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Covid-19, the impact of university return

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For many reasons, it is important for universities to re-open in the autumn, but it is also clear that this is a high-risk endeavour: bringing around 2% of the UK population together in close proximity for 10 to 12 weeks and then re-dispersing them at Christmas.

When I first estimated the actual size of the impact I was, to be honest, shocked; it was a turning point for me. With an academic hat on I can play with the numbers as an intellectual exercise, but we are talking about many, many thousands of lives at risk, the vast majority outside the university itself, with the communities around universities most at risk.

I have tried to think of easy, gentle and diplomatic ways of expressing this, but there are none; we seem in danger of creating killing zones around our places of learning.

At the very best, outbreaks will be detected early, and instead of massive deaths we will see substantial lockdowns in many university cities across the UK with the corresponding social and economic costs, which will create schisms between ‘town and gown’ that may poison civic relationships for years to come.

In the early months of the year many of us in the university sector watched with horror as we watched the Covid-19 numbers rising and could see where this would end. The eventual first ‘wave’ and its devastating death toll did not need sophisticated modelling to predict; in the intervening months it has played out precisely as expected. At that point the political will was clearly set and time was short; there was little we could do but shake our heads in despair and feel the pain of seeing our predictions become reality as the numbers grew, each number a person, each person a community.

Across the sector, many are worried about the implications of the return of students and staff in the autumn, but structurally the nature of the HE sector in the UK makes it near impossible even for individual universities to take sufficient steps to mitigate it, let alone individual academics.

Doing the sums

For some time, universities across the UK have been preparing for the re-opening, working out ways to reduce the risk. There has been a mathematical modelling working group trying to assess the impact of various measures, as well as much activity at individual institutions.  It appears too that SAGE has highlighted that universities pose a potential risk [SN], but this seems to have gone cold and universities are coping as best they can with apparently no national plan. Universities UK have issued guidance to universities on what to do as they emerge from lockdown [UUKa], but it does not include an estimate of the scale of the problem.

As I said, the turning point for me came when I realised just how bad this could be. As with the early national growth pattern, it does not require complex mathematics to assess, within rough ranges, the potential impact; and even the most conservative estimates are terrifying.

We know from freshers’ flu that infections spread quickly amongst the student community.  The social life is precisely why many students relocate to distant cities.  Without strong measures to control student infections it is clear that Covid-19 will spread rapidly on campuses, leading to thousands of cases in each university. Students themselves are at low (though not zero) risk of dying or having serious complications from Covid-19, but if there is even small ‘leakage’ into the surrounding community (via university staff, transport systems, stay-at-home students or night life), then the impact is catastrophic.

For a mid-sized university of 20,000 students, let’s say only 1 in 20 become infected during the term; that is around 1,000 student cases. As a very conservative estimate, let’s assume just one community infection for every 10 infected students. If city bars are open this figure will almost certainly be much higher, but we’ll take a very low estimate. In this case, we are looking at 100 initial community cases.

Now 100 additional cases is already potentially enough to cause a handful of deaths, but we have got used to trading off social benefits against health costs; for any activity there is always a level of risk that we are prepared to accept.

However, the one bit of mathematics you do need to know is the way that a relatively small R number still leads to a substantial number of cases. For example, an R of 0.9 means for every initial infection the total number of infections is actually 10 times higher (in general 1/(1-R), see [Dx1]).  When R is greater than 1 the effect is worse still, with the impact only limited when some additional societal measure kicks in, such as a vaccine or local lockdown.

A relatively conservative estimate for R in the autumn is 1.5 [AMS]. For R =1.5, those initial 100 community cases magnify to over 10,000 within 5 weeks and more than 600,000 within 10 weeks. Even with the most optimistic winter rate of 1.2, those 100 initial community infections will give rise to 20,000 cases by the end of a term.

That is for a single university.

With a mortality rate of 1% and the most optimistic figures, this means that each university will cause hundreds of deaths.  In other words, the universities in the UK will collectively create as many infections as the entire first wave.  At even slightly less optimistic figures, the impact is even more devastating.

Why return at all?

Given the potential dangers, why are universities returning at all in the autumn instead of continuing with fully online provision?

In many areas of life there is a trade-off to be made between, on the one hand, the immediate Covid-19 health impacts and, on the other, a variety of issues: social, educational, economic, and also longer term and indirect mental and physical health implications. This is no less true when we consider the re-opening of universities.

Social implications: We know that the lockdown has caused a significant increase in mental health problems amongst young people, for a variety of reasons: the social isolation itself, pressures on families, general anxiety about the disease, and of course worries about future education and jobs. Some of the arguments are similar to those for schools except that universities do not provide a ‘child minding’ role. Crucially, for both schools and universities, we know that online education is least effective for those who are already most economically deprived, not least because of continued poor access to digital technology. We risk creating a missed generation and deepening existing fractures in civil society.

Furthermore, the critical role of university research has been evident during the Covid crisis, from the development of new treatments to practical use of infrastructure for rapid production of PPE. Ongoing, the initial wave has emphasised the need for more medical training.  Of course, both education and research will also be critical for ‘post-Covid’ recovery.

Economic situation: Across the UK, universities generate £95 billion in gross output and support nearly a million jobs (2014–2015 data, [UUKb]).  Looking at Wales in particular, the HE sector “employs 17,300 full-time members of staff and spending by students and visitors supports an estimated 50,000 jobs across Wales”. At the same time the sector is particularly vulnerable to the effects of Covid-19 [HoC]. Universities across the UK were already financially straitened due to a combination of demographics and Brexit, leading to significant cost-cutting including job cuts [BBCa].  Covid-19 has intensified this; a Wales Fiscal Analysis briefing paper in May [WFA] suggests that Welsh universities may see a shortfall due to Covid-19 of between £100m and £140m. More recent estimates suggest that this may be understating the problem, if anything. Cardiff University alone is warning of a £168m fall in income [WO] and Sir Deian Hopkin, former Vice Chancellor of London South Bank and advisor to the Welsh Assembly, talks of a “perfect storm” in the university system [BBCb].

Government support has been minimal. The rules for Covid-19 furlough meant that universities were only able to take minimal advantage of the scheme. There has been some support in terms of general advice, reducing bureaucratic overheads and rescheduling payments to help university cashflow, but this has largely been within existing budgets, not new funding. The Welsh government has announced an FE/HE £50m support package with £27m targeting universities [WG], but this is small compared with predicted losses.

Universities across the UK have already cut casual teaching (the increase in zero-hour contracts has been a concern in HE for some years) and many have introduced voluntary severance schemes.  At the same time the competition over UK students has intensified in a bid to make up for reduced international numbers. Yet one of the principal ways to attract students is to maximise the amount of in-person teaching.

What is being done

To some extent, as in so many areas, coronavirus has exposed the structural weaknesses that have been developing in the university sector for the past 30 years. Universities have been forced to compete constantly and are measured in terms of student experience above educational impact. Society as a whole has been bombarded with messages that focus on individual success and safety rather than communal goals, and most current students have grown up in this context. This focus has been very evident in the majority of Covid-19 information and reporting [Dx2].

Everything we do is set against this backdrop, which both fundamentally limits what universities are able to do individually, and at the same time makes them responsible.  This is not to say that universities are not sharing good practice, both in top down efforts such as through Universities UK and direct contacts between senior management, and from the bottom up via person-to-person contacts and through subject-specific organisations such as CPHC.

Typically, universities are planning to retain some level of in-person teaching for small tutorials while completely or largely moving large-class activities such as lectures to online delivery, some live, some recorded. This will help to remove some student–student contact during teaching. Furthermore, many universities have discussed ways in which students could be formed into bubbles. At a large scale that could involve having rooms or buildings dedicated to a particular subject/year group for a day.  At a finer scale it has been suggested that students could be grouped into social/study bubbles of around ten or a dozen who are housed together in student accommodation and are also grouped for study purposes.

My own modelling of student bubbles [Dx3] suggests that while reducing the level of transmission, the impact is rapidly eroded if the bubbles are at all porous.  For example, if the small bubbles break and transmission hits whole year groups (80–200 students), the impact on outside communities becomes unacceptable. For students on campus the temptation to break these bubbles will be intense, both at an individual level and through bars and similar venues.  For those living at home, the complexities are even greater, and crucially they are a primary vector into the local community.

Combined with, or instead of, social/study bubbles some universities are looking at track and trace. Some are developing their own solutions both in terms of apps and regular testing programmes, but more will use normal health systems.  In Wales, for example, Public Health Wales regard university staff as a priority group for Covid-19 testing, although this is reactive (symptoms-based) rather than proactive (regular testing).

Dr Hans Kluge, the Europe regional director for the World Health Organization and others have warned that global surges across the world, including in Europe, are being driven by infections amongst younger people [BBCc].  He highlights the need to engage young people more in the science, a call that is reflected in a recent survey by the British Science Association which found that nine out of ten young people felt ignored by scientists and politicians [BSA].

As of 27th July, the UK Department for Education were “working to” two scenarios “Effective containment and testing” (reduce growth on campuses and reactive local lockdowns) and “On and off restrictions” (delaying all in-person teaching until January) [DfE].  Jim Dickinson has collated and analysed current advice and work at various government and advisory bodies including the DfE report above and SAGE, but so far there seems to be no public quantification of the risk [JD].

What can we do?

I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of high-level advice from national governments and pan-University bodies, and most individual university thinking, has been driven by safety concerns for students and staff rather than the potentially far more serious implications for society at large.

As with so many aspects of this crisis, the first step is to recognise there is a problem.

Within universities, acknowledge that the risk level will be far higher than in society at large because the case load will be far higher. How much higher will depend on mitigating measures, but whereas general population levels by the start of term may be as low as 1 in 5,000, the rate amongst students will be an order of magnitude higher, comparable with general levels during the peak of the ‘first wave’. This means that advice, particularly for at risk groups, which is targeted at national levels, needs to be re-thought within the university context. This means that advice that is targeted at national levels, particularly for at risk groups, needs to be re-thought within the university context.  Individual vulnerable students are already worried [BBCd]. Chinese and Asian students seem more aware of the personal dangers and it is noticeable that both within the UK and in the US the universities with the greatest number of international students are more risk averse. University staff (academics, cleaners, security) will include more at risk individuals than the student body. It is hard to quantify, but the risk level will considerably higher than, say, a restaurant or pub, though of course lower than for front line medical staff. Even if it is ‘safe’ for vulnerable groups to come out of shielding in general society, it may not be safe in the context of the university. This will be difficult to manage: even if the university does not force vulnerable staff to return, the long-term culture of vocational commitment may make some people take unacceptable risks.

Outside the universities, local councils, national governments and communities need to be aware of the increased risks when the universities reopen, just as seaside towns have braced themselves for tourist surges post-lockdown. While SAGE has noted that universities may be an ‘amplifier’, the extent does not appear (at least publicly) to have been quantified.  In Aberdeen recently a cluster around a small number of pubs has caused the whole city to return to lockdown, and it is hard to imagine that we won’t see similar incidents around universities. This may lead to hard decisions, as has been discussed, between opening schools or pubs [BBCe] – city centre bars may well need to be re-thought. Universities benefit communities substantially both economically and educationally. For individual universities alone the costs of, say, weekly testing of students and staff would be prohibitive, but when seen in terms of regional or national health protection these may well be worthwhile. Although this is a ‘for example’ it could well be critical given the likelihood of large numbers of asymptomatic student cases.

Educate students – this is of course what we do as universities!  Covid-19 will be a live topic for every student, but they may well have many of the misconceptions that permeate popular discourse.  Can we help them become more aware of the aspects that connect to their own disciplines and hence to become ambassadors of good practice amongst their peers? Within maths and computing we can look at models and data analysis, which could be used in other scientific areas where these are taught.  Medicine is obvious and design and engineering students might have examples around PPE or ventilators. In architecture we can think about flows within buildings, ventilation, and design for hygiene (e.g. places to wash your hands in public spaces that aren’t inside a toilet!). In literature, there is pandemic fiction from Journal of the Plague Year to La Peste, and in economics we have examples of externalities (and if you leave externalities until a specialised final year option, rethink a 21st century economics syllabus!).

Time to act

On March 16, I posted on Facebook, “One week left to save the UK – and WE CAN DO IT.” Fortunately, we have more time now to ensure a safe university year but we need to act immediately to use that time effectively. We can do it.

References

[AMS] The Academy of Medical Sciences. Preparing for a challenging winter 2020-21. 14th July 2020. https://acmedsci.ac.uk/policy/policy-projects/coronavirus-preparing-for-challenges-this-winter

[BBCa] Cardiff University to cut 380 posts after £20m deficit. BBC News. 12th Feb 2019.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47205659

[BBCb] Coronavirus: Universities’ ‘perfect storm’ threatens future.  Tomos Lewis  BBC News. 7 August 2020.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53682774

[BBCc] WHO warns of rising cases among young in Europe. Lauren Turner, BBc New live reporting, 10:05am 29th July 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-53577222?pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:59cae0e7-5d3d-4e35-94ec-1895273ed016

[BBCd] Coronavirus: University life may ‘pose further risk’ to young shielders
Bethany Dawson. BBC News. 6th August 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-53552077

[BBCe]  Coronavirus: Pubs ‘may need to shut’ to allow schools to reopen. BBC News. 1st August 2020.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53621613

[BG]  Colleges reverse course on reopening as pandemic continues.  Deirdre Fernandes, Boston Globe, updated 2nd August 2020.  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/02/metro/pandemic-continues-some-colleges-reverse-course-reopening/

[BSA] New survey results: Almost 9 in 10 young people feel scientists and politicians are leaving them out of the COVID-19 conversation. British Science Association. (undated) accessed 7/8/2020.  https://www.britishscienceassociation.org/news/new-survey-results-almost-9-in-10-young-people-feel-scientists-and-politicians-are-leaving-them-out-of-the-covid-19-conversation

[DfE] DfE: Introduction to higher education settings in England, 1 July 2020 Paper by the Department for Education (DfE) for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). Original published 24th July 2020 (updated 27th July 2020).  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dfe-introduction-to-higher-education-settings-in-england-1-july-2020

[Dx1]  More than R – how we underestimate the impact of Covid-19 infection. . Dix (blog).  2nd August 2020  https://alandix.com/blog/2020/08/02/more-than-r-how-we-underestimate-the-impact-of-covid-19-infection/

[Dx2] Why pandemics and climate change are hard to understand, and can we help? A. Dix. North Lab Talks, 22nd April 2020 and Why It Matters, 30 April 2020 http://alandix.com/academic/talks/Covid-April-2020/

[Dx3] Covid-19 – Impact of a small number of large bubbles on University return. Working Paper. A. Dix. July 2020.  http://alandix.com/academic/papers/Covid-bubbles-July-2020/

[HEFCW] COVID-19 impact on higher education providers: funding, regulation and reporting implications.  HEFCW Circular, 4th May 2020 https://www.hefcw.ac.uk/documents/publications/circulars/circulars_2020/W20%2011HE%20COVID-19%20impact%20on%20higher%20education%20providers.pdf

[HoC]  The Welsh economy and Covid-19: Interim Report. House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee. 16th July 2020. https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1972/documents/19146/default/

[JD]  Universities get some SAGE advice on reopening campuses. Jim Dickinson, WonkHE, 25th July 2020.  https://wonkhe.com/blogs/universities-get-some-sage-advice-on-reopening-campuses/

[SN]  Coronavirus: University students could be ‘amplifiers’ for spreading COVID-19 around UK – SAGE. Alix Culbertson. Sky News. 24th July 2020. https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-university-students-could-be-amplifiers-for-spreading-covid-19-around-uk-sage-12035744

[UUKa] Principles and considerations: emerging from lockdown.   Universities UK, June 2020. https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Pages/principles-considerations-emerging-lockdown-uk-universities-june-2020.aspx

[UUKb] https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Pages/economic-impact-universities-2014-15.aspx

[WFA] Covid-19 and the Higher Education Sector in Wales (Briefing Paper). Cian Siôn, Wales Fiscal Analysis, Cardiff University.  14th May 2020.  https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/2394361/Covid_FINAL.pdf

[WG]  Over £50 million to support Welsh universities, colleges and students.    Welsh Government press release.  22nd July 2020.  https://gov.wales/over-50-million-support-welsh-universities-colleges-and-students

[WO] Cardiff University warns of possible job cuts as it faces £168m fall in income. Abbie Wightwick, Wales Online. 10th June 2020.  https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/cardiff-university-job-losses-coronavirus-18393947

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paying On Time – universities are failing

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Universities are not living up to Government prompt payment targets.  As many suppliers will be local SMEs this threatens the cashflow of businesses that may be teetering on the edge, and the well being of local economies.

I’ve twice in the last couple of months been hit by university finance systems that have a monthly payment run so that if a claim or invoice is not submitted by a certain date, often the first day or two of the month, then it is not paid until the end of the following month, leading to a seven week delay in payment.  This is despite Government guidelines for a normal 30 day payment period and to aim for 80% payment within 5 working days.

I’d like to say these are rare cases, but are sadly typical of university payment and expense systems.  In some cases this is because one is being treated as a casual employee, so falling into payroll systems.  However, often the same systems are clearly being used for commercial payments.  This means that if a supplier misses a monthly deadline they may wait nearly two months for payment … and of course if they are VAT registered may have already had to pay the VAT portion to HMRC before they actual receive the payment.

The idea of monthly cheque runs is a relic of the 1970s when large reels of magnetic tapes had to be mounted on refrigerator-sized machines and special paper had to be loaded into line-printers for cheque runs.  In the 21st century when the vast proportion of payments are electronic, it is an embarrassing and unethical anachronism.

As well as these cliff-edge deadline issues, I’ve seen university finance systems who bounce payments to external suppliers if data is on an out of date form, even if the form was provided in error by a member of university staff.

Even worse are universities finance systems which are organised so that when there is a problem in payment, for example, a temporary glitch in electronic bank payments, instead of retrying the payment, or informing the payee or relevant university contact, the system simply ignores it leaving it in limbo.  I’ve encountered missing payments of this kind up to a year after the original payment date.  If one were cynical one might imagine that they simply hope the supplier will never notice.

The issue of late payments became a major issue a few years ago.  Following the recession, many SMEs were constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, yet larger firms were lax in paying promptly knowing that they were in a position of power (e.g. see “Getting paid on time” issued by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, February 2012).

Five years on this is still a problem.  In April last year The Independent estimated that British SMEs were owed 44.6 billion in late or overdue payments(see “The scourge of late payment“).  There is now mandatory reporting of payment processes for larger companies, and recent returns showed that some companies missed prompt payment up to 96% of the time, with bad performers including major names such as Deloitte (see “Ten of the UK’s big businesses that fail to pay suppliers on time get named and shamed by the Government“).

There is also a voluntary “Prompt Payment Code“, but, amongst the signatories, there are only two universities (Huddersfield and Westminster) and three colleges.

Universities are often proud of the way they support local economies and communities: being major employers and often offering advice to local businesses.  However, in respect to prompt payment they are failing those same communities.

So, well done Huddersfield and Westminster, and for the rest of the university system – up your game.

value for money in research – excellence or diversity

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Government research funding policy in many countries, including the UK, has focused on centres of excellence, putting more funding into a few institutions and research groups who are creating the most valuable outputs.

Is this the best policy, and does evidence support it?

From “Big Science vs. Little Science: How Scientific Impact Scales with Funding”

I’m prompted to write as Leonel Morgado (Facebook, web) shared a link to a 2013 PLOS ONE paper “Big Science vs. Little Science: How Scientific Impact Scales with Funding” by Jean-Michel Fortin and David Currie.  The paper analyses work funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and looked at size of grant vs. research outcomes.  The paper demonstrates diminishing returns: large grants produce more research outcomes than smaller grants, but less per dollar spend.  That is concentrating research funding appears to reduce the overall research output.

Of course, those obtaining research grants have all been through a highly competitive process, so the NSERC results may simply be a factor of the fact that we are already looking at the very top level of the research projects.

However, a report many years ago reinforces this story, and suggests it holds more broadly.

Sometime in the mid-late 1990s HEFCE the UK higher education funding agency, did a study where they ranked all universities against every simple research output metrics1. One of the outputs was the number of PhD completions and another was industrial research income (arguably whether an output!), but I forget the third.

Not surprisingly Oxford and Cambridge came top of the list when ranked by aggregate research output.

However, the speadsheet also included the amount of research money HEFCE paid into the university and a value-for-money column.

When ranked against value-for-money, the table was near reversed, with Oxford and Cambridge at the very bottom and Northampton University (not typically known as the peak of the university excellence ratings) was the top. That is HEFCE got more research output for pound spent at Northampton than anywhere else in the UK.

The UK REF2014 used an extensive and time-consuming peer-review mechanism to rank the research quality of each discipline in each UK university-level institution, on a 1* to 4* scale (4* being best). Funding is heavily ramped towards 4* (in England the weighting is 10:3:0:0 for 4*:3*:2*:1*). As part of the process, comprehensive funding information was produced for each unit of assessment (typically a department), including UK government income, European projects, charity and industrial funding.

So, we have an officially accepted assessment of research outcomes (that is government funds against it!), and also of the income that generated it.

At a public meeting following the 2014 exercise, I asked a senior person at HEFCE whether they planned to take the two and create a value for money metric, for example, the cost per 4* output.

There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the idea!

Furthermore, my analysis of REF measures vs citation metrics suggested that this very focused official funding model was further concentrated by an almost unbelievably extreme bias towards elite institutions in the grading: apparently equal work in terms of external metrics was ranked nearly an order of magnitude higher for ‘better’ institutions, leading to funding being around 2.5 times higher for some elite universities than objective measures would suggest.

contingency-table

From “REF Redux 4 – institutional effects“: ‘winners’ are those with 25% or more than metrics would estimate, ‘losers’ those with 25% or more less.

In summary, the implications both from Fortin and Currie’s PLOS ONE paper and from the 1990s HEFCE report suggest spreading funding more widely would increase overall research outcomes, but both official policy and implicit review bias do the opposite.

  1. I recall reading this, but it was before the days when I rolled everything over on my computer, so can’t find the exact reference. If anyone recalls the name of the report, or has a copy, I would be very grateful.[back]

ignorance or misinformation – the press and higher education

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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at poor reporting in the Mail, but it does feel slightly more serious than the other tabloids.  I should explain I have a copy of the Mail as it was the only UK paper when I got on the Malaysian Airlines plane in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday evening, and it is the Monday copy as I assume it had flown out of the UK on the flight the day before!

Deepish inside, p22, the article was “UK students lose out in sciences” by Nick Mcdermott.  The article quotes a report by Civitas that shows that while the annual number of students in so called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) courses rose by around 6500 in the 10 years 1997-2007, in fact this is largely due to an increase of 12,308 in overseas students and a fall in UK students of nearly 6000.  Given an overall increase in student numbers of 600,000 in this period and employers “calling for more science graduates”, the STEM drop is particularly marked.

While the figures I assume are correct, the Mail article leaves the false impression that the overseas students are in some way taking places from the UK students, indeed the article’s title “UK students lose out” suggests precisely this.  I can’t work out if this is simply the writer’s ignorance of the UK higher education system, or deliberate misinformation — neither are good news for British journalism.

Of course, the truth is precisely the opposite.  Overseas students are not in competition with UK students for undergraduate places in STEM or other subjects, as the number of UK students is effectively controlled by a combination of Government quotas and falling student demand in STEM subjects.  The latter, a disinterest in the traditionally ‘hard’ subjects by University applicants, has led to the closure of several university science departments across the country.  Rather than competing with UK students, the presence of overseas students makes courses more likely to be viable and thus preserves the variety of education available for UK students.  Furthermore, the higher fees for overseas students compared with the combined student fees and government monies for UK students, means that, if anything, these overseas students subsidise their UK colleagues.

We should certainly be asking why it is that an increasing number of overseas students value the importance of a science/engineering training while their British counterparts eschew these areas.  However, the blame for the lack of UK engineering graduates does not lie with the overseas students, but closer to home.  Somehow in our school system and popular culture we have lost a sense of the value of a deep scientific education.  Until this changes and UK students begin to apply for these subjects, we cannot expect there to be more UK graduates.  In the mean time, we can only hope that there will be more overseas students coming to study in the UK and keep the scientific and engineering expertise of universities alive until our own country finally comes to its senses.

Qualification vs unlimited education

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In “Adrift in Caledonia“, Nick Thorpe is in the Shetland Isles speaking to Stuart Hill (aka ‘Captain Calamity’).  Stuart says:

“What does qualification mean? … Grammatically, a qualification limits the meaning of a sentence. And that’s what qualifications seem to do to people. When you become a lawyer it becomes impossible to think of yourself outside that definition. The whole of the education system is designed to fit people into employment, into the system. It’s not designed to realise their full creativity.”

Now Stuart may be being slightly cynical and maybe the ‘whole of education system’ is not like that, but sadly the general thrust often seems so.

Indeed I recently tweeted a link to @fmeawad‘s post “Don’t be Shy to #fail” as it echoed my own long standing worries (see “abject failures“) that we have a system that encourages students to make early, virtually unchangeable, choices about academic or career choices, and then systematically tell them how badly they do at it. Instead the whole purpose of education should be to enable people to discover their strengths and their purposes and help them to excel in those things, which are close to their heart and build on their abilities.  And this may involve ‘failures’ along the way and may mean shifting areas and directions.

At a university level the very idea behind the name ‘university’ was the bringing together of disparate scholars.  In “The Rise and Progress of  Universities” (Chapter 2. What is a University?, 1854) John Henry Newman (Cardinal Newman, recently beatified) wrote:

“IF I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or “School of Universal Learning.” This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot;—from all parts; else, how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? and in one spot; else, how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such as this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.”

Note the emphasis on having representatives of many fields of knowledge ‘in one spot’: the meeting and exchange, the flow across disciplines, and yet is this the experience of many students?  In the Scottish university system, students are encouraged to study a range of subjects early on, and then specialise later; however, this is as part of a four year undergraduate programme that starts at 17.  At Lancaster there is an element of this with students studying three subjects in their first year, but the three year degree programmes (normally starting at 18) means that for computing courses we now encourage students to take 2/3 of that first year in computing in order to lay sufficient ground to cover material in the rest of their course.  In most UK Universities there is less choice.

However, to be fair, the fault here is not simply that of university teaching and curricula; students seem less and less willing to take a wider view of their studies, indeed unwilling to consider anything that is not going to be marked for final assessment.  A five year old is not like this, and I assume this student resistance is the result of so many years in school, assessed and assessed since they are tiny; one of the reasons Fiona and I opted to home educate our own children (a right that seems often under threat, see “home education – let parents alone!“).  In fact, in the past there was greater degree of cross-curricula activity in British schools, but this was made far more difficult by the combination of the National Curriculum prescribing content,  SATs used for ‘ranking’ schools, and increasingly intrusive ‘quality’ and targets bureaucracy introduced from the 1980s onwards.

Paradoxically, once a student has chosen a particular discipline, we often then force a particular form of breadth within it.  Sometimes this is driven by external bodies, such as the BPA, which largely determines the curriculum in psychology courses across the UK.  However, we also do it within university departments as we determine what for us is considered a suitable spread of studies, and then forcing students into it no matter what their leanings and inclinations, and despite the fact that similar institutions may have completely different curricula.  So, when a student ‘fails’ a module they must retake the topic on which they are clearly struggling in order to scrape a pass or else ‘fail’ the entire course.  Instead surely we should use this this as an indication of aptitude and maybe instead allow students to take alternative modules in areas of strength.

Several colleagues at Talis are very interested in the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), which is attempting to create a much more student-led experience. I would guess that Stuart Hill might have greater sympathy with this endeavour, than with the traditional education system.  Personally, I have my doubts as to whether being virtually / digitally ‘in one spot‘ is the same as actually being co-present (but the OU manage), and whether being totally student-led looses the essence of scholarship, teaching1 and mentoring, which seems the essence of what a university should be. However, P2PU and similar forms of open education (such as the Khan Academy)  pose a serious intellectual challenge to the current academic system: Can we switch the balance back from assessment to education?  Can we enable students to find their true potential wherever it lies?

  1. Although ‘teaching’ is almost a dirty word now-a-days, perhaps I should write ‘facilitating learning’![back]

just counting

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I have been an academic for 25 years and I am an academic by vocation, because it seems right, because God has given gifts and I try to see how to use them for the best. Of course vocation is only part of life and for around the first half or so of that time family took precedence over vocation, as is right.  However, for the past 8–10 years, academic life has been dominated by  teaching and in particular by the training, nurture and encouragement of research students.

It has been a privilege to see the growth and flowering of so many individuals.  At times hard, speaking soothing words whilst quaking within, Christmases with a cracker in one hand and a draft thesis in the other.  But it is amazing to see the transformations, like chrysalis into butterfly.

Recently, however, I was reading our faculty guidelines for workload allocation.  Activities are allocated to teaching, administration and research.  It transpires that the supervision of research students is not 50:50 research:training, not even 75:25, but wholly, only, and solely research.  That is all the nurture and training are null and void; research students are but fodder for my personal research agenda and the word ‘student’ a misnomer.

My head says this is simply counting, a simplification to make things add up, and yet my heart is saddened, sickened, broken by the notion as if ten years of my life were eaten and then spewed out.

It does not lessen the wonder I have seen in so many people and yet saddens me profoundly .

making part-time work?

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Woke early worrying how to make the part-time thing work.

Looking forward through the year and adding up every odd day at home, still less than 18 weeks worth of ‘my time’, not exactly half of 52!  Even adding a couple of weeks of non-essential travel into ‘my’ budget doesn’t make it add up.

More worrying is that the time is all chopped up.  Just three solid months (and one of those is in July/August, maybe when I’d expect some research and holiday time anyway), the rest odd weeks split up with other commitments.  the model I’m aiming for is nearer the US 9 month contract idea with big periods for research, but struggling to keep blocks clear.

Also I’ve noticed myself allocating things that should be ‘university business’ to ‘my time’ as I know they won’t get done otherwise.  Got too used to doing the academic thing and planning time around assumption of 200% commitment averaging 80-90  hours a week.  Now trying to squash that into 50% of my time – no wonder it is difficult!

As the half pay cheques start to mount, I need to start to be ruthless.

Total Quality, Total Reward and Total Commitment

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I’ve been reading bits of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman1 off and on for some months. It has had many resonances, and I meant to write a post about it after reading its very first chapter. However, for now it is just part of one of the latter chapters that is fresh. Sennett refers to the work of W. Edwards Deming, the originator of the term ‘total quality control’. I was surprised at some of the quotes “The most important things cannot be measured”, “you can expect what you inspect” — in strong contrast to the metrics-based ‘quality’ that seems to pervade government thinking for many years whether it impacts health, policing or academia, and of course not unfamiliar to many in industry.

Continue reading →

  1. Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, Penguin, 2009[back]

Been to London to visit the Queen

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… well Queen Mary, University of London anyway. Giving a talk on “The New Media of Digital Light”1. While there I was given interesting tours of various research groups in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at QML including music that plays along with the drums, maps for the blind, and red dots on the heads of crowds at Covent Garden.

On the tube I noticed that if you are standing and look at the reflections in the curved tube train windows, all the seated passengers become Siamese twins joined at the head. Also looking down standing people tend to stand with their toes pointing outwards, whereas for seated people only the men do that. I feel there must be a social psychology paper in that, but it has probably already been written.

At the hotel neo-classical statues line the way down to an underground car park, and while seated at a WiFi sweet spot, was overhearing a dissident group planning a protest.

A typical day out in London.

A reminder of Wales, Aberavon Road, near QML

  1. work with Joe and Angie on Firefly technology[back]

now part-time!

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Many people already knew this was happening, but for those that don’t — I am now officially a part-time university academic.

Now this does not mean I’m going to be a part-time academic, quite the opposite.  The reason for moving to working part-time at the University is to give me freedom to do the things I’d like to do as an academic, but never have time.  Including writing more, reading, and probably cutting some code!

Reading especially, and I don’t mean novels (although that would be nice), but journal papers and academic books.  Like most academics I know, for years I have only read things that I needed to review, assess, or comment on — or sometimes in a fretful rush, the day before a paper is due, scurried to find additional related literature that I should have known about anyway.  That is I’d like some time for scholarship!

I guess many people would find this odd: working full time for what sounds like doing your job anyway, but most academics will understand perfectly!

Practically, I will work at Lancaster in spurts of a few weeks, travel for meetings and things, sometimes from Lancs and sometimes direct from home, and when I am at home do a day a week on ‘normal’ academic things.

This does NOT mean I have more time to review, work on papers, or other academic things, but actually the opposite — this sort of thing needs to fit in my 50% paid time … so please don’t be offended or surprised if I say ‘no’ a little more.  The 50% of time that is not paid will be for special things I choose to do only — I have another employer — me 🙂

Watch my calendar to see what I am doing, but for periods marked @home, I may only pick up mail once a week on my ‘office day’.

Really doing this and keeping my normal academic things down to a manageable amount is going to be tough.  I have not managed to keep it to 100% of a sensible working week for years (usually more like 200%!).  However, I am hoping that the sight of the first few half pay cheques may strengthen my resolve 😉

In the immediate future, I am travelling or in Lancs for most of February and March with only about 2 weeks at home in between, however, April and first half of May I intend to be in Tiree watching the waves, and mainly writing about Physicality for the new Touch IT book.