Beyond Mass Education High Education: Building on Experience

Citation

Marks, G. (2007), "Beyond Mass Education High Education: Building on Experience", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 237-239. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880710748965

The premise of this book is that university education has moved from an elite system to a mass‐system and is now entering a new phase: a universal system. Just as finishing school has increased, e.g. in Australia from about one‐third of secondary students in the early 1980s to over half now, university education in 20 or 30 years time may also reach 75 per cent. This book is concerned with the change to a universal system and the implication this has for universities, their students and society. The context for the book is the UK.

The book is organised in to three sections: “Student issues”, which includes discussions on social equity, student experiences in higher education and the graduate labour market; “Academic policies and processes” which includes chapters on teaching and learning, assessment and universities engagement with the economy and society; and “Staff and system issues” which focus on university staff, management and administration, and governance. So it is a comprehensive account of the issues facing universities as the sector expands. It is generally well written and usually provides appropriate evidence for the various arguments made.

I have a few quibbles. Although, the book is based on the assumption that participation rates are rising and would in the future approach “universal” levels, it was not clear what the participation rates actually are (different chapters appear not to be consistent), what are the likely participation rates in the future and how does participation in the UK compare with comparable countries, like Australia. Concepts such as, the Age‐Participation Index and the Initial Entry Rate may be well‐known to some researchers in the UK but to most readers the concepts are ill‐defined. It is not clear if participation has reached New Labour's target of 50 per cent. Similarly, the chapters on the socioeconomic and other social inequalities in education concentrated on the social profiles of new students rather than the proportions of working class and other minority who gain places, which is the appropriate way to investigate social inequalities in education.

The chapter on social inequalities in university participation in England lacked rigor. It is important to know if expansion has increased participation among disadvantaged groups and if so but how much. The author was content to rehearse the fairly standard reasons why working class participation is lower and disappointingly ends on the usual class‐gender‐ethnicity triad when participation is actually higher among women and most ethnic minorities. I found this one of the most disappointing chapters since it was unable to contemplate that the theoretical approaches that, arguably, were appropriate to the 1970s – that the system is organised for the benefit of white bourgeois males – is no longer viable. Their emphasis on the persistence of inequality contrasts with the widening access documented or implied in other chapters.

The chapter on higher education in Scotland was much better posing the interesting question “Can a differentiated system be an equitable system”. The question is relevant to many other countries, e.g. the Australian system where the higher status universities want to differentiate themselves. Some Australian universities see themselves as the Antipodean Oxford or Harvard. The author concludes that differentiation may not necessary produce stratification although it is unclear how this can be achieved.

The chapter titled “The demise of the graduate labour market” is also relevant internationally, e.g. in Australia there is a concern that further expansion of university participation will result in high unemployment among graduates in the future. The title is misleading, since there is no evidence that the graduate labour market has deteriorated in the UK despite increasing numbers of graduates. (The same can be said for Australia). Rather, the issue is skill shortages especially in some crucial areas. The authors point out that in the future unemployment may be a problem as the labour market becomes increasingly fragmented and if the general labour market deteriorates substantially. The question of the employability of graduates with generalist or low‐status degrees at red brick or new universities vis‐à‐vis vocational educational was not discussed.

The chapter on the effects of new technologies on teaching practices was timely. The days of students fervently writing down what the lecturer has written in chalk on a blackboard have hopefully long since gone. New technologies have the potential to improve teaching and enrich the learning process. One downside is more limited face‐to‐face contact. It is now possible to receive all the course material on‐line so students rarely need to be on campus. Tutorials and one‐to‐one interactions with other students, post‐graduates (or tutors) and lecturers were an important part of the formal and informal learning experience. Another chapter discusses the erosion of social capital at universities which the expansion of new technologies is likely to accelerate.

Generally teaching practices at universities do not involve formative assessment procedures. Usually the approach is sink or swim; students are presented with the material and it is their task to deal with material in such a way as to satisfy the assessment criteria. The chapter on formative assessment, which involves continual feedback to students on their learning, advocated it as a suitable model for university education as opposed to “summative assessment”, an end of semester exam or essay, which is not designed to enhance student learning. Although it is well‐established that formative assessment is successful in schools and is appropriate for most university courses, it involves considerable resources. Academic staff, who are under pressure to win grants and publish their research, are unlikely to embrace such intensive forms of teaching unless they are employed only as teachers.

One potentiality controversial issue is summarising what students have learned and what skills they have. The default model used generally is “reputations in the market‐place”; not an employer friendly record of achievement in skills and competencies. What competencies and skills should be assessed and how, is a difficult question and encompasses other issues such as standardised curricula and testing, measuring value‐added, and differences in the intake characteristics of students from different institutions. These complexities make the goal of a clear standard record of graduates' competencies far too difficult. Notwithstanding, the level and type of skills graduates have is important and some kind of summary of skills and competencies may be appropriate to some courses connected to particular types of employment.

A similar volume appropriate to the other national contexts would be timely. For instance Australia, on OECD indicators, is further along the road to universal university than the UK. Some issues that should be discussed include: the optimum level of participation among young people, the distribution of government resources across the university and technical and further education (TAFE) sectors, the relationship between school systems and universities, the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (a Government scheme for providing loans to higher education students) (HECS) and the HECS debt, core curricula and their assessment, teaching only staff, the University of Melbourne's adoption of the Bologna Model, the general issues of diversification and specialization and graduate skills and their assessment. Thus a volume on these lines related to nationally relevant issues would stimulate important debates as university participation edges towards universal levels.