EPSRC studentships

I’m somewhat uncertain about how to react to the news that EPSRC is cutting the number of studentships by about 30%. If you’ve read some of my earlier posts you’ll know that I feel that we may be producing too many PhD graduates. This isn’t because I don’t believe that PhDs are useful, it’s because I’m not sure it’s necessary to have as many PhD graduates as we currently have. It’s also because there are, in my opinion, real problems with the academic career structure that is exacerbated by the large number of PhD graduates.

Many who start a PhD do so because they would like to end up doing independent research. The main way to do this is to become an academic in a university. The fraction of PhD students who can, realistically, achieve this is now very small. Some argue that this doesn’t matter because those who don’t become academics go into industry and do very well. This is absolutely fine and I have no problem with someone doing a PhD and then choosing to go into industry. A concern I have, however, is that it can still be very disheartening for those who had hoped for an academic career and didn’t realise how difficult it was to do so. We also have to be careful that we don’t discourage, because of the difficulty of having an academic career, potentially excellent researchers from starting a PhD in the first place.

The other concern I have is that some feel that PhDs should become degrees in which people are taught research skills. I sat through a meeting recently where a concern was expressed that our PhD graduates typically were not competitive internationally. Someone then responded by saying that this didn’t matter as their PhD students were snapped up by industry. That’s great, except that in my opinion a PhD from a top UK university should typically allow that person to compete for research jobs anywhere in the world. They don’t have to do so, but it should allow them to do so if they so choose. If this is no longer then case, then our PhDs are no longer degrees in which students learn to undertake independent, world-class research. I think this is a crucial aspect of a PhD, otherwise we’re wasting everyone’s time.

The solution, in my view, is to expand the number of degrees. If we introduce a research Masters degree, students could learn, in a year or two, very useful research skills that will translate very well into industry. The tops students could then go on to do PhDs and the rest could go out into industry where they could contribute greatly. This would be more cost effective and those going into industry would do so a year or two earlier than they would do if they’d done a PhD and probably with most of the research skills they would need. If the cuts to EPSRC studentships was an attempt to rebalance the system, I might be quite pleased. However, it does seem to be purely a cut because of a reduction in their budget and does not appear to be based on any sense of attempting to produce a sensible system that will address issues relating to the academic career structure without reducing the number of research trained people going into industry. Admittedly EPSRC is a research council and doesn’t have any say in the structure of degrees at UK universities. It’s unfortunate, however, that there doesn’t appear to be any attempt to try and use this as an opportunity to address issues with the degree structure and career structure in UK universities.

Dumbing down?

Quite an interesting article in the Guardian this morning suggesting that university degrees have been dumbed down in the last decade or so. This is based on a parliamentary enquiry that shows that the number of students getting first-class degrees has doubled in the last 10 years.

The report seems to suggest that different universities require different levels of effort to get similar degrees. It also suggests that the value of a good degree from a Russell Group university could be very different to the value of a good degree from a non-Russell group university (or at least one that is low on the league tables). Although there may be some merit to this, I can’t really make an informed comment since I don’t have any real experience of the standards at different universities. I would, however, be surprised if there wasn’t some truth in this.

What about the University where I work. Although I haven’t actually been there for 10 years, it doesn’t seem like the level of the material that is taught has really changed (we aren’t making the material easier). We are however replacing some content in the later years with courses that teach skills (research methods, literature surveys). I found this slightly worrying, but suspect that it is probably necessary and since it is at the 10% level, probably doesn’t really substantially change the degree.

What does seem to be happening, though, is an implicit pressure to maintain high pass rates, especially in the earlier years (this pressure does apparently become more explicit if reasonable pass rates are not achieved). Although we haven’t really changed the level of the material that is taught, we do seem to set our exams with some thought to what kind of pass rates we may want to achieve. This isn’t necessarily the overriding consideration, but does seem to play at least some kind of role. In later years this is not as crucial on an exam by exam basis because students can fail some courses and still progress or graduate. Even this, however, worries me slightly. I don’t have a problem with students not being required to pass all courses in the final year of an Honours degree (or 2 years in the case of students doing taught Masters degrees), but I think we introduce this a year too soon, when the students probably do need to have a reasonable understanding of all the material.

Do I think we are giving many more first-class degrees and as a result have dumbed down our degrees. I’m not entirely sure: it still seems pretty hard to get a first-class degree, especially a good one. The high pass rates in early years, however, probably does put students through to later years who maybe won’t cope as well as they should. We also seem reluctant to fail students in these later years since they’ve already committed so much of their time to the degree. My impression is that it may well be easier to pass an advanced science degree than it was 10 years ago, but is probably not significantly easier to get a first-class degree. This is essentially why, in an earlier post, I was arguing for more granulating in the degree structure. This way students could graduate at appropriate times and there wouldn’t be as many students in later years who were struggling to cope, but who may pass anyway because of the reluctance to fail students at this stage of their degree.

Too many university students?

Last night on BBC Radio 4 there was a programme about whether or not the UK has too many university students. I don’t remember quite who was on the panel, but it included Sally Hunt from the University and College Union (UCU) and the vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, the UK’s only private university.

I found it fairly interesting, although my 5 year old son had decided to tidy the kitchen and kept interrupting me to ask for help, so I didn’t hear as much as I would have liked. The vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham kept promoting – rather predictably – the idea that there should be more of a free market approach to Universities in the UK. I don’t really agree with this, but since I’m trying to keep this post shorter than normal, I won’t go into this here.

What I did generally agree with is that the real issue is not whether or not there are too many students in the UK, but whether or not they are getting an appropriate University education. One of the main views on the programme seemed to be that not enough students were taking science degrees. This may well be true, but the problem in my view is subtler. It seems to me that UK universities have not structured their degrees to be appropriate to the current student intake. In most science degrees it appears that students are assumed to be doing a degree that will ultimately allow them to basically be professional scientists (i.e., most students start off doing Honours degrees or Masters degrees and a Bachelor’s degree is really a failed Honours degree).

It would seem much more reasonable – in my view – to have more granularity in the system, allowing students to graduate at various stages with various different degrees. This isn’t meant to penalise any students, but simply to be more honest about different students’s abilities and skills and to then design the degree structure appropriately. This would optimise the amount of time students spend at university and also allow employers to have a much better idea of potential employees’ actual strengths and skills.