
Is there a Magic Link between Research Activity, Professional Teaching Qualifications and Student Satisfaction? Adrian R. Bell and Chris Brooks ICMA Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6BA, UK; tel: (+44) 118 378 7809; e-mails: [email protected] and [email protected] January 2016 Abstract This paper examines the key drivers of the satisfaction of UK students, as measured by the National Student Survey, using the entire database of students who completed it in 2014. We employ a wide range of factors that may potentially affect contentment, including both university-wide variables that capture the reputation of the university and the quality of its research, and school-specific measures incorporating the demographic and ethnic profiles of the teaching staff. We find overall that students are happiest when taught by staff with the following characteristics: white, full professors, holding doctorates, and on fixed-term contracts - although there is no link between satisfaction and the gender mix of the teaching faculty, or with the contractual designation of the staff as teaching intensive or teaching and research. In terms of the broader characteristics of the institutions as a whole, when we allow for a range of factors simultaneously, students are happiest at pre-1992 universities outside the Russell group with high degree course completion rates and where the amount of top-rated research is lower. We find no link between student contentment and the percentage of faculty holding formal teaching qualifications. JEL classifications: C52, I21, I23 Keywords : National Student Survey, student satisfaction, professional teaching qualifications, teaching quality. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the audiences at the Universities of Reading and Bath for insightful comments. Also for helpful discussions with Cherry Bennett, Maxine Davies, Nathan Helsby, Eileen Hyder and Claire McCullagh. Tony Moore and James Walker also provided detailed and useful comments on an earlier draft. Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2712412 1. Introduction The UK higher education system has undergone radical changes over the past decade. The funding formula has altered significantly, so that the bulk of universities’ incomes now come from the fees paid by the students themselves rather than from a government block grant. Research income from the government, distributed following the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, now exceeds government teaching income as a result of this change in funding streams. 1 In 2011/12, before the latest reforms, UK Universities had a combined turnover of £27.9 billion and a report by Universities UK found that ‘Most revenue is directly associated with teaching and research activity (with income from funding council grants, tuition fees and research grants and contracts amounting to 80% of the total).2 Within this mix, research grants and contracts contributed 16%, whilst teaching related income accounted for 35%. By 2013/14, and following the introduction of direct student payment, tuition fees now account for 42% (up 7%) of total income as the direct source of university funding has been transferred from government to student with the block grant dropping from 30% to 20% over the same period.3 These reforms have naturally been accompanied by a heightened focus on the ‘student experience’ (Gibbs, 2010; 2012), which has engendered several important changes in universities’ environments and modus operandi. First, students now feel a sense of empowerment as paying customers and they expect high quality teaching, good facilities, and high standards of organisation and of professionalism throughout their experience. Second, universities have become more corporate in their outlook and objectives, entrepreneurially establishing new subject areas and programmes with the objective of increasing student numbers to generate revenue. Universities compete in an increasingly international marketplace to attract highly qualified students (Chatterton and Goddard, 2000), who in turn are increasingly aware of the relative rankings of universities and departments, with the danger that such rankings then become increasingly ossified and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Achieving a high and rising position in the rankings is now considered a legitimate (and perhaps the most important or even only) objective in its own right rather than being merely a positive side effect of good performance on other, more specific indicators. Consequently, a poorer than expected positioning in the rankings is likely to lead to admonishment of deans and heads of department by university senior managers; the former will in turn pass on their disappointment to the rank and file, who are told that things must improve (Locke, 2014). At the same time, and as an integral part of this intensification of competition, an increasing percentage of university teachers have obtained professional qualifications. This trend has been driven from several directions, including from students, from senior university managers, from 1 The current research funding pot is £1.6 billion. See ‘Winners and Losers in in HEFCE funding allocations’ Times Higher Education, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/winners-and-losers-in-hefce-funding- allocations/2019306.article. 2http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Documents/2014/TheImpactOfUniversitiesOnTheUkEcono my.pdf. The report found that ‘Through both direct and secondary or multiplier effects, the higher education sector generated over £73.11 billion of output and 757,268 full-time- equivalent (FTE) jobs throughout the economy. The total employment generated was equivalent to around 2.7% of all UK employment in 2011’ and that ‘In the year 2011–12, universities contributed over £36.4 billion to UK GDP. The off-campus expenditure of their international students and visitors contributed a further £3.5 billion to GDP. Taken together this contribution came to over £39.9 billion – equivalent to 2.8% of UK GDP in 2011’. 3 http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Documents/2015/higher-education-in-facts-and-figures- 2015.pdf. 2 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2712412 government, and from the individual academics themselves who have sought such qualifications as recognition of their commitment to teaching and learning or to enhance their perceived status. 4 The Browne Report proposed that all new academics who teach should be required to register for a teaching qualification, proposing that: ‘institutions require all new academics with teaching responsibilities to undertake a teacher training qualification accredited by the HEA [Higher Education Academy] and that the option to gain such a qualification is made available to all staff - including researchers and postgraduate students - with teaching responsibilities’ (Browne 2010, p. 50 ). Thornton (2014) outlines how others have made similar calls. A former Chief Executive of the HEA, Craig Mahoney, told the Times Higher Education (THE) in 2010 that he ‘wanted to see every member of staff teaching in UK higher education to have formal qualifications in teaching’ (Atwood, 2012). Boffey (2012) reports that the National Union of Students (NUS) has also called for those teaching in higher education to be formally qualified. A report by the NUS and Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in 2012 claimed, based on the results from a survey, that students wanted lecturers to improve their teaching skills: ‘Students want academic staff to develop their teaching styles to be more engaging, interactive and use technology and props to make the subject more accessible and interesting. Developing an active learning style is a teaching skill which needs to be taught and developed over time, and 34% of students in this research articulated that they wanted their lecturers to have better teaching skills’ (QAA and NUS, 2012). However, not all academics share these views that we, as a profession, are in need of more training to teach. A well-cited paper by Layton and Brown (2011, p. 163-4) argues that the assumptions behind these conclusions and recommendations are simplistic and ‘mask a neoliberal agenda and culture of managerialism’. Furthermore, it is interesting to note from the survey behind the quotation in the above report that only 34% of the student body expressed this view, and whilst indicative of a desire to see lecturers improve their teaching skills, it certainly is not a call to arms. The formal teaching qualification agenda has become an accepted goal, and indeed most UK universities now require their new recruits to undergo an internally operated training and development programme leading to a postgraduate certificate in academic practice, and well- seasoned faculty are also increasingly applying for recognition via the experienced route, as described below. Further, a recent paper (Bryant and Richardson, 2015) finds some preliminary evidence that academics with a PhD, but without a teaching qualification, achieve very different student learning outcomes (positively and negatively) from those who hold both. On this basis, it is not clear that the teaching qualification route for all academic staff would benefit all students. Universities, like many other branches of the public sector, are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that they provide good value for taxpayers’ money (now indirectly through the student loan schemes for fees and living support costs), and the push towards
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