Category Archives: Higher Education

April 23, 2010 · 9:18 am

Reflections on the effects of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption

The transport disruption caused by ash from the erupting Eyjafjallajökull volcano has had enormous impact across the world, not only for economic activity but also for individual human lives.  Having been ‘stuck’ in the North Karelian town of Joensuu in eastern Finland for the last week, I have been interested and surprised by the emotional impact that this has had on me:

  • I discovered that eastern Finland is really a long way from anywhere!  Joensuu is four-and-a-half hours by train north-east from Helsinki, and almost at the same latitude as the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland!
  • Finland itself is amazingly isolated, and very much like an island.  Almost everyone who wanted to leave during the cessation of flights had to get ferries – from Turku or Helsinki to Stockholm, or from Helsinki to Tallinn.  According to travel agents, many of these were fully booked, and so it was difficult to ‘escape’.  The prospects of the Finnair offer of a 34 hour bus journey to Berlin, with two nights and a day on board, were not particularly appealing – especially when other parts of Europe seemed to be opening up their air-space. Most people who left, and took onward trains through Sweden and Denmark, or across Europe from Berlin took three or four days to get back to England!  Being in ‘mainland Europe’ would have been so much easier – a train from Prague to Madrid would, for example, have been simplicity itself compared with leaving Finland!
  • The most disturbing feature of the disruption for me was the uncertainty!  I was surprised how much not knowing when it might be possible to leave affected me – and particularly my ability to concentrate on work.  Might it be worth taking the bus to Berlin – and then the subsequent problems associated with getting a train back to the UK?  Should I go to Turku and hope for the best? When might flights start again?  Should I try to get a train to Helsinki in case the flights from there are going to be a better bet than risking a flight from Joensuu to Helsinki first?
  • It can be really lonely…  Thanks to all those friends who kept in touch on Skype, Facebook and by e-mail!
  • But I also discovered the real value of open-handed friendship.  After I had stayed a couple of extra nights in a hotel, Erkki and Päivi welcomed me into their home, and this transformed things.  Their hospitality enabled me to get on with some work (despite my difficulties in concentrating on it), and provided an enormous warmth of personal support.  They have been absolutely amazing, and I hope one day to be able to return the favour.
  • A real lesson to be learnt from this is therefore that we should all be generously open and welcoming to ‘refugees’ – from wherever they come.  Whilst it is completely inappropriate for those of us caught up in the dislocation caused by the closure of air space to draw comparisons with the experiences of political refugees, I do think I have gained a whole lot more insight into some of the anguish that they must face.
  • One can spend an age trying to rearrange flights!  Many, many calls to Finnair were ‘answered’ with a message saying that their system was overloaded – even at 05.00 in the morning!  Eventually, it took almost an hour of waiting earlier in the week to reschedule my flights for tomorrow  – but who knows now even if that will be leaving!
  • It’s therefore crucially important to take advantage of every opportunity that such chaos can afford!  It was great to visit Koli, and also to spend time participating in academic discussions and teaching at the Computer Science Department at the University of Eastern Finland – thanks for the opportunity.
  • This disruption also, though, shows the huge value of modern ICTs – the ability to hold conference calls with people in many different parts of the world, to receive e-mails (although not necessarily my ability to answer them all), to speak with loved ones ‘dislocated’ elsewhere (providing their ‘phones are charged), to find out information about the latest delays, to give a conference presentation at a distance (not easy – but see #beyond2010) and to find communal means of resolving travel problems (such as stuckineurope.com)! When the fuel runs out for ‘traditional’ air transport, life might become very much more human!

Apologies to everyone whose e-mails I have not responded to, and for the meetings I have missed!  I should have been back in the UK on the 18th – and it is now the 23rd.  Finavia this morning at last announced that “Based on the current forecasts all airports in Finland have been opened for air traffic and operate normally”, although lots of flights in Finland today have still been cancelled!  Hopefully tomorrow will improve, and I will indeed return home.  I intend to take a few days off – just to smell the late spring flowers, to taste some fine wine and to relax!

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April 21, 2010 · 6:19 am

The World Bank ‘releases’ its data

Yesterday, the World Bank announced the good news that it is making all of its statistical information available freely to anyone who has access to the Internet. As World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick commented, “I believe it’s important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank available to everyone,” … “Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty. They are now easily accessible on the Web for all users, and can be used to create new apps for development”. The database includes some 331 of the World Development Indicators (WDI) covering 209 countries from 1960 to 2008 translated into Spanish, French and Arabic.

However, this reveals what is very much a ‘World Bank’ view of the world.  The data are only partial, and should never be seen in some ways as ‘hard facts’.  There is a real danger that sources such as this may be used uncritically to give misleading views of international development.  Take education for example. There are only 5 indicators that show up when a search on “Find an Indicator” is done for “education” among the 331 indicators made available in this way:

  • public spending on education as a % of GDP
  • public spending on education as a % of government expenditure
  • ratio of female to male enrollments in tertiary education
  • ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education
  • trained teachers in primary education as a % of total teachers

However,  using “Topics”, one can find a further 24 indicators about education, and this provides a much more balanced view of global education.   On delving deeper, it is possible to access a still more detailed set of data from the databank itself.  Here, there are some 1247 different time series on educational data, and they can also be downloaded for free.  This is indeed a valuable resource.

Another problematic feature of the main public database is its maps.  At first sight, these could be seen to be  helpful visualisations of the data, but they are fundamentally misleading, because they use proportional symbols to represent % data – the higher the percentage, the larger the circle.  While such symbols are fine for absolute data (such as total GNI), they are inappropriate for showing ratios such as percentages for a spatial territory (such as % enrollment in secondary education).   For such data, it is much more appropriate to use choropleth maps that shade the areas in different densities.

These criticisms having been noted, we should applaud the World Bank for sharing its statistical understanding of the world in such an accessible way.  It tells us as much about the Bank as it does about development.

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April 14, 2010 · 8:16 am

Less than half of the students accepted at UK universities have A levels!

A recent report in the Sunday Times noted that according to UCAS figures only “49.8% of the 425,000 British students accepted at universities across the UK for full-time degrees starting last autumn had taken A-levels, down from nearly 70% in 1999”.  This is a remarkable figure, and reinforces my views abut the dumbing down of UK higher education that has taken place over the last decade.

To be sure, there are many reasons why A levels are no longer seen as the gold standard exam used for university entrance, but as the Sunday Times report goes on to argue, there are huge implications of this change.  Certainly, universities are now taking students from much more diverse backgrounds, and with different qualifications, which is all to the good – providing of course that these students have the intellectual capacity to cope with the rigorous demands of a quality higher education system.

One of the things that really concerns me about this, though, is that as the Sunday Times notes many schools are “pushing academically bright pupils towards vocational exams to improve league table positions. The result is the students have almost no chance of gaining entry to academic courses at top universities, shutting them out of highly paid jobs”. The article goes on to quote Anna Fazackerley, head of education at the Policy Exchange think tank, who claimed that “Vocational courses can be hugely worthwhile… However, many children from less wealthy backgrounds are pushed into less academic courses simply because their school has low aspirations for them and one eye firmly on league tables.”

This is worrying on two grounds: first, that such students appear to be being excluded from the best universities (however defined) because of decisions made by school teachers so as to ensure their success in the league tables; second, that the argument helps to perpetuate the myth that universities are only about creating graduates who will get high paid jobs.  We must never forget that universities should be about so much more than just enabling people to get better paid jobs!

Over the last 20 years, governments and those working in the higher education sector have combined to create a system that is fundamentally flawed, and fails to provide the intellectual and scholarly leadership that we so desperately need in this country.  Since 1992, when the former polytechnics and universities were merged, attempts have continued to create a unified higher education system – driven largely by the flawed belief that we need half of our young people to go to ‘university’.  We need to recognise that these have failed.  We are increasingly creating a system that delivers neither on academic excellence, nor on giving people the high level vocational qualifications that they want or need.

I wish to retain the idea of a “university” as a community of scholars and learners, all of whom are committed to the advancement of knowledge for the good of society.  Universities should not simply be about providing people with technical skills that certain people deem to be useful.  In the UK, we are indeed in need of people with an outstanding technical education; students doing dumbed down degrees at so-called ‘univeristies’, are not gaining the skills that either they, or our economy, require.  We also need outstanding scholars and scientists who are able to push forward the boundaries of knowledge; sadly, our present so-called ‘university’ system is likewise failing to deliver the excellence that it might be capable of – and it is expected to do so with increasingly severe funding cuts!

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April 10, 2010 · 5:44 pm

ICT4D Students at World Economic Forum

The final year undergraduate students studying ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London, have to do a formal presentation on some aspect of the course as part of their assessment (along with annotated bibliographies and a website – this year on Healthy Homes).

For 2010, we had the privilege of being able to convene these presentations at the World Economic Forum‘s offices in Cologny, Geneva on Thursday 8th April, on the themes of:

  • Why have mobile phones become so popular in Africa? (Alex Hamilton)
  • Education in Post-Conflict Zones: Pathways to Peace? (Helen Blamey)
  • Internet Access and Usage in Africa (Michael Hart)
  • What is really innovative about ICT4D? (James Huntley)
  • ICTs, Climate Change and Sustainable Development (Elizabeth Coulter)
  • Freeplay Energy: education and health solutions (Rickesh Patel)

Alex Wong (Senior Director, World Economic Forum), Joanna Gordon (Associate Director responsible for the ICT sector at the World Economic Forum) and Daniel Stauffacher (Chairman ICT4Peace Foundation) also gave short presentations on their work, as well as providing feedback on the student presentations.

Being in Geneva provided an opportunity to see various UN buildings in the City, and some of the group also went on a six hour walk in the vicinity of Mont Salève (down from the Télépherique du Salève, through the villages of Mounetier and Mornex, and back to Veyrier) – a great opportunity to discuss ICT4D in the French countryside!

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March 26, 2010 · 12:02 pm

‘Collective’ reflections on plagiarism and the production of knowledges

ICT4D BookParticipating today in a very interesting seminar organised by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) at Woburn House in London, made me reflect on actually why plagiarism is becoming such a ‘problem’, and on ways in which we might create alternative ideas about this.

The first question I wish to raise is whether ‘scientific ideas’ or ‘individual careers’ matter most?  As a starting point, let me suggest that actually it should be the ideas that are of most importance.  Yet, we always tend to associate ideas with people – hence, we have Nobel prizewinners who are individuals. It is authors’ names that are on articles.

But following my logic, if it is the ideas that are of most importance, then perhaps plagiarism actually becomes less of a ‘problem’.  Plagiarism is generally seen as the passing off of someone else’s ideas as being one’s own.  So, if we do not attribute ideas to people, but let the ideas in a sense speak for themselves, and make them available for public scrutiny through for example the Web, then the ideas that are deemed to be of most importance might, in a sense, float to the top by popular choice.

This is particularly important right now.  In the UK (as in many other countries) governments fund universities – both directly and through research councils.  Governments, very literally, pay academics to produce knowledge.  So, a case could be made for this knowledge to be ‘published’ under the government’s or research council’s ‘name’.  Imagine a world where there were no author(s)’s names on published articles.  Journal articles would just be known by their titles and the funding source.  Would not this be more open and honest?

What does the individual author’s name matter – other than for their own personal careers?  In a world where knowledge has increasingly become a commodity, where individual academic careers depend largely on publication records, where departmental and institutional reputations and thus funding rest on publications and grants, it is of course essential that authors are named.  That is why plagiarism is so important an issue. But if we want to fragment this system, if we believe in knowledge as something so much more valuable than a commodity, if we wish to make this freely available – if we want to be a little less selfish about our own careers – then perhaps, there is some value in my proposal.

After all, as one of my former PhD students regularly reminds me, where do our ideas actually come from?  We can never cite all of the influences on our writing.  I am quite sure that the inspirational lectures that I listened to as an undergraduate in one of the best universities in the world have influenced my subsequent writing.  The beggars I met on the street in Bihar have also influenced my ideas.  I am ashamed that I do not always cite them as influences on my writing – although I do indeed try to mention them in my acknowledgements.  In a sense, almost all of our written work is indeed plagiarised…

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March 18, 2010 · 9:47 am

Further reflections on the refereeing process

Not so long ago, I wrote about some of the issues associated with peer reviewing of research grant proposals.  This morning, I received editorial comments on one of my recently submitted papers – four sets of comments were broadly supportive, usefully recommending changes that would improve the paper.  However, a fifth referee clearly had not understood the purpose of the paper, which was a largely qualitative analysis of ICTs and disability in Ghana.  This is what the referee wrote:

“The paper lacks a profound research method & data analysis techniques.
In order to improve the paper I suggest:
-You develop taxonomy of the various possible factors (drivers, benefits, barriers, pitfalls) related to:
ICT & Special Education Needs in Developing Country Settings.
-Make a thorough field study grounded by previously derived taxonomy
-Use statistical analysis to determine the correlations between the taxonomies & derive the hypothesis for the study. Or use grounded theory analysis if you are interested more in the phenomenon rather than the correlations.
For the time being the paper findings are scattered and cannot be granted as validated or evenaccurate or complete.
Therefore the paper is not ready yet for publishing”.

OK – at one level, I accept that there are indeed different approaches to intellectual enquiry, but it seems quite clear that this referee fails to see the value of qualitative approaches, and is seeking to impose one particular view of the research process.

At least the other referees found something that they liked in the paper:

  • “This article addresses a particularly important issue very well. The authors understand the problem deeply and support their case with relevant evidence and clear writing.”
  • “This manuscript addresses an important and inadequately addressed topic. Data presented is valuable in informing programs and policy needs related to ICT for people with disabilities in educational settings in Ghana and other low-resource communities.”

I am tempted entirely to give up sending papers to academic journals – let’s face it, few people read them anyway – and instead simply put out material on the Internet and see what readers themselves make of them!

At the very least, I will try in future to submit papers to journals where I have greater faith in the quality of the refereeing process!

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Following correspondence with the journal’s Editor in Chief, I am delighted to say that my co-author and I are resubmitting our paper, and will include with this a commentary of exactly what we think of the referee’s comments above. Let’s see what happens!

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March 4, 2010 · 6:11 pm

Dumbing down in UK higher education – what’s new?

Three Appeal Court judges ruled on 24th February that Paul Buckland, a professor at Bournemouth University, who resigned in 2007 in a row over the alleged dumbing down of degrees, was treated unfairly.  In essence, Professor Buckland had given fail marks to a number of students, whose papers were subsequently remarked and permitted to pass (for a detailed summary of the case, see the University and College Union News). He had complained, and subsequently resigned as a result of the university’s investigatory process.  As UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: “This is an important victory for everyone who values high standards and probity in our universities. Dr Buckland’s defence of academic standards and examination procedures must be congratulated. However, we are deeply concerned about the events that led to this tribunal. Staff need the confidence to be forthright and honest in their comments and assessment of work”.

This is an important and personal case, but what surprises me most about it is that few people or reports seem to have picked up on the fundamental underlying issue, which is that universities across the country have indeed been manipulating the degrees they have been awarding in recent years to give higher marks.  According to the then Department for Children, Schools and Families, between 1994/5 and 2005/6 the percentage of first class and upper second class degrees in HE institutions in the UK increased from 47% of all first degrees awarded to 56%. The latest HESA figures show that this percentage had risen to 62% in 2008/9.

Universities, just like schools, are subject to league tables, and one of the criteria they are frequently  judged by is the percentage of students getting good honours degrees, usually defined as upper seconds and firsts.  Is it therefore surprising that universities have sought means to maximise this figure as they compete in an increasingly competitive market?  Moreover, it is perfectly possible to manipulate the percentages of good degrees gained, even without any changes in the actual rigour of the marking. Typical of such ways are the following:

  • changing the mechanisms for awarding degree grades by, for example, ignoring the worst 20% of marks given
  • discounting the first year exam marks, when students often do worst as they get used to the university system
  • reducing the amount contributed by terminal exams to the overall assessment, and increasing the amount of coursework at which most students usually do better

There is also some evidence that actual marking is becoming more lenient, as universities seek to encourage more diverse expressions and interpretations in response to assignments that are set.  This was the issue that gave rise to the original disagreement at Bournemouth. Attention paid to the quality of written expression has, in many institutions, declined, and it is therefore scarcely surprising that employers regularly complain about the quality of these skills in apparently highly qualified graduates!  The nature of assignments has also in many instances changed to make them easier.  Typical of this is the expectation of what is required for an undergraduate research dissertation.  Years ago, it was expected that students would spend most of the summer vacation between their second and third years undertaking their dissertations – and I indeed still expect a substantial amount of empirical work to be done for a dissertation to gain a good mark.  However, on more than one occasion colleagues have berated me saying that this is completely unreasonable, because students have to gain paid employment over the summer to cover their fees, and that I should therefore be willing to accept what I consider to be paltry amounts of empirical work.

The situation is at least as bad in many Master’s degrees, especially where foreign students are concerned.  Many universities rely heavily on the financial income derived from fees paid by foreign students.  Despite the requirements imposed on such students to have high language scores as tested, for example, by the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), the reality is that many such students do not have sufficient language abilities to perform at a high level in written terminal examinations.  Many Master’s degrees which in the past were assessed by terminal examinations that required a high degree of competency in academic writing in English, are now being assessed purely by course assignments, and even in some cases largely by oral presentations!  As is well know, anyone who can use a word processor with  grammar and spelling checkers can produce a half-competent piece of written work, even when their ability to do so without such support is very much less!  The assessment requirements are less challenging, and therefore the pass rates remain high.  Universities are too desperate for the fees that such students bring in that they cannot be seen to be failing large numbers of them; the assessment system therefore has to change to accommodate the financial realities.

To make matters even worse, this percentage increase in ‘good degrees’ is taking place at a time when many universities have reduced the amount of time academic staff actually spend teaching students so that they are able instead to concentrate on research.  Across the country, class sizes have gone up, there are fewer and fewer personal or group tutorials, and undergraduates have less and less contact with academics!

This is of course not to deny that many students work incredibly hard, and get the good degrees that they deserve.  However, it is to claim that university degrees taken as a whole have seen very considerable dumbing down in recent years.  There is nothing extraordinary or surprising about this.  Universities do have some clever people working for them, and in a competitive market place where they are being judged in part on the number of ‘good degrees’ that they award, some of them are bound to find ways of manipulating the system!  There is nothing new in this.

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February 14, 2010 · 10:47 pm

Peer review – implications of ‘corruption’

Two separate events that occurred at the start of this month have made me reflect once again on the many myths surrounding the ‘hallowed’ peer review process on which so much academic credibility is seen to lie.

First, I received an e-mail from a friend for whom I had written a reference in connection with a grant application that they had submitted to one of the UK’s Research Councils.  They had received the disappointing news that despite two strong references, a third referee had been highly critical of the proposal, casting aspersions on their professional expertise and on the quality of the proposed research.  I was appalled by this.  The research proposal was one of the best I have recently read, and from what the Research Council said of the comments of the ‘third’ referee, they seemed to me to be completely inappropriate.  Either the referee was ignorant of the research field, or they had vested interests in ensuring that this research was not funded.

By coincidence, at about the same time, the BBC picked up on an open letter sent by a group of scientists last July that also criticised the traditional peer review process, but this time with respect to journal articles.  As the BBC Science Correspondent Pallab Ghosh commented, “Stem cell experts say they believe a small group of scientists is effectively vetoing high quality science from publication in journals. In some cases they say it might be done to deliberately stifle research that is in competition with their own”. The 14 scientists had written that “Stem cell biology is highly topical and is attracting great interest not only within the research community but also from politicians, patient groups and the general public. However, the standard of publications in the field is very variable. Papers that are scientifically flawed or comprise only modest technical increments often attract undue profile. At the same time publication of truly original findings may be delayed or rejected”.  To try to overcome this, they proposed that “when a paper is published, the reviews, response to reviews and associated editorial correspondence could be provided as Supplementary Information, while preserving anonymity of the referees”.

Peer review is one of the fundamental principles upon which the edifice of academic reputation – and financial reward – is based.  However, the system is inherently  flawed, and I find it somewhat surprising that it still retains such power.  Six issues warrant particular consideration:

  • First, peer review is based on a belief that ‘science’ is in some way value free; that individual prejudice, political beliefs, or social agendas have no effect on academics’ judgements as to the quality of research.  Whilst many academics do indeed try to reach impartial judgements about the quality of work that they review, they undoubtedly bring biases to such judgements as a result of their own lives and research practices.  Moreover, editors of journals and Research Council panels exercise immense power through their choices of whom to ask to act as referees for papers or grant applications.  Science is not, and never has been, value free.
  • Academic status is in part based upon the number of citations a paper receives.  Academics thus seek to publish in the most prestigious journals that have high citation indexes.  For a very long time, cartels of academics have therefore operated, deliberately citing each other’s works so as mutually to raise their profiles and status. Academics are only human, and it is scarcely surprising that they operate in this way.  There is nothing exceptional about this.  Some of us may not think it right, but it happens.
  • One way that new ideas can begin to find voice is through the creation of new journals.  However, these take time to become established, and when status relies so much on having papers published in the most prestigious journals, it remains very difficult for new approaches and ideas to find widespread expression in this way; rarely do the most eminent academics deliberately choose to publish in new and ‘unimportant’ journals!
  • Those who run the major journals and sit on grant-giving Research Council Boards have immense power, and most do their very best to be fair in the judgements that they reach.  However, by definition, the peer review system is designed more to endorse existing approaches to intellectual enquiry, rather than to encourage innovative research.
  • None of this would matter particularly, and could merely be dismissed as irrelevant academic posturing, if there was not so much money involved.  Academic prestige and income depend fundamentally on success in publications and grant applications.  The UK’s Research Councils thus invest some £2.8 billion annually in support of research, and it is crucial that this is dispersed wisely.  It is therefore extremely sad – albeit typical – that in the case of my friend who had their grant application rejected, there was no right of appeal against the decision.  Panel chairs and editors must have the guts to stand up and recognise when they see flawed decisions being made by referees.  It is thus extremely encouraging to see that some Research Councils, notably EPSRC, are trying to create exciting new ways to support research that do not place excessive emphasis on traditional peer review processes.
  • Finally, there is now a good case for exploring alternative ways of judging research ‘quality’.  ‘Publishing’ papers openly on freely available websites, and then assessing their quality by the number of ‘hits’ that they get would, for example, be a rather more democratic process than that through which a small number of ’eminent’ academics judge their peers.  Of course this would be as open to abuse as existing systems, but at least it would present an alternative viewpoint.

We must debunk the myth that there is something ‘pure’ or ‘objective’ about academic peer review.  It is a social process, just like any other social process.  It has strengths and weaknesses.  For long, it has served the academic community well.  However, as the 14 stem biologists who raised the lid of Pandora’s Box implied, it is a system that fails to encourage the most original research, and instead supports the system that gave rise to it.  After all, that is not so surprising, is it?

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February 2, 2010 · 11:31 am

Indian Visa Application Centre, Hayes

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS POST WAS FIRST WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY 2010 AND SOME OF THE INFORMATION IS NOW OUT OF DATE – from 23rd November 2010 a new online application system was introduced – details are available at http://in.vfsglobal.co.uk/.  However, the information contained below may well still be of interest for those seeking to get to the Hayes office – for which the blog was originally intended!

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After reading some of the horror stories online about applying for a visa to visit India, I embarked on the process, and thought some tips might be helpful for others – especially about actually getting to the Centre in Hayes!

  • Yes, the online system is a bit clunky – and it crashed on me once without saving what I had done – which was a pain! But by automatically checking for completeness it did save time filling out the forms, perhaps incorrectly, and therefore having to redo them again.
  • Before embarking on completing the forms online, do check you have all the information to hand – down to the level of detail required about the place of both parents’ birth!  Unfortunately, there is not an easy to find guide to completing the visa form available in the drop-down menus!  One solution is to print out a hard-copy form from those available, and then use this as a guide.  The trouble is that not all of the questions asked are unambiguous!
  • The automatic fee charging system did indeed seem to overcharge me – as least compared with the advertised fees for visas! Watch out for this!
  • Make sure that you submit all of the relevant required documents, or have them with you (together with two photographs) when you go to the Centre.
  • For those taking the application form to the Indian Visa Application Centre in Hayes, there are many comments on the Web about how difficult this is to find!  It is actually very simple!  The Centre is accessed on the south side of Uxbridge Road in Hayes, just by the Grand Union Canal.  For those driving from the M4, take the A312 north to its junction with the A4020, and then turn east towards Southall.  Don’t take the first right down Springfield Road, but watch out for the large Currys superstore just before the Fiat car showrooms. That is the best place to park! Walk a short distance (c. 100 yards) towards the canal, and turn right just beyond the Fiat garage. The entrance to the Application Centre is then through some large metal gates  just  after the car park behind the garage. This is just by the A4020 label next to the canal on this map!
  • Once inside, you will receive a numbered ticket, and will then have to wait in the large seated waiting hall.  There are around a dozen service desks, and so the queue moves relatively quickly.  At 08.30 in the morning, I only had to wait about 25 minutes to be ‘processed’.  Opening hours for submission of passports are 08.30-14.30 Monday to Friday; passport pickup (usually withing 2-3 working days) hours are 13.00-16.30 Monday to Friday.

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February 1, 2010 · 8:08 pm

University Funding

The Higher Education Council for England (HEFCE) announced today its provisional funding distribution to universities and colleges in England for 2010-11.  The main decisions by the HEFCE Board were as follows:

  • “£4,727 million recurrent funding for teaching. This represents an increase of 0.4 per cent in cash terms or a decrease of 1.6 per cent in real terms, compared with 2009-10.
  • £1,603 million recurrent funding for research. This represents a £32 million or 2 per cent increase in cash terms (maintained in real terms) on the £1,571 million allocated for the 2009-10 academic year.
  • £562 million in capital funding, which represents a 14.9 per cent reduction in cash terms on the 2009-10 allocation.
  • £294 million in special funding for national programmes and initiatives. This represents a 7 per cent reduction in cash terms on 2009-10.
  • £150 million for the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), which compares with £134 million in 2009-10. This represents an 11.9 per cent increase”.

Responses from the university sector were not surprisingly highly critical.  As the BBC reported,  this represented a cut of £449 million, with teaching budgets being reduced by £215 million, a cut in real terms of 1.6% on 2009-10 levels, research being frozen, and the buildings budget being cut by 15%.  It is estimated that these cuts will lead to a reduction in student places in England of about 6,000 compared with 2009-10 levels.

Such cuts add fuel to the universities’ demands to be allowed to charge students higher fees.  But in an election year, the student vote may delay such apparently inevitable fee increases.  Again, as the BBC notes, “Students campaigning against an increase in tuition fees are targeting MPs who hold seats in a “hit list” of university cities in England. The National Union of Students says MPs must support their campaign against higher fees – or lose the student vote. Among the MPs identified as targets by students are three ministers – John Denham, Ben Bradshaw and Hilary Benn – and the chief whip, Nick Brown”.

While these cuts are in large part driven by the need for the government to reduce the deficit brought about by its efforts to overcome the financial crisis of 2008-9, they do highlight some important questions:

  • Do we already have too many students going to university?
  • What is so special about the notion that it is healthy to have 50% of our young people going to university?
  • Are universities providing appropriate learning opportunities for those who study there?

I live in hope that these cuts might be used sensibly to help provide responses to these questions.  Rather than trying to support an increasingly second-rate university system that fails not only its students and academics, but also the wider society of which we are all part, surely the time has come for a cull of universities?  Should we not close those that are least effective, and turn them into institutions that would provide the technical skills and expertise that our country so badly needs?  Let us stop pretending that half of our population somehow has a right to go to university, and instead use the limited amounts of funding available to support a truly outstanding research and learning culture in institutions that can properly call themselves universities.

For some practical suggestions on how we might achieve this, see my comment on “Solving the crises facing UK universities“

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