How UK universities work (and how they can respond to current challenges)

1. How UK universities work (and how they can respond to current challenges) Ralf St.Clair University of Glasgow

2. Topics • The ideas of the university • Structure • Quality assurance • Role of students • Issues facing the university • The future? • Case study of Glasgow’s Court

3. The ideas of the university

5. History and philosophy of unversity shows up in: • Structure • Decision-making • Expected outcomes

6. Mediaeval university: • Designed for nobles • Retreat from the world • Often religious • VERY elite

7. Two C19 ideas • Humboldt– university as creator of knowledge through research • Newman– university as preserver and communicator of culture through teaching

8. Two C20 ideas • Massive research-led universities • “Massification” –univerisites for everyone, not just elite

9. Two Key Principles • Institutional autonomy • Academic freedom (Higher Education Act 1988)

10. BUT . . . • Major public funding • Clearly quantified outputs (student numbers) • High quality research • Increasing external quality assurance

11. Summary • Universities are in a very difficult position • Everything is contestable • Their structure is designed to deal with these ambiguities

12. Structure

13. Privy Council Royal Charter (1451) Chancellor

14. Privy Council Chancellor Senate Court Principal

15. A note on Court • Corporate style governance ($400m business) “small as possible, have a lay majority, limited staff and student representation and are distanced from universities’ work” Newman, THES 2010/2/8

16. Privy Council Chancellor Senate Court Principal Vice Principals Arts Science Social Sc. Medicine Research Learning and Teaching

17. Arts Science Social Sc. Medicine Research Learning and Teaching 3 Deans (Research, Learning and Teaching, Graduate Studies) 5 Heads of School

18. Quality assurance

19. QA in the last twenty years • MASSIVE increase • The Audit Society (Power, 1994) • Increased surveillance at every level of the university

20. Institution • Enhancement-Led Institutional Review • Research Assessment Exercise • Learning and Teaching Plan (also College) • Rankings

21. Subject • Annual Programme Monitoring Reviews • Course evaluations • End of year reviews • Periodical subject reviews • Internal reviews • Academic standards committee

22. Role of the students

23. Committees • Staff Student Liaison Committees • Almost all other committees to do with Learning and Teaching, including Senate

24. Surveys • International Student Barometer • First year survey • Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey • Postgraduate research Experience Survey • Course Evaluations

25. Does all the QA activity help? • Probably not • Overlapping • Contradictory • Too much information • Often badly designed by non-academics • EXPENSIVE

26. Issues facing Scottish universities

27. £££ • Transfer of costs from government to students • 2011-2012 tuition support down 11%, capital down 38% • Less research money (most from central government) • Difference between Scottish (£0) and rest of UK (£9000) fees

28. Other • Changing interests and enrolments • Sheer scale • Aging infrastructure

29. The future?

30. Can academic and corporate management sit alongside each other? Probably not. The relationship is quite strained already, and it seems likely that the two will become more distinct.

31. What will replace mass higher education? Most likely more specialised institutions; a division between teaching and research universities, possubly between UG and Graduate focus

32. What does this mean for academic freedom and institutional autonomy? It’s not clear. It’s useful to the State to have universities nominally independent, so that will continue. Univerisities in the UK will take a long time to gather the resources to step away from the State. Research and teaching will be more shaped by the market.

33. Universities are no longer a place outside social forces to reflect upon them; they now directly reflect those forces.