All in a Don's Day (8 page)

Better? Well, the ‘Students and Universities' report of the House of Commons' Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee has some pretty harsh words for the government. It criticises the idea that more university places can be made available without extra funding. It queries the effect of so much emphasis on research output (writ in stone by the Research Assessment Exercise). And it recommends that the government takes a hard look at school education before simply bashing the universities (the standard response to any question of aspiration, social mobility etc. etc.). So far, so good.

But there is worse in the small print.

As I read this document, I asked myself where the Committee had been for the last 20 years. There are a series
of recommendations which urge greater cooperation between universities and schools ‘to facilitate widening participation in higher education'.

Absolutely. But do they not know that, where I come from, this is happening already? Indeed I am, at this minute, proudly carrying round in my bag a copy of a letter from a retiring teacher at both independent and maintained schools – thanking my own Faculty for all the hard work and input we have given to his/her schools over the last 30 years.

Likewise, we have for years been taking ‘context' into account in the process of admitting students – another thing they seem to think of as radical and rare.

Then there is all the silly stuff about how badly we compare with the student experience at universities in Europe and the USA. According to this report, our students study (including library time) less than students in other European countries. And their 30 hours per week is just half the 60 hours that students in the USA claim to study. At this point, anyone who has experience of university teaching in the USA and Europe must say that they cannot have been comparing like for like.

So who are ‘they', and how did they do the comparisons? And where was Cambridge in all this?

‘They' were the ‘Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills' parliamentary committee, 13 of them (11 men and 2 women). And to produce this report they had met just nine times to hear ‘evidence', seven times in London and once in Liverpool and Oxford. They also went once to Washington to discover about US universities.

This begins to explain why they hadn't caught up with the kind of university experience that is my bread and butter. They had not come to Cambridge once, nor did they hear oral evidence from any Cambridge student or academic in post.
(Maybe we could have written in, but didn't – perhaps because we were too busy.) Their special advisers were all those who worked in research into higher education (not an ordinary practitioner among them).

And the only access they had to any comparative material from overseas was written statistics or their single trip to Washington. Only one member of the committee (Gordon Marsden) had any experience of working or studying in an American university. None had experience of a European campus. I have both. And to me it seems absolutely preposterous to suggest that (whatever the current difficulties of the UK system) the undergraduate experience elsewhere is better.

If you are worried about assured standards in the UK, try looking at the USA – where the grades for each course are normally given by the lecturer who taught the class, and by no one else. When these guys criticised our system, with its double marking
and
external examiners, did they realise that? And didn't they realise how much of the teaching in elite universities in the States was done by postgraduate students, when they criticised that aspect of UK universities?

Meanwhile, as Cambridge kept quiet, others in the academy made their views very well known to the committee. Michael Arthur, the Vice-Chancellor of Leeds, keeps cropping up in the report – and being patted on the back for ‘innovations' that have been common in Cambridge (or at least in my subject in college) for years … a specific programme of support for those students from non-traditional backgrounds etc. etc. Presumably he wrote in vociferously, and no one really knew whether his innovations were innovations or not?

And they didn't always check out whether he was right. He claimed that 9 members of the committee were graduates of
‘Russell Group' universities. I could only make that 7 members. But I did notice that only 2 out of 13 had done Arts subjects (unless Rob Wilson did – whose degree I can't discover). Is that significant in their pushing of Science?

I don't mind a group of MPs doing a quick raid into higher education. Indeed I am rather pleased that they do. I do mind the rest of the country imagining that this is well researched and well founded. In fact this is precisely the kind of stuff I would warn my students against.

Mary B′s quite wrong on this.

While Cambridge and one or two others may be exceptions to the general UK – and others in Europe – rule, experience on both sides of the Atlantic does indeed indicate to me that US students do about twice as much work as British students. Even in the case of Cambridge and similar, where the work load is higher, comparing like for like, US students at places like Harvard do a whole lot more work – reading, writing, discussion groups etc. – than those at Cambridge.

MB also notes that in the US system (in many cases) ′the grades for each course are normally given by the lecturer who taught the class, and by no one else.′ The fact is that the burden of administering second gradings and external examining is vastly out of proportion to the gains accruing to students from them. In many UK-style universities weeks are spent on these processes, where it would be much better to, yes, let the lecturer who taught the course just grade the papers and have done with it.

OTTO

Otto – I find it slightly incredible that US students work on average twice as hard as UK students. First, I probably spend 7 hours a day working during term time. Now, I′m a history student and thus tend to have a much lighter work load than some of my scientist friends who are in labs 9–5 and then work in the evening to finish tutorial sheets. Let′s say they do 10 hours a day of work in the week and 7 at weekends. So my question is: what physiological difference do US students have which some how allows them to survive on 4 hours a day for sleep and sustenance?

JOSH

I think the question of workload is irrelevant. You wouldn′t say it was because he worked many hours that Mozart ended up a good composer. He was because he was. Whatever the demands made on the student, the university must be judged by the effect they have, and not in terms of the demands themselves, such as the number of contact hours and so on.

MICHAEL BULLEY

20 August 2009

It's the A level season again, and everyone feels they have a right to pontificate on the state of the nation's youth, the failings/successes of education etc. etc. That includes me.

Here is my self-opinionated Top Ten of what
not
to believe:

1. A levels are getting easier
.

No, they are not. They are different from what we used to do, and they don't test some of the skills that I personally value highly (‘open-ended' essay writing, for example). But the hard work required is just as it ever was.

2. More students get A grades because they are now better taught
.

No, I'm not saying teaching isn't better now. (I honestly don't know.) But I strongly suspect that more students are getting As because today's A levels have much clearer criteria, towards which it is easier to work (contrary to open-ended essays).

3. More students get A grades because they are cleverer than they used to be
.

No, see 2 – but I do suspect that they work harder, partly because it can be easier to work harder towards clear criteria. (Personally I think that this is lousy training for later, but that's another story.)

4. Some A levels are easier than others
.

Well, this is a bit of a no and yes. I would tend to rate someone more highly for future academic success if they had As in Latin, Maths and Further Maths … than if they had As in (say) Media Studies, Health and Social Care, and Sport Studies (though I could be wrong). But there isn't a single spectrum here. The kid who gets a top A in Further Maths might be completely hopeless at Media Studies.

5. The brightest kids are those ones who manage to clock up As in six or seven subjects at A level
.

No way. This is the A level equivalent of stamp collecting. No one ever needs more than four A levels – and if that leaves them any free time, it would be the best thing intellectually to read novels, go to the movies … and grow up.

6. It is the job of the best universities to take into account that many disadvantaged state schools tend to underestimate their pupils' A level grades when they make predictions
.

That, at least, is what John Dunford, head of the Association of School and College Leaders, has been reported as saying. No it isn't – or only in part. It would be more to the point if he got his Association to do something to rectify the problem at school level.

7. Things will be put right if we reintroduce the old-style essay-writing exam
.

Not entirely. Exams are only as good as the examiners. The new-style ‘clear-criteria' exam can be marked by the relatively inexperienced (that's in part why they were invented). In the old days you could have a more open-ended essay style of question, because you had relatively few candidates and
a cadre of experienced examiners. Where will you find enough experienced examiners to take this on …?

8. The International Baccalaureate is much better than A levels
.

No. The grass on the other side always looks greener, but if we were to go over to this
en bloc
, you'd find just as many complaints. The breadth will be good for some but not for others. There is no quick fix.

9. It is better for the country if more kids take Science and Maths at A levels (according to Schools Minister Iain Wright)
.

No – not necessarily. Or only if they want to, and that is where their talents lie. In the long term (and even in the short term, I suspect) kids well educated in any subject are good for the country's success and economy. Forcing them to do science only produces unwilling and bad scientists.

10. Geniuses pass their A levels at a preternaturally young age. (There were a pair of eight-year-old twins this year, I believe, who got a B and a C in Advanced Maths.)

No, no, no. Maybe they are clever, but the reason they have had this exam inflicted on them is that they have preternaturally pushy parents.

The whole business of marking, per se, seems desperately flawed. And yet how to get along without it? Like the opposite sex, there′s no living with it and no living without it – only it′s also impossible to fall in love with.

PL

I disagree with all this. The clear criteria thing is obviously what is needed – no woolly fluff. Fax fax fax and stubby forefingers.

′Teachers′ are the labourers of the system, brute sluggers hacking off the coal – it′s the sorters and refiners and pit-owners who give the process value – and make the coal useful for the productive sector so it can produce the things we need.

All this open-ended sludge and ′whole man′ crap is just the exception that proves the rule that where there′s muck there′s money.

XJY

And one thing to
believe
about A levels: 50% of A levels taken in private schools are awarded a grade A compared to 20% in state comprehensives. And Mary believes that Cambridge does not need to do anything about this.

STATE

State – it is not Cambridge′s job to set to rights the shortcomings of the state school system. If they take that on as a matter of course, and keep making allowances, there is no incentive for improvement. I, as someone with grandchildren in the state system, just wish that the powers that be could differentiate between ′equality′ and ′equality of opportunity′, and not try to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator. The result is that somebody else has to pick up the pieces, and teach the basic skills at 18 that should have been honed by the time A levels come around.

JACKIE

24 September 2009

A few weeks ago I had an email from a friend who works on
Times Higher Education
(
THE
) asking if I would contribute 500 words to their forthcoming feature on ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of the Academy'.

I was tempted, but as my favourite sins (notably sartorial inelegance and procrastination) had already been taken, I gave it a miss. And when the article actually appeared last week, I hardly had time to look at it (except to notice a cheap pot shot at the complacency of nineteenth-century Classics by the multi-talented Simon Blackburn – who should, in this case, have known better).

I hadn't realised that there was a storm about Terence Kealey's piece on ‘Lust', till I got an email from a man on the
Evening Standard
, asking me if I would like to comment on it – largely because I had past ‘form' on the issue of sex between students and university teachers. So I took a look at it.

‘Clark Kerr' it began, ‘the president of the University of California from 1958–1967, used to describe his job as providing sex for the students, car parking for the faculty and football for the alumni. But what happens when the natural order is disrupted by faculty members who, on parking their cars, head for the students' bedroom … Why do universities pullulate with transgressive intercourse? … The fault lies with the females.'

‘The myth is', he went on, ‘that an affair between a student and her academic lover represents an abuse of power. What power? Thanks to the accountability imposed by the Quality Assurance Agency the days are gone when a scholar could trade sex for upgrades.' Anyway he conceded, ‘Normal girls … will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless most male lecturers know that most years there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration … what to do? Enjoy her! She's a perk. She doesn't yet know that you are only Casaubon to her Dorothea … and she will flaunt you her curves. Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife.'