SRHE News Issue 33–July 2018
SRHE News 33: July 2018
Editorial: Doing academic work
Summer holidays may not be what they were, but even so it is the time of year when universities tend to empty of students and (some) staff - an opportunity to reflect on why we do what we do. What do universities do? They do academic work, of course. What exactly does that involve? Well, as far as teaching is concerned, there are six stages in the ‘value chain’. For every teaching programme a university will:
Design the programme Validate it Teach Assess students Certify achievement Evaluate, review, redesign the programme
Universities often subcontract elements of that chain. They may allow professional bodies or consortia of academics to steer curriculum design. They bring in people from outside the university to contribute to teaching. They may involve members of relevant professions in assessment, and in evaluating and reviewing programmes. They often seek additional recognition for their awards from other bodies. But they never subcontract validation and certification. Those are the stages which any university worthy of the title will keep to itself, because they guarantee the academic autonomy of the institution. They are the ultimate protector of core academic values.
It follows that if you work in quality assurance you are at the absolute heart of the academic enterprise. Quality assurance is fundamental to the standards and health of the university. This may be an unpalatable truth to some people in universities, whose default setting is complaining about pointless bureaucracy. My experience of multiple full-time and part-time roles in universities of all kinds has shown me that the people most likely to talk proudly about the centrality of educational values in connection with their everyday work are the porters, the cleaners, the estates managers, the administrators, the committee secretaries … all those working in roles that tend to be labelled by reference to something they are not: ‘non-academic’, ‘support’ or ‘back office’. The best efforts of SRHE member Celia Whitchurch to articulate the dimensions of the ‘third space’ have not yet managed to rebrand workers in universities in a way which does not instantly reveal whether they are above or below the salt. Even the grandly-styled Council for the Defence of British Universities seems more inclined to defend just some: “Our founding members include past and present presidents of the British Academy, the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Learned Society of Wales, as well as Nobel laureates, former principals and vice-chancellors”. No ‘support staff’ here.
Paul Greatrix, Registrar at the University of Nottingham, has often written about the ‘us and them’ mentality which still pervades universities. In his latest blog for WonkHE on 21 May 2018 he compiled some recent academic broadsides and concluded that:
“Anyone who sees administrators either as merely lovely and well-meaning or as semi-literate philistines but in either case ultimately expendable really does need to think a bit more about how universities really work. We are all pulling in the same direction and administrators, whatever their roles, are dedicated to enabling institutional success not preventing it.”
1 In these unbundled times ‘academic staff’ increasingly refers to people with only a partial connection with the full range of a university’s academic work: research staff, teaching fellows, educational developers, associate deans, pro vice-chancellors and others, all properly and necessarily focused on just one part of what makes the university what it is. Too many ‘academic staff’ are less likely to see the bigger picture, and more likely to weaponise educational and academic values for some real or imagined battle with ‘the university’ or one of its malign manifestations: ‘the management’, ‘the admin’ or sometimes just ‘them’. But it does not need to be like this. As Charles Knight pointed out in Times Higher Education:
“I truly have never felt that at Edge Hill University there is this hard divide between academics and administrators – and that doesn’t just refer to processes; it’s about culture and values. … if your university does feel as if it’s a protracted conflict between two tribes, then I’d suggest that your problem isn’t your administrators – it’s your culture; and everyone has a part to play in changing that.”
Everyone has a part to play.
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SRHE News Editor: Professor Rob Cuthbert [email protected] (00 44) 1275 392919
Rob Cuthbert is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics [email protected].
Editorial policy SRHE News aims to comment on recent events, publications, and activities in a journalistic but scholarly way, allowing more human interest and unsupported speculation than any self-respecting journal, but never forgetting its academic audience and their concern for the professional niceties. If you would like to suggest topics for inclusion in future issues, to contribute an item, or to volunteer a regular contribution, please contact [email protected]. We aim to be legal, decent, honest, truthful, opinionated and informed by scholarship. We identify named individuals with their employing institutions. News content is written by the editor except where authors are identified or sources are acknowledged. Comments and suggested additions to editorial policy are welcome.
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3 Contents Editorial: Doing academic work ...... 1 Government and Higher Education Policy ...... 6 Policy and funding in England ...... 6 The HE Finance Review ...... 8 Office for Students ...... 9 Policy and funding in Scotland ...... 9 Policy and funding in the USA ...... 10 Private and for-profit colleges ...... 10 Strategy, Leadership, Governance and Management ...... 10 “Your papers, please!” by Paul Temple ...... 13 VCs’ pay ...... 14 Staff ...... 14 UCU strike over USS pensions ...... 14 Teaching, Learning and Assessment ...... 15 The Teaching Excellence Framework ...... 15 Peer Observation of Teaching – does it know what it is? by Maureen Bell ...... 16 Access and widening participation ...... 18 Students ...... 19 Quality, Standards, Performance, Evaluation ...... 20 Quality and standards ...... 20 Performance, evaluation and rankings ...... 21 Research ...... 21 What does ‘learning organisation’ mean? ...... 21 Are two authors better than one? Or even three? by James Hartley ...... 22 Research into higher education ...... 22 Powerful knowledge in the fishbowl by Jim Hordern...... 22 Boundaries, Buddies, and Benevolent Dictators within the Ecology of Doctoral Study by Kay Guccione and Søren Bengtsen ...... 22 Staff academic writing: why write? by Amanda Roberts and Joy Jarvis ...... 23 Publishing ...... 23 Ethics and Academic Freedom ...... 24 Ethics and Integrity ...... 24 What is Times Higher Education for? by Paul Temple ...... 25 Global Perspectives ...... 26 Africa ...... 26 Benin ...... 26 Asia ...... 26 China ...... 26 Pakistan ...... 27 Singapore ...... 27 Taiwan ...... 27 Australasia ...... 28 New Zealand ...... 28 Europe ...... 28
4 Hungary ...... 28 Netherlands ...... 28 Sweden ...... 28 North America ...... 29 Canada ...... 29 United States ...... 29 Society News ...... 29 SRHE Annual Research Conference: 5-7 December 2018 ...... 29 SRHE Newer Researchers Conference: 4 December 2018 ...... 29 SRHE Research Awards 2018 (Member and Scoping Awards) ...... 29 SRHE Newer Research Awards Winners 2018 ...... 30 Membership rates for 2018-19...... 30 Forthcoming Events for 2018 ...... 30 Small ads ...... 31 Mind your language...... 31 What’s in a name? ...... 31 And finally ...... 32 Brenda Leibowitz 1957 – 2018 ...... 32 Ian McNay writes … ...... 34
5 Government and Higher Education Policy
Policy and funding in England
Universities no longer required to set up schools The Government’s response to the consultation on Schools that work for everyone, published in September 2016, was slipped out in May 2018, conceding that it was not such a good idea to require every university to set up a school. Now, universities are merely encouraged to do so; if not, then they should support state schools through ‘sustainable and reciprocal partnerships’.
Stephen Topping reported for The Chester Chronicle on 26 June 2018 that Education Minister Nick Gibb had announced that University Church of England Academy (UCEA) in Ellesmere Port, after Ofsted judgments that it was ‘failing’, will be ‘re-brokered’ - meaning it will be taken off the hands of the University of Chester Academies Trust (UCAT) and handed over to another multi-academy trust.
NAO says Government failed to oversee the Student Loans Company effectively The National Audit Office issued a report in May 2018 which criticised the government for failing effectively to oversee the Student Loans Company during the tenure of former chief executive Steve Lamey. Mr Lamey was dismissed from the SLC in November 2017 for gross misconduct in public office, as Ellie Bothwell reported for Times Higher Education on 11 May 2018. Civil servants had advised that his appointment a year earlier would be ‘too risky’, but were overruled when an unnamed special adviser in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills argued he had been described as a ‘top performer’ at HMRC in 2011-2012 and suggested his HMRC reference had been ‘unfair’, as reported by Robert Wright for The Financial Times on 10 May 2018.
Public Accounts Committee says the HE market isn’t working to benefit students A Public Accounts Committee report published on 15 June 2018 found “no evidence greater competition between providers will improve quality of education they provide … The original aim of introducing a market into higher education was that student choice and competition between providers would improve quality and value for money. In reality the planned-for competition did not emerge.” The OfS welcomed the report but denied its observation that the OfS is not working with the NUS. Wonkhe commented that the Committee had failed to draw the obvious conclusion that perhaps a market is not an appropriate way to organise an HE system, preferring to aim to ‘improve’ the way the market functions.
Universities UK and Freedom of Information A petition to make UUK subject to the FOI Act has been rejected by the government.
Who can save the Open University? Pam Tatlow, until recently chief executive of Million+, was unimpressed (in her THE article on 10 April 2018) by MPs who in July 2017 voted for the HE and Research Act, promoting market forces to improve failing universities, but less than a year later were calling for government intervention to save the Open University.
University of London A University of London Bill before Parliament in April 2018 proposed to modernise the process for making statutes for the university. It’s that word ‘modernise’ that makes you suspicious.
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Not the Real Madrid University Not the real Manchester University either, but two institutions in Manchester now have ‘university’ in their title with the blessing of the DfE, as John Morgan reported for Times Higher Education on 19 April 2018. The artists formerly known as UCFB are now the University Campus of Football Business, thanks to a partnership with the new University of Buckingham. In 2017 a venture by Gary Neville and the University of Lancaster was permitted to call itself University Academy 92.
HEFCE chief executive had her contract paid up, and no more John Morgan breathlessly reported for Times Higher Education on 12 April 2018 that after much digging he had induced HEFCE to reveal that chief executive Madeleine Atkins, who lost her job when HEFCE was closed on 31 March, had been paid to the end of her contract period, a total of £178,000, but had not taken any redundancy payment, and her bonuses had in the past been donated to charity. Not the most sensational bit of news this year.
T-levels prompt a Ministerial Direction The timetable for introducing the government’s T-levels reform to schools and FE was such that the DfE Permanent Secretary, Jonathan Slater, advised against it, and - when Secretary of State Damian Hinds pressed on - Slater required a Ministerial Direction to proceed. This is a rare event in Education, as the Institute for Government website explains. The letters published on 24 May preserve an intended 2020 start, whereas civil servants had advised a delay to 2021, meaning further slippage after the original 2019 target. Richard Johnstone reported for Civil Service World on 25 May 2018 that: “Slater’s direction is the fifth received by a permanent secretary this year, with a majority relating to authorising Brexit-related spending that lacks legislative consent.” FE Week’s Billy Camden reported on 25 May 2018 that: “The Institute for Apprenticeships is giving the FE sector just five working days to respond to its consultation on the draft content for the first three T-levels – during half term. … It is asking for views ahead of their planned roll-out in 2020, but it has sensationally set a consultation deadline for June 4. … Mark Dawe, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, branded the deadline as “staggering”.”
Gyimah grabbing headlines again Universities Minister Sam Gyimah was at it again on 3 May 2018, with a story in The Times by Rosemary Bennett about a supposed ‘Crackdown on students who silence free speech’ through ‘tough guidance’, which he intended the OfS to implement. His predecessor Jo Johnson also often highlighted the supposed dangers of ‘no platforming’. A solution in search of a problem, or perhaps not even a solution – Amatey Doku of NUS was soon tweeting that he had attended the meeting and ‘no new duty, rule or legislation was announced’. Once again Gyimah had manufactured a headline out of a consultative meeting.
Chris Parr reported for *Research on 17 May 2018 on a Westminster Hall debate on the findings of the Freedom of Speech in Universities report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which Harriet Harman MP chairs. Harman said that: “The previous minister [Jo Johnson] spoke a lot about [freedom of speech on campus], but I couldn’t detect any action,” she said, whereas current minister Sam Gyimah “is actually doing something about it”. Gyimah made a speech at the University of Buckingham on 15 June 2018 in which “he said a student made a complaint against a King’s College London lecturer for “hate speech” after taking the side of the British when teaching the Berlin Blockade.” But Eleanor Busby reported for The Independent that King’s said they had no record of any such complaint and denied it had happened.
One more time: neoliberalism is to blame SRHE Vice-President Roger Brown made yet another return to the fray in ResearchResearch on 26 April
7 2018, railing against neoliberalism and marketization. Brita Bergland (Oxford/King’s College London) argued in Educational Philosophy and Theory (online 17 July 2017) that the incompatibility of neoliberalism and interdisciplinary development in HE might be resolved by the “(Re)introduction of a feminist ethics of care into the university, as suggested by the feminist slow scholarship movement”.
Post-New Public Management? New Public Management is, well, old now. Are we past it? The literature review by Renate Reiter (Leipzig) and Tanja Klenk (Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg) in the International Review of Administrative Sciences (online 21 May 2018) said: “so far, the post-New Public Management idea has been very influential as an ‘ideational weapon’ to indicate a crisis of the New Public Management model. The use of the post-New Public Management idea as a blueprint for future reform, however, still needs further treatment.”
The HE Finance Review
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) launched an international investigation of how governments treat income-contingent loans in April, after Parliament’s Treasury Committee issued a critical report in February 2018. The ONS also declared that the December 2017 securitisation of loans was a genuine sale and that the company created to arrange the sale was a ‘financial corporation outside the public sector’. Andrew McGettigan, who gave evidence to the Treasury Committee, blogged on 24 April that he was happy about the former but not the latter, which he has asked ONS to explain.
Ariane de Gayardon (UCL) looked at international experience and argued in University World News on 15 June 2018 that abolishing tuition fees, as in New Zealand, is likely to lead either to systematic underfunding of institutions or to limitations on access.
Rob Brelsford-Smith (Swansea, Director of Finance) blogged for Wonkhe on 21 May 2018 with a sharp corrective to recent misleading media stories about universities ‘hoarding cash reserves’.
Mike Boxall of PA Consulting tried to demolish some misconceptions about HE funding in his article on 29 May 2018 for Times Higher Education, in particular he argued against thinking that: “Students are customers of universities … Students pay £9K for their degree … Tuition fees pay for teaching … Taxpayers are subsidising students”.
Jack Britton and Chris Belfield (both Institute for Fiscal Studies) blogged for Wonkhe on 7 June 2018 about graduate earnings for different kinds of course and university.
Alison Wolf (King’s College London) and Andrew Jennings (UCL) had an article in Higher Education Quarterly (online 19 April 2018) reporting research on university fees in England, suggesting that “Public universities with high rankings in global league tables and on domestic measures can command teaching income per student which is very much higher (in this case typically more than a third) than lower‐prestige institutions”.
Former SRHE Scoping Award winner Ceryn Evans (Cardiff) and Michael Donnelly (Bath) wrote in the Journal of Youth Studies (online 28 March 2018) that “‘debt commentaries’ play out very differently across schools according to the nature of their catchment and the sorts of views staff hold about pupils in relation to their fear of debt. Furthermore, students’ views on debt largely contradict these popular ‘debt-as-deterrent’ narratives and instead are often characterised by acceptance, ambivalence and at times positive orientations towards the prospect of debt.”
8 Nevertheless, Danny Dorling (Oxford) argued at a CGHE seminar on 14 June 2018 that we should write off student debt to mark the Queen’s 70th jubilee in 2022, because “the English student income- contingent university loan and fee system is unfair, inefficient and unsustainable.” Andrew McRae (Exeter) was justifiably scathing about a report from the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, Treating Students Fairly: The Economics of Post-School Education, in his blog for Wonkhe on 19 June 2018.
Office for Students
The Office for Students published its Strategy and Business Plan on 30 April 2018. It will distribute £1.5 billion for the 2018-19 academic year across four key areas of activity: £1,290 million for recurrent teaching grant; £47 million for knowledge exchange; £51 million for national facilities and regulatory initiatives; and £150 million for capital funding.
Gill Evans (Cambridge) doesn’t think the OfS as worked out what ‘governance’ and ‘management’ means, as she argued persuasively in her blog for Wonkhe on 23 May 2018. What’s more: “The Office for Students may find it challenging to understanding fully how the “public interest” registration requirements operate across an increasingly diverse sector.”
Former QAA head Peter Williams said the OfS guidance to institutions published on 1 April 2018 was “extraordinary” in requiring institutions to deliver successful outcomes for all students. He said it was sloppy drafting and ‘dangerous nonsense’, as Jack Grove reported for Times Higher Education on 10 April 2018.
Almost all universities and some other HE institutions are ‘exempt charities’ - exempt from registration with and direct regulation by the Charity Commission, but regulated instead by the OfS. Guidance issued in May 2018 by OfS explains that: “The OfS has adopted a different approach to its role as principal regulator from that taken by HEFCE. In line with its legal duty, the OfS will focus on promoting compliance by a charity’s trustees with their legal obligations in exercising control and management of the administration of the charity. The OfS has removed many of HEFCE’s disclosure requirements for exempt charities and will require only those disclosures that are legally required. This will reduce regulatory burden for those providers that are exempt charities.”
A Statutory Instrument which proposed to release student data held by the OfS to other organisations was temporarily blocked by Labour Party intervention, as Camilla Turner reported for The Telegraph on 18 June 2018. The SI would have been approved on 18 June but Labour’s intervention required a debate in Parliament. Data would have been given to a range of other organisations including the private organisation Pearson Education, as well as HMRC, the Student Loans Company and the Competition and Markets Authority. OfS chair Michael Barber was Pearson’s Chief Education Advisor from September 2011 to March 2017.
Policy and funding in Scotland
On 13 June 2018 the Scottish Information Commissioner published a scathing report on the Scottish Government's practice and performance in terms of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. Journalists had complained about delays, and the headlines in the Commissioner’s report were that: “It is an important principle of FOI law that, in most cases, it should not matter who asks for information. The practice of referring requests for clearance by Ministers simply because they come from journalists, MSPs and researchers is inconsistent with that principle. The Scottish Government's
9 FOI policies and procedures are not clear enough about the role of special advisers in responding to FOI requests. The Scottish Government takes longer to respond to journalists' FOI requests than other requests …”.
Policy and funding in the USA
Fake Cloud – no silver lining LendEDU is a student loan refinancing company whose ‘spokesperson’ Drew Cloud became a widely- quoted expert on student finance. But Drew Cloud was an elaborate fiction, despite a biography and picture on the company website, The Student Loan Report. The company founder Nate Matherson apologised in late April 2018 for inventing ‘Drew Cloud’ as a pen-name to cover contributions by a range of contributors.
Private and for-profit colleges
EdX’s free MOOCs won’t be free any more In a blog post on 3 May 2018, EdX CEO Anant Agarwal said that from that day EdX would be “starting to test the introduction of a modest support fee in some of our courses. The support fee will enable EdX and partners to continue to invest in our global learning platform.”
US for-profits continue to decline The annual report from the National Center for Education Statistics showed 2,791 for-profit colleges eligible to award federal financial aid in 2017-18, compared to 2,899 the year before and 3,436 in 2014-15. The reduction in the number of colleges is paralleled by a fall in enrolments.
Strategy, Leadership, Governance and Management
A jungle of ego and a desert of usefulness Marketing guru Gerry McGovern, speaking at the annual conference of the European higher education PR and communication network, EUPRIO, in Seville, Spain, on 4 June 2018, described universities as lagging badly behind the times in marketing. University websites are “a jungle of ego and a desert of usefulness” without authentic student reviews of their experience alongside all the positive messages from the university, as Nic Mitchell reported for University World News on 13 June 2018.
UK senior appointments Koen Lamberts, VC at York, will become VC at Sheffield after Sir Keith Burnett steps down in November 2018. Lynn Dobbs, Provost at Roehampton University, is to be the next VC for London Metropolitan University, taking over from John Raftery in October 2018. Gill Aitken, HMRC’s General Counsel and Solicitor, has been appointed as Registrar at the University of Oxford.
Pro VCs Education don’t need to know about education Gustave Kenedi (King’s College London) and Anna Mountford-Zimdars (Exeter) reported their research on Pro VCs (Education) in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management (online 25 April 2018): “the PVC Education role requires managerial skills, usually acquired in previous headships, as well as academic credibility and knowledge of institutional processes rather than particular expertise in education.”
10 Horrocks resigns as Open University VC Peter Horrocks announced on 13 April 2018 that he would stand down with immediate effect, as an official statement from the University confirmed. His announcement followed months of controversy, prompted by the VC’s proposals for radical restructuring and some unfortunate gaffes by Horrocks in meetings in Parliament and in a meeting with OU students. The announcement suggested that the restructuring would continue, but the interim VC then announced a ‘pause’ in implementation.
NMITE leader resigns unexpectedly Janusz Kozinski, the first president of the Hereford-based NMITE, has resigned for personal reasons, after just a year in post, to return to Canada. NMITE is a new-build institution which promised to introduce a radical new engineering curriculum. Kozinski is to be replaced by Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, a former professor at Sheffield, as Jack Grove reported for Times Higher Education on 18 June 2018.
UCL ructions lead to governance commission UCL staff successfully called a special academic board meeting on 14 May 2018 which established a commission aimed at ‘re-establishing academic values’ in UCL. The move followed UCL’s plans to build a new campus in East London to allow expansion to 60,000 students and a notorious email circulated in March 2018 by UCL’s director of media relations, Charles Hymas, who has now left the university. The motion to establish the commission also referred to the university senior management’s position on the controversial USS revaluation, which was ‘withheld’ from academic board.
US senior staff departures CL Max Nikias resigned as president of the University of Southern California on 25 May 2018, after prolonged criticism and pressure from USC staff who said he had mishandled numerous recent cases of sexual harassment and misconduct at the university.
Gregory J Vincent, President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, resigned on 13 April 2018, just weeks after anonymous allegations that he had substantially plagiarised parts of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, which awarded him a doctorate in education in 2004. The Colleges appointed Pat McGuire, an emeritus professor of economics, as interim president, as Fernando Zamudio-Suaréz reported for The Chronicle of Higher Education on 13 April 2018. But Vincent will keep his doctorate. He posted to Facebook a statement from Pam Grossman, dean of Penn's Graduate School of Education, in which she said that Vincent's dissertation and questions about it were reviewed by faculty members. Based on their recommendations, "Vincent will be given the opportunity to make revisions to the literature review portion of his dissertation, under Penn Graduate School of Education faculty supervision, which, when completed to our satisfaction, means his degree will stand."
The University of Dallas announced on 13 April 2018 that the institution needs "a change in leadership," and that President Thomas W Keefe would leave at the end of the current academic year, as Scott Jaschik reported for insidehighered.com on 16 April 2018. Keefe had encouraged the university to consider new educational and financial models, expressing concern that the current focus on a traditional liberal arts model might not be viable by itself in the long run.
Jabari Simama, the president of Georgia Piedmont Technical College, was given notice to quit in mid- April by officials of the Technical College System of Georgia after federal and state investigations into the college's finances found problems, as Eric Stirgus reported for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on 13 April 2018.
Beverley Anderson, Chancellor of the Tennessee system’s flagship at Knoxville, was abruptly fired after just a year in post, with the President of the Tennessee system, Joseph A DiPietro, writing a scathing
11 letter making it very personal, accusing her of being a poor communicator, a bad team player, and someone resistant to necessary professional coaching. As Jack Stripling reported for the Chronicle of Higher Education on 2 May 2018, there seemed to be a lot of politics involved as well.
Sergio A Garcia, chief of staff at the highly-regarded Upstate Medical University, which has 9500 staff, part of the SUNY system, made a speech last Autumn in which he made a series of claims about his experiences in Afghanistan while he was working for the State Department. He said he was in a convoy which suffered a bomb attack in which a young mentee of his was killed. The woman he named did indeed die in a bombing, but Garcia was not involved, and seems not to have been her mentor. Garcia has also claimed he is an attorney, but he is not, and made many other claims which proved to be untrue about his previous experience. A day after the story by Brendon J Lyons appeared (20 May 2018) in Times Union, Garcia resigned from his post at the request of the university president.
Former Papua New Guinea VC arrested Albert Schram was arrested at Port Moresby airport in May on his return from a brief trip to Australia, charged with ‘false pretence’ over his academic credentials. He was controversially dismissed from his job as VC of Papua New Guinea University of Technology in February 2018 by the university council, which accused him of having unverified academic credentials, spending too much time travelling and failing to win benefits he had promised for the university. A senior colleague had alleged Schram did not have the PhD he claimed, but this claim was refuted by Australian academics, who pointed to Schram’s popularity in his university and questioned the rule of law in the country. Tim Dodd had the story for The Australian on 12 May 2018.
New Dean for Harvard Graduate School of Education Economist Bridget Terry Long will be the next dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, succeeding James E Ryan, moving to be president of the University of Virginia. Long was HGSE's academic dean from 2013 to 2017 and the faculty director of the research doctoral program from 2010 to 2013. She works on college access and affordability, financial aid, the effects of postsecondary remediation and the impact of institutional initiatives aimed at reducing inequality in outcomes.
How to behave in committees David Farris (George Mason) identified a set of positive behaviours contributing to exemplary organizational citizenship in university committees in his article in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management.
Guardian University Awards In Brighton’s local paper The Argus, Josh Walton reported that 100 Brighton University staff had written to VC Debra Humphris calling on her to withdraw from a Guardian-run competition in which she had been shortlisted as an ‘inspirational leader’. The staff said that neither they nor students had been involved or consulted. The university said she would not withdraw. But just when you finally decide all awards ceremonies are a complete waste of time, the Guardian gets one right and votes Mary Stuart (Lincoln) the winner in the Inspiring Leader category. There were some thoughtful comments from Mary Stuart in her blog for Wonkhe on 10 May 2018. The THE Leadership and Management Awards were announced in June 2018.
Hereditary Chancellors at Derby In choosing university chancellors, you need an impeccable figurehead with connections in high places who can be a credible ambassador for the university. Tricky for post-1992 universities, who wanted simultaneously to emphasise their complete university-ness as well as their differences from the rest. In 1995 Derby hit on the ruse of appointing Sir Christopher Ball, former chair of the National Advisory Body (NAB) which once directed funding for polytechnics, who was the leading establishment-based
12 critic of the university establishment. In 2003 Sir Christopher’s former NAB colleague Leslie Wagner CBE, VC of North London and then Leeds Metropolitan (now Leeds Beckett), was a safe pick to succeed him. Five years later the University was searching again, this time wanting to send a different message: to show some history and tradition. The Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Cavendish, just about top of the aristocratic hierarchy, was installed as chancellor on 6 November 2008. When the Duke stepped down, who better to pick than his son and heir William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington, installed at a ceremony held in the Devonshire Dome (of course), at the University’s Buxton campus on Thursday 15 March 2018. Of course, everyone knows that Chatsworth House, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, is in Derbyshire and the Duke of Devonshire is not to be confused with the Earl of Devon, a lesser aristocrat.
Solent – no-one likes us, we don’t care Theo Paphitis has been installed as Chancellor of Southampton Solent University, the Southern Daily Echo reported on 30 May 2018. He was for 8 years chairman of Millwall FC, the notoriously unpopular London club, but as a noted entrepreneur, Dragon’s Den performer, parent of twins who graduated from Solent, and a longstanding supporter of the university, he seems an excellent choice.
Boston faculty vote no confidence in Massachusetts system president Gintautus Dumcius of masslive.com reported on 14 May 2018 that the Massachusetts-Boston Faculty Council on 14 May 2018 had voted no confidence in their system’s president, Marty Meehan, and board of trustees, arising from the board decision to buy the campus of the recently-closed Mount Ida College – and use it as a satellite for Massachusetts-Amherst, even though Mount Ida is in Boston territory. The vote came at an awkward time, as the president and board considered three finalists for the vacant post of President at Boston.
Public universities, managerialism and the value of higher education Rob Watts’ book Public universities, managerialism and the value of higher education, Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2017 was reviewed by Fiona Robson (Roehampton) for Management Learning (online 20 June 2018). The Palgrave Series editor was John Smyth, whose own book in the series, The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars, and Neoliberal Ideology Palgrave Macmillan) was reviewed by David Wheeler (previously VC, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia) for Times Higher Education 10 August 2017, alongside a feature quoting Smyth: “The new era of “generic management” meant that nobody needed to know anything about the real work of universities – any fool could do it! This separation of decision-making and management from any profound understanding embedded in and emerging from academic work destroyed the collegial basis of universities with a single blow and ushered in what I consider to have become the sinister and toxic culture we now have.”
“Your papers, please!” by Paul Temple I’ve never been a big fan of HR (or Personnel, as they used to be) departments, in universities or elsewhere. This may result from the tendency of HR people to patronise those they’re dealing with: “We’ve been considering your career options”, “Are you really a team player?”, and so on; and because, however matey the conversation, you need to remember that anything you say may be taken down and later used in evidence against you. The problem isn’t at all confined to universities: Lucy Kellaway used to write a workplace agony aunt column in the Financial Times which featured a running gag on the lines of, “Whatever your problem, going to HR will only make it worse”. Roger Watson and David Thompson vented their accumulated irritations about university HR departments in a piece in THE on 8 March this year, arguing that the various “downward-spiralling” HR nonsenses that they listed “are just another symptom of the managerialism that is now the norm in UK
13 universities”. Perhaps; but I don’t think that explains why HR departments are, apparently, more afflicted than Student Services, say, or Finance … Read more on the SRHE Blog.
VCs’ pay
John Rushforth, Executive Secretary of the Committee of University Chairs (CUC), blogged on 5 June 2018 for Wonkhe about the HE Senior Staff Remuneration Code published by the CUC: it is ‘principles- based’ (nothing about absolute levels of pay), emphasising fairness, transparency and independence. Sector reaction was generally favourable, if lukewarm. The UK media in general were less impressed.
The Office for Students then published ‘Regulatory advice’ on 19 June 2018 which “requires providers to supply a range of information about the financial arrangements for their head of institution, including: full details of the total remuneration package, including basic salary, any performance- related pay, pension contributions, and other taxable and non-taxable benefits; a justification for the package; the relationship between the head of provider's remuneration and that for all other employees in their institution, expressed as a pay multiple. The justification must include an explanation of what value the head of institution has delivered, and the process by which their performance was judged. Providers must also disclose the number of staff (anonymised) with a basic salary of over £100,000 per annum, broken down into bands of £5,000.”
Cue complaints by students and staff that this is no substitute for their representation on remuneration committees, which it isn’t, and sotto voce muttering by VCs and some governors about micromanagement. Expect formulaic expressions of how VC performance was judged, very soon.
Jack Grove continued his admirable digging into the pay of HEI senior staff with a story in Times Higher Education on 21 June 2018 about pay in for-profit UK HE institutions which receive public money. Even Bath would be swamped by some of those pay levels.
In Canada, Advanced Education Minister Marlin Schmidt announced on 10 April 2018 that Alberta will bring in a ‘pay grid’ for the leaders of its 20 post-secondary institutions, fully in effect in 2020. The new rules mean a maximum salary of $536,000 for heads of the Universities of Alberta and Calgary, currently paid over $800,000, as Dean Bennett reported for The Star Edmonton on 10 April 2018.
There were (bush)whacking pay rises for Australian VCs: John Ross’s report for Times Higher Education on 7 May 2018 detailed the eye-watering pay levels for many Australian VCs, with institutional leaders in Victoria’s 8 universities averaging over £500,000.
And in the US Rachel Leingang reported for azcentral on 1 June 2018 that Arizona State University President Michael Crow will receive a 15% increase raise in his base salary to $690,000, backdated to January 2018, but his total compensation could be more than $1.1 million, combining his salary, housing and vehicle allowances, benefits and additional pay from the ASU Foundation. ASU is the largest public university in the US with more than 100,000 students.
Staff
UCU strike over USS pensions
The Office for Students issued a statement on 11 April, giving notice that OfS would expect institutions to avoid or minimise disruption to study: “In particular, we will be expecting providers to make clear
14 to students what the impact of the industrial action will be and how any disruption will be mitigated, in accordance with their responsibilities under consumer protection legislation. Students should be told where to go for advice, and who to contact to discuss the impact of the industrial action on them.”
Gill Evans (Cambridge) had some caustic comments about ‘grubby ambulance-chasing’ firms touting for student clients to seek compensation, in her blog for WonkHE on 29 April 2018. Peter Fleming (Cass Business School, London) said the USS strike had showed academics that their managers held staff in contempt, in his article for Times Higher Education on 27 May 2018.
What motivates people for public service? Xavier Ballart and Guillem Rico (both Autonomous University of Barcelona) analysed motivations in their article for Public Administration (online 23 April 2018).
Teaching, Learning and Assessment
Measuring teaching intensity Which idiot dreamed up the teaching intensity measure which the government seems so keen on? Well, there were four of them, actually, and their article finally appeared in a scheduled issue of Fiscal Studies (the Journal of Applied Economics) (39(2): 241-264 June 2018), having been published online on 7 July 2017. The guilty parties are Gervas Huxley (Bristol), Jennifer Mayo (Michigan), Mike Peacey (New College of the Humanities) and Maddy Richardson (Cambridge): “We find that how much teaching students receive is uncorrelated with tuition fee; that teaching has little predictive power in explaining student satisfaction; and that physics students consistently receive more teaching than either economics or history students.” Gosh.
HE teaching is emotional and moral Kathleen M Quinlan (Kent)’s article in Studies in Higher Education (online 5 April 2018) followed her research into “66 case examples of teachers’ emotional experiences to see whether and what kinds of moral concerns underpin those emotional moments”.
The Teaching Excellence Framework
All shall have prizes (except FE colleges) Louis Coffait and Arthi Nachiappan of Wonkhe quickly crunched some numbers and examined some hypotheses after the TEF3 results were published, in their blog on 6 June 2018. Most institutions decided to stick with their 2017 results but, of those that didn’t, 22 improved; the only sufferers were FE colleges, which in two cases went down from silver to bronze. SRHE member Paul Ashwin (Lancaster) argued in *Research on 10 June 2018 that TEF is still not fit for purpose.
What do teachers think of teaching assessment? The article by Christine Teelken (Vrije) in the European Journal of Higher Education (online 20 June 2018) said that: “… teaching assessments in … three countries have become more institutionalized, as scepticism of their principles have been replaced with resilience and pragmatism in assessment instruments and, among individual instructors, with sharpened focus on the operational side of teaching. Although faculty members acknowledged benefits of teaching assessments, they could not envision how the assessments would improve the quality of teaching. In response, we offer a theoretical explanation of those trends that extends the development of micro-institutional theory.”
15 Peer Observation of Teaching – does it know what it is? by Maureen Bell What does it feel like to have someone observing you perform in your teaching role? Suppose they tick off a checklist of teaching skills and make a judgement as to your capability, a judgement that the promotions committee then considers in its deliberations on your performance? How does it feel to go back to your department and join the peer who has written the judgement? Peer Observation of Teaching (POT) is increasingly being suggested and used as a tool for the evaluation, rather than collaborative development, of teaching practice.
Can POT for professional development co-exist with and complement POT for evaluation? Or are these diametrically opposed philosophies and activities such that something we might call Peer Evaluation of Teaching (PET) has begun to undermine the essence of POT?
I used to think the primary purpose of peer observation of teaching (POT) was the enhancement of teaching and learning. I thought it was a promising process for in-depth teaching development. More recently I have been thinking that POT has been hijacked by university quality assurance programs and re-dedicated to the appraisal of teaching by academic promotions committees. The principles and outcomes of POT for appraisal are, after all, quite opposite to those that were placed at the heart of the original POT philosophy and approach – collegial support, reflective practice and experiential learning.
In 1996 I introduced a POT program into my university’s (then) introduction to teaching course for academic staff. Participants were observed by each other, and myself as subject coordinator, and were required to reflect on feedback and plan further action. It wasn’t long before I realised that I could greatly improve participants’ experience by having them work together, experiencing at different times the roles of both observer and observed. I developed the program such that course participants worked in groups to observe each other teach and to share their observations, feedback and reflections. A significant feature of the program was a staged workshop-style introduction to peer observation which involved modelling, discussion and practice. I termed this collegial activity ‘peer observation partnerships’.
The program design was influenced by my earlier experiences of action research in the school system and by the evaluation work of Web and McEnerney (1995) indicating the importance of training sessions, materials, and meetings. Blackwell (1996), too, in Higher Education Quarterly described POT as stimulating reflection on and improvement of teaching. Early results of my program, published in IJAD in 2001, reported POT as promoting the development of skills, knowledge and ideas about teaching, as a vehicle for ongoing change and development, and as a means of building professional relationships and a collegial approach to teaching.
My feeling then was that a collegial POT process would eventually be broadly accepted as a key strategy for teaching development in universities. Surely universities would see POT as a high value, low cost, professional development activity. This motivated me to publish Peer Observation Partnerships in Higher Education through the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA).
Gosling’s model appeared in 2002 in which he posed three categories of POT, in summary: evaluation, development, and fostering collaboration. Until then I had not considered the possibility that POT could be employed as an evaluation tool, mainly because to my mind observers did not need a particular level of teaching expertise. Early career teachers were capable of astute observation, and of discussing the proposed learning outcomes for the class along with the activity observed. I saw evaluation as requiring appropriate expertise to assess teaching quality against a set of reliable and
16 valid criteria. Having been observed by an Inspector of Schools in my career as a secondary school teacher, I had learned from experience the difference between ‘expert observation’ and ‘peer observation’.
Looking back, I discovered that the tension between POT as a development activity rather than an evaluation tool had always existed. POT had been mooted as a form of peer review and as a staff appraisal procedure in Australia since the late eighties and early nineties, when universities were experiencing pressure to introduce procedures for annual staff appraisal. The emphasis at that time was evaluative – a performance management approach seeking efficiency and linking appraisal to external rewards and sanctions. Various researchers and commentators c.1988-1993, including Lonsdale, Abbott, and Cannon, sought an alternative approach which emphasised collegial professional development. At that time action research involving POT was prevalent in the school system using the Action Research Planner of Kemmis and McTaggert. Around this time Jarzabkowski and Bone from The University of Sydney developed a detailed guide for Peer Appraisal of Teaching. They defined the term ‘peer appraisal’ as a method of evaluation, that could both provide feedback on teaching for personal development as well as providing information for institutional or personnel purposes. ‘Observer expertise in the field of teaching and learning’ was a requirement.
In American universities various peer-review-through-observation projects had emerged in the early nineties. A scholarly discussion of peer review of teaching was taking place under the auspices of the American Association for Higher Education Peer Review of Teaching project and the national conference, ‘Making Learning Visible: Peer-review and the Scholarship of Teaching’ (2000), brought together over 200 participants. The work of both Centra and Hutchings in the 90s, and Bernstein and others in the 2000s advocated the use of peer review for teaching evaluation.
In 2002 I was commissioned by what was then the Generic Centre (UK) to report on POT in Australian universities. At that time several universities provided guidelines or checklists for voluntary peer observation, while a number of Australian universities were accepting peer review reports of teaching observations for promotion and appointment. Soon after that I worked on a government funded Peer Review of Teaching project led by the University of Melbourne, again reviewing POT in Australian universities. One of the conclusions of the report was that POT was not a common professional activity. Many universities however listed peer review of teaching as a possible source of evidence for inclusion in staff appraisal and confirmation and promotion applications.
My last serious foray into POT was an intensive departmental program developed with Paul Cooper, then Head of one of our schools in the Engineering Faculty. Along with my earlier work, the outcomes of this program, published in IJAD (2013), confirmed my view that a carefully designed and implemented collegial program could overcome problems such as those reported back in 1998 by Martin in Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 35(2). Meanwhile my own head of department asked me to design a POT program that would provide ‘formal’ peer observation reports to the promotions and tenure committee. I acquiesced, although I was concerned that once POT became formalised for evaluation purposes in this way, the developmental program would be undermined.
Around 2008 my university implemented the formal POT strategy with trained, accredited peer observers and reporting templates. POT is now accepted in the mix of evidence for promotions and is compulsory for tenure applications. In the past year I’ve been involved in a project to review existing peer observation of teaching activities across the institution, which has found little evidence of the use of developmental POT.
17 The Lonsdale report (see above) proposed a set of principles for peer review of teaching and for the type of evidence that should be used in decisions about promotion and tenure: Fairness such that decisions are objective; openness such that criteria and process are explicit and transparent; and consistency between standards and criteria applied in different parts of the institution and from year to year. It always seemed to me that the question of criteria and standards would prove both difficult and contentious. How does a promotions committee decipher or interpret a POT report? What about validity and reliability? What if the POT reports don’t align with student evaluation data? And what does it mean for the dynamics of promotion when one of your peer’s observations might influence your appraisal?
In 2010 Chamberlain et al reported on a study exploring the relationship between annual peer appraisal of teaching practice and professional development. This quote from a participant in the study stays with me, “… the main weakness as far as I’m concerned is that it doesn’t know what it is. Well, what is its purpose?”
POT for professional development is an activity that is collegial, subjective, and reflective. My view is that POT for professional development can only co-exist with a version of POT for evaluation that is re-named, re-framed and standardised. And let’s call it what it really is – Peer Evaluation of Teaching (PET).
Dr Maureen Bell is Editor of HERDSA NEWS, Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia; HERDSA Fellow; Senior Fellow, University of Wollongong Australia.
Access and widening participation
How to widen participation Paul Clarke of Brightside and Diana Beech of HEPI edited HEPI Report 106, Reaching the parts of society universities have missed: A manifesto for the new Director of Fair Access and Participation, published in May 2018. And here is new Director Chris Millward’s response.
Black students are over-represented at university Once again the media obsession with Oxbridge obscured a more important truth. The statistic buried as the national press, encouraged by David Lammy MP, frothed at the alleged under-representation of black students at Oxford, was that, as the BBC report on 23 May 2018 pointed out: “Black students make up 8% of the UK university population but about 4% of 18-24-year-olds in England and Wales.” If you really want it, here are all the data about Oxford undergraduate admissions 2013-2018. On 23 May Jason Murugesu wrote in The Spectator that ‘The obsession with Oxbridge elitism gives other British universities a free pass’, but by ‘other universities’ it seems he only meant the Russell Group - so just 15% of the others then. The media’s secondary obsession with the Russell Group was taken aback by a HEPI report on the student experience, which, amazingly to the average journalist, and maybe even Simon Baker of Times Higher Education on 24 May 2018, showed that Russell Group universities were rated by students as much the same as all the rest – except for Oxbridge.
National Collaborative Outreach Programme makes a difference, but no credit to OfS OfS went over the top in claiming the credit for the NCOP in their 31 May 2018 news release: “OfS funded local networks inspire young people to enter higher education”. Firstly, OfS only just took over the funding from other agencies. Secondly, NCOP was itself an admission by government that its previous bipartisan abolition of Aimhigher had been a big mistake, setting back widening participation by several years. And thirdly, all the credit should go to the people on the ground who make the
18 collaborations work: they are often underpaid, living from one precarious contract to the next, and fighting to overcome significant institutional obstacles.
What Les Ebdon did next Les Ebdon, former Director of the Office for Fair Access, has joined Applied Inspiration, an Australian and British consultancy firm which specialises in supporting the development of effective widening participation strategies and operations. That’s Sir Les to you, after his knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2018.
What do ‘disadvantage’ and ‘potential’ mean in the context of fair access? The article by Louise Gazeley (Sussex) in Educational Review this paper offered “insights into a process of policy translation that requires multiple encodings and decodings of two constructs that defy ready definition, with their intersection being a particular point of difficulty. Behind the apparent objectivity of commonly used selection criteria sits a process of situated decision-making that incorporates not only the particularities of institutional context and the understandings of key actors, but also macro level pressures that reinforce the need for changes in understandings of fairness at the top.”
New books Worth a look: a new edited collection from Sheila Riddell, Sarah Minty, Elisabet Wheedon (all Edinburgh) and Susan Whittaker (Glasgow Caledonian): Higher Education Funding and Access in International Perspective, and Equality and differentiation in marketised higher education, the new book by Marion Bowl (Birmingham), Colin McCaig (Sheffield Hallam) and Jonathan Hughes (previously Open University) ‘explores how discourses and practices of marketisation, differentiation and equity are manifested in higher education today’.
Students
Student debt is bad for you The Centre for Global HE has published a review of available research on the consequences of student loan debt, which suggests that student loan debt, particularly in the US, tends to have a negative impact on people’s lives after university. Specifically, it appears to have a negative impact on career choices, home ownership, health, finance, retirement, and, for women, getting married and having children. The review was undertaken by Ariane de Gayardon, Claire Callender (both UCL), KC Deane and Stephen DesJardins (both Michigan).
US court ruling finds that universities may be liable in mental health cases The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on 7 May 2018 that MIT could not be sued for the suicide in 2009 of a graduate student who jumped off a building and killed himself, shortly after being told by a faculty member that an email he had sent was unprofessional and rude. However the judgment also said: “Moral blameworthiness on the part of a university in failing to act to intervene to save a young person's life, when it was within the university's knowledge and power to do so, is understood and accepted by our society".
Enrolments go up after postgraduate loans are introduced The OfS has published new data, alongside data from the Intentions After Graduation Survey, showing that the proportion of students who state their intention to continue their studies and end up going into postgraduate education has increased. In 2016 the government introduced postgraduate masters’ loans of up to £10,000 to help students meet tuition fees and living costs. Between 2015-16 and 2016-17 the number of entrants studying eligible masters’ courses rose from 73,880 to 96,465. The proportional increase was largest among the following groups: students from low participation
19 areas; black students; students who declared a disability; and students aged 25 and under.
Poor students pay more and drop out more An NUS report, Class Dismissed: Getting in and Getting on in Further and Higher Education, said that dropout rates from university are highest among working-class students, who are more likely to be debt averse than their wealthier peers, yet can end up paying more. The research, reported by Sally Weale in The Guardian on 23 April, called for the introduction of a minimum living income for students in further and higher education and the restoration of maintenance grants, the education maintenance allowance and NHS bursaries for healthcare students.
Contract cheating in Australian universities A survey of teaching staff in Australian universities on ‘contract cheating’ (where students ‘outsource’ assignment-writing) investigated staff experiences, attitudes and views on what might inhibit or support efforts to minimise cheating. Improving key aspects of the teaching and learning environment, including the relationships between students and staff, is likely to minimise cheating, and also improve detection when cheating occurs. The research was reported in an article in Studies in Higher Education (online 17 April 2018) by Rowena Hartley (South Australia) and her six co-authors.
New leadership at OIA The Board of Directors of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator has appointed Felicity Mitchell and Ben Elger to jointly lead the OIA as Independent Adjudicator and Chief Executive respectively. They took up their posts on 1 April 2018.
Quality, Standards, Performance, Evaluation
Quality and standards
30 years of teaching quality enhancement David Kernohan of Wonkhe gave an excellent keynote for SEDA which, naturally, he also blogged for WonkHE on 10 May 2018, arguing we should look again at the idea of small funded projects.
The unintended impacts of quality management may outweigh the intended ones SRHE Fellow John Brennan (Open University) had an international survey-based article in the European Journal of Higher Education (online 20 May 2018) on ‘Success factors of quality management in higher education: intended and unintended impacts’.
Grade inflation is a global problem and may need sector-wide solutions That was the view of SRHE members Andrew Gunn and Priya Kapade (both Leeds) in their article for World University News on 25 May 2018. Think tank Reform published a report on 21 June 2018 on grade inflation with some frankly fatuous recommendations, including national examinations for first degrees. Commenting on the report, Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of the Office for Students, said: ‘It is important that degrees hold their value over time, and if there is artificial grade inflation this is not in the interests of students, employers or the higher education sector. The report by Reform is a useful contribution to the debate, and there is other work currently under way by the OfS and other partners to assess the complex issues involved, so that we can fully understand and tackle this in the right way.’ Damned with faint praise, we think.
20 Fraud and malpractice now pose a real threat to traditional quality assurance QAA chief executive Douglas Blackstock made a speech at the QAA annual conference on 25 April in which he said that QAA had “recently received and, in some cases, investigated allegations about admissions, malpractice, academic fraud and the falsification of evidence in 19 alternative providers in London.”, as Jack Grove reported for Times Higher Education on 25 April 2018.
HE risk management hasn’t changed much Keiko Yokoyama (Stockholm) had an article in Quality in Higher Education (online 15 January 2018) based on research in England and the State University of New York, suggesting that HE had responded to the 2008 financial crisis by coping with expenditure cuts rather than reshaping their risk management systems.
Performance, evaluation and rankings
How to go up the pecking order Jelena Brankovic had an article in Higher Education (online 10 July 2017) using the concept of organisational status to explore how universities respond to intensifying competition. The paper drew from the literature to identify three mechanisms of organisational status construction— categories, intermediaries and affiliations—and offered a set of propositions as to how universities of different status rank are expected to act when seeking to maintain or advance their status.
Coventry beat Exeter We interrupt our determined non-coverage of all university ranking systems only because Coventry were above Exeter in The Guardian’s latest league table, just as they were that week in play-offs for promotion from football’s League 2, winning at Wembley 3-1. (#playupskyblues #Iwastherein1987).
Research
Is it true that half of all academic papers are never read? Not according to Arthur G Jago (Missouri at Columbia), who tried and failed to validate this much- reported assertion.
The academic papers researchers regard as significant are not those that are highly cited Rachel Borchardt and Matthew R Hartings (both American University) wrote for The Impact Blog on 14 May 2018 about their PloS One article showing “a strikingly large discrepancy between researchers’ perceptions of impact and the metric we currently use to measure impact.”
More revisions = more citations That’s what John Rigby (Manchester), Deborah Cox (Sheffield) and Keith Julian (independent) found, researching the peer review process. They wrote about it for The Impact Blog on 10 April 2018.
Just for methodology buffs Dirk von Lehn’s article in the British Journal of Management (online 22 May 2018) introduced “phenomenology‐based ethnography as a novel ethnographic approach for research in management studies and organizational analysis and describes three methods that have been developed from this approach: life‐world analytical ethnography, focused ethnography and go‐along ethnography.”
What does ‘learning organisation’ mean? Anders Örtenblad (Nord University, Norway) had an article in The Learning Organisation (25:3, 2018) unpicking various concepts: four versions, each relatable to three organisational aspects, calling for a contingency approach. Perhaps the journal has a touch of existential angst.
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Not as easy as ABC Mathias Weber (Vilnius) reviewed the evidence on alphabetical ordering of article authors and concluded that alphabetical order is discriminatory, in his article for Research Evaluation and his contribution for The Impact Blog on 29 May 2018.
Are two authors better than one? Or even three? by James Hartley Are two authors better than one in getting citations? Most analysts say yes, but few, if any of these studies, keep one author constant and compare the citation rates for that author writing alone with the citations he/she acquires when writing with one or more co-authors. The latest contribution in James Hartley’s continuing series on the SRHE Blog compares the median number of citations for 21 papers written by himself, 21 written with a colleague, and 21 written with two colleagues.
Research into higher education
Higher education as a public good The 2015 edited collection Higher education as a public good: critical perspectives on theory, policy and practice by SRHE Council member Ourania Filippiakou and SRHE Fellow Gareth Williams was positively reviewed by Nicola Dunham (Massey) in Higher Education Quarterly 37:3, 2018: “a very complex and detailed book which warrants many readings”.
Powerful knowledge in the fishbowl by Jim Hordern A review of an SRHE South West Regional Network event on ‘Knowledge and power in higher education’
On 8 May 2018 an SRHE SW Regional Network event held at the International Centre for Higher Education Management (ICHEM) at the University of Bath examined ‘knowledge and power in higher education’. Two speakers, Michael Young and Melz Owusu (who also treated the audience to some rap), gave opposing views. This was followed by brief comments from David Packham and a ‘fishbowl’ discussion session, which offered audience members opportunities to voice their opinions on the topic. Read the whole review on the SRHE Blog.
Boundaries, Buddies, and Benevolent Dictators within the Ecology of Doctoral Study by Kay Guccione and Søren Bengtsen In March 2018 Kay Guccione (Sheffield) and Søren Bengtsen (Aarhus) co- delivered a seminar at SRHE based on their complementary research studies into doctoral support, supervision, and relationships. In recognition that very many and varied players contribute to supporting doctoral researchers along the way, we spoke to the idea of the ‘Ecology' of doctoral study. Through both of our research and practice areas, we raise issues of boundaries, buddies and benevolent dictators: read the full report on the SRHE Blog.
Mapping HE research using PhD reports Sioux McKenna, Lynne Quinn and Jo-Anne Vorster (all Rhodes) had an article in Higher Education Quarterly (online 29 January 2018) analysing 39 examiners’ reports on 13 Rhodes PhDs, using aspects
22 of Karl Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory: “The study found that despite concerns in the literature about the a-theoretical nature of the Higher Education Studies field, examiners valued high-level theoretical and meta-theoretical engagement as well as methodological rigour. In addition, examiners prized the ability to demonstrate a strong ideological position, to use a clear doctoral voice, and to recognise the axiological drive of the field.” In the same issue of HEQ you can also see Susan Carter’s favourable review of The idea of the PhD: the doctorate in the twenty-first-century imagination by her Auckland colleague Frances Kelly; Tara Brabazon’s (Flinders) THE review was altogether less flattering.
Staff academic writing: why write? by Amanda Roberts and Joy Jarvis
University of Hertfordshire academics Amanda Roberts and Joy Jarvis reflected on academic writing and its motivations in two pieces for the SRHE blog in May. Amanda Roberts, co-founder of the university’s impressive in-house journal LINK, developed the journal in response to the lack of confidence many academics felt about writing at an acceptable level for publication, as she explained in Staff academic writing. In Why write? Joy Jarvis reflected on motivations to write and explained how LINK can help: “We need spaces where we can share our concerns about practice with others, connect with research that is ongoing elsewhere, and help to move the practice on, through our writing as well as through our research. The SRHE blog is of course another such space.
Publishing
Is Google a journal publisher? Kent Anderson, founder of the Scholarly Kitchen blog, said it is, in his blog on 11 June 2018.
Sweden cancels contract with Elsevier, protesting against lack of open access Annika Wentzel reported for OpenAccess.se on 16 May 2018 that the Bibsam consortium, which acts for Swedish HE, had announced that it would cancel its agreement with Elsevier on 30 June 2018: “To be able to make the necessary transition from a subscription-based to an open access publishing system the Bibsam Consortium requires: – Immediate open access to all articles published in Elsevier journals by researchers affiliated to participating organisations – Reading access for participating organisations to all articles in Elsevier’s 1,900 journals – A sustainable price model that enables a transition to open access … Elsevier has not been able to present a model that meets the demands of the Bibsam Consortium”.
An increasing number of US universities are ending, or threatening to end, bundled journal subscriptions with major publishers, according to a report by Lindsay McKenzie on 8 May 2018 for insidehighered.com.
Journal editor resigns over self-citations Colleen Flaherty reported for insidehighered.com on 30 April 2018 that Robert Sternberg (Cornell) had resigned as editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science after colleagues raised concerns about his frequent self-citation in the journal, attitudes toward gender and diversity, and other issues.
LSE launches open access publishing platform LSE announced on 16 May 2018 the launch of LSE Press, a new open access publishing platform for social science research.
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Ethics and Academic Freedom
Ethics and Integrity
ANU stands up for academic autonomy in robust terms The Australian National University statement on discussions with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation about a proposed course pulled no punches in drawing a red line on academic autonomy for a would-be sponsor who wanted too much control.
Self-plagiarisation is not what you think Jamie L Callahan (Northumbria) had an article in Organization (online 26 October 2017) on the ‘The retrospective (im)moralisation of self-plagiarism: power interests in the social construction of new norms’: “in presenting this article, I engage in a form of ‘guerrilla plagiarism’ to resist the appropriation of my authorial voice by power elites in the institutional field of publishing.”
University lawyer says he was fired for investigating university president’s son Jeremy Davitz, former general counsel for Ohio Christian University, has taken legal action against the University: he says he was forced out of his job after he investigated President Mark Smith’s son Doug – a student and employee of the University. He recommended Doug’s dismissal for a range of racist, homophobic and sexist behavior, but then allegedly had his duties reduced before he left altogether. Mark Smith was then appointed to head Columbia International Christian University, where Doug is also now employed, as Scott Jaschik reported for insidehighered.com on 3 May 2018.
Explosive resignation letter Accusations of sexual harassment against a member of faculty at the University of Rochester, a ‘top- tier research university’ in New York State, led to multiple complaints from women who said they were also victims. But the University then investigated various complainants and reinstated the alleged perpetrator, leading to multiple resignations, with two of those leaving writing this explosive letter of resignation.
Corruption in Kazakh universities Emma Sabzalieva’s (OISE, Toronto) well-regarded personal blog had a 15 June 2018 post on ‘Ranking corruption in Kazakh universities’, a recurring theme she has found regrettably unavoidable.
Tajikistan fake dissertation scandal reaches high levels of government Emma Sabzalieva reported for University World News on 28 April 2018 that more than 25 doctoral dissertations from Tajikistan defended between 2004 and 2015 contained significant elements of plagiarism. The candidates concerned include Davlatali Said, first deputy prime minister. Tajikistan retained an academic affiliation with Russia until recently, and in 2016 Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made adverse comments on the high number of theses coming from just two institutions: Tajik National University and the Tajik Academy of Education.
24 What is Times Higher Education for? by Paul Temple Have you been to a THE Awards bash? If not, it’s worth blagging an invite – your University must be on the shortlist for Herbaceous Border Strategy Team of the Year, or some such, as the business model obviously depends on getting as many universities as possible onto the shortlists, and then persuading each university to cough up to send along as many of its staff as possible. A night out at a posh Park Lane hotel for staff whose work most likely is normally unnoticed by the brass: where’s the harm? I went once – once is enough – mainly I think because our Marketing Director wanted to see if I really possessed a dinner jacket. (She was generous enough to say that I “scrubbed up nicely”.)
I mention this because THE itself seems to be becoming less a publication dealing with higher education news and comment and more a business aimed at extracting cash from higher education institutions, with the weekly magazine merely being a marketing vehicle in support of this aim. The Awards events are the least bothersome aspect of this. The THE rankings – highly valued as “how not to use data” examples by teachers of basic quantitative methods courses - have now entered the realm of parody (“Emerging Economy Universities with an R in their names”) although the associated conferences and double-page advertising spreads in the magazine rake in a nice bit of revenue, one imagines. THE might fairly respond by saying that nobody makes these universities come to their conferences or buy corporate advertising in their pages, and anyway they weren’t the ones who decided that the marketisation of higher education worldwide would be a good idea. True, but their profit-making activities give the ratchet another turn, making it harder for universities trying to survive in a competitive market to say no to marketing blandishments, and so helping to move yet more spending away from teaching and research: something regularly lampooned by Laurie Taylor in – remind me where his Poppleton column appears?
The newer, more problematic, development is THE then selling itself as a branding consultancy to the same universities that it is including in its rankings and maybe covering in its news or comment pages. Now it goes without saying that a journal with the standards of THE would never allow the fact that it was earning consultancy fees from a university to influence that university’s position in the rankings that it publishes or how it was covered editorially. It would be unthinkable: not least because it would at a stroke undermine the whole basis of the rankings themselves. Audit firms similarly assure us that the fact that they are earning consultancy fees from a company could never affect the audit process affecting that company. The causes of misleading audit reports – on Carillion, say - should be sought elsewhere, we’re told.
But wait a minute, what’s this on the THE website? “THE is the data provider underpinning university excellence in every continent across the world. As the company behind the world’s most influential university ranking, and with almost five decades of experience as a source of analysis and insight on higher education, we have unparalleled expertise on the trends underpinning university performance globally. Our data and benchmarking tools are used by many of the world’s most prestigious universities to help them achieve their strategic goals.” This seems to be saying that the data used to create the THE rankings are available, at a price, to allow universities to improve their own performance. Leaving aside the old joke about a consultant being someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time, referring to the data used to produce rankings and in the following sentence proposing using the same data to help universities achieve their strategic goals (and I’d be surprised if these goals didn’t include rising in the aforementioned rankings) will suggest to potential clients that these two THE activities are linked. Otherwise why mention them in the same breath? This is skating on thin ethical ice.
25 SRHE member Paul Temple, Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education, University College London.
Global Perspectives
HE expansion and differentiation go together In CGHE Working Paper 33 (April 2018) Vincent Carpentier (UCL IoE) investigated expansion and differentiation in higher education, and the relationship between the two during the last century in the UK, the USA and France. He found a strong association between HE expansion and institutional differentiation in all three countries. The association is related to socio-economic transformations, particularly economic crises, but correlation does not mean causality. Institutional differentiation was a key driver of inclusion of underrepresented groups at the beginning of each phase of expansion, but - in the longer-term - differentiation tends to constrain social mobility, with the composition of the student body remaining stable, in a ‘stratified democratisation’. Economic crises affect HE funding models, increase forms of inequality and intensify the demands made of HE in terms of growth and (un)employment.
Spanish Inquisition Samuel Martín-Barbero, vice-chancellor of the Universidad Camilo José Cela in Spain, and Adrian Monck, head of public and social engagement at the World Economic Forum, argued in Times Higher Education on 26 May 2018 that there are three kinds of HE system: equalisers, revolutionaries and globalisers. Or maybe four, with the addition of a model where students work and study throughout their time at university.
Africa
Benin
Benin universities’ strike deadlocked after talks break down Benin’s university staff came out on strike early in 2018 after the nation’s Constitutional Court ruled that the government could not legislate to ban strikes in many public services. The staff demanded pay rises, bonuses for publications and the reintroduction of automatic promotion each year. The country’s President Patrice Talon asked a former university lecturer to negotiate with the strikers, but talks broke down in April and the President then froze pay in the universities. Tunde Fatunde reported for University World News on 20 April 2018.
Asia
China
A new administrative paradigm for China? The article by Tom Christensen (Oslo) and Yongmao Fan (Renmin University of China) in the International Review of Administrative Sciences (84(2): 389-404, online 23 May 2016) suggested that “China is imitating post-New Public Management reforms and adapting them to Chinese cultural traditions. China’s case reveals that the public sector is a complicated combination of elements from New Public Management and post-New Public Management reforms in a process where new reform elements are continuously added to old ones. China’s reforms are still ongoing; in the past years, China focused more on economic reform, decentralization and efficiency, but today its reforms are turning to social stability, political order and central control.”
26 Pakistan
Pakistan Supreme Court orders five VCs to step down Ameen Amjad Khan reported for University World News on 26 April 2018 that increasing instances of nepotism in VC appointments had led to a rising tide of academic opposition in various provinces. On 22 April 2018 the Pakistan Supreme Court had ordered the removal of the vice-chancellors of the University of the Punjab, Lahore College for Women University, Rawalpindi Medical University, Fatima Jinnah Medical University and Faisalabad Medical University. The Court ruled they had been appointed in violation of the merit-based system. Academics had complained about increasing political influence over senior appointments since a constitutional change in 2010 devolved responsibility for HE to the provincial level. Some academics took cases to court, and the courts in some cases took action on their own account (suo moto). The Supreme Court hearing was a suo moto case.
Singapore
Singapore Parliament attacks academic called to give evidence on fake news The Singapore Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods asked Thum Ping Tjin (Oxford), a Singapore scholar whose history of Singapore previously embarrassed the ruling party, to give evidence at its hearing. Yojana Sharma reported for University World News on 15 May 2018 that: “Official Singaporean government videos of the hearing show six hours of bullying, personal attacks and cross-examination about Thum’s own historical research, which was a very small part of his submission to the committee.” The onslaught was led by Singapore’s Minister of Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam. Thum’s experience prompted international outrage among academics and letters to the chair of the Select Committee calling for an apology.
Taiwan
Taiwan Education Minister resigns over refusal to confirm NTU president appointment Mimi Leung reported for University World News on 18 April 2018 that Taiwan’s Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung had resigned on 14 April 2018, over his refusal to sign off the appointment of a new president for National Taiwan University (NTU). Pan said he hoped his resignation would “serve as an opportunity for the ministry and the government to properly consider the issues surrounding the appointment of NTU president-elect Kuan Chung-ming”. Kuan has still not taken up his post despite being due to start on 1 February. There were allegations of a conflict of interest in the appointment process, separate allegations of plagiarism, and more recent allegations that he had taken up teaching posts in China, which is illegal for government servants, including professors.
To lose one is unfortunate, but to lose two ... Pan’s replacement, Wu Maw-Kuen, also resigned after just a month in office, after allegations - which he denies – that he too had held teaching appointments in China, and that he had been misallocated significant funds in research bonuses in his previous role as president of National Dong Hwa University. Mimi Leung again reported for University World News on 30 May 2018. Kuan is still not confirmed as NTU’s new president, and the university appears to be deeply split over whether he should be. Meanwhile, NTU and three other leading universities are to be investigated because although they have been funded to provide English-language courses the proportion of such courses they offer is less than 10%, as Taiwan News reported on 1 June 2018.
27 Australasia
New Zealand
New Zealand government freezes HE funding after abolishing tuition fees Just as universities feared, the new Labour-led government in New Zealand has frozen HE funding in an apparent trade-off for the costs of waiving student fees for the first year of university study, as John Gerritsen reported for University World News on 20 May 2018. Universities New Zealand chair and Auckland VC, Stuart McCutcheon, said “… it will cost us somewhere in the order of NZ$18-36 million [US$12-25 million] … next year alone … it reflects … a continuation of a trend … for the past 20 or so years in which governments on both sides of the house have put most of their effort into lowering the cost of university education rather than raising quality …".
Europe
Hungary
Hungary cracks down on foreign universities (well, just the one foreign university) Reuters reported on 29 March 2018 that the newly-re-elected Orban government in Hungary has launched a new bill to require all foreign universities operating in Hungary also to have a campus in their home country. There are many foreign universities in Hungary but the only university affected by the proposed law is the Soros-founded Central European University, which said the law strikes at the heart of the CEU. CEU rector Michael Ignatieff has called for the bill to be withdrawn and said the university must have a guarantee of its academic freedom.
Netherlands
Too many English language degrees A lobby group is taking Maastricht and Twente universities to court complaining that they offer too many degrees taught in English, as Dutch News reported on 18 May 2018. The Beter Onderwijs Nederland association says the two universities are breaking the law because they are offering English language courses without good reason to do so.
Sweden
Court orders university college to repay fees for student on poor-quality course A significant case in Sweden ended with a Supreme Court ruling ordering Mälardalen University College to pay back SEK114,000 (£9600) plus interest from 25 May 2015, plus court costs of SEK41,360. Connie Askenbäck, then Connie Dickinson, a US citizen, moved to Sweden to study an MA in analytical finance at the university college in 2011-12. The course was taught in English, with tuition fees of SEK55,000 per term, and was marketed as being of “very high quality”. But Askenbäck said the professors had poor English skills and the course suffered from inadequate computer provision, overcrowding and unhelpful tutors. She raised these issues with the college, but to no avail, and eventually sued for the full fees of SEK170,812. The College argued that it was not legally liable for the quality of its education, even for foreign students - who pay tuition fees, unlike Swedish nationals. It argued unsuccessfully that no refund was due and sought costs. A local court ordered complete repayment; the Appeals Court ordered 50% repayment, and the Supreme Court settled on two-thirds. Jan Petter Myklebust had the story for University World News on 18 April 2018.
28 North America
Canada
Canadian universities increase fees for overseas students Xiao Xu reported for the Vancouver-based Globe and Mail on 22 April 2018 that the University of Victoria had increased international student fees by 20% to $10837, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University had increased fees by 15%, to $9870. Canadian students pay $2000.
United States
Texas university reneges on scholarship offers at the last minute The University of Texas at Tyler offered more than 100 ‘full-ride’ scholarships worth an estimated $27000 each to international students, mostly in Nepal, in Autumn 2017, but then wrote to them in mid-April saying the offer was withdrawn. 1st May is in practice the cutoff date for many US admissions processes. The University said it had made too many offers and couldn’t afford them all, prompting widespread outrage – but no change in the outcome. Eric Hoover reported for The Chronicle of Higher Education on 29 April 2018. They later apologised … but without changing their position.
Society News
SRHE Annual Research Conference: 5-7 December 2018 Celtic Manor, Newport Wales, UK
Firstly, we would like to thank all who have submitted papers, symposium proposals, or made other contributions to this key event in our 2018 calendar. This year’s conference theme is The changing shape of higher education: Can excellence and inclusion cohabit?
To register your place at the conference, go to https://www.srhe.ac.uk/conference2018/submit- abstract-register.asp and note the reduction for early registration ends on 28th September 2018.
SRHE Newer Researchers Conference: 4 December 2018 Coldra Court, Newport Wales, UK
This linked SRHE conference provides a unique opportunity for postgraduate and newer researchers to share and discuss their work with peers in the higher education research community in a supportive and developmental environment.
Booking and further information are available via http://www.srhe.ac.uk/conference2018/newer- researchers-conference.asp
SRHE Research Awards 2018 (Member and Scoping Awards) Applications for these £10,000 and £5,000 awards are currently open and will close on September 1st. Further details, including application forms, guidance notes, and reference forms are available via http://www.srhe.ac.uk/research/annual_research_awards.asp
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SRHE Newer Research Awards Winners 2018 We are delighted to confirm the three winning proposals for this year’s SRHE Newer Researchers Awards as follows:
Prevent/ing criticality? The pedagogical impact of Prevent in UK universities by Dr. Emily Danvers (University of Sussex)
Dual Professionals in Higher Education: From Professional Practitioner to Lecturer by Dr. Julia Hope (University of Kent)
Scholars in the streets: Portraits of disruptive faculty activism in 20th-Century social movements by Dr Nora Timmerman (Northern Arizona University)
Further details will appear on the SRHE website shortly, but we would also like to thank all those who put together proposals for this year’s awards and hope that at least some of the many other innovative and well-written proposals will be able to find alternative sources of funding.
Membership rates for 2018-19
The above rates were recently reviewed by the SRHE Management and Finance Committee, and whilst the standard rate for membership will remain at £100, and the Student rate at £35, there will be a slight increase to the Retired rate. This will increase from £45 to £55 annually from 1st August 2018, to bring this in line with rates in comparable organisations.
Note also that from the 1st August 2018, the non-member fee for attending SRHE Network and Professional Development Programme (PDP) events will increase from £60 to £75 per event. Another good reason to encourage your contacts to join and become SRHE members, and attend all Network and PDP events for free. For the full range of SRHE member benefits see https://www.srhe.ac.uk/join_us/individual_membership_benefits.asp
Forthcoming Events for 2018 See www.srhe.ac.uk for details
Helen Perkins, Director [email protected] Rob Gresham, Manager Operations and Finance [email protected] Franco Carta, Finance Officer [email protected] Katie Tindle, Team Coordinator [email protected] François Smit, Conference and Events Organiser [email protected]
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Small ads
External examiners, referees, reviewers wanted News will be happy to carry advertisements for external examiners in the broad field of research into higher education, for publishers’ referees, for book reviewers, and so on.
Higher Education Close-Up Dear colleagues, we would like to invite you to the HECU 9 (Higher Education Close-Up) conference which will take place from 15-16 November 2018 in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. The Call for Proposals is now open, and you can access the conference website at http://www.hecu9.co.za/. We look forward to welcoming you to Cape Town in the South African summer in November! Best wishes, Renee Smit
Dr Reneé Smit | PhD, Senior Lecturer (Academic Development), Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Centre for Research in Engineering Education (CREE) [email protected] Tel. no. +27 (0)21 6503440 Rm 4.16 Menzies Building
Mind your language
The space between words (and sentences) The American Psychological Association (APA) Manual states that two spaces should follow the punctuation at the end of a sentence. Rebecca L Johnson, Becky Bui and Lindsay L Schmitt, (all Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, US) decided to investigate whether the spacing made a difference: “Although comprehension was not affected by punctuation spacing, the eye movement record suggested that initial processing of the text was facilitated when periods were followed by two spaces”. They published their findings in Attention, Perception and Psychophysics (online 24 April 2018). The only thing they can plead in mitigation is that they are all psychologists.
What’s in a name?
Congratulations to Ravensbourne University London Ravensbourne has been awarded university status by the Privy Council and from now on will be called 'Ravensbourne University London'. Ravensbourne moved to a new purpose-built campus on the Greenwich Peninsula in September 2010. It has offered degree level courses for many years, validated by University of Arts London, and in August 2017 gained its own Taught Degree Awarding Powers.
There was more on names from Paul Greatrix on WonkHE on 12 April 2018. And the Victoria University of Wellington is considering changing its name to become the University of Wellington, saying it has been repeatedly confused with other universities around the world with similar names. We advise a merger to obscure the reason, like Manchester in 2004.
31 And finally
Will Chester’s £120m science park and learning centre have to be demolished? Cheshire West and Chester Council planning committee ruled that the University of Chester’s £120m learning centre at Thornton Science Park, housing its science and engineering department, would have to be dismantled because of health risks to students. The committee rejected a retrospective application to allow the learning centre to continue, because the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) advised that students would be at risk if there was a toxic gas release or explosion from the Stanlow oil refinery, which is adjacent to the Science Park. The university’s science and engineering department has been based at the Science Park since 2014. David Holmes had the story for The Chester Chronicle on 5 June 2018. The University is appealing against the decision and argued that it was based on technicalities which overstated the risk.
Brenda Leibowitz 1957 – 2018 It is with much sadness that the SRHE community notes the passing of Brenda Leibowitz, a South African scholar in academic development and higher education. Her recent work on academic staff development features twice in the SRHE/Routledge book series; first, a chapter in the edited 2016 book “Researching Higher Education: International perspectives on theory, policy and practice”, and then, with Vivienne Bozalek and Peter Kahn, a 2017 book “Theorising learning to teach in higher education”. She also presented her work at the SRHE annual conference and will be known to many in the community for her engagement across a wide range of higher education conferences in South Africa and abroad. Read the full obituary on the SRHE Blog.
Cliff Adelman We also report with sadness the death on 3 May 2018 of Cliff Adelman, former researcher at the US Department of Education and senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, remembered by Doug Lederman for insidehighered.com.
Simon Marginson moves to Oxford SRHE Fellow Professor Simon Marginson has been appointed Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford and will take up his post in September 2018. Professor Marginson, recently conferred as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, will continue to lead the Centre for Global HE, and, subject to the signing of a new CGHE partner agreement, the University of Oxford will become one of the Centre’s university partners, joining the UCL Institute of Education, Australian National University, the University of Bath, the University of Cape Town, Dublin Institute of Technology, Durham University, Hiroshima University, Lancaster University, Leiden University, Lingnan University, the University of Michigan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Sheffield.
Honour for Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt Congratulations to Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt (Global University for Lifelong Learning/Griffith), awarded the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2018: ‘For distinguished service to tertiary education in the field of action research and learning as an academic, author and mentor, and to professional bodies.’
32 Scholarly societies are more diverse than universities More diverse in Zoology, at least, according to research by Dominique A Potvin and colleagues published in PLoS ONE on 30 May 2018: “While women were more highly represented in society leadership than in institutional academic leadership, this representation was still far short of equal (~30%): we thus also provide a checklist and recommendations for societies to contribute to global gender equality in science.”
Music students get the Elbow Elbow frontman Guy Garvey is to become a ‘professor of songwriting’ at Manchester Metropolitan University, according to a BBC report on 27 April 2018. Students can be a cast of thousands, some will be the seldom seen kid, but if they avoid being asleep in the back some will no doubt go on to become leaders of the free world.
Why are there more home runs in baseball now? Eric Kelderman reported for The Chronicle of Higher Education on 28 May 2018 that Alan M Nathan (Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), a nuclear physicist and lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, got so interested in the physics of baseball that Major League Baseball asked him to lead a study on why there have been more home runs during the 2015-2017 seasons. His team discovered it was because the air resistance on the baseball had somehow reduced, for reasons still unknown, so the ball carries further. Maybe they could do some work on the reasons for England’s batting collapses.
The very model of a pundit academical Miriam Elizabeth Burstein (Brockport, SUNY) came up with this delightful Gilbert and Sullivan skit, including:
I'm very good at clickbait that's superbly supercilious, I know exactly just the thing to make my colleagues bilious, In short, in fields artistic, scientific, and political, I am the very model of a pundit academical.
More topical and a nice idea, but not such a good effort from *Research about The Providers of Penzance. That scansion was all wrong.
Which celebrity chef is your university? For a seriously off-the-wall take on university cultures, try this from The Tab. Who knew there were so many celebrity chefs, and that youth culture was so well-informed about them? “The Tab is a site covering youth culture and student culture … Our London office is run by 23-year-olds”.
Neoliberal corporations have imperialist souls, but they can be saved Edward Wray-Bliss (Macquarie) got all spiritual for Organization (online 17 April 2018) in his article ‘Redeeming organizational soul’.
Fictional universities John Rentoul had a list of fictional universities in The Independent on 3 May 2018, but with no mention for Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University it could hardly be definitive.
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Ian McNay writes … Front line news
Professional life continues to throw up issues that would amuse in their management expectations if they were not so serious. This updates some things treated last time.
On appraisal, I have now been told that to prepare for my appraisal, I need to complete on-line mandatory courses – seven of them, with exams to pass, at 80% pass mark, for the two I have done: - Equality and diversity essentials - Information security - Data protection training - Display screen equipment - University reporting - Safeguarding against extremism - Safeguarding essentials I get excused from the one on Managing Diversity, since I do not have management responsibilities.
On the appeal by the doctoral student where I chaired the viva panel, I have now, after I chased the enquiry again, been told the outcome. The appeals panel has set aside the recommendation from the external examiners and awarded the student an MPhil without further requirement, when the panel had been specific in saying that if the opportunity for a re-submission were to be offered, it should be on condition that extra fieldwork was done to give a more rigorous underpinning to the work, as well as other changes to show that the student understands basic research methodology.
Their academic judgement has been rejected. Why? They will not be told. My internal correspondence suggests that they have no right to know, and confidentiality issues mean that the background to the decision cannot be shared with them. Their comments on problems of supervision and support systems have had no response: if there are any lessons to be learned – and there must be to justify the exceptional decision - they will be considered next time there is a review. Although secrecy is denied, it appears that the faculty liaison person for appeals was told of the outcome only after my first enquiry and the externals were sent a terse letter only after my second enquiry suggested I was not going to give up. They were told the decision, thanked and the hope expressed that they would act again. The faculty research committee, to which the appeals panel reports, has been told nothing. The VC, after an approach from me, asked a PVC to conduct an enquiry. He found nothing wrong, but … he had chaired the appeal panel.
I am about to move office again, for the twelfth time, to share with two other research professors. We have an allocation of one bookshelf each – I assume one bookcase shared among us. Somebody taking these decisions either has no idea of how academics work, or believes the university can make free use of home-based facilities, though there is a ‘presentism’ expectation, too, which presents a quandary.
Beyond the office
The THE reputational rankings (31 May) listed countries represented in the top 100. Four of those countries had one institution each, which scraped in to the last ten, ranked 91-100. Except … like the 100 years’ war, there were more than 100: 106 to be precise, with 11 between 81 and 90 and 15 in the final decile. The decision to expand the final group reduces the meaning of the rankings even
34 further – since they are based on ‘where have you heard of?’, which is hardly a valid base for ranking. It favours brand management above product quality. The extension of the list does, though, extend coverage and allow its use for brand management by four universities/countries with consequent impact on marketing, not least for the THE, and its branding consultancy.
There is one other example to be referred to the Radio 4 programme ‘More or Less’ (which I recommend for researchers using published statistics and press claims). Zhejiang University has a double page advert, where it pushes its place in the 51-60 cluster in the 2017 rankings. Unfortunately, if you turn the page, you will see that, this year, it dropped to 71-80. Oops. But, its maths is not the strongest. It claims to have three strategies to be consistently listed in these rankings. Count them: - Cultivate high quality people - Build academic strength - Pursue research excellence - Attract high-calibre scholars - Inherit cultural traditions - Explore reform approaches Perhaps they gained in translation.
Two items link to events beyond the ivory tower, but show how societal values cross the boundary. One is serious, in the light of the ‘hostile environment’ for BAME citizens. The Independent reported on 23 April: @Black people in UK 21 times more likely to have university applications investigated. That is nearly four times the ratio of stop and search by the police. Of British applicants through the UCAS clearing house 1 in every 102 black applicants were ‘highlighted as a cause for concern’. The ratio for White British applicants was 1 in 2,146. Other figures, used to argue for post results applications, show that Black school students are likely to have predicted grades much less optimistically pitched than those for other groups.
Finally, given births and marriages and line of succession issues among our rulers, not least to head the Commonwealth, the University of Derby is establishing a family tradition. The current chancellor, the Duke of Devonshire (don’t ask – a geographic glitch by a southerner centuries ago) is retiring and will be succeeded by his son, the Earl of Burlington. I do hope he, like George VI, is called Bertie. Somebody could write a music hall song.
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