So What? Oxford's Congregation Non-Confidence in Government

This afternoon (7 June 2011), Oxford's "dons' parliament" voted 283 in favour (5 against) of a motion declaring no confidence in the current UK Secretary of State Universities and Science (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13681202). Oxford's Congregation is a body composed of all the the university's full time academic staff. The total number of eligible voters is over 4,500. The turnout for this vote was one of the highest for a meeting of Congregation in five years.

I could not agree more that the UK government's higher education policy is chaotic. It is direction-less. It is disjointed and it is short sighted.

The purpose of the non-confidence vote is to convince the government to reverse some of the decisions it has made with regard to higher education funding. However, Oxford's Congregation members (and the universities to follow in the wake of Oxford's no-confidence motion. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13627420) may not have the impact on government policy they are hoping to inspire.

The problem with the vote is expecting the government to (a) see Oxford Congregation as a threat and (b) to expect the public to be drawn to academics' opinion that government policy on higher education is poor. The unfortunate reality that Congregation only represents the academics of Oxford makes this non-confidence vote smack of self interest. Student support of the vote runs the same risk. Higher education does not affect everyone equally - those that access universities are, largely, from upper-upper middle classes. Oxford's Congregation vote can easily be seen as a group of privileged people complaining the government is threatening their privilege. Hardly inspiring public support.

If anything, it will suggest an arrogance that many already associate with university academics: "agree with me because I know best". There are other, and potentially more effective, strategies to convince the public of the higher education cause. These alternate strategies could have focused on access to higher education (please see my article on the cancellation of the AimHigher program, http://www.universityaffairs.ca/missing-the-target.aspx).

If the government takes any action, such as forcing David Willets to resign, it will likely to be to install a government 'strongman' into the post to bring the higher education sector to heel. From the government's perspective, this vote of non-confidence (and those to follow at other universities) is only evidence Willets hasn't been tough enough on the university sector (case in point, the shockingly ill-advised comments by Willets's former tutor at Christ Church College, Oxford http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8557553/David-Willetts-former-economics-tutor-backs-calls-for-his-resignation.html). If Willets does resign, he's not going to be replaced with a kinder, gentler Secretary of State. It will signal a crack down.

The best case scenario of Congregation's no-confidence vote, in all likelihood, is that the government does not respond at all.

Missing the Target – the Great Mistake of Canceling the AimHigher Program

Missing the Target – the Great Mistake of Cancelling the AimHigher Program

Andrew M. Boggs

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (“Spending Freely on Research, Canada Reverses Brain Drain”, 20 February 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/Spending-Freely-on-Research/126425/ ) discusses the advantageous position the Canadian higher education sector is in compared to the United States. The article focuses on Canadian research funding policy since the late 1990s. New programs and funding streams have been introduced designed to attract scholars from around the world to Canadian universities and to keep Canadian rising stars in the country. These programs came toward the end of a period of national austerity as Canadian federal and provincial governments made massive cuts to public spending (including cuts to operating budgets of universities). Research funding represented a politically justifiable means of directing funds back into the higher education sector. Jennifer Lewington, the author of the article and a Canadian-based reporter on education issues, draws the conclusion that these sustained investments in university research are putting Canada in a stronger position than the United States and the United Kingdom to recruit the next generation of world-leading researchers. The likelihood of Lewington’s prediction coming true is strengthened by new visa restrictions on foreign nationals coming to the US and the UK. While Canada may not be the primary English-language destination of choice for university academic staff, it is certainly eating into the future prosperity of UK and US-based university research.

There is an equally significant policy divergence occurring between the UK and Canada in the realm of student access to higher education. The UK’s new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government conducted a Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) through the autumn of 2010. A number of programs faced the chopping block in the interest of reducing public expenditures. One of these programs was AimHigher. The AimHigher program was introduced by the Labour government in 2004 as one of the tools through which the UK would achieve its (now abandoned) goal of 50% school-leaver participation in some form of tertiary education. AimHigher funded programs, organized and offered at the local school level, included such activities as visits to university campuses, residential summer schools in universities, open days and student mentoring schemes. The programs were targeted to schools and students in disadvantaged communities to encourage and support participation in higher education. AimHigher funding will stop as of July 2011. The government has suggested that the negative impact of killing AimHigher will be ameliorated by a new National Scholarship Program (see “Aimhigher brought down by coalition axe”, Times Higher Education, 25 November 2010, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=414416) and by requiring individual universities to conduct more of their own student outreach (see “How to Produce an Access Agreement for 2012-13”, Office For Fair Access, 1 March 2011, http://www.offa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/newaccess.pdf). Unfortunately, given the funding cuts universities are to receive, it is difficult to imagine there being enough new revenue from increased student fees to fund expanded university-based student outreach efforts. This is to say nothing of the economies of scale lost when many universities are duplicating their outreach efforts versus funding coordinated, locally-based programs which work with multiple institutions.

Discussion about the elimination of AimHigher has been overshadowed by the national debate over fee levels and the cutting of teaching funding in the humanities and social sciences. This prioritization is understandable – the new fee and accompanying income-contingent loan repayment system effects those currently accessing university education. The middle class, the largest single component of the voting public, are disproportionately represented in universities. Not surprisingly, the fees (and loans) this group will be paying have come to dominate the discussion over access to higher education.

Despite the public fixation on the fees issue in the UK, research suggests that fees are not the main reason individuals from under-represented groups (such as those from lower socio-economic status families) do not attend university. Research extending back as far as the late 1980s suggests that parental encouragement is the single most important factor whether or not a child considers higher education an option (see Stager, Focus on Fees, 1989). Parental encouragement is often tied to parental achievement in higher education, but not exclusively. It is possible for children who are “first generation” university attendees to have been encouraged into higher education by parents who did not attend university themselves. More recent research has found that peer group expectation (i.e. what one’s friends’ plans are) is also a major contributing factor (see Schuetze & Slowey, “Participation and exclusion: a comparative analysis of non-traditional students and lifelong learners in higher education” (2002) for an international comparative view, and Ross Finnie, et al, “Under-Represented Groups in Postsecondary Education in Ontario: Evidence from the Youth in Transition Survey” (2011) and “Access to Postsecondary Education” (2011) for the latest Canadian research). While ability to pay fees is obviously not an insignificant aspect of access to higher to education, it is important to recognize the importance of family and peer group supports when designing policy that will be effective in attracting underrepresented groups to universities. Students have to know how to get to university before worrying about the cost. This is exactly what AimHigher was designed to address.

Canadian policy makers have embraced the above research and are investing in outreach programs designed to support and encourage primary and secondary school students living in underprivileged environments to finish high school and consider higher education. One such program is Pathways to Education. The Pathways program provides mentorship and additional academic support to secondary school students in socially disadvantaged areas of the country. It started as a community-led initiative in a depressed area of the city of Toronto. The provincial government recognized the success of the Pathways program in helping students complete secondary school and apply for higher education. The program was then expanded to other parts of Toronto and throughout the province of Ontario. Most recently, the federal government of Canada announced an expansion of the Pathways program across the country (see “Pathways to Education”, Prime Minister of Canada media release, 3 March 2011, http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=4011).

While the Pathways program does not repair pre-existing inequalities in educational or family environments it does provide academic and social supports designed to broaden students’ expectations of life after completing secondary school. It coordinates mentorship for students at risk of not completing secondary school as well as exposing students to vocational and higher education. Like AimHigher, Pathways is community-based but is supported centrally through government funding and infrastructure support (for more information on the Pathways to Education program see http://www.pathwaystoeducation.ca/about.html).

The legacy of Canada’s investment in university research during a period of cutbacks is now being born out. Canada is literally stealing leading edge academics from the countries it used to fear – the United Kingdom and the United States. This change required sustained policy and funding committed to a goal of attracting researchers to Canadian universities. Equally, if not more importantly, Canada is committed to making its higher education systems accessible. It is doing this by addressing social inequalities that go beyond the student fee debate and considers research on the issue of university access and student decision-making. And yet, just as Canada is expanding its outreach and support programs for higher education, the UK is cancelling AimHigher. It should be alarming that at the very point the UK government should be mitigating the most disastrous effects of public sector cuts, it cuts a program designed to seek out and encourage participation from those individuals most at risk of being lost to higher education. Instead public debate (including many well-intentioned academics) has focused on the price tag for those who would attend university regardless of the price. The UK needs to sort out its higher education policy priorities or it risks being left behind by Canada. Again.

(NB: A version of this post was published in University Affairs, the journal of the Association of University and Colleges of Canada, on 10 May 2011 and may be found at http://www.universityaffairs.ca/missing-the-target.aspx)

University of California system in trouble... Huh. No kidding!

The Times Higher Education has published a very interesting story on the risks currently faced by the oft lauded University of California system ("The Fruits of Californication", 13 January 2011, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414846)

The University of California is often held up by policy makers and higher education scholars as an example of a perfect (or as close to) higher education system. It is rational and centrally-planned. There is a negotiated but intentional articulation between institutions, programs and courses which allows students to navigate a single, coordinated system of adult education. The relative ease of student mobility and institutional cooperation with the University of California has been the envy of governments throughout North America and the UK. It ticks all the boxes for higher ed policy makers at the end of the twentieth/ early twenty-first century: enabling life-long learning, rational use and deployment of funding and the prioritization of a world class flag-ship campus. Order, rationality and transparency. What more could one want?

Unfortunately, the biggest weakness of the University of California may be its inherent interdependent connectedness. The University of California is predicated on the assumption that intelligent design is an advisable way to approach a higher education system. Until now, most higher ed scholars and policy makers agreed. Canadian provinces (especially Eastern provinces), other US states, and the UK have reflected negatively on their own, by comparison 'hodge podge' collection of universities and colleges. They've believed that the historical accidents that led to their respective independent, autonomous and in no way intentionally articulated universities made their own higher education "non systems" inferior to the intelligently designed University of California.

However, what this Times Higher Education article begins to suggest is that interdependent connectedness is not all that it is cracked up to be. The University of California is so efficient in its design that it doesn't have redundant systems, i.e. if one aspect of the University of California fails due to underfunding the entire system suffers. There is no fall back position and the system has restricted ability to adapt and change.

By comparison, the "non systems" of eastern North America are actually what one should call "ecosystems" of inter-relating (but not interdependent) institutions. Although interacting with each other, these systems are comprised of independent institutions that pursue and consider their own interest, versus a collective interest, first. This makes these systems more robust and capable of adapting to change (perhaps even evolving...?). If a few courses, programs or even institutions fail (which has been suggested with regard to England in the wake of the UK government's Comprehensive Spending Review) the entire higher education system does not collapse.

It could be that the very thing many policy makers thought was the golden fleece of university systems is the actually Achilles' heel of the University of California...