OxCHEPs Conference 2002

OxCHEPS Conference
September 2002

The Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies held a lively Conference of some forty participants on 23rd and 24th of September, 2002, at New College, Oxford. The theme was: New Government, New Labour, New Direction: Is UK HE a viable 'Third Way'? Presentations were given on three key dimensions of the HE systems in the UK, the USA and (broadly) in mainland Europe: Access, Quality and Funding. Several points of discussion and their thumbnail conclusions emerged.

The advent of a 'New Government' under the banner of ‘New Labour’ in 1997probably (and sadly) does not mean a 'New Direction' for UK Higher Education: it appears that the 'strategy' will continue to be 'Keep Muddling On': a conclusion which was reinforced by the White Paper delivered in February 1993—which allowed a small rise in ‘top up fees’ staggered over three years. Preliminary investigations by various institutions, academics and administrators suggest that this alone will not allow ‘elite’ research institutions to remain globally competitive, even though the majority of the block grant money goes to research rather than teaching; in other words though the student pays more up front he or she still does not pay a large enough sum up front to yield himself or herself more contact time with his educators. Nothing within the system was either changed or restructured at a fundamental level. Though the battle cry of 'New Labour' in its second election was ‘Education, education, education!’, in practice this means nothing much different for Higher education from what would emerge within a government of any other conceivable political hue.

UK HE may no longer exist anyway. The current situation is rather England and Scotland emerging as increasingly different systems, and with Wales potentially also diverging from England. Though here the White Paper may (but not necessarily) be seen to contradict this conclusion in that HEFCE has reintroduced a grant system following the Example of Scotland and Wales—so clearly there is some pressure still being asserted to make things equal at some levels throughout the UK.

The main topic of discussion throughout the conference was the thesis that there is currently a 'Third Way' aspect to UK HE when compared with Europe and the US. It is not the free 'open-access' paradigm of European systems. Neither does it have the 'easy-access' social mobility philosophy of the US—though theoretically straightforward, transferring between institutions in mid-degree is in practice difficult and is rare in the UK (unlike the system in place in the US where it is commonplace). Furthermore, quality in the UK is heavily externally regulated, when compared with a greater reliance in Europe on the transparent integrity of the professional academic, or with the mix of ‘student consumerism’ and internal management at US HEIs. Finally, State/tax-payer funding in the UK is increasingly used as a means of political control not seen in Europe, and not as easily applied within the greater institutional diversity of the US mixed-economy model. Ergo, UK Higher Education is a ‘Third Way’. This 'Third Way' was, however, judged not to be viable: Access is perceived to be 'a problem'; Quality seems not necessarily to be secured by the expensive and cumbersome regulatory regimes; the Funding policy is leaving some HEIs in a desperate financial position, while leaving most much less able to maintain Quality wile simultaneously fulfilling their mandate to widen Access. Wider Access must necessarily mean a need for extra teaching resources if Quality is not to be cynically used as the variable in the A, Q, F equation. Yet, as noted two paragraphs above the policy of ‘Keep Muddling On’ taken by the White Paper ignores this difficult issue of expanding access while maintaining the quality of education entirely by heavily weighting the block grants generated by the new fees to research in an attempt to preserve the status of a few elite institutions within the global arena. The issues being discussed in these papers are still very much alive.

As the very last item of business at the conference a straw-poll was taken to see A) which direction the participants would prefer UK HE to move in, and B) which direction they expected UK HE to move in. The preference (interestingly by only one vote in the straw-poll!) was for the UK model to move closer to the public HE model of Europe; but the expectation (by a much wider margin of votes) was that the UK HE system will, by 2010/2015, more closely resemble the US public-private model—higher tuition fees and all. In a sense the White Paper proved this expectation correct, but the issues discussed at the conference are still a great distance from being resolved in any way which could be called meaningful.

Papers:

The Expansion of Higher Education:
Economic Necessity or Hyper-Inflation?
Cécile Deer – Balliol College, Oxford
Download as Word document (92K)
Download as PDF (204K)

Quality in United States Higher Education
Clark Brundin, former VC, University of Warwick
Download as Word document (56K)
Download as PDF (56K)

Access in the UK: Whence, Where and Whither?
Chris Duke
Download as Word document (44K)
Download as PDF (92K)

A Possible Untapped Resource
Luke Wright, Research Officer, OxCHEPS
(updated 20 Mar 03)
Download as Word document (60K)
Download as PDF (132K)

The Dynamics of Massification: A Comparative Look at Higher Education Systems in the UK and California
John Aubrey Douglass, Visiting Fellow, OxCHEPS;
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Studies in Higher Education – UC Berkeley
Download as Word document (203K)
Download as PDF (600K)

University Finance - a ‘European’ norm?
Lewis Elton, University College London and Lisa Lucas, University of Bristol
Download as Word document (44K)
Download as PDF (104K)

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