University budgets to be cut ... Peter Mandelson wants more two-year degree courses ..
Coming after years of unwise, over-rapid expansion of higher education where resourcing failed to meet the new targets by miles, the cut backs already in progress are only driving the knife in further. So more cuts equals much more damage. In the commercial-style marketing world that universities find themselves they are having to pretend they have innovations in hand able to ensure the same high quality. It's an impossibility. Something has to give.
Administrative staff are having to apply for their own jobs at lower salaries as part of 'restructuring'. Vacant teaching posts go unfulfilled or else specialists in one area get packed off to teach on or manage courses where they have little of the required skill or knowledge. They feel let down, even ashamed, of their new positions.
Two-year courses run the high risk of being seen as inferior. Very good mature students can do well, but others are put under severe strain by the twelve months a year teaching demanded with little time for reflection, personal projects or refreshing time out.
Course managers for all subjects are placed under pressure to ensure results are at least good, preferably outstanding, in order to bring new students in. Watch out for sudden jumps in the number of First Class and Upper Second degrees awarded next year. Then ask whether they result from better teaching or else deliberate changes to the system in order to mark higher.
If that happens, those students who did achieve excellent degree and diploma results in the past will have had their awards relabelled as mediocre. I get a sinking feeling.
Coming after years of unwise, over-rapid expansion of higher education where resourcing failed to meet the new targets by miles, the cut backs already in progress are only driving the knife in further. So more cuts equals much more damage. In the commercial-style marketing world that universities find themselves they are having to pretend they have innovations in hand able to ensure the same high quality. It's an impossibility. Something has to give.
Administrative staff are having to apply for their own jobs at lower salaries as part of 'restructuring'. Vacant teaching posts go unfulfilled or else specialists in one area get packed off to teach on or manage courses where they have little of the required skill or knowledge. They feel let down, even ashamed, of their new positions.
Two-year courses run the high risk of being seen as inferior. Very good mature students can do well, but others are put under severe strain by the twelve months a year teaching demanded with little time for reflection, personal projects or refreshing time out.
Course managers for all subjects are placed under pressure to ensure results are at least good, preferably outstanding, in order to bring new students in. Watch out for sudden jumps in the number of First Class and Upper Second degrees awarded next year. Then ask whether they result from better teaching or else deliberate changes to the system in order to mark higher.
If that happens, those students who did achieve excellent degree and diploma results in the past will have had their awards relabelled as mediocre. I get a sinking feeling.
