Who are our role models?

I remember attending an informal get-together a few years ago with some local young people near the university of which I was then President, Dublin City University in Ireland. Those who are familiar with DCU know that it is situated close to some very deprived neighbourhoods on the northside of Dublin. The intention was to make the young people feel positive about the potential of a university education. Anyway, the discussion moved to role models; who did these young people look up to? Two answers have stayed in my memory: one suggested Britney Spears, while another voted for ‘anyone who drives a BMW’.

Two things to note here. Britney Spears never went to university, and at the time that this conversation was taking place was just going through a very public personal breakdown. As for the BMW drivers, the young people in the room were probably seeing a few of these, but the chances were that in many cases these were drug dealers. So in the lives of these young women and men, role models diverted their gaze far away from education.

More recently, the New York Times invited young people of 13 or over to suggest their role models. There was a significant response, but the overwhelming majority of those commenting listed parents, friends or relatives as their role models. This looks better, but what you get from it is that people seek to emulate their parents or relatives; and if the family background is one of disadvantage, this limits educational ambition. And actually, if your background is one of privilege, you are probably attracted to safe jobs in the professions, for which there is no longer any urgent social or economic need.

Why does all this matter? If we are to have an impact on education and career patterns, we need to be aware of the impact of role models, both good and bad. If we want to attract people from poorer backgrounds into higher value jobs and lives, there may be all sorts of social and cultural influences pushing the other way. Young people need to hear from those they admire, and who set out for them the benefits of higher education, and the desirability of more entrepreneurial careers. We need to persuade them that to be an engineer (where we have serious skill shortages) is as good a choice as, and maybe a better choice than, being a show business personality.

We need to make our culture converge with our social and educational needs. And we need this to be led by people who know and understand the influences and pressures that young people face.

Social equity and access to higher education

One of the great developments of higher education across much of the developed world over recent years has been the dramatic increase in participation rates. Where once it was common to find fewer than 10 per cent of each age cohort going to universities and colleges, today it is not unusual to find up to and more than 50 per cent getting a degree. What was an elitist system is now much more inclusive.

Or is it? The latest data from Scottish higher education shows that the proportion of students coming from socio-economically deprived areas is actually falling. This is in line with statistics from Ireland, where also participation rates of persons from deprived backgrounds remain stubbornly low, having hardly increased at all since tuition fees were abolished in the 1990s.

The policy of securing equal opportunities for all groups within society seems not to make much of an impact in higher education. Why is this so? There are probably many reasons, but one of the chief ones is that too many politicians and policymakers have persuaded themselves that removing tuition fees is a sufficient way of securing social equity. This is not so, not least because in countries with tuition fees disadvantaged students often get their fees paid by the state anyway. The main beneficiaries of free higher education have been the middle and lower middle classes; those from poor backgrounds have hardly benefited at all.

Any policy to secure greater participation by such groups must pursue a combination of measures: tracking talented students in the school system from an early age and bringing them into the universities and colleges; persuading parents to support their children’s aspirations; ensuring good secondary education so that students have equal chances of being prepared for and passing final school examinations; applying flexibility in entry requirements for universities; providing adequate financial support to poorer students while at university; and maintaining professional offices in universities dedicated solely to supporting disadvantaged students.

All these measures are not only important, but also expensive, and in many countries the resources are not made available, or not sufficiently, to allow participation rates to grow. It is time to stop believing that any policy on tuition fees can fundamentally improve access, and to understand that access needs to be fully resourced. It is an important and necessary investment in our future as a society.

Academic years

Back in 1978, I sat my final undergraduate examinations in Trinity College Dublin. In those days TCD had its exams in September, thus ruining everyone’s summer, and the last paper I tackled was on a Saturday towards the end of the month. Matters were not helped by the fact that, on the following Monday two days later, I was due to start as a PhD student in the University of Cambridge.

But if that was crazy, maybe we should ask whether the whole concept of an ‘academic year’ is now out of date. We enrol students for a September starting date, mostly, and round about this time of year they sit their exams. At least that’s how it is in this part of the world. Occasionally now we do make available entry routes that bring students in at other times, particularly just after the New Year. And for some postgraduate degree programmes it is even more flexible.

However, the concept of a shared journey through the course, experienced by students in groups, has value. If students came and went around the year as if they were using a train, it would become impossible to run a curriculum or maintain a group setting. In addition, it can be argued that modular structures require similar dates across subjects and disciplines, because without that you could not maintain an interdisciplinary menu.

So are we still stuck with the ‘academic year’, or is there scope for some creativity? This may become an increasingly important question, as students become less willing to set aside fixed years in their lives devoted exclusively to study. However, as long as we continue to see learning as consisting of a series of fixed segments that need to be experienced strictly in sequence, it will not be easy. Still, maybe that is what learning requires. Or then again, maybe we do not ask enough questions about pedagogy in a changing world.

Overwhelmingly granite

As some readers of this blog may know, Aberdeen is known as the Granite City. Most of its buildings are made of granite, and the scale of it can be almost overwhelming at first sight. But the biggest granite building of them all is Marischal College, seen here.

Technically, there are lots of things wrong with this photo: the severe lens distortion, the cars, and so on. But this was the only perspective I could use to show as much of the building as possible. It is in fact the second largest granite building in the world (the biggest is in Spain). It took nearly a hundred years to build, and was completed around the beginning of the 20th century.

Marischal College itself was originally an independent university, but became part of the University of Aberdeen in the mid-19th century. The university has now however largely left the site, and the building itself is now the home of Aberdeen City Council. It is a significant landmark in the city.

My colleague the computer

It’s that time of year when academics all over the place get ready for another avalanche of marking and assessment. In my own case, while I really do miss teaching very much and am looking at ways of returning to it, I don’t miss marking. Not even slightly. And I feel for those who will, over the next couple of months, be inundated with it.

But is there another way? In fact, could we just give the job to computers? And might we find that they can grade essays and assignments and examinations just as effectively as we can? Well perhaps, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Akron. They compared grades given to 22,000 short essays written in American schools by live examiners with those recorded by computers running ‘automated essay scoring software’. The differences were, according to the researchers, ‘minute’.

I don’t know what kind of software this is, or how it works, or what its stated limitations might be, but this is a pretty amazing result. We know that computers can easily grade multiple choice examinations, but essays? And can we really imagine that an assignment intended to produce reasoned analysis could be assessed by machine? More generally, how much work has been done in considering the role that computers can play in designing, conducting and assessing teaching?

In fact, this is a subject of some interest in the education world. In July of this year there will be a conference in Southampton in England on computer-assisted assessment, and indeed there is a journal on the subject.

There are probably various contexts in which higher education assessment can be conducted by or with the help of software. But equally there are others where, at least from my perspective, it is unlikely that computers will be able to make robust qualitative judgements that could replicate human marking. Somehow I doubt that, in a few years, lecturers will no longer have to be examiners.

How should universities be run?

As readers of this blog will know, I chaired the panel set up by the Scottish government to review governance in higher education. This reported in January of this year, and the report was presented by the government to the Scottish Parliament. In presenting it, the Cabinet Secretary for education and Lifelong Learning, Michael Russell MSP, indicated his support for the report’s recommendations.

In fact there were 43 recommendations. Of these, 40 were unanimously supported by members of the panel. One member dissented from the remaining three. As is sometimes the case in such circumstances, much of the media attention consequently focused on these three issues, and in particular on our recommendation that the chairs of governing bodies should be elected.

However, the report had a much wider focus. Its key principles can be summarised like this: (a) that universities should be autonomous and independent, and that their staff should enjoy academic freedom; (b) that without prejudicing that autonomy, universities should join with the government in an annual discussion of national higher education strategy; (c) that each university’s processes and decision-making should be open and transparent; and (d) that universities should allow full participation by as many as possible in these processes. We recognised the success of Scotland’s higher education system and institutions, but we suggested that the sector needed to ensure that it had and retained the confidence and support of its stakeholders and the wider society. Beyond that, we argued that there should be a shared vision of higher education, and that reform would be more robust if there was more work on producing the objective evidence on which such reform could be discussed.

While there was some opposition to our proposals, it is my view that their implementation is vital. The intention behind this is to ensure that universities – the institutions vital to growth and prosperity – can secure and retain political and public support and confidence. Without this they will be at risk of decline.

The interview as a student selection device – any good?

How should a university decide which students to admit? Should it all be done on the basis of a formula, usually related to final school examination results? Or should there be a more detailed assessment, perhaps including interviews?

If interviews were considered the best method, not many universities would have the resources or staffing to conduct them. Two universities that do make use of interviews for student selection are Oxford and Cambridge. However, not everyone finds this method impressive. Recently an applicant to an Oxford College decided, after her interview, to write the College a rejection letter, pointing out that the setting for the interview was likely to be off-putting for students from more modest backgrounds.

Of course interviews are a standard selection tool for employment. A concern always is that an interviewer may ask inappropriate questions, or may be influenced by irrelevant considerations on meeting the applicant in this way. However, over recent years interviewing for employment has become much more professional, and interviewers are usually well trained. But those factors likely to influence selectors inappropriately – i.e. those potentially liable to prompt discriminatory or prejudiced assessments – are even more likely to be factors in student selection, with less likelihood that the interviewers would be properly trained or fully aware of the risks.

There are probably no perfect methods of student selection. But it is important, to the greatest degree possible, to use objective methods, and interviews do not particularly help. Few can afford to use them anyway, but for those who don’t it may be a good idea to stop thinking that they would be better if only they were affordable. They almost certainly would not be better.

Taking leave

Back in 1984 I was completing a book, and was finding it difficult to achieve this alongside what had become a rather heavy teaching load. So I approached my head of department, and he decided to give me a term off (this was before the age of semesters in Trinity College Dublin). So I packed my bags and set of for Berkeley in California, where I spent some time sitting in a really excellent library and enjoying the opportunities for intellectual and other stimulation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not only did I get the time off, I was also able to get the financial support that made the American trip possible. I finished the book, developed a new course, and also discovered a lifelong fascination and love affair with California – but that’s another story.

But now to 2012. A few days ago a former colleague, who got his first academic job from me, sent me an email. He has been in his present university for 11 years, but in that time he has never had any kind of leave. Moreover, recent cuts in his department have left him with a teaching load that leaves no time for sustained research. His head of department has now told him that sabbatical leave is out of the question for the foreseeable future. But at the same time, his department is playing host to a lecturer on leave from another university. As far as my friend can tell, this visitor isn’t doing anything significant, and indeed is telling everyone that the purpose of the leave is to ‘re-charge his batteries’.

So where is all this heading? Is sabbatical leave a luxury we can no longer afford in straitened times? And when we had it more widely, was it sometimes abused?

How we handle the idea of sabbatical leave depends a little on what we think academic employment is all about. Do we want lecturers to be academic explorers and intellectual entrepreneurs? If we do, we need to give them the occasional space to pursue these aims. Equally, we need to ensure that this space is used appropriately. But increasingly we are creating a system in which academics are not designers but assembly line workers, and we are achieving this state of affairs by stealth rather than design.

There are still academics who are able to avail of sabbatical leave. But the number is declining, and the new more restrictive conditions are changing the face of the academy.

Spring 2012

In late March 2012, Aberdeen and its surrounding area had the highest temperatures in Britain – it felt more like July. Now we are back in something more like winter, with cold temperatures and changeable conditions. And here is how this looks now in the Cairngorms, not too far from Aberdeen.

Handling dissent

In 1985, as the opening up of the Roman Catholic Church in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council was gradually being wound down, the Vatican imposed on the Brazilian priest and liberation theologian, Leonardo Boff, a one-year sentence of ‘obsequious silence’. While I adored the term, and have often been tempted to find worthy subjects for such an order, in reality I was horrified by the idea that curiosity, analysis and open-ended thought could be stifled in this way.

And of course this particular approach to theological dissent has not gone away. In recent days the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (a vaguely Orwellian sounding body) has newly silenced an Irish priest known for his (relatively) liberal views, Father Tony Flannery, and has restricted the freedom to publish of the editor of a religious magazine, Father Gerard Moloney. Fr Flannery has now also been told to get himself to a monastery to reflect on his unorthodox views and (presumably) come up with something more on-message. The views he is expected to lose include support for married and women priests.

It is tempting, at any rate for me, to find this development appalling.  For anyone who is committed to a search for truth and for open-minded analysis, the idea that a group of elderly (and clearly out of touch) men in Rome could order someone – anyone – to stop all this open thinking is simply abhorrent. The consolation may be that the Vatican’s move seems to have unleashed much wider dissent in the Irish RC church.

But nevertheless, let us for a moment look at it from the perspective of the elderly men in the Vatican. For them, the church never changes. Of course in reality it has changed often and will do so again, but the institutional culture is that absolutely no change can happen or even be discussed until it, well, happens. So for them, the issue is simple enough. Fr Flannery is a Roman Catholic priest, and in that capacity he has signed up to a number of key doctrines, and as priest he needs to represent these to the faithful. The church is not a debating club, and while its members may turn ideas around in their minds, the clergy need to be steadfast.

Nor is the Roman Catholic Church alone in having such issues. A few years ago the then Dean of Clonmacnoise in the Church of Ireland, Andrew Furlong, declared he did not believe Jesus was the son of God, and expressed other views incompatible with the creeds to which Anglicanism and other denominations of Christianity subscribe. He was suspended from his ministry and eventually left the priesthood. The point made then was that you could not expect to be paid as a priest if you disagree with the central tenets that you are supposed to represent.

Perhaps the key to all of this is that while Dean Furlong was pretty far removed from almost any principles of Christianity as commonly held, Fr Flannery is looking to have some organisational rules of the church reinterpreted in the light of spiritual reflection, while holding on to the key doctrines and principles.

Dissent is an important support in any search for the truth. Dissent offered from within the fold, from someone committed to the life and health of the institution, is an asset rather than an impediment. A culture of blind obedience, or of ‘obsequious silence’, is far removed from today’s values. If the church is to thrive in the future, it needs to show an understanding of this. In short, Roman Catholicism needs to rediscover the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.