Access agreements and uncertainties

If universities want to charge more than £6,000 in yearly tuition fees, they have to outline how they intend to help attract disadvantaged students and improve social mobility.

The Office For Fair Access (OFFA) has today published guidance to universities on how to produce an ‘access agreement’. Access agreements set out the ways in which an institution would promote and improve student retention, student outreach, financial assistance, and other activities to benefit social mobility.

It seems that, even without any changes to the proposed fees system in coming years, it’s going to take a couple of runs through the process before we get a true picture of what’s happening.

photo by john curley
photo by john curley

Speaking on the Radio 4 Today programme, OFFA’s director, Martin Harris, said that universities must prove what they promise to do ‘in retrospect’. While proposals must be ‘stretching and demanding’, this leaves universities with a largely free reign on how they want to proceed. For now.

Given the general flexibility so far allowed in creating access agreements, it’s no surprise that representative groups are positive. Paul Marshall, Executive Director of the 1994 Group said:

“By allowing universities to set their own widening participation benchmarks OFFA have recognised that each university has its own priorities, and will be best placed to set the most appropriate measures.”

Russell Group’s Wendy Piatt was equally upbeat:

“We welcome the fact that OFFA will be allowing universities some scope to set their own targets and milestones for access work, noting that ‘there is no single perfect measure of access performance’.”

Such open possibilities make it difficult to see how anyone will achieve an overall awareness of what will end up becoming necessary in the longer term. I strongly suspect that there will be alterations based on the first year or two, which will result in an even longer period before a manageable picture is revealed.

Will it ever be clear which aspects of the system really can help HE and student intake? Students and staff alike know they must jump through particular hoops to get from one place to another. The difference now is that the hoops have slightly changed and may change again.

Potential students can see they might suffer in terms of fees and repayments, but can they be certain at the same time that they’ll benefit from a more level playing field? Is there enough potential in the future to break down barriers and help young people in a more targeted fashion, even before the idea of university becomes an important life choice?

Unfortunately, we just don’t know. Social mobility has a long way to go. All universities play an important part in enhancing mobility. Therefore, it’s important to make sure there’s a limit to unnecessary exclusions that could have still played a helpful part. If these elements are removed prematurely due to lack of funds, improvements elsewhere will, at best, cause stasis, not growth.

At times like this, I often acknowledge the bumpy ride that’s ahead for anyone involved. But when is the road not bumpy? If it’s going to take several years before greater clarity can be achieved, it will probably be just in time for a new set of sweeping changes to come about.

Not everyone is having to tread water and there is plenty of opportunity for HE to shine further, but it would be foolish for me to say that any wide-ranging situation can ever experience a bump-free terrain.

Mission groups are mainly positive that access agreements won’t be a barrier to setting fees of their choosing. Future students are now aware that fees are likely to be a lot higher and they must choose based on new rules. Current developments expose the latest hurdle that needs crossing (or fighting). But the next hurdle will never be far away.

My analogy shouldn’t consist of a bumpy journey. It’s more like a bucking bronco ride. We stay on for as long as we can.

And if we fall off? Either jump back on or choose a different ride. Make of that what you will. I’m not sure I’ve worked it out yet…

Education: an attitude to life

A came across this little gem the other day:

“The tutor has succeeded when the students question what they are told. Critical analysis and questioning are central to a university education, so the end ‘product’ is not a collection of packages of knowledge but a way or treating such offerings. For this reason an education is not a collection of commodities, it is more like an attitude to life.” – [The Trouble With Higher Education, Hussey & Smith, 2009, p.50]

It’s not what you know, it’s how you use it.

Choosing Bombardment

If life today had to be summed up in one word, a suitable choice of word would be ‘bombardment‘.

Bombardment means actions come before questions.  Bombardment means overwhelming detail overtakes information filtering.  Bombardment means that a rush to be first appears more important than sustained concentration and focus.

photo by underminingme

photo by underminingme

Our ability to be connected to so much all the time is both a blessing and a curse. Information overload isn’t a new thing, but it’s becoming a standard for most of us. The bombardment only increases, fuelling an even greater sense of now, Now, NOW. We try to find more time in the day to consume as much as possible. If we can speed up this and gloss over that, we’ll have even more detail to play with. Or that’s the thought, anyway.

Alain de Botton sums up how it’s easy to believe that more and now is best:

“The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties. Something that if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellow human beings.” [Source]

This simply isn’t true. But we’re blinded by the panic that we might miss something game-changing.

No matter how much we immerse ourselves, we’ll never catch everything. The game is changing all the time. You don’t need to be a part of everything in order to cope. You don’t even need to be a part of everything in order to make a difference.

I don’t particularly subscribe to the idea that things like the Internet rewire our brains in a scary way. But a lot of what Nicholas Carr says still makes sense.

Carr is author of “The Shallows“, a book which suggests that we’re losing our ability to concentrate and reflect. We’re training ourselves to skim over detail and accept interruption when we should be focused.

Carr explains why constant bombardment isn’t useful:

“The development of a well-rounded mind requires both an ability to find and quickly parse a wide range of information and a capacity for open-ended reflection. There needs to be time for efficient data collection and time for inefficient contemplation, time to operate the machine and time to sit idly in the garden. We need to work in Google’s “world of numbers,” but we also need to be able to retreat to Sleepy Hollow. The problem today is that we’re losing our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally, we’re in perpetual locomotion.”

Carr’s blog, Rough Type, is also a great resource. Recent posts include those on moderating abundance and how short is the new long.

I believe the ‘always on’ attitude is more a choice (perhaps unconscious) than a dangerous assault on the evolution of our brain. By recognising that it’s okay to switch off the noise, it only takes a bit of getting used to before you can once again distance yourself from bombardment and distraction.

If you’re used to realtime feeds and never-ending information beating at your door, the move away from it won’t be easy. But that’s based on habits, rather than an altered brain that is now unable to deal in any other way.

Steven Connor’s description of the present is a good explanation to why these habits aren’t easy to break:

“The present has become impossible not because it has become more ungraspable or fugitive than ever before, but because it has become more than ever available to itself, just as it has proportionately made other times available to it.” [From “Literature and the Contemporary“, p.15]

The subtitle of Nicholas Carr’s book is “How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember“. But I wouldn’t like to blame the Internet. Steven Connor’s description of the present seems more fitting, because all aspects of now are implicated.

This morning, as I was writing this piece, I had my Twitter feed rumbling past my eyes with regular updates. But I ignored it because I’m used to ignoring it when I’m concentrating on other tasks.

But I did suffer other distractions. Distractions that weren’t Internet related. But they did involve the present. And one distraction, ironically, involved Nicholas Carr.

Typing away, I heard the thud of post as it came through the letterbox. Among the post was the latest copy of the London Review of Books. I decided to have a flick through before continuing to write this piece.

When I got to page 9, imagine my surprise when I spotted a review of “The Shallows”.

My very first thought upon seeing the review was, “Thank goodness I’ve seen this now, before publishing anything. I may find something new that’ll change my point of view.”

My second thought came soon after: “Don’t be daft, Martin. This is exactly the type of distraction that shouldn’t matter. Let it go. Deal with it later. Don’t be distracted by it.”

I was distracted, not by the Internet, but by something posted through my letterbox. By the printed word. By a desire to consume something new, just because I knew it was there and had access to it.

The point is, the book review is bound to bring me new information, even if it doesn’t change my overall opinions. Everything we consume can have that effect.

Life is distracting. But it’s still within your power to reign in your concentration. You have the choice.

And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to read a book review. 🙂

Qualifications: Shaping, Not Dictating

Will a master’s get you a job?

The simple answer is: no, it won’t. But, as a piece in The Guardian says, “students are still heaping their dreams on them”.

Before you get too engrossed in that dream, wake up for a minute and remember what gets you a job:

YOU will get you a job. A degree helps to shape you, a master’s helps to shape you, any qualification helps to shape you. Your choices make a difference, but they don’t automatically get you a job.

That’s not to say that unemployment is solely the fault of an individual. Everything impacts upon your plans, which is why qualifications make a difference. Your achievements help shape the future, rather than dictate it.

photo by Quercusivo

If everyone held the same degree, how else would you stand out? (photo by Quercusivo)

What about big plans? The Independent questioned who gets the head start in life when comparing someone who went to uni and someone who went straight into employment.

In isolation, it doesn’t make sense to ask who had a head start. Neither had a head start based on the choice, even though it’s a big choice to make.

Life is complicated and each person’s life is unique. The most successful person in the world may have been more successful if they had made different decisions. But we’ll never know. What happens happens.

You can’t make the most of your lot by going to university with no good purpose, or without making considerations about the path you’re taking. Yes, you may still make good use of your time and end up with a great job soon after graduation, but that doesn’t mean uni was the best choice and it doesn’t mean you had a better head start than someone else.

All this talk of best choices and comparing one thing to another will keep going forever more. But it misses the point. Bypass this conversation and make your own plans clear. A confident view will guide you toward making the right choices.

Once you get serious about your plans and you still decide a masters degree is the way to go, The Guardian has updated their guide to postgraduate courses this month. As with any league table, it can only serve as a guide. But when you’re making plans, it all helps.

Will you make the best choice every time? Obviously not. But the odds are stacked in your favour when you ditch the general and get more specific.