Update from the Vice-Chancellor November 2012

University Challenge - responding to the Milburn Report

As I read Alan Milburn's report University Challenge: How Higher Education Can Advance Social Mobility over the weekend, I was struck by how many of the issues he raises are being discussed by colleagues across the University.

He first and foremost bemoans the loss of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, of schemes like Aim Higher to drive aspiration in schools and, of course, the introduction of the new fees regime. He is worried, as we worry, that we shall find it harder to attract as wide a social mix to university as the country would like.

The report also expresses concern that the release of the cap on students with higher A level grades will have an effect on participation. Alan Milburn also thinks that we are not doing enough to counteract these potential injustices in our society. We can only agree.

What we do already is quite obviously not enough to heal the divides that have accumulated in the 18 years before a potential student is ready to apply to university, and, for generations prior to this, in families and communities. If only we had some magic wand to make the world perfect, I imagine that this is an area in which we would be quick to employ it.

In fact, University Challenge makes a point that we must pick up in our future plans and actions. It says that we don't actually know enough about what precisely we should be doing to make a difference. We do not understand well enough what measures, outreach or bursaries really have the greatest effect on widening participation.

Here in Sheffield we certainly see the benefits of reaching out to schools, developing programmes such as the Sheffield Outreach and Access to Medicine Scheme and Discover Law. We know this work transforms lives. But what are our most effective tools? We need to know more about that.

This instinct is strongly shared by our colleagues working at the widening participation coal face. We have already begun our own research, and the Student Services department recently launched the Widening Participation Research and Evaluation Unit to coordinate just this activity. We would dearly like this to be linked to a bigger effort in this direction and will propose it to OFFA; we have already begun to discuss this with its director, Les Ebdon.

The Milburn report also calls for us to use contextual data. In fact, our admissions tutors already have the ability to use certain carefully defined contextual information as part of their academic consideration of an application with the aim of identifying the best applicants. But a deeper change in this area also begs questions: how far is it right to move away from an emphasis on national examination results?; would the loans system believe in it?; would the ABB system be changed?; how could such an approach be seen to be fair?

But perhaps the most important element of this report follows on from Alan Milburn's previous comments about Access to the Professions, in relation to postgraduate study. He says rightly that "both universities and students have consistently raised this as an issue, and there are reasons to be concerned that people from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds may be struggling to take part in postgraduate study... Lack of access to postgraduate study is in danger of becoming a social mobility time bomb".

This challenge is certainly not one for universities alone. The report recommends that the Government should consider a loan system for all postgraduate study. He also says that analysis of the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate study for students from disadvantaged backgrounds by HEFCE should report by the Spring of 2013.

Yet the issue of postgraduate study as a factor within social mobility is far too easily lost in the wider discussion about other vital questions relating to support at school, and the Education Maintenance Allowance in particular.

Yet no matter how important that is, a focus on what happens before university too often conceals what happens to students and graduates later.

The subject of postgraduates was missing from the Browne Review into higher education. And it will not now be enough for concerns about wide access to postgraduate study to be found on page 72 of a report that primarily focuses on undergraduate entrance. The initial response from the Minister to the report did not mention postgraduates at all, and most media coverage ignored it.

So how do we make the case for postgraduate study to politicians and a wider public who question access to university at all, as if all that is required for a student to succeed is to be accepted onto a place as a first year undergraduate? It is not an issue on the radar of families who may have little or no experience of higher education, or who may fail to understand and therefore to value the opportunities that are tied to postgraduate study.

Perhaps we need to put the case more starkly. If the prospect of funding postgraduate study puts off able students with talent and potential but without resource, we will see a crucial change in the social balance within professions. We need to challenge the assumption that getting into a good university and working hard is all you need to do to get a good job. We need to make crystal clear the process whereby a 17-year-old applies to university and then goes on to undergraduate and postgraduate study so they can become a teacher, a lawyer, a librarian or a social worker. All these roles follow on from postgraduate qualifications. Do we want a society in which teachers, lawyers and doctors are less and less representative of the communities they serve?

And who will carry out the research and become the university lecturers of the future? Will this also be a career path barred to some by fear of commercial debt? How will we encourage access then?

Alan Milburn may not have made this the main focus of his challenge, but we are clear that it is one of the most pressing issues we face in relation to social mobility. Our Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Learning and Teaching, Professor Paul White has been alerting the establishment to this for years. Our Registrar has been warning us of the consequences for the University.

And perhaps most important of all, our students are alive to it. They are living and breathing a different atmosphere within higher education than that experienced by previous generations.

So, in the absence of a wand to magically address the ills of society solely by our approach to widening participation, what shall we do?

The development of postgraduate study in the last twenty years has been one of the major success stories of UK Higher Education, but that success is being threatened. So we must explain the value of postgraduate study to individuals, to our university system, to our economy and to our society. The end of year report from the current generation of students, which reads 'must do better', is one that applies not just to universities but to the whole higher education system and the funding which does - or doesn't - underpin it.

As a university, we are looking at future postgraduate education through reviews currently being led by our Pro-Vice-Chancellors for Learning and Teaching and for Research, and we are actively involved in discussions with the Department of Business, Industry and Skills and with the Higher Education Funding Council. We also submitted our evidence to the recent Higher Education Commission on Postgraduate Education. We are doing this work with our students, who care deeply about the opportunities that they know postgraduate study can bring. Indeed they have identified it as one of their key priorities in their own campaigning.

Within our faculties there are also things we can and must do. Departments are thinking actively about postgraduate study in terms of their academic goals. It is important that this is the case. The new fees environment will not play out equally because of the nature of their subjects or the careers they lead to. Some areas will be unaffected, some will flourish, but others will struggle if fees rise in line with undergraduate courses, or if students are unable to access cash for upfront fees and living costs at a time when they are leaving university with a significantly increased debt burden.

But more widely, it is crucial that we understand the role of postgraduate teaching in its broadest sense.

Postgraduate students not only help fund their subjects and the University, they are a vital part of any leading university's core activities and mission. This is how we must think about this question.

The real challenge to universities (and there are many) is to be academic and strategic at a time when there may be policy drift around us. How can we translate those values into the real world, ensuring opportunity for individuals and the protection of the knowledge base that is so essential to our work as a university?

To address that question, we will need all of our shared energy and expertise to provide the best answers.

Professor Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor