Time to rethink the choices for university students
SCOTLAND has a proud history in higher education but the educational landscape is shifting. The four-year degree sits alongside a reshaped further education sector and most school leavers now enter university from sixth year. The Scottish Government wants to streamline the learner journey whilst Skills Development Scotland has launched a range of Graduate Apprentice degrees. Meanwhile, successive UK governments have deregulated and marketised higher education with the expectation of more private provision. Against this backdrop, what choices might the student of the future face?
Today’s tudents are making major financial decisions over the costs associated with where to study. Yet most universities share four common assumptions about how they deliver undergraduate education. Students generally attend campus; where fees are being paid, they are paid directly to the university; the default setting remains full-time study and all of the credits for your qualification usually come from the same provider. From insurance to bookselling, other industries have experienced radical change when someone rethinks the unwritten rules. What about universities?
In higher education, distance and online learning have thrived in the postgraduate market, but most undergraduates aren’t yet making the decision to learn remotely rather than paying the sticker price for the full campus experience. One look around our major cities shows universities and private firms building student accommodation blocks on the basis that on-campus study will remain popular. A second assumption is that the transaction for a degree is between the student and the university with the academic as a salaried employee. There are subtle differences where funding comes direct from the government as is the case in Scotland, but even there, the fees flow to the university which in turn hires academic and professional service staff to deliver the educational experience. Star academics do get well paid, but imagine a parallel world, where the individual educator was selling their content direct to the student and keeping most of the fee.
This links to the third assumption, that students study for the totality of their degree with a single provider. Yes, it is true that most institutions will accredit prior learning to enable students to transfer in from another university, but this tends to occur as the exception not the norm. Health issues or simply realising that your first choice of degree wasn’t for you are the kinds of one-off situations which universities consider sympathetically. Much more radical would be the opportunity to choose courses from a range of universities and modes of study. Yes, universities would want to approve the curriculum, as would professional bodies since engineers, medics, accountants and the like need particular skills. But students could choose where and how they’d study according to budget, time pressures and life circumstances before asking one institution to accredit their portfolio of credits. Blockchain technology might enable this
Finally, whilst postgraduate students study qualifications are on a flexible, part-time basis, the vast majority of undergraduates are fulltime students. Sam Gyimah, the UK minister responsible for higher education, has already made clear that he doesn’t see full-time study as the norm. The Open University has long championed flexible, part-time study whilst more recently, Buckingham University has brought in two-year degrees. No-one is yet offering the flexibility to choose or to switch modes back and forth as circumstances change.
As the educational landscape changes, it is worth asking whether our universities are changing fast enough, and what role the government should play in shaping this vital sector of the economy.
Agenda is a column for outside contributors.
Contact: agenda@theherald.co.uk
There could be the ability to choose courses from a range of universities and modes of study