Decisions, values and choices

A recent post for Platform Ten wondering whether politicians are on a hiding to nothing:

http://www.platform10.org/2011/11/decisions-values-and-choices/

Back to basics - finding the narrative

A new blog post for PlatformTen:

http://www.platform10.org/2011/11/back-to-basics-finding-the-party-narrative/ 

When is a sector not a sector?

‘When is a door not a door?’ begins the old joke. ‘When it’s ajar!’ concludes the groan-inducing line. As Christmas cracker japes go it is pretty poor, and that is truly saying something. However the basic play on words is something that should be looked within the realm of the HE ‘sector’.

What is a sector? It may seem, like the joke, a rather simplistic question to ask. But for its future strategic direction the definition of what constitutes the HE sector must be looked into.

A sector is defined as a group of organisations that ultimately have the same mission and that, importantly, contribute a significant slice of the economic capital of a country. Isn’t it nice, even in semantic terms, for the sectors awesome economic contribution to British GDP to be acknowledged? But look under the hood and the plethora of different agendas is pulling various institutions across the HE spectrum of service delivery so little cohesion can be discerned.

Teaching or research-intensive? Politically aligned or independent? Private or public? Arts or STEM based? Specialist or general courses? Academic or vocational? The list goes on. What benefit do the 165 HEIs get from being labelled in sector-specific terms? It’s like a family. The parents may definitely be yours, but the children have been separated and raised independent from one another. Their personalities and philosophies are different. Their value systems and internal practices are unlikely to be similar. Academic and professional support structures are hardly carbon copies and standardisation for ultimate national quality control is unheard of.

And that’s just what is so powerful and simultaneously so weak about the HE ‘sector’ – it’s ability to manage its affairs relatively devoid from external influences, but it’s clunky difficulty in evolving quickly and efficiently to meet the challenges of the new world order.

Through the intended increase in competition, our sector is transforming into a conglomerate of loosely related institutions that conceptualise, develop and effectively manufacture different ‘things’. This ‘thing’ is of course a course and creates the parameters for an individual to theoretically improve their skill set ready for entry into the world of work.

So does this make higher education an industry rather than a sector? As the marketisation of higher education begins to take hold, demand will be led by the students to whatever course they perceive will most likely enhance their employability prospects. There will be, of course, a handful who will still continue to pursue non-compulsory education purely for the sake of learning, but with the dearth of negative media coverage of the funding changes I can’t see them being the majority. As courses and degrees ever-increasingly become commodities to be traded and sold to the highest bidder, higher education institutions will proceed towards a future defined by the quality and quantity of output and the return on investment for the students and the taxpayer.

Sounds awfully like an industry doesn’t it? 

The perception of the value of HE and the perception of the value of an institutional individual profile (internationally, research, teaching etc.) and the individualisation of each will determine the popularity of the 'sector'. But unless a common mission and agreed lobbying angle can be ascertained then a difficulty of government in deciding HE policy will come from the disunity of our industry.

We should try to fix this.

Universities' crisis of image - how journalism impacts on the value of higher education

Here is a small piece of research that I carried out for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations on the relationship between HE organisations and the print media.

Comments and thoughts, as ever, are welcome:



NB: This paper is intended to stir debate around this topic rather than be scrutinised for academic rigour - so be gentle!

Live chat: beyond the press release - innovative PR in higher education

Starting at 1pm I'm participating with a bunch of other incredible people in a Guardian debate discussing innovation in HE PR.

Questions can come from anyone but we are starting with: Is the press release dead? What role can new tech play in communications? Should PRs be sidestepping journalists altogether?

Come join in!

A no brainer: the pointlessness of no-confidencing Willetts.

News broke yesterday, shattering and defying all expectation – the University of Cambridge did not succeed in its attempt in carrying forward a motion of no confidence against universities minister David Willets.

Actually that’s not technically true – it wasn’t the entire University. In fact it was only the governing body, the Regent House, which backed the motion after receiving a petition with 150 signatories. Those in the academic community were the only ones able to participate in this public censuring. In Regent House there are 4,500 academic and academic-related staff.

The vote was close. 681 voted in favour of the motion and exactly 681 voted against leading to a tie. Unlike in most contact sports, there is no second draw and the motion was abandoned – either you win the motion outright or you don’t win it at all.

Removing my instinctive conspiracy theory/PR stunt detecting hat for a second, just the numbers astound. 681/4500. That’s just over 15% of those eligible to vote voted against Mr Willetts. That’s hardly a great confidence knock is it?

This isn’t the first time that numbers fail to add up to a damning critique of the Government’s HE policies. At the University of Oxford’s legislative body last month the motion which successfully passed to censure Willetts won by only 283 votes. This group is made up of a large number of compulsory members as well as ‘all persons working in any university department or institution who hold posts on grades 8 and above’. Grade 8, for information, is approximately £36862 - £44016. That is a very large number indeed. Much larger than 283.

Leeds again has its data skewed: "There were many abstentions and even those who voted against the motion said they were unhappy about what was happening. They were just concerned if it was the right time and place to pass a motion," said a concerned academic. They are right to be concerned - I've taken issue with the number that didn't vote but how many voted against? How many abstained?

Only eight departments out of 95 at King’s College, London, have successfully passed a vote of no confidence. That’s less than 8%.

At Warwick University 1,062 lecturers and students have signed a petition on this subject – as of 2010 Warwick had 4,448 staff and 18,434 students. That’s a combined population of 22,882. That makes the percentage of Warwickians that have no confidence in David Willetts: just over 4%.

I accept that just proposing a vote of no confidence is bound to have sent shockwaves around BIS, but on closer examination it really is nothing more than not-very-impressive PR stunt. The percentages speak for themselves. Like RMT calling a tube strike with less than 10% of its base, if it is below a defined percentage of the eligible participants then it should surely not pass and should have very little impact on the business of governing. This smacks of a centrally orchestrated smear campaign strategy to me.

The autumn is when I predict it will all kick off. Students and staff will return full time and the real ramifications of a mis-communicated and vague HE White Paper will start to emerge. Once everyone is settled back, around about mid-October, the rhetoric will fly and emotions will run riot over an issue that deserves careful deliberation and academic debate, and not a spin-induced placard wielding frenzy.

Comment on 'Degrees of Value' by Professor Hall, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford.

Link to blog here.

 

Professor Hall is absolutely right – the value that is inherently expressed through a superficial glance at the KPIs is nothing short of painting over the cracks of a problem that is entrenched not just within the sector, but within the consciousness of the populace at large.

The financial reforms to the sector put funding in the hands of the student. But relatively little thought has been given to how the decisions are made that result in a student choosing where it is that they go to study – and therefore where the funding is allocated.

The KPIs follow concerns from many parts of the sector that there is not enough information to satiate the inevitable demand from prospective students and their parents. They seem to be made up of a variety of different surveys and statistical data that are already in existence without consideration about whether those sources need to be adapted at all.

Professor Hall makes a good example from the KPI about ‘student satisfaction’ being similar to the National Student Survey in only being based on the opinions of final years. Why not others? When you are a college student applying do you care about the opinion of third years? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s for the ‘not’ that data should be collated.

The discussion of SROIs is interesting – though I feel slightly uncomfortable with the unconscious assumption that the quality or value of higher education can be accurately summarised in monetary terms. Social mobility? Money. Employability? Money. It suggests an expectation that this is one of the most crucial factors to market when attempting to attract students. Can we not encourage a system or a tool of evaluation that expresses the value of higher education not in purely financial terms but in a format not totally subservient to the presumption that money matters more than education?

SROIs are interesting as a measure, though as with KPIs I think we have a way to go before either of them accurately provides the sort of rigorous detail that new students may require.

Is this reflex symptomatic of a guilty sector and a cautious government?