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Want a job at Cambridge?

by GR Evans

Cambridge has arcane and complex rules and policies for jobs in the university and its colleges; despite their idiosyncracy some of them may have lessons for other institutions. GR Evans is an expert guide to the rules, the policies, national employment law and the many debates through which the Cambridge rules and policies have evolved. If you ever wondered how Cambridge works, read this.

Academic jobs with an element of security are increasingly hard to get. Fixed-term contracts have long been the norm for research-only contracts, which are usually dependent on short-term funding from a external grant. For some decades the norm for ‘academic’ posts had settled at ‘teaching and research’, with appointments to last until retirement age. However, the Equality Act of 2010, making it discriminatory to enforce retirement by age, has helped to discourage contracts promising ‘permanence’. Teaching-only posts have become more common. The Office for Students now grants degree-awarding powers to new providers of higher education but so far these have almost all been confined to powers to award ‘taught degrees’.

These trends have encouraged the use of fixed-term and casual employment of academics by many HE providers. The University and College Union has launched an Anti-Casualisation Pledge. The University of Cambridge is not one of the worst offenders in this respect, though, like other higher education providers it may make use of the device of linking the continuation of an appointment to the continuation of external, usually grant, funding. In a  case in May 2008 it was held that the University of Aberdeen had been in breach of the Fixed Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 where that had been relied on, but there seems to have been no subsequent litigation helping to establish a precedent.

Under the Higher Education and Research Act (2017) institutions may set their own ‘criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied’ (s. 2(5)(d) and s.2 (8) (b) ii.). The clause appears again later (s. 36 (1) (b)) in HERA in connection with the duty of the Office for Students to ‘protect academic freedom’ in ‘performing its access and participation functions’. 

Yet the legislation does not define ‘academic staff’ and the applicant for an academic job in Cambridge must negotiate a complex system. Titles, status, hierarchy and contracts all have their history and the University’s constitution plays a decisive part. Its governing body is made up of now more than 7,000 members of its Regent House, which must make any legislative change to its employment practice and procedure by approving a published proposal in the form of a Grace, under Statute A,III,1-2. There is some mismatch between the requirements which may be written into employment contracts and those of the Statutes and Ordinances, particularly with reference to obligations to teach. It remains the case that a new University Officer enters into Office simply by signing a book kept by the Registrary for the purpose:

Unless it is otherwise provided by Statute or Ordinance, every officer shall be admitted to their office as soon as may be after the commencement of tenure by subscribing, in a book kept at the Registry, a declaration that the officer will well and faithfully discharge all the duties of the office, and by entering in the book the date of entering upon the office. (Special Ordinance C (ii) 4)

A major reorganisation of Senior Academic Promotions and the creation of Career Pathways have left their mark. Cambridge  still offers ‘Teaching and Research’ posts but more recently it has added ‘Teaching and Scholarship’ posts with the emphasis on teaching and their own Pathway. It is seeking to create a Research Career Pathway too. The University conducts itself very transparently and both the University’s Statutes and Ordinances and its organ of historical record, the University Reporter, are online and easy to search by anyone eager to get an academic job in at Cambridge and needing to understand its advertised vacancies.

The University formerly had University Lecturers and Senior Lecturers, Readers and Professors. These titles have changed with the University’s adoption of a ‘grading’ system (Higher Education Role Analysis and Statute C, XIII). Lectureships  and Senior Lectureships have become Assistant and Associate Professorships (Grades 9 and 10), former Readerships are  Professorships (Grade 11) (by Special Ordinance, C, vii under Statute C,IX,3, Part C ) and the full Professorships are Professorships (Grade 12) (Special Ordinance, C, vii under Statute C,IX,3).  

These academic posts are ‘University Offices’ as well as employments. Such Offices may be academic-related but those successful in being appointed to a University Teaching Office (UTOs), the most desirable of its academic posts, are entitled to a sabbatical Term after each six Terms. Statute C, I, 4 requires UTOs:

 to devote themselves to the advancement of knowledge in their subject, to give instruction therein to students, to undertake from time to time such examining of students as may be required by the Board, Syndicate, or other body which is chiefly concerned with their duties, and to promote the interests of the University as a place of education, religion, learning, and research.

They must also examine for degrees and such ‘other qualifications of the University as the University may from time to time determine’. Special Ordinance C (ix) 5 requires them to give at least thirty lectures a year, or other teaching agreed as equivalent.

UTOs must belong to a Faculty or Department but they may choose to be members of more than one. This normally does not apply to those appointed to a ‘curatorial’ Office which include a teaching requirement, for example in one of the University’s museums. A recent exception allowed such an appointee in the Fitzwilliam Museum to enjoy sabbatical leave (Reporter, 31 July, 2024).

Cambridge was slow to provide its UTOs with written contracts, with many of its UTOs appointed without one and some indignation expressed about the content when they were first introduced at the beginning of this century, especially when they proved to contain intellectual property restrictions (Reporter, 31 March 2004).

University Officers are protected constitutionally by Cambridge’s Statute C which expressly guards their academic freedom and requires ‘justice and fairness’ in their treatment. A Schedule to Statute C preserves specifically for ‘academic’ staff many of the protections in the Model Statute which was framed by the Commissioners appointed as the Education Reform Act 1988 required.

The disadvantage is that academic Officers remain subject to Cambridge’s Employer-Justified Retirement Age, although as a result of the 2011 Repeal of Retirement Age Amendment to the Equality Act of 2010 other employees of the University no longer have a ‘retirement age’. Special Ordinance C (ii) 12 requires University Officers to ‘vacate their offices not later than the end of the academic year in which they attain the age of sixty-seven years’.

A Report on this requirement was published on 15 May 2024, recommending that academic-related officers should no longer be subject to the EJRA and the age of retirement should be raised to 69. The recommendations of the Report were put to a vote by ballot of the Regent House in July, with an amendment adding ‘abolition’ of the EJRA to the options. Abolition of the EJRA was rejected but the other changes were approved bringing the forced retirement age to 69 for those to whom it still applied (Reporter, 24 July, 2024). This has had the effect of shrinking still further the category of University employees subject to forced retirement.

College posts

A post in a Cambridge College may also look attractive. The University and the individual Colleges are all employers in their own right. Although in Oxford an academic is commonly employed conjointly by the University and a College, in Cambridge a University post and a College post are quite separate and some UTOs choose not to accept a College Fellowship. The choice is theirs.

Cambridge, like Oxford, has chosen not to expand its undergraduate intake because its Colleges do not have room to accommodate more, though in principle a College may choose to add to its own academic staff. The Colleges set their own rules for the employment of College Lecturers under their individual Statutes. The main task of a College Lecturer is to give supervisions to undergraduates, in the form of personal small-group teaching, though a College employee may have an ‘affiliation’ to a Department or Faculty and give occasional lectures.  There has recently been some controversy over the role of Supervisors, who may include graduate students as well as College and University lecturers, mostly concerning the rate of hourly pay available.

Colleges tend to be eager to add a University Teaching Officer to their Fellowship: a  UTO’s salary is covered by the University and the College will need to add only a small supplement. So desirable are UTOs that a UTO Scheme is published ‘to enable all Colleges to operate effectively in the educational field by ensuring a reasonable distribution of University Teaching Officers amongst them’. This explains that ‘A UTO Fellow should be regarded as a permanent educational resource for a College and not simply as a provider of undergraduate supervisions’.

Senior Academic Promotions 

The  use of the unqualified title of ‘Professor’ remains protected, and named Professorships are rarely advertised. These are ‘established’, continuing to exist when vacated, and filled by a Board of Electors appointed for the purpose. Other full Professorships are ‘personal’, granted by promotion from an existing academic University post, so to obtain one it is necessary first to gain a less senior post. Personal Professorships are created for a ‘single tenure’ and disappear when the holder resigns or retires (now superseded under Statute C,XV). The creation of such a Professorship requires the approval of  a Grace (Statute A, III,3ff).  It is possible for a ballot to be called before the approval of such a Grace, but highly unlikely.

However, during the 1990s unestablished academic posts of University Lecturer  and Senior Lecturer had begun to be created, with some unestablished posts described as ‘at the level of Professor or Reader’, though a General Board circular of 19 June 1998 limited these to five year appointments.[1] In 1996 the General Board published a Notice on ‘Titles of unestablished appointments at the level of Reader’ (Reporter, 5655, 1995-6 p512), with a further Notice in 1999 on the ‘Procedure for appointments to unestablished posts at the level of Professor or Reader’ (Reporter, 5773, 1998-9 p587).

By now controversy was afoot on the operation of the Senior Academic Promotions Procedure.  Statute D, XIV [now Special Ordinance C(vii)] stated that:

 ‘No Professorship shall be established in the University except by Grace of the Regent House after publication of a Report of the General Board’.

For those successful in gaining a personal Professorship by Promotion a Grace is published and duly approved in the normal way.

From the late 1990s there was controversy in Cambridge about ‘Senior Academic Promotions’ (Reporter, 17 November, 1999). UTOs often expressed disappointment and indignation when they failed to gain Professorships by promotion. In 1995 a General Board Notice was published establishing a procedure for making appointments to  unestablished posts ‘at Professorial level’ (Reporter, 5609, 1994-5 p381). This was felt to be needed to cover certain special cases arising where the candidate had a claim to recognition as a Research Professor through a potentially qualifying relationship with such a body as the Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust or the Medical Research Council. In each such instance the candidate was to be assessed  for a Cambridge Professorship by a committee appointed for the purpose.  

A representation was made to the Vice-Chancellor under Statute K, 5 [now Statute A,IX,1], that the General Board’s practice of making appointments to unestablished Research Professorships was in contravention of the University’s Statutes. A legal opinion was sought, which confirmed that the practice was ultra vires (Reporter, 21 March, 2001). The General Board then published the Reports with Graces necessary to create the established posts for these appointees, but on a fixed-term basis. It remains the case that a:

 competent authority may authorize the establishment of an office for a fixed term provided that there is objective justification for such authorization and shall decide what constitutes objective justification. (Statutes and Ordinances. p.673)

There were reforms, but also continuing concerns about ‘career-structures’, as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor reported in a Discussion in November 2018, suggesting that the proposed Academic Career Pathway scheme might ‘make a decisive difference in tackling some of the main areas of concern’ and ‘also serve as a platform from which to review academic titles more generally’ (Reporter, 5 June 2018). A Report proposing the introduction of Career Pathways was published in May 2019 (Reporter 15 May 2019), duly Discussed and approved, setting out the changes of title. This was Discussed on 9  June. There was acknowledgement of:

growing dissatisfaction with the existing titles and concerns about comparability with the titles adopted by the University’s peer group nationally and globally which could hinder recruitment and/or retention of academic staff and handicap our academics in competing for research funding. (Reporter, 17 June 2019)

Oxford underwent a similar review of the requirements for its own promotions to Professorships.

Career Pathways

Cambridge is now adding other ‘Pathways’ to its longstanding ‘teaching and research’ requirement for the holder of a University Teaching Office.  A Research Career Pathway is still at a planning stage but there is already a Teaching and Scholarship Pathway. On the Teaching and Research Pathway an Officer may aspire to progress from an Assistant Professorship (Grade 9), to an Associate Professorship (Grade  9 or 10), a Professorship (Grade 11) and a (personal) Professorship (Grade 12). Clinical Academic posts have their own criteria and rewards including  Clinical Professorships.

Cambridge has held back from introducing ‘Teaching-only’ offices, preferring the introduction of a Teaching and Scholarship Pathway, with the intention to ‘establish a dedicated career path for the development of staff in teaching‑focused roles’ (Reporter, 24 March, 2021). Nevertheless its introduction prompted concerns about the meaning of ‘scholarship’ in distinction from ‘Research’.  Was it to mean having read the latest books and articles rather than having written them (Reporter, 28 April 2021)? The resulting route on this Pathway involves promotions to Offices with ‘Teaching’ in their titles: Assistant and Associate Teaching Professor (Grades 9 and 10), Teaching Professor (Grade 11 and 12) and Senior Teaching Associate (Grade 8).  

Getting a job at Cambridge has its complexities, then, which may usefully be kept in mind by the would-be applicant.

SRHE member GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.

[1] I am grateful to William Astle for this reference.


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Investigating the experiences of the many stakeholders of degree apprenticeships

by Andrea Laczik, Kat Emms, and Josh Patel

Degree Apprenticeships (DAs) have been ascendant in popularity and visibility since their launch in 2015. They are of particular interest to us at the Edge Foundation, where we’ve long championed novel approaches to the alignment of employer needs with provider offer and of the importance of access to high quality education experiences. In our recent event hosted with the SRHE’s HE Policy Network, we explored how DAs fit in the English higher education system, and reflected on their purpose.

DAs are offered across 17 industry sectors by employers ranging from SMEs to large national and international employers and are widely used in the public sector including in policing and the NHS. Studying on a DA programme is an opportunity to earn alongside learning at degree level and without paying tuition fees. About 100 higher education providers currently deliver this learning. The content of the curriculum is designed in partnership with employers, and employers fund DAs through an employer levy which employers can claim against to fund apprenticeship training. The number of DAs continue to grow, with participation up 8.2% to 46,800 in 2022/23.

While DAs were originally designed to address skills shortages and contribute to national economic growth, there has been some debate as to how effective DAs are as instruments to increase access and widen participation as claimed. It is also unclear how far the content of the curriculum should be determined by immediate employer needs versus the duty to prepare an effective and productive workforce for the future.

Our presenters provided productive and complementary perspectives on these questions from different stakeholders around DAs: employers, students, and mentors.

Employers and returns

Andrea Laczik and Kat Emms presented findings from Edge’s forthcoming research report on ‘Degree Apprenticeships in England’. This work based on interviews with nearly 100 stakeholders provides a broad sample of experiences of these groups which hitherto have often been considered in separation. Here we concentrated on employers’ motivations to engage with degree apprenticeships.

Employers favoured the sustainable employment and progression opportunities moulded closely to their needs that DAs facilitate. Some employers did see this as an opportunity for upwards mobility and diversification of the workplace. As one SME employer told us:

‘There are too many people in the IT industry that are like me. Okay, so we’re talking middle aged white guys… degree apprenticeships allow people who wouldn’t consider getting into this industry from a variety of backgrounds, creeds, colours. I want to increase the diversity in IT’.

Apprentices were also valued for their ability to apply theoretical learning to practical applications in work, for their developed communication and teamworking skills.

However, it was primarily large employers who had both greater resource and capacity to administer their levy funds and input into the design of DAs, meaning their DAs are often more closely aligned to their needs compared to SMEs. Many employers prioritised operations at the expense of workforce development and struggled with what was perceived as the loss of an apprentice for their off-the-job training for one day a week. The serendipity of the deployment of DAs in most sectors indicates a lack of clarity, dispersion, and embeddedness in employer thinking, behaviours, and strategising. There is a place for regional authorities to help administer levy transfer schemes, which may be underutilised currently.

Apprentices and belonging

Julie Pepper and Katherine Ashbullby, University of Exeter, explored how degree apprentices negotiate dual identities as both employees and students, and how this affects their relationship with the university. The degree apprentices they spoke to regarded themselves as employees first and foremost. This may be linked to the fact that they felt disconnected from a traditional university life and experience. However, many also regarded themselves as lifelong learners with distinct qualities including industry experience, connections and resilience. They discussed their ‘journey of transformation and change’ which they were able to fulfil through a DA. The weight of the dual identity nevertheless came with increased pressures.

The identities Julie and Katherine described bear considerable resemblance to that in existing research on part-time learners. And they illuminate some of differences between the highly structured programmes of employment-oriented identity formation in DA models and the more ‘open’ identity formation of UG courses. This is a productive difference. But it involves a trade-off – full time students have a disconnect with employers which mirrored DAs’ disconnect with socialisation opportunities in educational institutional communities.

Mentors and mentoring

Aimee France, Claire Staniland and Karen Stevens presented on their research, with Trudy Sevens from Sheffield Hallam University and with Josh Patel from Edge, on the role and identity of Work Based Mentors (WBMs) of degree apprentices in Allied Health Professions (AHP). DAs are increasingly important in NHS workforce planning. Defining the role of a WBM and identifying good practice is consequently valuable to ensure the success of DAs. As Aimee, Claire and Karen discussed, WBMs have a unique role distinct from an academic tutor or workplace assessor. Their role is both pastoral and acting as a bridge between the academic world and practice, particularly helping to identify opportunities to better integrate theory and practice. This is critical to providing recognition, perhaps accreditation, and effective training for WBMs. The formalisation of such roles might be welcomed, but only if important virtues of voluntarism, care, and reciprocity are maintained. The relevance of these findings outside AHP is likely to be high regarding other liminal mentorship roles.

Providers and social justice

Charlynne Pullen, also of Sheffield Hallam, turned to the perspective of providers, drawing on her research with Colin McCaig, and Kat Emms and Andrea Laczik from Edge. In the current uncertain higher education landscape, providers are motivated to strengthen and diversify their applied provision to draw on ‘untapped markets’ of student demand. Cultivating this market requires substantial efforts to stimulate interest from employers and potential students. How far these efforts do broaden entry and widen participation varied. With the growing awareness of DAs, concerns have arisen around so-called ‘middle-class capture’ of DA opportunities by candidates who likely would have attended HE regardless. DAs have high entry requirements, sometimes including assessment centres, and providers have limited means to influence recruitment which is ultimately the purview of employers. This meant that DAs currently display a contested role in enabling individual social mobility. Opportunities for school leavers seemed limited, though there is an arguable role for DAs in widening participation and entry to higher-level professions for adult learners. Social justice can potentially be achieved through DAs in two ways – either through social mobility of degree apprentices, and/or through widening participation in HE. DAs can offer social mobility for existing employees (as can any substantial on-job training) but will have no substantive role in widening participation to HE on current measurement methods which focus on young people, because DAs aimed at 18-year old school leavers do not attract the same level of diversity as existing undergraduate degrees offered by providers.

Conclusions

DAs represent one of the most exciting innovations in the way providers approach the design and delivery of degree level education in the UK. Together, this research indicates that while for employers and learners who can take advantage the benefits are substantial, there is work to do to improve their accessibility. DAs are still small scale. And, first and foremost, they are jobs. If employers do not have degree level vacancies, DAs cannot be offered. Until there are programmatic efforts to simulate job creation, distributing resources between employers, evidencing the impact of DAs more clearly, and identifying best practice in areas such as mentoring, would help strengthen the effectiveness of DAs.

Edge will be publishing three of the pieces of research on DAs featured in this blog in September and October 2024. To keep up to date with our research, sign up to our mailing list, or follow us on Twitter @ukEdge and LinkedIn.

The Edge Foundation is an independent, politically impartial foundation, inspiring the education system in order to help young people acquire the knowledge, skills & behaviours to flourish. Andrea Laczik is the Director of Research, Kat Emms is an Education and Policy Senior Researcher, and Josh Patel is a researcher.


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Debt and doubt: a graduate’s frustrations with the current higher education loans regime

by Josh Patel

And I am a weapon of massive consumption,
And it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.

When I was asked to speak about my experiences of graduate indebtedness at the recent SRHE event in June, I was initially enthusiastic. I was a member of the first cohort of school-leavers expected to take out the government loans to pay the then new £9000 university fees in 2012-13. I took a gap year, completed an undergraduate degree, and subsequently received funding for a Master’s and a PhD. I believe I am one of the first of this new generation of highly indebted graduates to have been afforded the time and space to develop expertise around and reflect on the HE system I was a part of. Few graduate voices on their indebtedness are heard in research or policy discourse. 

However, figuring out my contribution became frustrating. Firstly, any perspective I would bring would be unrepresentative. I am a mixed-race male from the home counties. I attended a Russell Group university, and had far too much fun in the sandbox of further academic study, sheltered from having to think seriously about entering the external labour market. Secondly, I had conducted no research myself on graduate experiences. I am also not an economist. I would be exposing my feelings about the current student finance regime (albeit informed by my related research) to the potentially sharp questioning of experts. This felt epistemically precarious. 

Graduate indebtedness

My frustrations around the legitimacy of my voice and my disenfranchisement from the conversation around indebtedness are part of a broader series of doubts and tensions. It’s hard to avoid a sense of resentment every time I check (mainly to satisfy a grim curiosity) my rapidly ballooning student debt total on the Student Loans Company website. I will likely be making payments that have a negligible impact on that total until 2047. It is Sisyphean. At the same time, I had heard for many years hear policymakers and academics like Nick Barr talk about the inherent fairness of income-contingent loans. Given that individuals receive a substantial return from their investment in higher education (HE), it is right that the balance of costs should be shared between students and the state. 

In Claire Callender and Steve Jones’ work on student experiences of indebtedness, the complaints of students and graduates are primarily centred around the slight delays of a few years to the privileges of an expected middle-class lifestyle, like buying a first house or having a family. Are these frustrations really valid, or are they just the mewlings of the demanding children of the late welfare state, now that democratic due diligence has found the public investment in our education was not providing an effective social return?

Thinking through these doubts was hard. Like the students in Claire’s and Steve’s research, I had internalised a certain logic. My failure to shed the shameful label of indebtedness lay in my regrettable choice to pursue history, my (apparently?) poor work ethic, and my subconscious suspicion of Big Four consultancy grad schemes. But I came to think about my frustrations with indebtedness through the work I’d done during my PhD. My frustration with the current loans regime is a frustration with ‘the whole way in which a society selects its priorities and orders itself’, to redeploy EP Thompson’s phrase from 1970. Our current politics has de-prioritised investments in the future, which undermines the realisation of a good society. Indebtedness serves as a sharp and recurring reminder of all of this.

The balance of freedoms

The axiom that those that benefit most from HE should bear proportionately more of the cost derives somewhat surprisingly from the 1960s. The story of post-war massification in the UK is a familiar one; participation in HE grew from less than 5% prior to 1939 to approaching 50% today. In 1962 a mandatory grant was introduced to pay for the education of ‘all those qualified by ability and attainment and who wished to do so’, in the words of the Robbins Report (1963). While this public-mindedness feels inevitable in the spirit of post-war optimism, at the time it was not uncontested. As one economist put it, in a system of grants, resources of the ‘poor and stupid’ in the general population who would not benefit from HE are used to fund the privileged lifestyles of the few ‘rich and intelligent’ who attended universities. While the Robbins Report advocated expansion based on grants, the chairman of the Robbins Report, Lionel Robbins (himself a neoliberal economist, as I have explored) thought the argument for loans and grants was delicately balanced.

Robbins considered the problem one of what he called the ‘balance of freedoms’. There was an important balance to strike between preserving freedoms in the present, and enabling future freedoms in the pursuit of social prosperity. For Robbins, prosperity was a consequence of the inherent tendency of individuals to pursue their own self-betterment in conditions of freedom. This included generating individual returns on the labour market and broader social returns. University education would increase young people’s productivity and ingenuity, while enhancing their understanding of their responsibilities to society.

Taxation (a substantial transgression of personal freedoms by the state) was only justified when it could be shown to enhance future freedoms. In the context of proportionately low attendance of HE in the UK in the post-war period, grants were a state investment in removing structural and psychosocial barriers to self-betterment in the population, particularly for women and others from underprivileged backgrounds. When a greater proportion of the population were empowered to pursue those opportunities, both individual and social prosperity would follow. 

As a greater proportion of the population attended HE habitually, the justification for increased taxation would fall. It would no longer be justified to take poor people’s money to pay for the continued elevation of the gifted. When this happened, it would be more just for the burden of HE cost to fall back to young people so they could make an informed decision about the relative costs and returns of them attending HE. 

The question of the balance of costs of HE was never as simple as stating that: because attending HE generates both a social return and a large individual return, students should be expected to take on some burden of the cost of their education.

As Robbins understood it, the question is: on the balance of how far future freedoms are enabled by the reduction of freedoms in the present, how far is it right that resources should be redistributed from the general population to fund HE? 

Three frustrations

Revisiting the question of the balance of freedoms in the twenty-first century leads you to a different place than in the twentieth century. The burden of the costs of education is now tipped towards graduates far in excess of a good faith balance of freedoms. It serves a regime which has played politics, fetishised austerity, and sought short-term returns above sustainability and long-term economic prosperity. Reflecting on my indebtedness, I identified three rough frustrations:

Short-termism

Because we live in a democratic society, the assessment of our collective capacity to engender future freedoms is, rightly, subject to accountability through our political system. But the downward pressure this exerts on public expenditure is not inevitable (as it is sometimes presented) but a consequence of political culture. Public and policy discourse seems to have completely lost sight of the capacity of collective action to advance future freedoms. Austerity has led to an underinvestment in social infrastructure, ducked the costs of maintenance, and eviscerated our national capacities. The burden of the costs of repairing this damage has been shifted to our future. There is limited research as to the economic and social consequences of this debt. Both Labour and the Conservatives’ commitments to avoiding raises in tax feels like a failure to have an honest conversation with the electorate about our national priorities in the face of serious national and international challenges. 

Poor redistributive justice

Recent London Economics modelling demonstrated that, for those taking new loans from August 2023, lower income female graduates will subsidise high-earning males’ education. Or, as James Purnell put it recently in publications for HEPI, ‘a nurse must now pay back more than a banker’. This is deeply unjust. It is completely antithetical to the progressive income tax regime we all abide by. It violently severs one route this generation can mutually support one another in our pursuit of human flourishing. And it is pointless. As Barr has argued, ‘The argument that tax cuts lead to growth is mistaken; lower taxes are not always better. Productive private investment needs to be complemented by productive public investment’. Job forecasts from other advanced economies expect more than 80% of the workforce will require some tertiary accreditation by 2050. Skills shortages even today are calculated to cost the UK economy up to £39 billion a year from 2024 through to 2027. Investment in education and training by employers and the state has deteriorated and productivity is stagnant. Redistribution is imperative. 

Deterioration of HE

The deterioration of the unit cost following from the political deadlock around loans makes HE an unappealing place to plan a career. The transition period at the end of the PhD consists of a ridiculous juggling act of multiple contracts for everything from research to teaching to administrative roles. Despite all the hard work, remuneration is comparatively poor. All the delays to adult life that indebtedness inflict are compounded. Even permanent academic roles do not seem particularly secure given the redundancies sweeping over the sector. Add on top of all that the expected workload, bullying managerial cultures, artificial ED&I strategies, it is a wonder HEIs are able to attract qualified and ambitious candidates at all. During my time as a PhD and Fellow, I was paid more per hour as head coach of the university swim team than I was to deliver seminars.[1] Why bother?

The next sixty years

Robbins was arguing for expansion just after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The wars of the first half of the twentieth century were raw, living memories. HE was implicated in this in a complicated way – the powerful knowledge of modern societies taught through HE had the potential to both to raise living standards to unparalleled heights but also enable mass atrocities. A proper education cultivated the wisdom in students to wield modern technologies with responsibility. 

Obviously freedom is diminished after a nuclear holocaust. But the existential crises I fear – everything from crises in teaching and healthcare, gender and social inequality, to the climate change and the resurgence of fascism across the world – if they are not tackled are also equally non-conducive to overall freedom. They require exponentially more of my generation and later generations to be part of the solution. Indebtedness is a constant reminder that our contribution to solving these problems is not worth collective support. 

Josh Patel is a Researcher at the Edge Foundation. There, he has contributed to research on Degree Apprenticeships, New HEIs, and T levels, and is currently leading research on student experiences of tertiary pathways between HE and FE. He was previously a Fellow at the University of Warwick and completed his PhD on the justifications for the massification of higher education in liberal thought. He is writing a monograph on this topic for SRHE’s Research into Higher Education book series with Routledge. Here, Josh writes in a personal capacity. The views contained within do not necessarily reflect the views of the Edge Foundation.

[1] I have to qualify this by stressing that participation in student-led communities was central in my and (as I saw as a coach, tutor, and researcher) others’ personal development. My point is that there is a social maldistribution of resources that permits this circumstance.


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Promoting equity and employability using live briefs

by Lucy Cokes

‘Live briefs’ are used in Higher Education programmes, and I suggest that they can help promote equity and employability if they are used in very specific ways. The use of live briefs takes place not only in the creative industries, but also across more practical or core subjects in HE. and has many parallels with a wide range of other teaching tools.

Live Briefs have been part of my teaching to students on the Creative Advertising degrees at Falmouth University for the past 10 years, with the last four years using live paid briefs as part of assessment. Done right I passionately believe that live briefs, with their ability to test students through an authentic task, develop creative problem-solving skills, and in turn, enhancing student satisfaction, are a valuable tool.

How live briefs are usually used

A live brief is defined as “a type of design project that is distinct from a typical studio project in its engagement of real clients or users, in real-time settings” (Sara, 2006, p. 1). Often, lecturers believe they are assigning ‘live briefs’, but frequently these are merely ‘simulations’ or ‘mock briefs’ using either outdated, or fictional client briefs which lack a genuine and immediate client need. Distant cousins of live briefs include the use of case studies in teaching, or the use of authentic tasks. However, I believe that the use of a live brief should be the unrivalled method to enhancing students’ employability skills and prospects at university in comparison to these other approaches. Typically, live briefs are sourced through lecturers’ professional networks and are presented to students most frequently as an extracurricular opportunity. These opportunities have often resulted in students securing paid or unpaid placements at agencies or being offered full-time positions post-graduation. By not fully embedding these live opportunities into assessments, there is an inadvertent disadvantage to those already disadvantaged.

How live briefs could be used

Live briefs can be, with effort, integrated into the students’ assessment brief for their modules. Students are often asked to deliver a pitch to the client as part of their assessment with one of the ideas chosen by the client. The winning students should ideally be paid for their time, with full guidance from tutors acting to provide feedback and project manage the process. Course leaders need to use caution when explicitly stating a particular module will contain live paid briefs, as they are often hard to come by. Instead, it is suggested that modules be designed in such a way they can be ‘plugged in’ when accessible.

There are many challenges in using live briefs, these include:

  • Planning in good time prior to start of a module.
  • The need to fit timings with pre-established assessment deadlines.
  • Additional time required for lectures to source the live briefs and manage the ‘clients’.
  • Potential administration constraints with invoicing ‘clients’, paying students and suppliers.

Live briefs seem particularly well-suited to non-profits, small businesses, or government agencies.  Experience has shown that these types of organisations tend so see the partnership with a university and students to be more cost effective, providing social benefits, whilst also being able to be more flexible around the module deadlines.

Organisations benefit from bringing their projects to the university, as they gain a dedicated fresh set of minds working on their problem. The same clients often come back year after year. Chris Thompson of Safer Futures shared that he “…thought the standard, confidence and professionalism of the student pitches and research was exceptional.”

The hierarchy of live briefs has been produced to assist lecturers in deciding how best to use live briefs in their teaching and push for the gold star of having paid opportunities embedded into assessment.  This is a call for a shift in culture and attitudes toward the use of live briefs, so we are not inadvertently decreasing social mobility in the UK through their use.

Live Brief Hierarchy

The hierarchy has been designed to help lecturers navigate the options whilst considering the ever-increasing demand for improved employability equity.

Figure 1: Hierarchy of the use of Live Briefs in University Teaching.
Ranked based on perceived equity and employability status.

Working on live briefs enhances the students’ employability by improving general employability skills, and providing the ability to include this work in their portfolios and CVs. The approach of using live briefs outside of assessment does not provide equal opportunities to students from diverse backgrounds. Less privileged students often work nearly full-time during evenings and weekends to support themselves financially while studying. Indeed, 55% of UK students now work an average of 13.5 hours a week meaning they have less availability to participate in extracurricular assignments  (BBC, 2023). The Social Mobility Commission has noted that “unpaid internships are damaging for social mobility”  (Milburn, 2017). I see a parallel between the use of extracurricular briefs and unpaid internships, so I advocate that we discourage the use of unpaid extracurricular briefs, as they reduce our chances of ‘levelling up’ in the UK.

The Gold Star of Live Briefs

Justyna, BA Creative Advertising graduate, shared her thoughts on working on a paid live brief. “It gave me more motivation to produce the best possible work. But it was mainly because I was excited about the opportunity to actually make a campaign, still as a student. It was a great way of getting work experience and seeing how the industry works. I believe that the campaign I made is one of the most valuable experiences on my CV”.

Embedding live briefs into briefs assessment, producing work for clients, and compensating students for their contributions present significant challenges. However, I believe incremental improvements to the existing practice of utilising live briefs outside of formal assessment without remuneration should be pursued. The deliberate consideration of these options and the effort to implement such changes will gradually shift the culture and attitudes toward the use of live briefs among both university academic staff and external organisations. This progressive adaptation will enhance the integration of live briefs into the curriculum, ultimately benefiting the student experience, learning and employability whilst simultaneously resulting in clear knowledge exchange advantages for the external organisations.

Lucy Cokes is a senior lecturer at Falmouth University, School of Communications. She has been working in higher education for the past ten years and is a Fellow of Advance HE. She leads the Behaviour Change for Good modules on the Advertising courses and started the inhouse agency ‘BE good’ to manage the live projects which have included a number of government funded campaigns around VAWG and Healthy Relationships. Prior to this she ran a highly successful digital marketing agency with 80 staff in the UK across 3 offices.

References

BBC (2023) Most university students working paid jobs, survey shows. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65964375 [Accessed 23 August 2023]

Milburn, A. (2017) Unpaid internships are damaging to social mobility. [Online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/unpaid-internships-are-damaging-to-social-mobility [Accessed 22 August 2023].

Sara, R. (2006) Live Project Good Practice: A Guide for the Implementation of Live Projects, s.l.: Centre for Education in the Built Environment


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Graduate outcomes: Beyond numbers, towards quality?

by Tej Nathwani and Ghislaine Dell

with a foreword and afterword by SRHE Network Convenors Tracy Scurry and Daria Luchinskaya

Foreword

As many of us working with graduate employment statistics will know, it’s difficult to find up-to-date large-scale data of graduates’ experiences of work. In the SRHE event Exploring graduate outcomes: Do we need to look beyond earnings and occupation?, Tej Nathwani (HESA) introduced a new graduate outcomes measure capturing subjective aspects of job quality, while Ghislaine Dell (Head of Careers at Bath University and member of the AGCAS Research and Knowledge Committee) reflected on the implications from a practitioner perspective. In this follow-up blog, Tej and Ghislaine comment on the issues in capturing subjective graduate outcomes and outline directions for future research. HESA is keen to get your feedback on its measures: see the end of the blog for how to get in touch.

Capturing job quality in HESA’s Graduate Outcomes survey

Tej Nathwani

Since the financial crisis, there has been a fundamental rethink about the way we measure economic and societal progress, with greater attention now given to subjective forms of data. At the individual or micro level, this has resulted in growing international interest in the quality of work – essentially those parts of our employment that correlate with our wellbeing. From a UK perspective, Scotland led the way in bringing this matter to the forefront with the formation of the Fair Work Convention. Not long after, we saw the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices published, which recommended the dissemination of regular data on eighteen job quality indicators covering seven broad dimensions.

Graduate outcomes in the UK have historically been assessed solely on the basis of earnings and whether individuals find themselves working in professional or managerial occupations. Yet, research examining the aspirations of higher education students indicates that they want a career that uses their skills, aligns with their ambitions and that can enable them to make impact. Under the Fair Work Convention framework, these aspects embody fulfilling employment. Furthermore, funding and regulatory bodies also want to see all graduates find such work.

With no data currently available on this matter, this clearly represents an information gap in graduate labour market statistics. As an organisation that adheres to the Code of Practice for Statistics, HESA have therefore started to conduct research to fill this space. This has involved using three questions in the Graduate Outcomes questionnaire relating to these features of employment to form a single composite measure that captures fulfilment (or the ‘job design and nature of work’ as it is also commonly referred to). Our ambition is to introduce this into our official statistics/open data in forthcoming years.

Indeed, with the importance of job quality set to grow, one pathway we are currently exploring for the future development of the Graduate Outcomes survey is the addition of new questions on other elements of decent work, as identified by the Measuring Job Quality Working Group.    

Ghislaine Dell

Students make career decisions for very personal and subjective reasons. Recent research from Cibyl shows us that the most frequently looked for qualities in students’ career choices are interesting work, career progression, good work-life balance, and training & development. This matches very well to the proposed new job quality indicator. The Government’s continued emphasis on degrees offering good return on investment is at odds with what the workforce of the future are seeking. Notably, Tej’s analysis showed that, after about £25,000, higher salary does not increase graduates’ reported wellbeing, but more fulfilling work, as captured by the new measures, does. From a governmental and individual perspective, then, knowing what jobs are ‘good jobs’ is important for a thriving society. An indicator which focuses on fulfilment could enable students to make a more informed choice between possible career directions.

However, there is a potential issue around the way in which we can capture this. For example, if we take ‘I am utilising what I learnt in my studies in my work’. Many graduate jobs are discipline-agnostic, and so a chemist, for example, would not be using ‘what they learnt’ in terms of Chemistry, in a financial services job. HESA’s cognitive testing of its survey questions provides a starting point for understanding how respondents are likely to approach these statements. However, further development of the phrasing of these questions is arguably necessary to ensure that the explanation of ‘skills mismatch’ isn’t simply attributable to graduates working in a field different to the one they studied.

 A key challenge will be to work on improving response rates so that each provider can report on this new measure with confidence. Currently, the subjective “graduate voice” questions in Graduate Outcomes are not compulsory, they rarely form part of the official narrative and minimal time is devoted to analysing and understanding the responses. If we are truly to maximise the potential of this measure, these issues need to be addressed.

The new measure both fills an information gap and provides a lever for inclusion of job quality into official statistics augmenting its importance for governments and providers.

Afterword

The lively discussion that followed this SRHE event, organised by the Employability, Enterprise and Work-based Learning Network, reflects the genuine interest and excitement in being able to gather job quality statistics at scale for the first time. HESA is plugging the long-standing information gap, enabling new research directions to take off in practitioner, academic and policy communities and providing better careers information, advice and guidance to students and graduates. There is still work to be done to improve the measures and scope to expand the coverage of job quality indicators in particular extending understanding of how students interpret and understand these questions. Your feedback, whether based on experience or research, can help in the future development of this measure.

Feedback on the types of statistics users would like to see incorporated into HESA open data based on the new measure are most welcome, as are views on potential amendments/additions to the Graduate Outcomes survey. Please send your thoughts to official.statistics@hesa.ac.uk.

For more information about the Employability, Enterprise and Work-based Learning Network and future events please see: Employability, Enterprise and Work-based Learning | SRHE

For more information about AGCAS and the Research and Knowledge Committee please see: Research and Knowledge from AGCAS

Contributors

Tej Nathwani is a Principal Researcher (Economist) at HESA, which is now part of Jisc.

Ghislaine Dell is Head of Careers, University of Bath and member of AGCAS’ Research and Knowledge Committee.

SRHE Network Convenors: Dr Daria Luchinskaya is a Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde Business School and Professor Tracy Scurry is a Professor of Work and Employment at Newcastle University Business School.


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Connecting conceptual and practical dimension of employability

by Omolabake Fakunle and Helen Higson

We were very proud to have our paper accepted at SRHE’s 2023 Research Conference. This was particularly because we value our collaboration, which was born via SRHE, and our paper was about that journey. This blogpost shares highlights from our SRHE 2023 conference paper which outlined: (i) our collaboration to publication research story; (ii) the importance of SRHE in our collaborative journey; which amongst many positives for nearly a decade, links directly to (iii) our award-winning journal paper that presented a conceptual framing of employability in different global contexts.

Our collaboration to publication research story

This recent piece of work started with a joint seminar at the 2019 SRHE Conference at Celtic Manor. We gathered a group of employability researchers to explore different aspects of interrogating methodologies and approaches on employability from different disciplinary perspectives and country contexts. It was a lively session, inspiring much debate including questions from the audience, and making us realise that it was time to re-evaluate yet again the conceptions of what employability meant.  We were encouraged to suggest a follow up session, and by the time we left the room we had agreed to investigate the production of a special issue of Higher Education Quarterly (HEQ).

We discussed the initial steps in our collaboration to publication journey. Helen shared her recollections and how she persuaded Labake, as an early career researcher, that her career would be strongly enhanced by taking the lead in the endeavour. Hence, throughout the Covid-19 lockdown and beyond, Labake pitched our idea, had it accepted by the editors of HEQ, and then worked to make sure that all the contributors met deadlines, and delivered papers of the quality needed for publication.

In July 2021, our special issue entitled ‘Interrogating theoretical and empirical approaches to employability in different global contexts’, appeared online and on paper in HEQ. We were ecstatic and amazed at the success of the publication, particularly when we discovered in 2023 that our introduction paper, Fakunle & Higson (2021) and Labake’s substantial paper (Fakunle, 2021), had been Wiley’s top cited and most downloaded articles respectively (in 2021/22). Additionally, both papers and two other papers from the Special Issue were cited in Tight’s (2023) recent review and synthesis of the debate and continuing discussion around how employability is viewed in relation to the core purpose of higher education. This affirms the intellectual quality and care with which the work had been carried out. We talked about the impact for our career trajectory, and its significance as Helen entered her third decade of researching in employability, with the first 20 years charted in Higson (2023).

The importance of SRHE to this work

This second part of our paper concentrated on the role of SRHE in the triumphs mentioned above.  As we chart this contribution, we acknowledge that it is a story that many other HE researchers will recognise.  For both  of us, the SRHE has played a major and significant part in our research journeys, both individually, but in this context particularly together.

The story begins when Helen was appointed Co-Network Convenor of the SRHE Employability and Enterprise special interest group. This involved running a number of very successful research days in London, and an eventful one held in 2014 in Edinburgh, which saved Scottish colleagues some journey time. The well attended event attracted participants not only from Scotland, but also from Northern Ireland and from England, as far south at Bournemouth. The session was held at the Dovecote Studios, where we first met when Labake, then a PhD student, was working on the employability of international students. This shows the importance of these events, and the vital role of supervisors and network convenors to encourage PhD students to attend these events, which are always collegiate and inspire confidence in early career researchers. This SRHE event at Edinburgh was the starting point for the mentoring relationship and follow-up conversations at subsequent SRHE Conferences. We provide below a brief snapshot/testimonial about the efficacy of SRHE network events.

Helen’s reflections

As network convenor, I was always keen to create a community of practice for employability researchers at the Conference.  On the first night, before most of the conference had started, I always hosted a table in the restaurant.  This allowed lone researchers, new researchers, and first time conference goers to join our group in an informal setting.  This always ensured that there were friendly attenders at conference presentations, and often led to future collaborations.  A number of my best collaborators and now friendships (including with Labake), stemmed from those friendly dinners, at which we always ran out of chairs.

Labake’s reflections

I kept in touch with Helen during and after completing my PhD and my academic roles at the University of Edinburgh. I enjoyed attending several Employability events as a valued opportunity to network with colleagues from the UK and abroad and explore collaborative opportunities. This formed the basis for asking Helen to join me in contributing to the Conference seminar in 2019, and our continuing mutually beneficial collaborations. I am especially proud that one of my PhD students was accepted to present her research at the 2023 SRHE conference and is able to avail themselves of the networking opportunities!  

Our groundbreaking employability framework

Our presentation culminated with the discussion about the employability framework in our award-winning journal article published here. The framework proposes a conceptualisation of employability in 3 dimensions: outcomes, process and conceptual. The outcomes approach is centred on economic parameters based on individual competence and employment rates. We point to the dominance of the outcomes approach in the multiplicity of definitions and understandings of employability. The process approach captures the role of higher education institutions in providing and assessing employability development opportunities. We differentiated between different conceptual approaches of employability dimensions such as the dominant human capital theory (underpinning the outcomes approach), critical realism, capability and positional conflict. The framework provides conceptual clarity that addresses contesting positionalities and differing positions on what employability is, and the relevance beyond dominant outcomes approach and western-focused context.

Conclusion

We are grateful and mindful that SRHE worked the magic for us, bringing together an experienced researcher and ECR with impactful outcomes. Our story is one of many. Hopefully, our story will inspire other ECRs to reach out and make the best of the opportunities that SRHE provides. We also want to highlight how the input and support from more experienced researchers, and collaboration can make a lot of difference in academic career trajectory!

Dr Omolabake Fakunle is Chancellor’s Fellow, and Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. She is Affiliate Faculty, Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano. Her award-winning research, teaching and consultancy includes inclusivity in internationalisation, employability, and decoloniality. She was a member of the inaugural Scottish Funding Council’s Tertiary Quality Framework Expert Advisory Group, and current member of the SRHE Governance and Appointments Committee. 

Professor Helen Higson OBE DL was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Aston University.  She is now Professor of Higher Education Learning and Management in Aston Business School.  Helen is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE and a National Teaching Fellow.  Her recent research, policy and consultancy work includes intercultural training, developing employability and skills development, facilitating a coaching


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How professional digital ePortfolios can enhance employability and professional identity

by Jodie Pinnell

Graduate employability helps UK universities to attract students, so strategies to connect learning to employment are increasingly valuable. One proven method encouraging undergraduate students to consider life beyond graduation is to build employability into summative assessment, and digital ePortfolios are one such approach. An ePortfolio is an online resource created by students that details professional experiences linked to academic study. It culminates in a structured collection of learner work that is primarily framed by reflection and serves as an online record of achievement, showcasing skills, professional experiences and credentials. My research investigated digital ePortfolios in the undergraduate curriculum in Childhood Studies at the University of Portsmouth.

Closely related to employability, ePortfolios showcase applicant credentials and digital competence, allowing universities to assess students creatively, and allowing hiring organisations to determine applicants’ skills for entering the job market (Ring et al, 2017[RC1] ). This is relevant in a climate where graduates compete for jobs, and degree programmes are perceived as a ‘product’ with an emphasis on value for money with students as customers (Modell, 2005). As pressure mounts for universities to compete for student recruitment, action is needed to improve graduate employability metrics.

Although ePortfolios may not be a novel approach in undergraduate programmes, their integration as a central element of curriculum and assessment has not been fully explored. My study investigated how ePortfolios affected students’ interactions with their university experiences by enhancing professional identities and reflective, lifelong learning. Data collected for the project relied upon students’ perceptions through recorded online interviews, adopting a phenomenological approach, eliciting meaning through reflective, subjective understandings. Findings showed that reflective work in ePortfolios can be challenging through exposing vulnerabilities, whilst also positively playing a role in the ‘bigger picture’ of students’ development – ePortfolios facilitated digital skill development and evolving professional identities.

In the data collection process, discussions encompassed ePortfolio development linked to students’ compulsory work placements embedded in Childhood Studies degree programmes. Participants were in 2 groups; current students and graduates, with data collection focused on specific contexts and circumstances (Willig, 2008[RC2] ) and reflective, subjective understandings (Finlay, 1999[RC3] ). I took an idiographic stance (Burrell and Morgan, 1999[RC4] ), collecting data covering the perceiver’s angle of perception (Willig, 2008[RC5] ). Participants in the study were in 2 groups; 5 current students and 4 graduates, sampled voluntarily. The interviews conducted were semi structured and the key themes of the findings were employability, reflection, professional identity, digital skills and the student experience.

ePortfolios “develop engaged, reflective, lifelong learners” by collecting valuable evidence of career-based skills, and promoting “professional digital identities” (McKay & Watty, 2016[RC6] ). This study recognised this shift in identity for students, with findings outlining how ePortfolios “help you to reflect and develop as a professional person,” and that students did not “feel like a student when […] writing this” (Graduate Participant).This is arguably caused by the facilitated connections between practical learning and reflective summative assessment: “I’ve got this theory and understanding of things from uni and I can apply that. And everything makes so much more sense which moving forward has meant Oh, my gosh! I can work even better now” (Graduate Participant). As students reflected on professional experiences they valued the connections between theory and practice, with ePortfolios aiding reflection on an individual’s strengths and weaknesses. This in turn improved the quality of work and addresses multiple identities (Ring et al, 2017, p 226[RC7] ). Embedding ePortfolios in the curriculum as a summative assessment enforced accountability for students’ professionalism, leading to an increased level of perceived value from degree study. The requirement for students to write reflective accounts and build connections between experiential and theoretical learning leads to “heightened awareness and preparation for professions” (Svyantek, Kajfez & McNair, 2015, p137[RC8] ). When students had an idea of their professional trajectories, this led to valuable consideration of career plans: “You’ve got clarity in your writing as well, which is probably a nice feather to the bow when you were reflecting on [your career]” (Student Participant). As ePortfolios prompted students to present their professional personas for large audiences to “intentionally curate their digital presence” (Svyantek et al, 2015, p 146[RC9] ), the development of professional identity aided career planning.

Reflection is key for undergraduate Childhood Studies degrees, with a need to embed this in the curriculum to be effective. “Danger lies in [reflection] being a separate curriculum element with a set of exercises” (Bolton & Delderfield, 2018[RC10] , p 1), and with ePortfolios, reflective writing characterises their creation. The meaning of this reflection was evident in the findings: “This is the only assessment that you go and do something real, and then you have to bring it back to our lovely, fluffy theory of ‘Oh, this is how things should be,’ and no one else really makes you do that” (Student Participant). This recognised integrative thinking for students, encouraging the management of complexity and problem-solving by connecting ideas akin to professional experiences (Svyantek, et al, 2015[RC11] ). Reflection brings challenges, however, with vulnerability associated with articulating learning from experience. Findings showed: “[There was a] vulnerability that you felt when you submitted those reflections” (Graduate Participant); the cause arguably in revealing more of the ‘self’ than other assessment methods (Lewis & Gerbic, 2017). Accompanying this is the requirement to adopt alternative ways of thinking that encompass purposeful goal-directed tasks that personalise the learning experience (Lewis, 2017).

The integration of ePortfolios in undergraduate Childhood Studies degree programmes positively affected students’ perceptions of their professional identities, employability and digital competence. Reflecting on work placement experiences was challenging for participants and vulnerability was exposed in recounting experiences for assessment purposes. ePortfolios have made a positive impact on undergraduate Childhood Studies degree programmes, taking into account wider university contexts and individual learning experiences.

Jodie Pinnell is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies in the School of Education, Languages and Linguistics at the University of Portsmouth. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy UK. Follow Jodie on Twitter @jodieEdu


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Interest rate changes could challenge universities, student loans and post 16 and vocational education

by Sir Adrian Webb

The publication on 13 September 2023 of the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee report on the Office for Students drew attention to the financial challenges facing universities in the UK and to the challenges associated with regulating and overseeing these risks.  

This week we look set to see these challenges increase with the possible increase in the  base interest rates by the Bank of England (the “Bank Rate”) to 5.5% when the Monetary Policy Committee next meets on Thursday 21st September (Guardian, Financial Times, 24 August 2023 ). If there is another 0.25% increase in the base rate, as is widely anticipated, this will place government and university finances under further pressure over the next few years with significant negative implications for HE students, the UK Government’s education budget in general and the further education college budget in particular. Furthermore, this anticipated rise in the Bank Rate may not be the last of these increases if Government spending remains high and inflationary pressures persist through the winter months. 

The most immediate and direct effect will be on the interest payments that universities need to pay on short term loans. According to HESA, average HE provider debt as a proportion of turnover stands at 0.16%, but with highs of 454% and lows of 0%, with unrestricted reserves of 204% of income (HESA, 2023). Of course, financial indicators expressed as a percentage of income for institutions of very variable sizes give no feel for the absolute amount of cash owed, or the annual cost of repayments.  

The top 13 higher education providers by percentage of debt are all small private institutions; most have recorded deficits in recent years and appear to have low levels of cash available to cover running costs. The next 35 institutions by scale of debt all have debt levels of over 50% of turnover. Among these institutions there are 22 large pre- and post-92 universities in all parts of the UK.  

The challenges presented by potential increases in interest payments will be exacerbated over the next two years by the continued decline in the real value of student tuition fees, limitations on the recruitment of overseas students with dependants and a decline in the proportion of students applying to low and mid-tariff universities.  

When student tuition fees were first introduced, HE providers were encouraged to set fees at between £6,000 and £9,000 per annum. Some price competition between institutions was expected but in practice the vast majority set their fees at the higher level. Recent analysis by Mark Corver of DataHE, an independent higher education consultancy, indicates that the real level of fees that higher education providers charge students as tuition fees has dropped below £6,000 if the value is deflated by the Retail Prices Index (RPI), slightly higher if other measures of inflation are used.

Over the last five years, many HE providers have been attempting to cover the reduced value of undergraduate home tuition fee income by recruiting larger number of international students, particularly from China, India and Nigeria. This approach has attracted large numbers of students to the most selective universities and those in major cities; many universities now have more than 25% of their students recruited from these sources. The announcement of restrictions on the release of temporary visas to support the dependents of international students has already had an impact on the recruitment of people from overseas who want to study at UK universities.. This impact looks set to continue and increase in 2024. 

To illustrate the issues faced by the more highly indebted institutions with a significant number of international students, consider the composite case of the University of Camberwick Green, with net debt of circa £200m and current loans with a weighted average debt cost of 3.5%. If this institution needed to renew all of its existing debt obligations this would likely double the costs of debt servicing from £7million to at least £14million. This would mean an additional annual outlay as a proportion of turnover in excess of 5%, dependent on the interest rates agreed with lenders and the term of their loan (e.g. revolving credit facility, private placement, bond or bank lending).  For a university like Camberwick Green, which has also recorded large operating deficits in recent years, additional debt is likely to be more expensive and so the short-term options are likely to focus on selling assets or laying off staff; these are not easy or attractive options. Changes to course portfolios and/or increased international student recruitment and transnational operations are unlikely to produce the necessary returns quickly and without undue financial or reputational risk.  

The more prestigious and selective universities in the more affluent parts of the UK are unlikely to face pressures that are likely to bear down hard on those which are, by conventional measures, less prestigious and less selective, in parts of the UK that engaged in levelling up activities with significant HE involvement. The impacts of high indebtedness, declining student recruitment and operating deficits are already being felt with significant redundancies planned at ten universities. 

The next most significant impact of higher interest rates will be on student loan repayments and the arrangements for funding this activity. The student loan book currently stands at £206bn with an additional £20bn of loans being issued each year. The internal real interest rate charged on these loan arrangements by HM Treasury, i.e. the real discount rate (excluding inflation), was set at -0.7% in 2021 at the height of the Covid crisis and remains the rate proposed in the Plan 5 changes scheduled to come into place during 2024. The nominal discount rate taking account of inflation is 1.9%. If Bank of England interest rates and by consequence HM Treasury bond/gilt rates move to 6.25% in 2024, as has been forecast, and the student loan rate is changed as a consequence, this will create an adverse upward movement in real interest rate charges on the loan book of circa 5%. Dependent on the scheduling of the loans this will then feed through into the calculation of the principal debt students are required to repay and also the Resource Allocation Budget (RAB) charge paid by the UK Government on loans that are forecast not to be repaid. Under revised accounting rules introduced in 2021, a proportion of this increased RAB charge will need to be accounted for in the national deficit in the year it is incurred and cannot be delayed until the loan matures. With forecast increases in the scale of the student loan book through to the next decade there are likely to be powerful voices in the Treasury wishing to pay down this debt or reduce the scale of its growth. This in turn is likely to mean a need to revisit the current arrangements in advance of the next HM Treasury Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in 2025. 

The current loan book is financed in part by the spread (difference) between the notional interest rate charged to students on loans they have taken out, which is currently set with some reference to the Prevailing Market Rate (PMR) for commercial loans, and the lower rate paid by the Treasury for its borrowings. The PMR was set at 7.3% in February 2023 and confirmed at this level for the period between September and November 2023 on 11th August. . At present the Bank of England Bank Rate is 5.3% and so the spread between the student loan rate and the Bank Rate was 2%. If a similar spread is expected if  the base rate rises further to 6.25% the PMR could be 8.25% or even higher. Interest rates at this level would make almost all student loans un-repayable, effectively converting the loan system into a graduate tax confined to new students and also potentially introducing a significant element of “moral hazard” as many students would face little incentive to do anything other than maximise their student loans. Given that they will never repay them; they will face an additional marginal loan repayment (tax) rate of 9% on undergraduate loans and 6% on postgraduate loans, so why not take out as much loan as possible and complete a postgraduate taught or research degree, even when the economic returns to them individually and to the public purse are negative. Beyond this “moral hazard” argument there is also arguably a “moral outrage” argument to be had about imposing an age-related differential income tax rate on younger people who are recent graduates. 

The problems outlined above are then likely to be heightened by forecast increases in the number of prospective undergraduate students entering the system over the next seven years.  In 2021/2022 there were 2.16 million U.K. domiciled students in UK HE institutions and a further 0.68 million students from the EU and other overseas countries. By 2030 the number of UK domiciled students is expected to increase by between 200,000 and 400,000 as a consequence of increases in the number of people in the relevant age groups. This would be at an average additional cost per student of at least £60,000 per three-year undergraduate degree, based on loans for tuition fees of 3 x £9,250 and for maintenance of 3 x up to £13,022 for students living away from home in London. Many students study for longer than three years on foundation and/or masters programmes, hence the forecast of £60,000 per student. This is an additional annual cost of loan outlay of £12bn or more. This seems unlikely to be fundable. 

The implication of these cost pressures would be serious enough if they were confined to HE, but they are not. Far from it. At present the growing costs of HE are being paid for by other parts of the UK Government’s education budget, resulting in real terms cuts to the further education budget, consequent low rates of pay for FE college staff, and cuts to the adult education budget. In adult education, FE and apprenticeship provision pay rates are set locally rather than nationally and so reductions in institutional budgets in this part of the education sector have tended to be accommodated by falling wages and unfilled vacancies rather than through redundancies as has been the case in the university sector. These different parts of the post-school education system are making greater use of part-time and temporary contracts and precarious jobs. This at a time when the need for more and better vocational education is increasingly widely recognised and the need for “industry standard” staff capable of delivering the new and upgraded skills required by rapid technological change has never been greater.  

Across the UK 70% of adults have not been to university, but like many older graduates they would benefit from the opportunity to take a course at a local college or other adult education provider. With 20% of the adult working age population (5 million people) currently economically inactive and with chronic skills shortages in all parts of economy it is very worrying that the pay of college lecturers in catering, construction, digital, engineering, health and social care is considerably below the rates paid to comparably skilled people working in the private sector. Employers in the UK spend on average 50% less than their counterparts in mainland Europe on workforce education and training. The combination of reductions in employer spending on training and cuts in UK Government funding for FE and apprenticeships has led to a reduction of over 1 million student places in adult education, apprenticeships and FE per year in the last ten years. This is not the position the UK needs to be in to improve productivity. Indeed, it is the very opposite of what is required to support such mission – let alone to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth.  

Who is responsible for monitoring and governing this system? At the moment the financial position of individual universities is overseen by their governing bodies, aided by internal and external auditors predominantly drawn in combinations of two of the big four audit firms. The Office for Students (OfS) monitors the financial position of individual higher education providers as part of its regulatory function, but it is not formally required to intervene financially at an early stage to support institutions in difficulties. It may issue a requirement to improve the plans for protecting students, but it is not required to prevent an institution from failing. The Student Loan Company (SLC) is overseen by an independent board and supported by a representative from the sponsoring departments in the UK’s national governments (i.e. Department for Education, Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Office in the absence of the Northern Ireland Executive). Whether the OfS, national regulators in the devolved nations or the SLC have modelled the scenarios outlined in this note is a moot point. Indeed, it is more of a mute point because no one is publicly talking about these issues and the problems that go with them in a joined-up way with a long-term perspective. It would be helpful if they did, and if there was a debate about the consequences for higher and further education providers and student loans of the return to real interest rates more in-keeping with the long run historical average. Given the commitment of central banks around the world to move in this direction after 15 years of ultra-low interest rates there is a pressing need for a comprehensive review of where we are heading and what needs to be done about it. 

As we approach a General Election in 2024, now is the time for the major political parties in the UK to commit to the appointment of a Royal Commission or equivalent to look at these issues with an impartial, sector neutral and critical eye.  Over the last hundred years all major changes of this type have proceeded in this way (i.e. Smith Report 1919, White Paper on Education 1943, Robbins Review 1964, Dearing Review 1997 and Browne Review 2011). Indeed, in 1997 Gillian Sheppard (Conservative minister) and David Blunkett (prospective Labour minister) agreed in the run up to the General election to respect the Dearing Committee proposals. A similar arrangement was reached regarding the Browne Review between Peter Mandelson (Labour Minister) and George Osborne (prospective Conservative Minister) in the run up to the general election in 2010.  The settlements in 1944 and 1963 were similarly effectively cross-party. This is a fundamental issue for the future of the UK and deserves to be made non-political with recommendations for the long term. Previous reviews have produced long term plans which have been implemented when they had cross-party support and straddled a General election. 

Sir Adrian Webb was an academic at the London School of Economics and Loughborough University; he was Deputy Vice Chancellor at Loughborough and Vice Chancellor at the University of Glamorgan. As well as holding a number of senior management positions and a wide range of public service/consultancy roles in local and central government (including HM Treasury, DHSS, Home Office, DFES, and the Ministry of Justice) and in Wales, he has also held many roles in the Third Sector. Sir Adrian was a member of the Dearing Review committee in the late 1990s and chaired a review of further education colleges and funding in Wales in 2007. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any organisation with which the author is affiliated.  


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New higher education institutions: a real chance to innovate?

by Katherine Emms

Since the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act, England has seen a surge of new higher education institutions adding to the traditional higher education  landscape. The Act made a number of major changes to the sector, one of which was the introduction of the Office for Students (OfS), which was given responsibility to grant degree-awarding powers to providers and the right to use ‘university’ in their title. The Act was intended to make it easier for more providers to enter the market, and in the words of the 2018 Universities Minister, Sam Gyimah, it was “designed to facilitate innovation, avoiding overly-prescriptive, process-focussed approaches that might place limitations on creativity”. The invitation was welcomed by a number of providers and now, a few short years later, some are already taking in their first cohorts of students. But are these institutions truly offering something different to students, facilitating innovation and diversification in a crowded marketplace, or just replicating existing models?

At The Edge Foundation we wanted to investigate the early experiences of these new higher education institutions (HEIs) and understand what their guiding principles and reasons for setting up were, as well as how they were interpreting their visions and putting these into practice. We have conducted a number of semi-structured interviews with founders and staff across several new HEIs, with more dialogue to follow as these institutions move through their early stages of operation.

Employability is increasingly seen as a responsibility of HE, not just as a separate task of the careers services but one which should be an integrated element within academic learning (Crammer, 2006). New HEIs have highlighted the gap between existing provision and employers’ needs, and see their offering as a way to address this issue, claiming that their innovative approaches could better support the employability of students. One way this has been tackled is through strong collaboration with employers from the outset of designing the course and its content. Some new HEIs emphasised the importance of a ‘backwards design’ which is demand (employer)-led rather than supply (academic)-led. Having industry experts involved in skills gap workshops and continuously having employer representatives as part of the validation process were some of the ways that supported this.

Most of the new HEIs we spoke to focus on broadness of provision in a number of senses. First and foremost, they set aside traditional subject silos and instead are looking to offer interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary degrees, or offer a broader notion to a single subject area (e.g. bringing the social science aspect into engineering). The arguments put forward were that complex world problems are not fixed within a single discipline and require a broad knowledge and skill set that spans disciplines in order to be solved. One way to support this broad provision is through staff recruitment at the new HEIs; staff are recruited partly from industry, partly from the world of academia, but ultimately having the right attitude and a team working ethos to work collaboratively across disciplines are considered key.

The broadness theme also plays out in terms of the development of the student. Looking beyond academic and knowledge-based learning, the development of the whole student is seen as core to their provision. All aspects are important – from ensuring the development of transferable skills that are integrated into the curriculum, to ensuring students take part in meaningful placements and have employer interactions to develop the ‘professional’ skills they need after graduation.

Another way these new HEIs are pushing back against traditional modes of delivery is through their focus on team work, and problem-based learning or project-based learning. Almost all our participants emphasised that their HEI has no lectures, instead focussing on students working together on authentic real-world issues often set by an external client, making them relevant to industry. Alongside this, exams are not the main form of assessment, instead a range of more ‘authentic’ methods were discussed including reflective portfolios, podcasts, blogs, and pitches to businesses.

These new HEIs vary across their stage of development, their size, mission, and delivery, although some common factors have been set out above. One thing that all the new HEIs have had to navigate was the registration and policy landscape. Some of these were partnering with or being ‘parented’ by an established university to go through the process and some were going at it alone. This brought differing issues and seemed to influence the degree of innovation they could deliver. To some extent working within the parameters of another university can stifle the innovation by having to fit their delivery into traditional and established ways. On the other hand, these established universities have the advantage of bringing credibility to the new HEIs, which can be beneficial both in terms of the registration process and the attractiveness to new students.

Ultimately these HEIs are new and are yet to see a full cohort of students graduate, therefore we have limited markers of success so far on which to evaluate them. Likewise it is difficult to see how innovative these providers are, as one stakeholder remarked: “innovative might be a great idea, but until it’s tested is much harder to understand whether it really is innovative”.Edge will continue with our research over the next year and beyond to understand more about the experiences of these new HEIs and their students.

Katherine Emms is a Senior Education & Policy Researcher at the Edge Foundation. Her main areas of research are in higher education, vocational education, skills shortages in the economy and employability skills. Current and published research can be seen here: https://www.edge.co.uk/research/research-team/kat-emms/. Twitter @kat_emms


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Extracurricular activities: does paid work count?

by Teri-Lisa Griffiths, Dr Jill Dickinson, and Catherine Day

The continued diversification of the student body means that students are engaged with a range of extracurricular activities, both on and off-campus. Our recently published research explores how these experiences impact student self-efficacy, that is participants’ perceptions of their ability to carry out a range of tasks associated with academic success. Here we discuss some of the key findings from the research and pose additional questions in the context of recent events.

Context

With the continued focus on graduate employability and outcomes, the benefit of extracurricular activity (‘ECA’) engagement is often promoted as a way for students to strengthen applications for opportunities following graduation. ECAs are considered useful for the development of students’ ‘soft skills’; those skills which are transferable, and which may help at the beginning of students’ graduate careers. The authors’ previous research illustrated how students have absorbed this message, and they often seek out opportunities which they perceive as valuable for their future career as a result. Students tend to be engaged in a variety of ECAs including: student activist and representative activity, work experience and internships, sport, and special interest groups. Following calls to expand understanding of what constitutes a legitimate ECA, and to include those who engage with activities necessitated by their personal circumstances, our study accepted any activity undertaken outside of timetabled classes as an ECA. To expand on this approach, we will explore the activity of paid work in some detail in this blog, as well as outlining some of the key findings of our study.

Student self-efficacy

Our study drew on the concept of self-efficacy, a person’s own belief in their ability to carry out particular tasks within specific domains, to understand more about how ECAs might confer benefits to students in higher education. Utilising and adapting a measure by Bandura, we asked respondents to rank their ability to carry out tasks related to success at university, including academic self-efficacy (eg I can get myself to study when there are more interesting things to do), external reach (I can make contact with professionals working in careers which interest me), relatedness (I can work well in a group) and help seeking (I can get tutors to help me when I get stuck on coursework). Although self-efficacy is believed to be restricted to specific domains, there is a hypothesis that high self-efficacy in one domain may positively influence self-efficacy in other domains, provided that the individual sees similarities between the activities carried out within each. We measured respondents’ student self-efficacy at two separate points in the academic year to understand more about how ECA engagement may influence student self-efficacy beliefs over time.

The impact of extracurricular activities on student self-efficacy

Our findings demonstrated a moderate relationship between higher self-efficacy and engagement with ECAs. All respondents experienced an increase in their student self-efficacy over the two time points, which is to be expected as they progressed through their studies. However, when comparing the engaged and non-engaged groups, those who engaged with ECAs reported higher self-efficacy at both points. We were unable to draw conclusions regarding causation from the results. We cannot be sure if engagement in ECAs supports the development of student self-efficacy or if those with higher student self-efficacy are more likely to be engaged with ECAs. For example, we found evidence of a small number of participants who were engaged with several ECAs and reported very high levels of student self-efficacy. Bringing together evidence from previous studies, it may be that those students who are already assured in their academic ability are the most likely to be comfortable with introducing additional responsibilities into their student experience. Furthermore, the authors have previously explored students’ conceptions of ECAs and found that worries about negative impacts on studies were one of the reported barriers to engagement.

Problematising paid work

The inclusion of paid work as a recognised ECA was important to this study for a number of reasons. Our previous research demonstrated that students tend to trivialise their paid work experience in the context of their graduate ambitions and the potential for skill development. There are also social justice implications which merit their inclusion, as most students from lower socio-economic backgrounds may find it necessary to undertake paid work to fund living expenses.

The results of our study strengthen the evidence that students undervalue paid work experiences. First, there were two questions on the survey which pertained to paid work. One question asked how many hours respondents engaged in paid work, and the second asked respondents to indicate whether they were involved with ECAs. Seventy-five respondents in total answered that they were engaged with paid work but did not subsequently give an affirmative response to the question of ECA engagement, even though paid work was explicitly included on the list of example ECAs on the survey. This gives a clear indication of respondents’ attitudes to their paid work experiences (and perhaps an insight into how closely respondents read survey questions!).

Second, part-time work participation had no impact on student self-efficacy overall, or on any of the domains we measured, including external reach. As a result of this, we can assert that respondents did not perceive the domains of their paid work activities to be sufficiently similar to their student tasks to have an impact on their reported self-efficacy. Some of the external reach questions included, ‘I would feel confident arranging to meet a professional’ and ‘I would feel confident applying to a new opportunity’, but the results demonstrate that respondents did not feel that their paid work experiences prepared them sufficiently for external reach tasks.

Implications

Our research demonstrates the importance of student self-efficacy to the wider student experience. Regardless of whether engagement with ECAs results in, or relies on, high student self-efficacy, we recommend that universities explore ways within which they can explicitly support students to develop their student self-efficacy to take advantage of the range of benefits to the student experience. Furthermore, we believe that the topic of paid work warrants further exploration. It is our intention to undertake an additional study to understand how universities might support students to make the connections between paid work experiences and their personal and professional development.

Teri-Lisa Griffiths is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology. As a former careers adviser, her teaching is focused on the development of employability and academic skills. Her research interests are centred on the student experience and professional development.

 Jill Dickinson is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Senior Fellow of Advance HE. After spending 10 years working as a solicitor in private practice, Jill moved into academia. Alongside various Course and Research Leadership roles, she has collaborated with both internal and external partners to develop student employability initiatives.

Catherine J. Day is Principal Lecturer in Psychology. She is departmental lead for student experience, engagement and employability. Her teaching portfolio includes personality and psychometrics at undergraduate level and individual differences at postgraduate. Her research interests focus on individual differences and personality, and student well-being. She is a qualified personality and ability Test User registered by the British Psychology Society.