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How can PhDs support solutions to local challenges?

by Rachel Handforth and Rebekah Smith-McGloin

Recent news headlines highlight the range of social and economic challenges faced by cities and counties across the UK (BBC, 2024; Financial Times, 2024; Guardian, 2024), reflecting wider predictions of ongoing economic challenges for the UK as a whole (OECD, 2024). Recent local election results seem to indicate public desire for change in their communities – and whilst we await the national democratic process later this year – the devolution process to combined local authorities indicates a positive shift towards increased funding, resources and power for those working to achieve positive change in their local communities.

What is the role of universities in all this? And how might the highest-level qualification that they offer hope to address any of the complex, systemic issues faced by local communities, and those that live and work within them?

The answer to these questions is not clear-cut, but exploring the ways in which the doctorate might lend itself to addressing locally relevant challenges – in theory and in practice – may offer a vision for how universities might enact their civic mission, and consider themselves ‘truly civic’. Yet whilst undergraduate curricula often contain elements of civic engagement through service learning, volunteering, and policy discussions (McCunney, 2017), work on civic and community-informed practice has been slow to emerge at doctoral level.

The last decade has seen an increase in the number of doctoral researchers in the UK (Smith-McGloin and Wynne, 2022) and in the proportion of doctoral graduates working beyond academia (Vitae, 2022). Yet the capacity of the doctorate to contribute to positive place-based change has not been fully explored. Indeed, a recent report from the National Civic Impact Accelerator highlights the ongoing positive economic and social impacts of doctoral graduates; boosting research productivity across sectors, contributing to cutting edge research and development, as well as adding to research capacity through a highly skilled workforce.

Existing literature on doctoral education and wider engagement with communities focuses predominantly on praxis in the context of industrial and professional doctorates (see Boud et al, 2021; Terzioğlu, 2011; Wildy, Peden and Chan, 2015). Too often, doctoral education is still conceptualised as an instrumentalist tool of neoliberal higher education, producing highly-skilled postgraduate researchers and knowledge for the economy. For example, professional doctorates are viewed as a mechanism by which the university can realise its potential, through close interaction with industry and government, to deliver innovation and economic development in a knowledge society.

At the last Society for Research in Higher Education conference in December 2023, we presented our early thoughts on how place-based partnership programmes such as the Public Scholars Initiative and Co(l)laboratory might seek to address socioeconomic challenges, and legitimise broader conceptions of scholarship within doctoral education. Following Gibbons et al’s (1994) consideration of knowledge production modes in relation to university knowledge transfer, and drawing on recent literature relating to modes of knowledge production (Liyanage et al, 2022; Miller et al, 2018; Peris-Ortiz, 2016), we considered how discussions around doctoral education and the public good (Deem, 2020) may be reimagined in the context of these programmes.

Our own experience of leading and working within Co(l)laboratory, a new Nottingham-based doctoral training programme which recruits a diverse range of candidates to co-created research projects, developed with local employers to address place-based issues, has shown the great potential of doctoral education to drive positive change locally. We have seen in practice how programmes such as Co(l)laboratory can act as a node in a wider civic knowledge and innovation system, and produce an expansive network currently involving two universities, 12 civic agreement partners, 30 community organisations, as well as current doctoral students and supervisors on 20 distinct research projects. This new model for doctoral training positions the doctorate as an agile, socially responsive and community-engaged catalyst to enable local people to tackle local problems.

Whilst it is clear that the complex and persistent challenges faced by communities across the UK require significant regional and national investment to resolve, the capacity of place-based doctoral education, shaped by civic partners and their local universities, should not be underestimated.

Dr Rachel Handforth joined Nottingham Trent University as Senior Lecturer in Doctoral Education and Civic Engagement in January 2023 to work on the Co(l)laboratory programme, working with local employers to build a community-informed model for developing place-based PhD research projects. Her research interests include gender inequality in higher education, and belonging, access and participation in doctoral education. She was recently funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education to explore public attitudes to, and engagement with, doctoral research programmes.

Dr Rebekah Smith McGloin is Director of Research Culture and Environment and Director of the Doctoral School at Nottingham Trent University. She provides strategic leadership in the area of inclusive research culture, environment and doctoral education. She is currently principal investigator on two major projects in the field of inclusive doctoral education; the Universities for Nottingham Co(l)laboratory Research Hub and Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation. She is an executive committee member and trustee of the UK Council for Graduate Education.  She was a member of the UKRI Bioscience Skills and Careers Strategy Panel (2015-2022) and an expert panel reviewer for the UK Concordat for Researchers (2019). Her research interests lie in higher education management, postgraduate research student experience, widening participation and access to higher education.


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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.

Paul Temple


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No, it doesn’t make sense to me, either

by Paul Temple

I recently gave a cat-oriented friend a framed copy of a New Yorker cartoon showing a vet’s waiting room. A vet is saying to a man sitting there, “About your cat, Mr Schrödinger, there’s good news and there’s bad news…” Linda put the cartoon in her downstairs loo, and says that half her visitors think it’s hilarious while the rest are completely baffled.

The cartoon really summarises the totality of my knowledge of quantum mechanics, but as it seems to be one of those topics where if you think you understand it, you almost certainly don’t (and you’d be in pretty good company, see below), then my almost boundless ignorance doesn’t feel too bad. But as ideas borrowed from quantum mechanics seem to be colonising areas of discourse that were until recently understandable (we thought) to those of us without doctorates in the subject, perhaps we’d better make an effort.

A recent example of its spread is the paper by our colleague Ron Barnett, ‘Only connect: designing university futures’ in Quality in Higher Education, in which Ron uses the idea taken from quantum mechanics of “entanglement” to consider the university’s relationship with other entities. (And this is where it starts to get tricky.) As Ron notes, entanglement implies that the entities involved are mutually constitutive: one entity cannot be understood without examining the other entities with which it is entangled: “It may be true that one cannot give a description of the modern university without also referring to the economy but the reverse situation also holds: one cannot give a proper description of the economy without referring to a society’s universities. The economy is constitutive of universities, certainly; but universities are also constitutive of the economy”.

So far, so just about OK, yes? But the entanglement idea leads us into territory that is beyond weird: Einstein apparently wrote that “no reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit” what entanglement implies, but – assuming that quantum computing is going to work, and there are some big bets on it doing so – it turns out that even he was mistaken. What Einstein couldn’t accept, it seems, was that two entangled objects, wherever in the universe they may be, become in effect one, after at first assuming opposite states.

Yes, this is way past anything that we’ve learned to accept as normal. One suggestion of how to think about entanglement asks us to imagine you and a friend tossing entangled coins. (How did they become entangled in the first place? Pass.) If, when you look at your coin, it’s heads, then your friend’s coin will, necessarily, be tails. But if your friend now looks at their coin, it will be heads, which means that your coin will now be tails: back to Schrödinger’s cat, simultaneously both dead and alive. (While the bits in normal computing have a value of either zero or one, qubits in quantum computing can have values of zero and one: Schrödinger’s cat is at the computer keyboard, which incidentally needs to be at a temperature close to absolute zero.)

With Einstein, perhaps, you may think this makes no sense, but earlier this year Google announced a breakthrough in creating an “error correction quantum computer”, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the project (Microsoft, Amazon, the Chinese, and others are also on the case), so they obviously think this stuff will work, regardless of the normal rules of the universe.

So, to pursue Ron’s suggestion about the university and the economy being mutually constitutive, it seems to follow that they will be – must be, following the theory – in opposite states. If you were looking for an argument for universities needing to be independent of government, might this be it? Next time a minister inveighs about universities being nests of woke, perhaps someone should explain the quantum aspects of the situation to them: the more regressive government policies become, universities will necessarily become more radical – it can’t be helped, it’s just to do with entanglement and the structure of the universe. I’m sure they’d appreciate the clarification.

Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.


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Moving with the times: The growing need for better graduate mobility data

by Tej Nathwani

Introduction

As SRHE noted in their summary of the theme of the 2022 conference, one of the current areas of discussion is the relationship between student mobility and outcomes. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have used the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset to explore trends in graduate mobility and earnings in England. While mobility is correlated with individual destinations, there are also wider macroeconomic consequences resulting from the extent to which graduates move around the country.

In a separate paper by the Resolution Foundation and the Centre for Economic Performance, researchers at the two organisations highlighted how one of the key factors that explains variations in productivity across areas are human capital levels – measured by the share of graduates in the locality. Hence, while providers can help with widening participation and upskilling the labour force in our most deprived regions, the full benefits of this for the vicinity may only be realised if those individuals who study in higher education choose not to move out of the area or region. One of the consequences of this is that providers are increasingly working with employers to try and ensure graduates can utilise their skills in the local economy (for example at Sheffield Hallam).

Given the state of the UK economy and the role mobility may have on individuals and growth, this is a topic that will remain salient in forthcoming years. However, even before we think about the association between mobility and outcomes, the first question to consider is how data might help us to better understand the extent to which graduates move for study and/or work. Historically, exploration of graduate movements has been at a regional level, which has become less relevant and valuable at a time when interest also lies in inequalities within regions, as well as between them. This blog will thus focus on a new marker HESA has generated to help our users gain more detailed insights into mobility.

The current problem

Patterns of regional migration and the categorisation of graduates into different groups based on this was first explored by Prospects back in the mid-2000s. One of the limitations of using such an aggregated level of geography, however, is that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all classified as individual regions. This means we are unable to examine what mobility is like within these nations. To see the drawbacks for investigating mobility in England using region, consider the neighbouring areas of Bradford and Leeds – both of which are within Yorkshire and The Humber. As the ONS regional economic activity data illustrates, there has been a divergence in the economic performance of these two places over the last twenty years. Hence, a graduate originally from Bradford who studies at the local university, but then moves for work to Leeds would be allocated to the same group in a regional analysis as one who initially lives, studies and is then employed in Bradford. With the graduate share being a key factor in understanding the differences in economic performance between areas, the possibility of distinguishing between graduates who remain in areas of low economic activity and those who move out of such localities for work is growing in importance.

A potential solution

HESA collect the postcode at which the individual resides prior to starting higher education and also request similar data from the graduate in the Graduate Outcomes survey regarding their location of employment (if they don’t know the postcode for their employment location, we ask the graduate to provide the town/city/area in which they work). There is therefore the potential to map these postcodes to local authority data (and their equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland). Using local authority of residence/work and region of study, we have created a mobility marker consisting of the following seven categories:

  1. Stays in same region for study and finds work in the same local authority as original location of residence
  2. Returns to the same local authority for work as original location of residence, having left region/country for study
  3. Stays in same region for study, but finds work in different local authority (in the same region) to original location of residence
  4. Returns to a different local authority (of the same region) for work when compared with original location of residence, having moved region/country for study
  5. Moved region/country for work, but did not move region for study
  6. Moved region/country for study, but did not then move region/country again for work
  7. Moved region/country for study and then moved region/country again for work (with the region/country being different to their original region/country of residence)

Going back to our original example of the two graduates from Bradford (one who moves for work and one who doesn’t), this new classification ensures they are no longer placed in the same group. Rather, one is allocated to category A, while the other is assigned to C. Such distinctions will help improve our awareness of overall patterns of mobility across time.

Concluding thoughts

Our initial exploration into mobility and job quality suggests that migrating for employment is correlated with graduates finding a role that fits better with their career plans. With similar findings on the benefits of moving for work from a salary perspective also being reported by the IFS, this could potentially leave those aiming to reduce disparities in economic performance between areas with a conundrum. Policies aiming to upskill the labour force in more deprived areas and help reduce spatial inequalities require these individuals to remain in such neighbourhoods. Yet current evidence suggests that moving for work is associated with more positive outcomes for these people. Given the relevance to policy aims, as we continue to collect increasing amount of data on graduates through our annual Graduate Outcomes survey, we shall be exploring the potential to map how mobility differs by area (eg by investigating whether we have adequate sample size at more granular levels of geography). If this does prove feasible, this will help end users with ascertaining the extent to which localities with lower output are gaining/losing graduates.

High levels of inequality and poor growth are two key concerns for the UK economy. We hope that the development of new measures on deprivation and graduate mobility can help the higher education sector with tackling these issues and assist providers in capturing the wider impact they are making in society.

Feedback on our mobility marker is most welcome. Please send these to pressoffice@hesa.ac.uk.

To learn more about Graduate Outcomes, visit www.graduateoutcomes.ac.uk or view the latest national level official statistics.

To be kept updated on our publication plans and latest research releases, please join our mailing list.

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


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Deprivation data: Introducing a new UK-wide area-based measure

by Tej Nathwani

Introduction

The 2020s will be a pivotal period in determining the UK’s economic future. That’s the primary message of a recent report published by the Resolution Foundation and Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. While major events such as the pandemic and Brexit have undoubtedly played a part in this, there are also longer-term factors that have contributed to the country reaching this position. Examples noted by the researchers include stagnant productivity levels, large disparities in economic performance between areas and inequalities in our education system.

Naturally, one of the questions being increasingly asked of the UK higher education sector is how it is helping to resolve some of the latter issues. Yet being able to tackle these matters successfully, as well as understand the outcomes from various interventions, requires the provision of suitable data. As the body responsible for the collection and dissemination of information about UK higher education, HESA has a role to play in supplying appropriate variables and statistics to our users that support them in their decision-making. Hence, the past few years have seen us develop new fields designed to be relevant and valuable in meeting the current needs of our customers. Across two separate blogs we will be outlining what these are and the potential value they can deliver. In this first piece we begin with a focus on our work relating to socioeconomic disadvantage.

The uses of data on deprivation in higher education

One of the ways in which providers seek to improve equality of opportunity in education is through outreach activity. These are initiatives that aim to raise aspiration and attainment among those from disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as helping to inform them of the potential benefits that studying for a degree can offer. Area-based data on deprivation will typically be used in two ways. Firstly, as part of the eligibility criteria that an individual must meet to participate (for example, at Surrey). Secondly, it can help providers determine the areas of the country which they believe would be most useful to target given their strategic ambitions (for example, at King’s College London).

The current problem

The most commonly used area-based measure of disadvantage across the sector in each of the four nations is the index formed from the Indices of Deprivation. However, while this is especially effective in capturing deprivation in major urban areas, it is known to be less useful in identifying this in rural locations. For example, Na h-Eileanan Siar in Scotland has no localities that emerge in the bottom quintile of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), despite income levels being below the national average. (Indeed, local government looking at poverty in the area highlight that ‘There are difficulties in using the SIMD in rural areas. Areas such as the Outer Hebrides are sparsely populated, socially heterogeneous and less sensitive to area-based measures such as SIMD. This can lead to a situation where households in rural areas are omitted from policy and targeting by national interventions designed to address poverty and inequalities’.) Furthermore, the size of the areas used to derive the index can also make it difficult to fully understand the levels of deprivation within localities. For example, there may be pockets within a zone that are experiencing higher levels of disadvantage compared with other vicinities, but the use of a more aggregated geographic domain can lead to this being masked. The consequence of this for the higher education sector is that there may be some prospective students who live in deprived neighbourhoods, but due to the limitations of existing data, find themselves unable to participate in outreach activity (eg as a result of not meeting the eligibility criteria or providers not targeting their place of residence).

Comparability is also an important aspect of high-quality statistics. Each nation of the UK, however, adopts a different approach in generating its index from the Indices of Deprivation. This means it is not a UK-wide variable and does not enable statistics to be evaluated across nations. Both the Office for Statistics Regulation and the latest State of the Nation report by the Social Mobility Commission (see p20) have highlighted this as an existing data gap that inhibits our understanding of wider societal trends in social mobility.

A potential solution

The question we therefore asked ourselves was ‘Can we create a UK-wide area-based measure of deprivation that can also address some of the drawbacks of existing indicators?’. To do so, we relied upon the 2011 Census, given the questions asked across the nations are harmonised as far as possible, meaning a UK-wide metric can be created. Data are also released at ‘output area’ level (output areas are often referred to as ‘small areas’ in Northern Ireland), which is a smaller level of geography than is used for the Indices of Deprivation. Output areas will typically contain less than 500 individuals.

With earnings data not available in the Census, our measure of deprivation was derived using the qualifications and occupations of residents in output areas, given these two factors are key determinants of low income. Having generated this, and to understand the potential value it could bring, we compared the bottom quintile of our measure to the equivalent group in the index produced from the Indices of Deprivation (ie the most deprived neighbourhoods). In each of the four nations, we found that our measure picked up a greater proportion of rural areas, albeit to varying degrees. Furthermore, when looking at those output areas that emerged in the lowest fifth of our measure, but a higher quintile of the index developed using the Indices of Deprivation, we observe that the most prevalent localities are based in local authorities/council areas/local government districts where there appear to be lower levels of economic activity (eg County Durham in England, North Lanarkshire in Scotland, Rhondda in Wales, as well as Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon in Northern Ireland).

Concluding thoughts

In summary, our measure does seem to overcome some of the existing shortcomings of area-based indicators of deprivation. Over the next few years, we shall therefore be looking to supply the measure to users in an accessible format, alongside updating it using information from the most recent Census. As well as supporting equality of opportunity, if the measure can help to raise participation and skill levels in some of our most deprived neighbourhoods, there is also the possibility that this will assist with reducing spatial disparities in output. For example, the study by the Resolution Foundation and the Centre for Economic Performance notes that the ability of the Shared Prosperity Fund to successfully increase growth may well depend on the levels of human capital in the area. Through upskilling local residents living in disadvantaged localities, providers may therefore be able to facilitate the creation of the conditions needed for growth-enhancing initiatives to succeed. Of course, this rests on the assumption that these areas do not subsequently see residents move to other parts of the country. Understanding the geographical mobility of graduates will thus be the topic of our next blog.

Read more about our measure, its correlation with income and how it compares to the Indices of Deprivation https://www.hesa.ac.uk/insight/08-11-2022/new-area-based-measure-deprivation-summary.

Feedback on our measure of deprivation is most welcome. Please send this to pressoffice@hesa.ac.uk.

To be kept updated on our publication plans and latest research releases, please join our mailing list.

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

Vicky Gunn


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Notes from North of the Tweed: Valuing our values?

By Vicky Gunn

In a recent publication, Mariana Mazzucato1. pushes the reader to engage with a key dilemma related to modern day capitalist economics. ‘Value extraction’ often occurs after a government has valued work upfront through state investment and accountability regimes. The original investment was a result of the collective possibilities afforded by a mature taxation system and an understanding that accountability can drive positive social and economic outcomes (as well as perverse ones). The value that is extracted is then distributed to those already with both financial and social capital rather than redistributed back into the systems which produced the initial work via support from the state in the first place. This means that the social contract between the State and its workers (at all levels) effectively has the State pump prime activity, only to watch the fruits of these labours be inequitably shared.

I find this to be a useful, powerful and troubling argument when considering the current relationship between State funded activity and the governance of UK HE. As a recipient of multiple grants from bodies such as the Higher Education Academy (now AdvanceHE) and the Quality Assurance Agency (now a co-regulatory body in a landscape dominated by the Office for Students), I have observed a similar pattern of activity. What this means is that after a period of state funding (ie taxpayers’ money), these agencies are forced through a change in funding models to assess the value of their pre-existing assets. The change in funding models is normally a result of a political shift in how they are valued by the various governments that established and maintained them. The pre-existing assets are research and policy outputs and activities undertaken in good faith for the purposes of open source communication to ensure the widest possible dissemination and discussion, with an attendant build up in expertise. After valuing these assets, necessary rebranding may obscure the value of this state-funded work behind impenetrable websites in which multiple prior outputs (tangible assets) are pulled into one pdf.  Simultaneously, the agencies offer intangible assets based on relationships and expertise networks back to membership subscribers through gateways – paywalls. This looks like the unregulated conversion of a value network established through the collaboration of state and higher education into a revenue generating system, restricting access to those able to pay.2. If so, it represents a form of value extraction which is limited in how and where it redistributes what was once a part of the common weal.

Scottish HE has attempted to avoid this aspect of changes in the regulatory framework in two ways:

  • Firstly, by maintaining its Quality Enhancement Framework (QEF) in a recognisable form.3. Thus: the state continues to oversee the funding of domiciled Scottish student places; the Scottish Funding Council remains an arms-length funding and policy agency which commissions the relevant quality assurance agency; Universities Scotland continues as a lobbying ‘influencer’ that mediates the worst excesses of external interventions; and the pesky Office for Students is held back at the border, whilst we all trundle away trying to second guess what role metrics will play in the quality assurance of an enhancement-led sector over the next five to ten years. Strategic cooperation and value co-creation remain core principles. And all of this with Brexit uncertainty.
  • Secondly, by refocusing the discussion around higher educational enhancement in the light of a skills agenda predicated not on unfettered economic growth, but on inclusive and sustainable economic growth.4.

Two recent outputs from this context demonstrate the value of this approach: The Creative Disciplines Collaborative Cluster’s Toolkit for Measuring Impact and the Intangibles Collaborative Cluster’s recent publication.5. Both of these projects were valued for the opportunity they provided of collaborative problem solving across Scottish HEIs. Their outputs recognise it is now more important than ever to demonstrate the impact of what we do. Technological advances in rapid, annualised data generation is driving demands to assess the  value of our higher education. The prospect of this demand requiring disciplinary engagement means academics leading their subjects (not just Heads of Quality, DVCs Student Experience, VPs Learning and Teaching) need to be more aware of frameworks of accountability than before. Underneath the production of these outputs has remained a belief in the value of cooperation over the values of competition.

However, none of this means that those of us trying to maintain a narrative of higher education as the widest possible state good can rest on our laurels. If we are to seize this particular moment there are some crucial tensions to problematise and, where appropriate, resolve. We need formal discussion around the following:

  • What is to be valued through State influence in Scottish HE? How does the ‘what is to be valued’ question relate to the values and value of this education socially, culturally and economically?
  • How are these values and value to be valued through the accountability framework for higher education in Scotland?
  • What will the disruptions created by a new regulatory framework in England (based on a particular understanding of value and values) mean for how Scottish institutions continue to engage with the QEF, when they will probably also have to respond to a framework that would like to see itself as UK-wide?
  • How can we protect years of enhancement work from asset stripping and value extraction? How can we continue with an enhancement framework with social, cultural, and economic benefits for Scotland and its wider relationship with the world, at the same time as supporting reinvestment into the enhancement of Scotland’s higher education?
  • There is a push to revalue ‘success’ as simple economic outcomes, away from inter-relational outcomes that capture intangible but nonetheless critical aspects of that education – social coherence, wellbeing, cultural confidence and vitality, collective expertise, innovation, responsible prosperity. That path of value extraction may result in more not less inequality: how can we mitigate it?
  • How can all of this be done without merely retreating to the local? Bruno Latour has noted how locality is a cultural player in the current political inability to engage effectively with the planetary issue of the day: climate crisis.6. He notes the sense of security in the local’s boundaries and a perception across Europe that we somehow abandoned the local in the push to be global. The local is important. Yet, he clarifies, climate regime change means withdrawal into the local in terms of value and values – without interaction across political boundaries at a global level – is tantamount to wilful recklessness. How we can enable higher education to secure the local and the global simultaneously is surely the big question with which we are grappling. How can Scotland’s HE leaders engage to ensure the value and values we embody through our accountability regime do not get mired in local growth agendas unable to measure the impact of that growth within a global ecology?

Sitting within a creative arts small specialist institution, these questions seem both overwhelmingly large (how can a minnow lead such a conversation, surely only a BIG university can do this?) and absolutely essential. In the creative arts our students are, in their own frames of reference, already challenging us on the questions of value, values, environmental sustainability and inequality through their artistry, designerly ethics, and architectural wisdoms. I am, however, yet to hear such a recognisable conversation occurring coherently across the various players (political, policy, institutional) in the wider sector, except in activities related to the localities of cultural policy, the creative economy, and HEI community engagement.7.

Perhaps it is time for sector leaders, social, cultural, and economic policy-makers, and student representatives to work together to identify the parameters of these questions and how we can move forward to resolve them responsibly.

SRHE member Professor Vicky Gunn is Head of Learning and Teaching at Glasgow School of Art.

Notes

  1. Mazzucato, M (2018) The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy,  Penguin, p xv
  2. Allee, V (2008) ‘Value network analysis and value conversion of tangible and intangible assets’, Journal of Intellectual Capital, 9 (1): 5-25.
  3. This 2016 description of the sector’s regulatory framework of enhancement remains broadly the same:  https://wonkhe.com/blogs/analysis-devolved-yet-not-independent-tef-and-teaching-accountability-in-scotland/
  4. See the Scottish Funding Council’s latest strategic framework: http://www.sfc.ac.uk/about-sfc/strategic-framework/strategic-framework.aspx
  5. Enhancement Themes outputs: Creative Disciplines Collaborative Cluster: https://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/current-enhancement-theme/defining-and-capturing-evidence/the-creative-disciplines
    Intangibles Collaborative Cluster: https://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/current-enhancement-theme/defining-and-capturing-evidence/the-intangibles-beyond-the-metrics
  • Latour, B (2018) Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime Polity Press, p 26
  • Gilmore, A and Comunian, R (2016) ‘Beyond the campus: Higher education, cultural policy and the creative economy’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 22: 1-9