srhe

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Monthly Archives: May 2016


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Gesellschaft für Hochschulforschung – the German Society for HE Research

By Richard Budd

Given that my PhD compared German and English HE, I was thrilled to be awarded SRHE funding to attend their counterpart’s annual conference in München. It gave me a chance to gen up on the hottest topics in German-speaking HE research, to catch up with a few people I already knew from a stint as a visiting doctoral researcher, and to build some new bridges. It didn’t disappoint, and the only dark cloud was that I was unable to stay for the whole event due to prior commitments.

The early career researcher day started with a workshop on publication strategies, and was mostly directed towards doctoral students who might be unfamiliar with the publishing landscape. Many of the tips such as identifying the original contribution of your paper, an eye-catching title, and listening to the editor’s /reviewers comments were (recent) old hat, although some of this I’d had to learn the hard way. Of particular interest was the array of German language journals that either focus entirely on HE or are amenable to HE-oriented pieces. A number of German academics do publish in the more familiar English language journals, but there is a great deal of interesting research that happens away from the ‘English eye’. I struggle to keep up with the volume of my ‘must-reads’ in English at the best of times, and would welcome suggestions on how to manage this (on a postcard, please). I am conscious that I somehow need to keep my finger on the German language pulse, too.

The main event of the early career researcher day was Continue reading →


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Research and Policy in Higher Education: the implications of new research published by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS)

By Michael Shattock

In April 2016 the IFS published its long awaited Working Paper (W16/06): ‘How English domiciled graduate earnings vary with gender, institution attended, subject and socio-economic background’ authored by Britton, J, Dearden, L, Shephard, N and Vignoles, A. The research and its findings are likely to be immensely influential in the UK and probably internationally, both in higher education studies and in respect to policy.

A month later the UK Government published its White Paper, Success as a Knowledge Economy: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, May 2016, Cm 9258 which made several references to the Working Paper’s findings and confirmed that they were ‘at the heart of delivering our reform agenda’(para 34).

The originality of the IFS paper lies primarily in the methodology adopted to offer data on the earning levels of English graduates 10 years from graduation and the precision which it gives to analysing  it against a given set of variables. Hitherto, economists have been able, using rate of return analysis, to calculate the value of degree study as against non-entry to higher education but the absence of national data, apart from the notoriously suspect employment data collected by careers offices six months after graduation, has proved to be a severe limitation on any assessment of the employment outcomes of UK higher education. Continue reading →


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The Annual Conference of the German Association for HE Research

By Susi Poli

It was by chance that I sent my application for a sponsored delegate place at the Annual Conference of the German Association for Higher Education Research (GfHF), held in Munich in April. SRHE had called for a student/early career researcher, fully sponsored by GfHF, to engage in their panel discussion at the pre-conference on making the connection between HE research and practice. Surprisingly or not, I was shortlisted and I got the place!

Before leaving for the conference I became aware that there is a distinction to be made between ‘early stage researcher’ as defined by the EU, and ‘early career researcher’ (ECR) based on UK terminology. The first refers to the European Commission’s Charter for Researchers, which clearly states the professional status of the researcher from the early stage, ie from the doctoral phase onwards. In contrast the UK considers its doctoral candidates as ‘students’ and doesn’t afford them professional status (Hancock et al, 2015). However, I was happy to be seen as an early career/stage ‘something’ or researcher, appreciated even more as a woman and an experienced/mature (or both) professional in her mid-40s.

The leading questions in preparation for the panel discussion were: Continue reading →

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The Thirty Years Quality War

By Rob Cuthbert

Ten years ago David Watson[1] (2006 p2) said that in England since the 1980s: “the audit society and the accountability culture have collided (apparently) with academic freedom and institutional autonomy”. He called this clash between accountability and autonomy the ‘Quality Wars’ and identified five major casualties: the shrinking of higher education’s sectoral responsibilities; truth – managers mistaking criticism for resistance, staff mistaking resistance for criticism; solidarity – because of the rise of the ‘gangs’ – the Russell Group and others; students, as quality assurance became ever less effective at delivering enhancement; and the reputation of UK HE abroad, as our determination to label things unsatisfactory advertised the few deficiencies of our sector and obscured our strengths.

Ten years on, the hostilities continue and the casualties mount. Continue reading →