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The Welsh University Funding Debacle

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags , , , , on September 4, 2013 by telescoper

Although I no longer work in Wales, I still try to keep up with developments in the Welsh Higher Education sector as they might affect friends and former colleagues who do. That’s why my eye was drawn this morning to a news item on the BBC website about the effect of the Welsh Government’s policy of giving Welsh students bursaries to study at English universities. The gist of the argument is that:

For every Welsh student that goes to university across the border it costs the Welsh government around £4,500.

It means this year’s 7,370 first-year students from Wales who study in other parts of the UK could take more than £33m with them. Including last year’s students, the total figure is over £50m.

I did in fact make exactly the same point over three years ago on this blog, when former Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews announced that students domiciled in Wales would be protected from then (then) impending tuition fee rises by a new system of grants. In effect the Welsh Assembly Government would pick up the tab for Welsh students; they would still have to pay the existing fee level of £3290 per annum, but the WAG would pay the extra £6K. I wrote in May 2010:

This is good news for the students of course, but the grants will be available to Welsh students not just for Welsh universities but wherever they choose to study. Since about 16,000 Welsh students are currently at university in England, this means that the WAG is handing over a great big chunk (at least 16,000 × £3000 = £48 million) of its hard-earned budget straight back to England. It’s a very strange thing to do when the WAG is constantly complaining that the Barnett formula doesn’t give them enough money in the first place.

What’s more, the Welsh Assembly grants for Welsh students will be paid for by top-slicing the teaching grants that HECFW makes to Welsh universities. So further funding cuts for universities in Wales are going to be imposed precisely in order to subsidise English universities. This is hardly in the spirit of devolution either!

English students wanting to study in Wales will have to pay full whack, but will be paying to attend universities whose overall level of state funding is even lower than in England (at least for STEM subjects whose subsidy is protected in England). Currently about 25,000 English students study in Wales compared with the 16,000 Welsh students who study in England. If the new measures go ahead I can see fewer English students coming to Wales, and more Welsh students going to England. This will have deeply damaging consequences for the Welsh Higher Education system.

It’s very surprising that the Welsh Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, who form part of the governing coalition in the Welsh Assembly, have gone along with this strange move. It’s good for Welsh students, but not good for Welsh universities. I would have thought that the best plan for Welsh students would be to keep up the bursaries but apply them only for study in Wales. That way both students and institutions will benefit and the Welsh Assembly’s budget will actually be spent in Wales, which is surely what is supposed to happen…

Well, the changes did go ahead, and now the consequences are becoming depressingly clear.

The figures in the BBC story suggest something that I’ve also worried about, which is that the WAG policy might actually increase the number of Welsh students deciding to study in England, while also decreasing the number of other students deciding to study in Wales. Why would this happen? Well, it’s because, at least in STEM subjects, the tuition fee paid in England attracts additional central funding from HEFCE. This additional resource is nowhere near as much as it should be, but is still better than in Wales. Indeed it was precisely by cutting the central teaching grant that the Welsh Government was able to fund its bursaries in the first place. So why should an English student decide to forego additional government support by choosing to study in Wales, and why should a Welsh student decide to do likewise by not going to England?

I really hope the Welsh Government decides to change its policy. There didn’t seem to be any chance of a U-turn while Leighton Andrews remained in charge, but now that he’s gone perhaps there’s hope.

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Old Emus for Physics

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on September 3, 2013 by telescoper

It is time to reveal just a part of  the series of innovations I have been introducing to the curriculum here in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex, since I became head earlier this year.

In order to develop further the problem-solving skills of students in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, I have decided that  all modules OLD EMUS will henceforth be referred to by anagrams of their actual titles. For example, in the forthcoming Semester I will be teaching second-year students MONSTER DELICACY.

Among the other old emus to be taken by Year 2 students of SHY PICS are:

MANIAC MUNCH QUEST

UNFITTING COMIC SPICE

SPIN HISS SLICKLY

A TINSMITH’S DEPTH, SARCASTICALLY

ASTHMATIC MODE HALTED for SPICY SHITS

and for options there are

TRANSPLANTED ASS (compulsory for those into RACY SOPHISTS)

ATHEIST PSYCHIC LORE

This list does not include the compulsory A RICH SORT’S PLAYBOY.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

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GCSE and A level results: Three steps to make things better

Posted in Education on August 27, 2013 by telescoper

Too busy for a proper post today so I’m going to reblog this interesting reflection on recent examination results from Protons for Breakfast. I had a croissant myself.

 

Michael de Podesta's avatarProtons for Breakfast

As my own children approach the year in which they will sit GCSE and A level exams, the annual brouhaha  over exam results feels a bit more personal. And my anger over the betrayal of students and the governments abnegation of responsibility in this field grows more intense.

“It wasn’t like this when I were a lad ..”. No really: it wasn’t. Back in the 60’s and 70’s, the results were always the same: for example the top 7.5% (I think that was the number) received an A, the next n% received a B and so on. This approach served to discriminate amongst the candidates. But it didn’t register whether students knew more or less than in previous years.

Then exams were changed in many ways simultaneously. Syllabuses were reduced, continuous assessment introduced, exam boards became wholly-owned by book publishers, and ‘absolute’ marking became the norm. The result…

View original post 377 more words

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Physics and Statistics

Posted in Bad Statistics, Education with tags , , , on August 16, 2013 by telescoper

Predictably, yesterday’s newspapers and other media  were full of feeble articles about the A-level results, and I don’t just mean the gratuitous pictures of pretty girls opening envelopes and/or jumping in the air.  I’ve never met a journalist who understood the concept of statistical significance, which seems to account for the way they feel able to write whatever they like about any numbers that happen to be newsworthy without feeling constrained by mathematical common-sense.  Sometimes it’s the ridiculous over-interpretation of opinion polls (which usually have a sampling uncertainty of ±3 %), sometimes its league tables. This time it’s the number of students getting the top grades at A-level.

The BBC, for example, made a lot of fuss about the fall in the % of A and A* A-level grades, to  26.3% this year from 26.6% last year. Anyone with a modicum of statistical knowledge would know, however, that whether this drop means anything at all depends on how many results were involved: the sampling uncertainty depends on size N approximately as √N. For a cohort of 300000 this turns into a percentage uncertainty of about 0.57%, which is about twice as large as the reported fall.  The result is therefore “in the noise” – in the sense that there’s no evidence that it was actually harder to get a high grade this year compared with last year – but that didn’t prove a barrier to those editors intent on filling their newspapers and websites with meaningless guff.

Almost hidden among the bilge was an interesting snippet about Physics. It seems that the number of students taking Physics A-level this year has exceeded 35,000 in 2013.  That was set as a government target for 2014, so it has been reached a year early.  The difference between the number that took Physics this year (35,569) and those who took it in 2006 (27,368) is certainly significant. Whether this is the so-called Brian Cox effect or something else, it’s very good news for the future health of the subject.

On the other hand, the proportion of female Physics students remains around 20%. Over the last three years the proportion has been 20.8%, 21.3% and 20.6% so numerically this year is down on last year, but the real message in these figures is that despite strenuous efforts to increase this fraction, there is no significant change.

As I write I’m formally still on Clearing business, sitting beside the telephone in case anyone needs to talk to me. However, at close of play yesterday the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences had exceeded its recruitment target by quite a healthy margin.  We’re still open for Clearing, though, as our recent expansion means we can take a few more suitably qualified students. Physics and Astronomy did particularly well, and we’re set to welcome our biggest-ever intake into the first year in September 2013. I’m really looking forward to meeting them all.

While I’m on about statistics, here’s another thing. When I was poring over this year’s NSS results, I noticed that only 39 Physics departments appeared in the survey. When I last counted them there were 115 universities in the UK. This number doesn’t include about 50 colleges and other forms of higher education institutions which are also sometimes included in lists of universities. Anyway, my point is that at most about a third of British universities have a physics department.

Now that is a shocking statistic…

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Advice for Students on Clearing

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on August 15, 2013 by telescoper

1-dont-panic

We still have places in the School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex. No other Physics & Astronomy department in the UK scored more highly in the latest NSS survey than ours, so whether you’re interested in Physics, Astrophysics, Astronomy or Mathematics (or even a combination of those subjects), why not just take a look at the University’s Clearing Page and give us a ring.?

As a matter of fact, I’ll be there myself from 8am this morning to talk to interested students.

11.30 UPDATE. I finished my first shift at 11am. I’ll be going back at 5pm for the last session, until the lines close at 7pm. During the last hour a minimum of 20 overs must be bowled. Or something.  The main call centre (which has fifty phone lines) is next door to where we were sitting and is operated by admissions experts and student helpers who are processing the queries and, if necessary, routing them through to academics (i.e. people like me) to provide further information or to answer specific questions. You can take a peep behind the scenes here. Some of the calls were from very anxious prospective students, and it’s a very nice feeling being able to help them sort out their course! Now back to other things until I start again this evening.

 

19.30 UPDATE. Phew. Finally been stood down, but I’ll be back on duty tomorrow afternoon. It’s been a very interesting day which has gone very well for us. Lines stay open until 8pm tonight and re-open at 8 in the morning and we’re still in business to see if we can give just a few more students the opportunity to study in the School next academic year. Now I’m off home to chill, probably over a glass or two of wine!

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First Among Equals

Posted in Brighton, Education with tags , , , , on August 13, 2013 by telescoper

Well, it’s been a pretty good day so far. I had a very interesting meeting in London this morning about something that will be out in open (geddit?) very soon but which I won’t blog about until the appropriate time. Instead I’ll just mention the news just out that the Department of Physics & Astronomy in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex finished in (joint ) 1st place in the 2013 National Student Survey (NSS). The full subject-level tables are not yet published – or at least I’ve been unable to find them – so I don’t know who we’re equal with, but I will update this post when I receive this information.

Looking through the detailed breakdown of the results, one figure leapt out at me. The fraction of Physics & Astronomy students at the University of Sussex who expressed overall satisfaction (in response to Question 22) was an amazing

images

Obviously it will be difficult to improve on this figure in future (!), but in fact we have already been planning to introduce a number of changes to our courses to boost our scores on other questions. That’s not to say that the result is due to one result: we also scored 100% on Q3 (“the staff are enthusiastic about what they are teaching”), Q4 (“the course is intellectually stimulating”), Q15 (“the course is well-organized and is running smoothly”) and Q18 (“I have been able to access specialised equipment, facilities or rooms when I needed to”).

You can say what you like about the NSS, but it certainly keeps us on our toes. The tables generally show continued improvement in NSS scores across the sector, which I think demonstrates that all Higher Education Institutions do make the effort to respond to student feedback.  That’s where the NSS has real value, as opposed to just being part of yet another league table. The survey also shows that in fact most UK Physics and Astronomy departments are extremely good and the differences between them are actually rather small. Maintaining our high ranking therefore won’t be easy, but we’re certainly going to give it a go for next year, and our influx of new staff will certainly help. Hopefully next year we’ll be out in front on our own again!

On behalf of everyone in the Department of  Physics & Astronomy, I’d like to thank the students who participated in the NSS for this enthusiastic endorsement!

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The Expanding University

Posted in Biographical, Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on August 10, 2013 by telescoper

Well, I’m a bit busy today – despite the fact that it’s a weekend – so I’m just going to take the opportunity post here  a news item from my employer which has already been posted on the University of Sussex website. 

–o–

The School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) will have 63 academics at the start of the 2013-14 academic year – an increase of 58 per cent from February, when only 40 were in post.

The expansion follows a very successful few years for the School, during which the number of students starting degrees in Physics and Astronomy at Sussex has grown almost threefold.

The department has also climbed to 5th in The Times Good University Guide 2013 and Mathematics was ranked in the top 10 for academic support in the 2012 National Student Survey (NSS).

From September, Physics and Astronomy will have 40 academics, up from 25 in February. There are 12 new posts as well as three replacements, including the arrival in February of Professor Peter Coles, who replaced the late Professor David Axon as Head of School.

Mathematics is increasing from 15 academics to 23, with five of these arrivals being new positions. In particular, three new professors will join the Department this year.

Professor Coles says that overseeing this expansion has been his main focus since returning to Sussex. He says: “When I arrived, plans were already under way to get new people in and I knew this had to be my priority in my first few months as Head of MPS.

“We had an incredibly high calibre of applicants for all the posts and, in many cases, have been able to appoint more than one person. For one of the posts in Astronomy, the shortlist was so strong that we have actually appointed four excellent academics in that area. We couldn’t miss that opportunity.

“Our three  new chairs in Mathematics are joining us from Denmark, Greece and Italy, bolstering the School’s international outlook.

“We have been strategic in our appointments to encourage growth into new areas for us, such as probability and stochastic modelling on the Mathematics side, and materials-based experimental research on the Physics side. We anticipate further strategic expansion in these areas in the near future.

“These appointments also represent a step towards more interdisciplinarity and better crossover between the two departments within the School, and indeed with other schools such as Life Sciences, developing still further the University’s traditional strength in interdisciplinary research.

“And, most importantly of all, students in MPS will benefit from more study choices and smaller class sizes.”

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Lectured Out

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , , on July 10, 2013 by telescoper

Just time for a quick post today because I’m quite knackered. Both my lectures for the Summer School I’m attending were this morning, and each was 90 minutes long – though there was a 30 minute coffee break between the two. The students therefore had to out up with me droning on most of the morning so were probably sick of the sight of me by lunchtime although they were quite polite about it. MOst of the participants went off on an excursion after lunch, but I decided to stay behind and take a siesta. I’m definitely too old for hiking in this heat.

The conference organizers told me that ninety minute lectures are apparently quite normal in Germany. I’m not sure why. I don’t think students can concentrate for that length of time, and it’s a definite strain on the lecturer too. I find even an hour lecture quite tiring, actually, but that’s more the effect of expending nervous energy walking backwards and forwards trying frantically to tell if anyone is understanding what I’m talking about. I usually enjoy lecturing actually, but it’s definitely stressful at the time. Now that I’m Head of School I won’t get to do as much teaching in the future as I did in the past. I suppose I’ll miss that “contact” with students, but I don’t think their education will suffer at all as a consequence of not being taught by me!

This is graduation week at the University of Sussex; finalists from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences actually graduate tomorrow. In normal circumstances I would be there to read out the names as the graduands parade across the stage, but I committed to attend this Summer School long before I’d even been appointed to my job as Head of MPS so felt I shouldn’t leave the organizers in the lurch. The Deputy Head of School will therefore do the honours at tomorrow’s ceremony. I haven’t been there long enough to get to know the graduating class very well, so it’s quite fitting that he’s looking after them on the big day. In other words, I don’t think I’ll be missed. I also see that final year students from the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University will be graduating next Monday (15th July). I’ve known some of them for almost four years so feel a bit sad that I left before they finished, but I’m sure I won’t be missed on that occasion either. I bet most of them have already forgotten I was ever there!

Anyway, on the off chance that any graduating students from either Sussex or Cardiff happen to read this, I hope you enjoy the graduation ceremony and associated celebrations and wish you well as you embark on the next stage of life’s journey.

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Can a University be Democratic?

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , on July 6, 2013 by telescoper

Today I thought I’d pick up on a topic I mentioned in last week’s post about Simon Fanshawe, about University governance.

The Royal Charter which formed the University of Sussex way back in 1961 includes the following clauses:

1.         By this Charter there shall be constituted and founded a University by the name of ‘The University of Sussex’ (‘the University’).

2.         In this Charter: ‘Council’ means the Council of the University; ‘Regulations’ except when otherwise required by the context, means Regulations made pursuant to this Charter or the Statutes. ‘Statutes’ means the Statutes of the University set out in the Schedule.

3.         The objects of the University shall be to advance learning and knowledge by teaching and research to the benefit of the wider community.

…

7.         There shall be a Council of the University which shall be the governing body of the University and shall have the custody and use of the Common Seal and shall be responsible for the revenue and property of the University, its conduct and activities, and shall exercise all the University’s powers.

8          There shall be a Senate of the University which shall, subject to the general control and approval of the Council, be responsible for academic standards and the direction and regulation of academic matters.

9.         There shall be a Students’ Union of the University.

This makes it quite clear that  the Senate (on which I happen to sit) is specifically meant to focus on academic matters; see below for a comment on this.  The role of the Student’s Union is not specified at all in this document, although it should be said that there are student members of Senate and Council too.

The reason for including this in a blog post is that it demonstrates an organization formed in this way has to strike a difficult balance between, on the one hand, listening to staff and students when it comes to forming policy and, on the other, having an efficient and effective executive that can implement those policies. There are about 16,000 people working and studying at the University of Sussex (c. 13,000 students and c. 3,000 staff), most of whom are highly intelligent and independent-minded so there’s bound to be a divergence of opinion on almost any topic under discussion. Even if it were possible for everyone to get involved in the University’s governance, it’s inevitable that decisions will be made that run counter to some of the input.

Difficult balances that have to be struck in the governance of any organization, whether religious, administrative, commercial or educational. The Council of the University of Sussex is its supreme governing body and everyone who works here is in some way accountable to it. In turn, Council is accountable to its “stakeholders”, not just funding authorities and students, but the wider world; its Charter states that

The objects of the University shall be to advance learning and knowledge by teaching and research to the benefit of the wider community.

In a nutshell, a University is not a democracy. It can’t be, not unless “democracy” is defined in a very limited way. A university can employ some democratic structures, and may (for many reasons) desire to include as many people as possible in its governance, but in the end this is limited by the need for effective and efficient management. We can – and do – debate where this balance should lie, but anyone who has ever worked in a University will agree that if it were allowed to be run “democratically” by some of academic collective then the result would be a complete shambles. Democracy has to be balanced by the rule of law.

Similar issues apply further down the pecking order. Since I took over as Head of Mathematical and Physical Sciences here earlier this year, I have had a wide range of responsibilities for the School, including its finances, academic matters, and even health and safety. I’m not an autocrat, so I try to do things as democratically as possible within the constraints I have to work, but this democracy is necessarily limited. I like to keep staff informed about and involved in decisions, but I sometimes have to make decisions without any consultation at all. This can be because such a quick decision is required that there is no time to consult widely, or because there is some issue to do with confidentiality which means that it can’t be discussed in an open forum (including, e.g., email). More often, though, it is just because they pay me to be Head of School and its my job to take responsibility so staff working in the School can get on with what they are supposed to do without being inundated with requests for input from me on trivial things.

On the other hand there are things in  MPS that are extremely  democratic compared with other places I’ve worked. We have a  Joint Committee which gives students direct input into various aspects of School life. In particular, the School has ceded part of its building to form Student Spaces and given students a budget to manage them (i.e. choose furniture, equipment, etc). These are extremely popular and no doubt contribute a great deal to our healthy position in the National Student Satisfaction (NSS) Survey. I think it’s great to have students involved in this way, but we have to remember that students are not the only stakeholders in a University; we also have obligations to other bodies whose requirements may run counter to the wishes of the student body.

Anyway, these ramblings are given a bit of topicality by an item in the Times Higher recently about two student representatives on the University of Sussex Senate who resigned in protest against alleged lack of consultation by the University management. I was at the Senate meeting when they resigned, as well as the previous one where there was a lengthy discussion at which they and others were given an extremely good hearing despite the fact that the matter concerned was not to do with academic so wasn’t strictly speaking in the remit of Senate anyway.

Eventually Senate voted and the two students concerned were on the losing side. I’m sad that they subsequently decided to resign from Senate, although to be absolutely factual both were due to be replaced next academic year anyway so it was a pretty empty gesture.

The point is that democracy isn’t just about being given the chance to express your own views. It’s also about acknowledging that others might feel very differently and accepting the decision when it turns out that you lost the argument.

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Farewell, then, Leighton Andrews…

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags , , , , , , , on June 27, 2013 by telescoper

Although I no longer live in Wales I couldn’t resist commenting on the resignation, announced on Tuesday, of the Welsh Education Minister, Leighton Andrews. It seems that Mr Andrews was spotted holding a placard protesting against the planned closure of a school, a closure that results from his own policies. Personally, I think that it’s quite an imaginative move for a Minister to campaign against his own policies. It shows an open-mindedness absent in most politicians.

Leighton Andrews will probably be best remembered as the architect of the policy that students domiciled in Wales would be protected from having to pay large tuition fee rise by a system of grants, meaning that the Welsh Assembly will pick up the tab for Welsh students. They will still have to pay the “old”  fee level of £3290 per annum, but the WAG will pay the extra approx £6K charged by most Universities since the fee cap was raised. This is good news for the students of course, but the grants will be available to Welsh students not just for study in Welsh universities but wherever they choose to go. Since about 16,000 Welsh students are currently at university in England, this means that the WAG is handing over a great big chunk (up to 16,000 × £6000 = £96 million) of its hard-earned budget straight back to England. This has always seemed to me a very strange thing to do when the Welsh Government is constantly complaining that the Barnett formula doesn’t give them enough money in the first place.

What’s more, the Welsh Assembly grants for Welsh students are paid for by top-slicing the grants that HECFW makes to Welsh universities. So funding cuts for universities in Wales have been  imposed in order to subsidize English universities. This is hardly in the spirit of devolution either!

English students wanting to study in Wales will have to pay full whack, but will be paying to attend universities whose overall level of state funding is even lower than in England (at least for STEM subjects whose subsidy is protected in England). Currently about 25,000 English students study in Wales, compared with the 16,000 Welsh students who study in England, but I wonder how many of them realize that if they study England their £9K fee attracts an additional investment of £1.5K from HEFCE whereas there is no equivalent central resource supplied by HEFCW if they study in Wales? To put it another way, each £1 of tuition fee paid by a STEM student is worth £1.16 in England, but just £1 in Wales.

The other drastic implication of this policy is that HEFCW will have no money left to fund research via the QR mechanism that pertains in England (at least for the time being). I blogged about this a couple of days ago so won’t say any more today.

I don’t think any of my former colleagues in Cardiff are terribly upset to see Leighton Andrews go, but there is some nervousness about whether the replacement might be even worse. The new Education Minister is Huw Lewis. I wish him well in his new post, and hope he has the courage to question some of the decisions made by his predecessor that have had such a negative effect on education in Wales.

Anyway, in bidding farewell to Leighton Andrews I thought I’d show him all due respect, and do him the honour of presenting a look-alike. All reference to Muppets purely coincidental…

Slide1

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