands of you. PGCE courses aren’t always practical. As Imogen pointed out a ‘general fit’ all course is not always adequate to the demands of different disciplines. I think there also a case for it, accepting part time tutors on induction programmes and also more encouragement to be actively involved in the research activities of the department. Mentoring is another area which I think could be developed more substantially. Perhaps a member of staff, a full time member of staff available to support part timers specifically. Inclusion in staff appraisals with the same levels of guidance on career development and future direction of research will overall work towards a system that recognises part time staff not only as teachers but also as serious academic researchers. Finally there is one issue that struck me quite significantly today, and that’s the emphasis that has been placed on idea of the young researcher and young staff. I think we really do have to accept the fact that the increasing emphasis on widening participation and widening access means that research students are going to be a little older than the traditional model and I think that has to be taken on board, if we are going to think about the future developments in research and teaching to the year 2010.
Dr. Godfrey Keller
Lecturer in Economics, Oxford University
First, would like to say that despite what I may say later this is the greatest job in the world. You get so many discretionary times and your paid to sit and think. To me the downsides of it are whatever has an impact on those two. So teaching impinges on research time and the pay isn’t that good. I left my job ten years ago to return to studies and it has taken me that ten years to reach the same nominal level of financial reward. I feel that I didn’t think I had the same view on the teaching aspects as previous two or three speakers, the VC’s. I feel that teachers in primary and secondary education do have a vocation I am glad it’s a vocation but teachers in tertiary education certainly amongst my colleagues I have spoken they view teaching as a necessary evil. Just part of the job. They have to do it, but they like to do as little of it as possible. We feel that undergraduates, possibly just fall into or fall off the end of school they fall into tertiary education. They are very passive. If they do come to higher education it’s the next thing to do and they are going to end up with a BSc or BA and a broader spectrum of job opportunities and consequently it is not terribly rewarding. Despite What I said about teaching, teaching postgraduates who have made an active choice probably before going to higher education is much, much more satisfying and it naturally leads on to their research and our own research. With lecturing and it varies from to university to university, I feel it is much better for older wiser colleagues to teach certainly students in their first year at university. Especially the subject like mine economics, is not often and certainly not sometimes not taken and often not offered in school, apparently at ‘A’ level. Also on my particular subject it becomes, a very technical subject and I don’t think and we are talking that down to people who feed into the higher education. It is very different on the continent in France for example, which produces the best economists in Europe you just can’t take economics as we know it as an undergraduate. You are only allowed to do it if you’ve got tooled up in maths, physics or engineering or some such subject. I think you will find in most UK economics departments at least half the teaching and research staff do not have Economics as a Bachelors degree. A University with its colligate system such as Oxford has its own particular problems, lecturing is provided by the Department on behalf of the University and classes or tutorials are provided by the college and this leads to a lot of duplication of effort by the college tutors who have to design tutorial schedules and from the prospective of the undergraduates if they happen to go, to end up in the good college for that subject and could be well taught and poorly taught subject if their colleges does not teach that subject very well it is tough on them. I think there should be some way of smoothing out the idiosyncrasies associated with the collegiate system and possible some federal systems that we are going to suggest.
As far as staff induction is concerned I think we can sum it up in one word and that’s ‘pathetic’. There is none at all at college level and almost none at the departmental level. It was slightly better when I first joined the LSE before going to Oxford and seems fairly dependent on the particular person who is head of department at that time. I also think that the problem of induction or lack of it depends on where the particular institution recruits its staff from and I am aware that I was first person for ten years that had been recruited for the Oxford of Economics Department who hadn’t had an immediate prior association with Oxford, where it’s assumed that you know the ropes and if you don’t that some process of osmosis was very successful. They think you will be swimming or floating rather than sinking. I was assigned an academic mentor but unfortunately for him spending time with me would affect his research and so we see each occasionally or we see each other quite a lot but we don’t talk about my research or his. So there is negligible line management and I think universities have to get realer. Private companies would not be able to get away with this attitude again you don’t need as much contingencies as in a private company you are more responsible to yourself than you are to your line manager. It is a bit like being self-employed if you don’t do your research today it’s still going to be there for you to do tomorrow, unless of course you have some very understanding co-authors.
So one last almost a little plea about what the vice chancellors to talk amongst themselves about is. If you are going to expect someone to write and deliver one or more new lecture courses in their first term. Then it would be convenient so at least to have a harmonised start at the beginning of September not the beginning of October when you have got about two days left in which to go through your options if there is any and then delivery your first lecture the day after you arrive.
Which I mentioned earlier this is my is my sort of final point I do feel quite strongly that it is good encourage interactions to our sister disciplines psychology and political science in particular that mean have some implications for psychical location where people actually site themselves at their place of work and also to foster joint research projects. I know one has started relatively recently in UCL between the economics department and psychology department and it’s working very well. So I just encourage you to encourage other social science departments to interact more and this is a postscript that comes back to right from the beginning I feel it is a shame that more and more of my colleagues are being stolen by business schools, as business schools have pots of money……..
Dr. Matthew Watson
Political Science and International Studies – Birmingham University
Thanks very much for the invitation to speak, and thanks in particular for putting me into a situation of having been described as a ‘young person’ already five times this morning. I am sure my students will find this particularly amusing on Monday when I tell them because they will see themselves as the only truly young people around of course. My brief this morning is that I have been asked to talk about financial constraints and so that’s exactly what I will try to do: and my financial constraints. I certainly don’t intend to get on any soapbox and engage in a ten minute wages whinge, and I think that people who have already made the choice to go into an academic career do so with their eyes open on the wages front. I think we’re all perfectly attuned to the fact that there are opportunity costs of academic careers in terms of foregone wages. I think we are well aware what the academic labour market now is like and what wages for us elsewhere in other sectors might be. So financial constraints to me certainly doesn’t mean altogether the wages issue on its own. I think financial constraints impact more in terms of the way that my working life is structured, both in terms of the way I have to structure it for myself and also in terms of the way that it’s structured for me by my line managers.
I work in a department which I think in terms of age profile would be seen to be relatively young; there are nine of us in the department who are thirty five or younger. So maybe what I can do is just to give you a snippet of the types of conversations that we have with one another in the senior common room when we are talking over our sandwiches. Because the language of financial constraint is one that we’re very adept at using, and the notion of financial constraint and the way it is likely to impact upon our professional lives is very clearly there. It is part of our professional vocabulary even though I wish it wasn’t and I will try to highlight one or two of the ways in which it slips into our professional vocabulary in the way we talk to one another.
First, in terms of our teaching, I think we are very well aware that there are financial constraints even in terms of our teaching and we identify and recognise the way that we are encouraged - we’re ‘encouraged’ - to teach courses that might have high student numbers, high student demand. We’re encouraged to think of the way that we can teach courses that might be best for business, in terms of putting people on seats. This is certainly true in the department I work where we have a large MA programme. Many of the students on the MA programme are similarly persuaded to part with very substantial tuition fees, and this now applies across the sector - ___ institution is exempt. In terms of the teaching that we are encouraged to do on the MA programme, we are always encouraged to teach those mass appeal courses rather than ones that might interact more closely with our particular research interests. I think this is a shame. I think it takes the teaching aspects away from the wider research environment in which we operate. I’ve actually always enjoyed teaching my undergraduates, because of the intellectual stimulation I get from them. I am fully aware that a lot of the ideas that I seek to work with in developing my research work come from conversations that I have had with my undergraduates. I would like therefore to be able to structure my own student time and the contact with my students in such a way that I can always expose myself to those types of conversations. This is not always possible when we are being encouraged to think in terms of “persons on seats” courses.
Secondly, in terms of research, financial constraints definitely impinge upon the content of the research that we do. Increasingly I feel I am being encouraged once again, probably my favourite word for this morning, ‘encouraged’ to shape my research in such a way where I might become an increasingly attractive proposition to a research funding council. I have had a fairly heated exchange of views with a senior colleague over the last few weeks because he was thinking just how good it would be for the department if he and I put in a significant research application for European Union framework five funding. This would be fine but the content of the research that he wanted us to undertake was certainly not something that I was too keen on doing. It certainly did not fit with the view of how I wanted to shape my research in the next two or three years. So in terms of Martin’s story about receiving a letter from a junior colleague asking for rather more guidance, and rather more shaping in terms of their research opportunities, I would quite actually like to be freed rather more from that. I would quite like not to feel the constraints of research funding bodies in terms of persuading me that certain points of research would be more preferable to another.
Thirdly, I think the notion of financial constraints also impacts in terms of the social environment in which we work. It impacts amongst junior colleagues in the way that they see each other, in the way they interact with each other. I am thinking in particular of the excessive use of short term and fixed term contracts and the way that this disturbs the possibility of junior colleagues thinking of themselves primarily as colleagues in the first instance. I am actually one of the fortunate ones. I am not in that contractual position though I do see those people that I work with who are in that contractual position viewing each other implicitly, maybe subconsciously, and certainly not anything that they would want to own up to doing, but view one another as potential competitors for the next job that might come up in our department, rather than truly as colleagues. I think this is a shame. I think this has or is likely to have massive impacts in terms the morale of the profession as well as anything else.
I am aware that I often talk for rather too long and I am coming up to the end of my ten minutes. So if I can just finish with one anecdote: an anecdote that comes from one of my PhD students, who was sat around the Christmas dinner table last year and his grandma was pushing him on why it was he wanted to do a PhD, and why it was that after his PhD he wanted to become an academic. So he outlined all the usual reasons which I am sure we have all been through, the usual reasons that we are really enthused about the prospect of being an academic. We are very enthused about that ability to sit and think and to write our thoughts down. His grandma could not understand this, but ‘why?’ she said, “why are you wasting a good education to become an academic?” I think that this may be the key in terms of thinking about the way the financial constraints impact upon junior members of staff. We have to continue to believe, if our sector is to thrive in the future to 2010 and beyond, we have to continue to believe that it is worth while, that it is worth it to make financial sacrifices that we know we will have to make in terms potential wages forgone. We can only do that, if some of the other financial constraints that impact upon our daily working routines are lifted from our shoulders. I hate the thought that future generations of PhD students will see an academic career as a waste of a good education.
Summary of Research Findings
In preparation for the Conference, and to establish the discussion issues on which it should be centred, SCASS Steering Committee members were asked to contact a small number of colleagues in their institution from the segment identified and seek their comments on the present situation and future prospects of themselves, their discipline, HE in general, their place in institutional structures, etc. Enquirers were asked to keep the field of discussion as open as possible.
Views were communicated by email, or in small group meetings. The number of individuals giving views was probably about 40. Between them, they offer comment from different regions (Scotland, N Ireland, Midlands, N-E and S England), different kinds of institutions (ancient foundation, old civic, new university, College of HE), and different disciplines across the humanities and social science range.
This was not intended to be any kind of representative survey, which would have taken time and money beyond SCASS resources and, indeed, beyond our proper remit and function. The document compiled from it only just qualifies as a snapshot — and a very blurry one at that. It does however, I hope, offer substantial points and sharp perspectives to help generate the day's discussion of how our sector is perceived by its newer members, and how their problems and pre-occupations sit alongside those of senior colleagues inside institutions, and making and implementing policy on national bodies.
The document has been put together from a range of direct responses in the form of individual emails from the younger colleagues themselves, and reports on meetings from Committee colleagues, of varying length and detail. I have not very often specified the kind of discipline, institution or position (eg. postgraduate, lecturer) comment(s) came from, to maintain anonymity, and to avoid making a long document even longer. I have tried to ensure that the whole spectrum of comments given has been represented. Material in direct quotes is exactly what it seems, with minimal intervention for readability. The rest is my paraphrase, as close to the original as possible. The questions taken as headings are more or less what everybody was asked, in some form or another, but I have moved around answers to make a readable document.
Jennifer Birkett
18 October 2001
a. How do you perceive the current situation in HE, in general terms?
Generally, respondents noted that problems affecting arts and social sciences were also affecting everyone in HE, across the country: funding shortages, pressures to recruit more students, pressure to find external funding. One group of postgraduates however (Modern Languages) perceived a marked difference between the situation of the sciences - felt to be much more favourable - and our sector. Whereas science-based departments have seemingly little difficulty securing funding, from Government and private investors, our sector did not enjoy such good fortune. One respondent asked how relevant our research was felt to be in an increasingly market-based economy. Arts suffered from having inappropriate models from the sciences applied to it: in funding terms, for example, AHRB money was perceived as going on big projects, which were less relevant for arts. Another respondent hoped the conference would address 'the continued lack of funding for Arts/Humanities in general, and the downgrading of Arts and Humanities in terms of the status accorded to these areas.'
People who had already worked in a number of institutions noted that the way these system-wide problems affected people on the ground was very institution-specific. Even in the same segment (e.g. 'old' as opposed to 'new' universities), there seemed to be significant differences in funding regimes and priorities. There were very significant differences in administrators' ability to handle forward planning, which filtered down to generate more or less dynamic situations on the ground. And differences were noted in departmental heads' capacity to generate enthusiasm and good morale in their staff teams.
A disciplinary-specific dimension was also noted. Modern Languages was presented as an obvious case, with a recruitment crisis coming through from the schools. Classics has had to reinvent itself to find new ways of recruiting students as the subject has disappeared in schools.
b. What specific issues have touched you personally?
It was a considerable surprise, one respondent said (and others agreed) to find out how important finance is in determining programme content and methods, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Modes change to facilitate recruitment. Teachers can't do exactly what they think is intellectually most appropriate; it's got to be a case of negotiating between what you want and what the target cohort is thought to want.
Job availability was a concern for everyone, though the degree varied between disciplines. Drama, for example, was described as 'expanding', with posts available around the UK. The situation was more difficult for Modern Languages, and especially for particular specialisms within that subject. A group of postgraduates working on the applied language side perceived a tendency on appointing committees to choose researchers in literature, rather than the language teachers required to answer national needs. One postgraduate respondent noted 'the lack of employment opportunities for postgraduate students who wish to teach at third level, and the lack of career information for those who may not necessarily wish to teach.'
Quality of management was raised by a research student employed as a project research officer : 'It seems to me it very much comes down to the line-manager how he/she deals with appraisals and other issues _ I found it extremely important to have a good working relationship with your line-manager and have the possibility to brief/debrief on a regular basis .. But perhaps the main problem is that the role of the line manager very much boils down to a personal approach _ perhaps there is a need to train line-managers.'
The teaching experience was cited by many, especially as regards the unsatisfactory nature of teacher training. Staff Development courses had to pitch at too many different levels of experience to be really useful. ILT preparation added extra load to already heavy timetables. The personal mentor system was commended as giving the most useful teaching support. One respondent working in a subject centre noted the need felt by young staff for more focused discipline-specific training opportunities, and cited from personal experience as a new lecturer: 'the difficulty I perceive within the various institutions (4 so far!) in which I've taught about innovating and trying something different within the classroom. Course structures and their delivery are often determined by a collection of institutional forces, into which the un-knowing new lecturer is slotted, and told (more or less) that "this is the way we do things here". So this makes it hard to think differently, or suggest alternative teaching methods.' Others, in contrast, felt that heavy course responsibilities were compensated by the scope they gave to remove 'dead' elements from the syllabus and design more interesting programmes. There was however general agreement that it was inappropriate to pile too many heavy responsibilities onto people at the start of their careers.
The nature of the undergraduate population is seen to be changing in some disciplines. Recruits are coming from Europe, attracted by undergraduate programmes that are better than their own, more postgraduates are coming from the US, and non-EU countries. Anxiety was expressed over changes in traditional undergraduate syllabuses as the system expands and comes under stress. 'How can we sure that we are giving our bright students enough to vector them into becoming future colleagues?'
Strains between teaching and research. Teaching is not given its appropriate value. Unfairness is built into the system. Young staff in temporary positions are loaded with teaching in ways that make it very difficult to build a research profile; then the permanent jobs go to people with published research. The less conscientious and more selfish prosper at the expense of the more committed. The system exploits goodwill and discourages real commitment. Modern Languages lecturer: 'I have been in my first permanent post for 18 months now, and have just completed my PhD. Needless to say, the chief cause of the delay in submission of my thesis has been full-time employment. In this area at least, at a local level (that is, within the immediate working environment of languages), colleagues have been very supportive, and have so far made administrative burdens relatively light to facilitate my pressing need for research time. Overall, though, this must be seen in the context of the perennial difficulty of balancing research and teaching, and is thus not restricted to the problem of finishing a thesis while starting a new job (in any case, a fortunate situation to be in, given current circumstances, despite the difficulties it presents). '
There was much dissatisfaction with the two exercises around which teaching and research are now organised.
TQA is a drain on resources, an extra burden. It is seen to lead to 'an awful lot of concentrated effort, much of which seems wasted.' 'The QAA review I saw generated an enormous paper-trail, took up a huge amount of the time of people who are already overworked, taking away the time available for teaching and research, and produced results which were of little use to anybody. I saw some QAA feedback of some kind _ we graduates thought that what was said was either blatantly obvious or just false.'
The Modern Languages lecturer cited above: 'The perceived conflict between research and teaching — activities which should in fact be complementary — currently manifests itself most strongly in terms of the twin pressures of RAE and QAA. The problem faced by new staff in particular is that as well as having to balance research and teaching with the usual QAA-related activities, they have, as probationers, a number of specific obligations in relation to QAA, most notably attendance and completion _ of an accredited course in university teaching _ . While accreditation, like training itself, is welcome, and indeed is increasingly becoming a requisite for employment as a teacher in higher education, many younger staff have a number of concerns about the way in which it is being implemented through courses such as the ILT-approved PGCUE. _ run (by design) during the usual teaching period _ prevent the devotion of one's full attention to the teaching and learning of students _ project work required [for] the end of the semester, precisely the time when teachers' time is taken up by essential assessment activities Whilst on the one hand this is useful training for the juggling of responsibilities which is an occupational hazard of academic life, on the other, there is a percption that much of the activity required of participants is enacted simply to oil the wheels of the QAA mechanism _'
The RAE has destroyed real scholarship, undermined academic developments, there is now less time to read the work of others as the need to publish becomes more pressing, mediocre work in edited books replaces well thought out monographs, it has blocked academic exchange ( ' a dramatic reduction in attendance at seminars and conferences is already noticeable since i started as a graduate student in 1994'). A group of social sciences postgraduates indicated that RAE has affected their view of their own department (good) and the potential of others as employers (bad).
'It [is a] highly artificial means of assessing academic quality which has extremely damaging consequences for research. _ encourages premature publication and the recycling of old material by academics at all stages in their career _ discourages the undertaking of major innovative projects which often take considerably more than four or five years to complete.'
'It sometimes keeps good people out of university jobs because people who dedicate more time to publication and less to their students are chosen. There's room for more distinction between teaching-based and research-based jobs; teaching achievements should be rewarded as well.'
One respondent: 'Keeps you on your toes'.
Interdisciplinarity. All respondents in one mixed group said they took it for granted that they lived and worked intellectually in an interdisciplinary culture. There was no longer a culture of loyalty to a single area. But university structures were not adjusted to take account of this; talking across disciplinary borders was not built into the system.
c. The postgraduate experience
A social sciences group was reported as having mixed reactions. Some had hoped for a more 'pleasurable experience', and most had felt 'rushed' (but, said the reporter, 'our completion rates are high'), and the experience had been more isolated from staff (not supervisors) than they had hoped for. Disillusionment about the limits put on intellectual engagement for its own sake was strong.
Postgraduate teaching load: postgraduates find it useful career experience to have hourly-paid teaching, but it interferes severely with the progress of a PhD, and is not properly supported.
The lack of recognition among the general public of the value of postgraduate work is demoralising.
d. Are you planning an academic career?
Yes. I really enjoy research, and it's a luxury to be paid just to think. Having so much discretion over how to spend one's time is a big bonus.
Yes. Flexibility of time (compatible with family life), freedom of expression, contact with students.
Soc.sci. postgraduate group: one rejected 'a career that offers 60hrs+ working weeks, low salaries, no job security, little chance of advancement, lots of bureaucracy and very little appreciation'. Other reactions were more mixed: 'The attraction is intellectual freedom, and some ability to control where one puts one's energy. The repulsion is long hours, bureaucratisation and low pay.'
'Six years of university-level study in modern languages — and for what? As I enter the final year of my PhD, I ask myself this question all too often. Whereas I hope to become a university lecturer in French or Spanish, I must confess to finding this an increasingly unfeasible prospect. The UK seems particularly affected by the problem of dwindling numbers of students taking language degree courses. This leads us to wonder whether or not there will be jobs for us, if numbers of students continue to fall and university language departments become like those businesses who have a lot of staff but no one to shop there, and are consequently forced to close, or scale down the workforce. This is perhaps one of the most urgent challenges that need to be faced by those involved in language teaching, including potential lecturers like ourselves, who hope that there will be jobs for us at the end of our studies.'
'Hopefully! Flexibility, self-fulfilment, chance to travel, intellectual stretching. Preference: working part freelance as a writer/researcher, with some kind of academic part-time position at a decent Central European university.'
'Yes, because that's the best way I can see of spending time doing what I love, which is working with people on research _ The doubts I have are over the extent to which teaching and admin. will prevent me from doing research, so if I can't find a job that has a balance I'm happy with, I will find another way than a traditional academic job.'
'The insoluble difficulty is how to combine professional and private life. A successful university career seems to demand that you move around as and when jobs present themselves, regardless of any personal ties. I don't see any way of solving this.'
e. If you are already in an academic post, is it turning out as you expected?
Soc. Science respondent: 'More or less. Disappointments: lots of teaching, disorganisation of department, college, plus their interaction. Positive features: I really enjoy research.'
Arts respondent: 'Yes. Disappointments _ limitations on what I can teach - little/no input into courses. Positive features: being thrown into all sorts of teaching experiences whilst also having time to do my own research.'
f. Are academic salary levels a concern to you?
'Yes - for those working in the south (facing rising housing costs - the need to rent in this area, for example, means that I can never save any money — as rental prices are almost twice as expensive as mortgage rates, but the latter are impossible to secure, given the need to move on regularly, to fit in with partner's needs, and the high cost of housing.'
'Extremely. I will be almost thirty by the time my Junior Research Fellowship finishes and still living on a salary which does not enable me to do anything more than subsist _ nor begin to pay off the debts which have accumulated during eight years of undergraduate and graduate study.'
'The fact that a newly-qualified city solicitor currently earns more than an Oxford law professor (that is, more than I will ever earn if I reach the pinnacle of my career) is profoundly depressing.'
'Clearly we deserve to earn more for the hours involved in teaching, researching, etc. However, it wouldn't put me off becoming an academic, as the flexibility and intellectual level of the work compensates for the money to some extent.'
Project research officer: 'I am under the impression that these short contracts are something we have to live with, and I guess it is handy for the University/employers Whether or not it is good for the individual is a separate story.'
g. What do you think about the kinds of ideas being put forward by the
HE planning people for the future development of the system?
These responses, from the mixed group, were prompted: the group was not aware what was being canvassed and asked for examples. Committee reporter instanced a recent discussion document on postgraduate provision from AHRB, and indicated some of the questions asked there.
Centres of excellence are a good thing from the individual postgraduate's point of view. Numbers matter, and it's immensely stimulating to have a good cohort of people in your area. The ESRC system of accredited institutions is a good idea, provided you are working in one. There are however problems: fossilisation (bad for the development of discipline), access opportunities (postcode lottery, limited opportunities for a particular undergraduate community - retaining a broad base is very important for access).
Central planning nationally (e.g. to preserve and develop availability of particular subject specialist areas). Fine as long as there is input from the disciplines themselves. And all depends on who 'the planners' are.
h. How do you see our sector of HE 20 years from now?
1. The kind and level of academic study we now engage in will have gone.
2. Rationalisation will have generated
· fewer undergraduate institutions (amalgamations);
· different kinds of programmes, or more intensive teaching within
existing ones;
· different student orientations - in drama, for example, academic
postgraduate study is giving way to study by intending practioners;
· change of funding structures, with more students paying their
own way.
'Increasingly miserable?'
'If somebody doesn't do something, standards in the humanities in this country are going to suffer. The treatment of academics in this country strikes me as scarcely sustainable. A university is not a business.'
'Things can only get worse. Government destroyed state schools which were selective on grounds of ability, and now wishes to make Oxford fall in to the same comprehensive, egalitarian, wholly disastrous philosophy.'
'I worry that financial pressure and pressure from RAE-type controls distracts universities from their wider social role. I also worry that humanities in general will get shorter and shorter shrift if they don't publicise their benefits to society more, and more effectively.'
'I find talk of privatisation, increasing lack of government funding, company-driven research, and rising student fees worrying.'
'I think it's likely that some kind of privatisation will happen, but I don't think that will solve any of the problems, which are to do with poor management and lack of focus, hence the out-of-control administrative burden which academic staff are overwhelmed with. I wish that good management practices could be spread through HE, but I don't see much chance of that, regardless of whether this is in the public or private sector.'
'What many younger staff members' concerns may ultimately be boiled down to is a worry that if students are treated as consumers, demanding customer service ... then the logical endpoint of this essentially ideological culture is that universities (or most of them anyway) will be perceived as businesses, or at best teaching factories existing primarily to serve the interests of business, rather than institutions which value the beneficial pursuit of knowledge, implemented through the complementary activities of teaching and research. If higher education continues to go in this direction, many younger staff, reluctantly prepared to accept comparatively low salaries because employed in areas of expertise which are of great interest to them (and able to share this interest with students), may eventually vote with their feet. The reason most younger staff of my acquaintance became academic professionals was in order to engage in teaching and research, necessarily understood as symbiotic activities; if universities cease to provide an environment in which they can do so productively, they may seek alternative environments elsewhere.'
i. How do you see the future of your own discipline?
Historian: 'Unsure.'
Economist: 'Bright, especially if we talk more to the Psychologists or
maybe the Political Scientists.'
Peace Studies: 'Potentially quite positive.'
Philosopher: 'Seems to me in good health.'
Lawyer: 'As lawyers and judges continue to increase their political power,
it s hard to see law schools dying off. The struggle is to keep law as
an academic liberal discipline, not a glorified training course. More
philosophy, politics and history would be my preferred solution for this.'
Modern Linguist: 'Language learning in the UK seems to be on the decrease,
particularly as far as German is concerned. We need to boost European
awareness and awareness of our nearest foreign cultures. Whatever level
academics work at, they should take responsibility for this.'
j. What do you think would be five good topics for future SCASS Conferences to focus on? - given that we try to identify the issues that are of immediate and major importance for the ways the system is going.
1. Investing in people, which means:
· recognising what people in the system actually do.
· restoring a sense of professional integrity (so much emphasis on external regulation implies our own professional integrity is not sufficient).
· recognising how much the system of external regulation creates non-useful work.
· making training person-centred - looking at how what you're offering fits what people have already got.
· creating a public culture in which PhD students are recognised as having important status - not just dismissed as time-wasters.
2. Developing models of co-operation between subjects to promote interdisciplinarity - generating new structures that will work effectively.
3. Developing the postgraduate community.
4. Remaking the research/teaching connection, and securing for both elements equality of esteem.
5. Fees.
Acknowledgements
SCASS is very grateful to everyone who contributed their views to the
conference document, and to those who collected and collated the data.