HE funding

Interesting speech by Phil Willis about Higher Education (HE) funding that makes a number of very valid points about how the current funding situation is likely to influence the HE sector and, in particular, those who are currently applying for places at HE institutions.

Although he has openly criticised the Russell Group universities’ take on the recent funding cuts for being somewhat over the top, he does feel that this is not the right time to be cutting funding to Higher Education. I probably agree that using scare tactics – especially ones that are probably not demonstrably true – is not going to convince the government to reverse the proposed funding cuts, even if this decision does verge on the insane. I do also agree that now is not the time to reduce funding for Higher Education.

What is of more immediate concern is the real possibility that, despite the increase in the number of applications for university places, Russell Group universities are likely to reduce the number of places that they fill. There seems to be two reasons for this decision. One is that universities generally have a quota that sets a limit on how many places they can fill. There is currently a threat that English universities will be fined £3500 for every student over this quota. The quota essentially reflects a maximum amount of money that a university can expect to receive. If this maximum also reflects a real limit on the number of places that can reasonably be accommodated, then a fine may also make sense. It’s not fair on students if there aren’t sufficient resources for them all to get the support that they need to perform well during their degree. On the other hand, there is probably some flexibility in most programmes. Fining universities for going a few percent over quota probably achieves nothing (and effectively reduces the available resources) and the threat of such a fine probably means that universities would rather reject potentially good students than go slightly over quota.

The other reason for this reduction in places this coming year is also probably because the actual quota is not on a single year, but a total over the first 2 or 3 years. Many universities over-recruited last year, probably as a result of the financial crisis and people choosing to go to university rather than look for a job (One reason for this over-recruitment is that universities use data from previous years to work out how many students will accept their offers. To fill 100 places universities may make offers to 800 applicants. The current financial crisis means that data from previous years is not really valid and so guessing how many offers to make is very difficult). Many universities are therefore worried that if someone notices that they are coping with more students than their quota allows, their quota may be increased without a corresponding increase in funding. Balancing their overall quota by under-recruiting this coming year (and maybe next year) may make some sense, but it does mean that students who would have been accepted last year and would be accepted in future years, will be excluded to match what might be a somewhat artificial quota. It is probably also largely correct that under-recruitment this year won’t really make up – in resource terms – for the over-recruitment last year. Students in different years generally don’t sit in the same lecture theatres and don’t use the same laboratory space. It would seem reasonable for universities to argue for an exception during what are clearly exceptional times.

Something that Phil Willis’s speech highlighted is that although there is a quota for local students (essentially UK and EU) there isn’t a quota for foreign students who pay their own fees. The under recruitment this coming year probably means that universities can fill what will essentially be spare places by making more offers to foreign students (assuming they can attract them). Having foreign students in our universities is, in my view, generally a good thing. They tend to be quite good students so have a positive effect on those around them, and they bring extra money into the HE sector (and in return hopefully get a valuable degree). However, the more foreign students in our universities, the fewer local students we can accept. Under-recruiting local students this year and effectively freeing up places that can be filled by foreign students seems wrong to me, especially if those being excluded would have been accepted in the recent past and would be accepted in the near future.

What is more, there must be some value associated with our graduates. It has been argued that Physics, for example, underpins something like 6% (~ £100 billion) of the UK economy. If we graduate 3000 Physics students a year each of whom work for 30 years, there will be something like 100000 Physics graduates in the UK economy at any one time. One could then argue that each graduate underpins about £1 million. This is clearly an oversimplification and increasing the number of Physics graduates isn’t going increase the UK economy by £1 million per graduate. Foreign students also, of course, bring new money into the UK, which is clearly a good thing. However, reducing the number of local physics graduates could, however, have a very detrimental effect on the economy since there must be some minimum needed to sustain this part of the economy. There must be a point at which increasing the number of foreign students – at the expense of local students – could damage the UK economy. The same must be true in other areas and reducing the intake of local students, particularly in the sciences, at a time when we need to stimulate the economy seems like a potentially damaging decision. It feels like another short-sighted decisions that will appear to save money in the short term (although even this may not be true) but potentially cost us in the long term.

I think I understand why universities are doing this. It may even be true that during these difficult financial times, predicting how many students will accept offers is very difficult. Over-recruiting again could be very damaging if we don’t have the resources to accommodate all the incoming students and so under-recruiting may well the sensible option. I do, however, feel that we will be disadvantaging students who won’t get a university place simply because of the year they finish school. Although I don’t necessarily think the current situation will lead to a sudden change in the ratio of foreign to local students, I do think we have to be very careful about the balance between foreign and local students. Foreign students do bring money into the UK economy now (in exchange for a good degree), but local students contribute to the economy for the rest of their lives. We have to make sure that we get this balance right.

As an aside, I believe that Phil Willis is not intending on standing again at the next election which is, I think, a great shame. From what I’ve seen, he’s been a very good chairman of the Science and Technology committee and I find his views very sensible and well informed. He also seems to be well regarded and has some influence. It is possible that his criticism of the cuts to research and HE funding could have some impact. I hope that we get a few more equally sensible MPs after the upcoming election.

STFC Fellowship debacle?

There’s been quite a lot of anger and disappointment at today’s decision to cut all STFC Postdoctoral Fellowships (PDFs). In fairness to STFC management – and as pointed out by Paul Crowther on Twitter – the decision to cut all PDFs was probably taken by the Education and Training Careers Committee. Admittedly this was as a result of the decision last Wednesday to cut Fellowships and studentships by 25%.

Maybe I should wait a while before commenting, but since I tend to write these posts when I have a particular view about something, here goes. I don’t know how many STFC studentships are awarded each year (my suspicion is that it is more than 100), but in the past there have been 12 Advanced Fellowships (AFs) and 12 PDFs awarded each year – shared between Astronomy, Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics. A 25% reduction means a cut of more than 25 studentships and reducing the AFs and PDFs each from 12 to 9 (I’m assuming here that awarding 6 AFs last year was an anomaly) .

The impression that I have gathered (mainly from Twitter to be honest) is that the reason for today’s decision is to protect the AFs and studentships. An AF probably costs slightly more than a PDF, but cutting something like 4 PDFs can probably fund 3 AFs. Each PDF can also fund something like 3 studentships, so cutting all 9 PDFs allows STFC to increase the number of AFs from 9 to 12, and increase the number of studentships by about 20 (so the reduction in studentships is less than 25%). The former decision I think I agree with.

Although the Fellowships are meant to be prestigious, the intention – at least as far as I can tell – is to award them to a reasonable fraction of those who are doing quality research, and have the potential to be the research leaders of the future. It is not intended to be a lottery. Reducing the number of Fellowships, coupled with the increased demand for jobs, was going to make it even harder to identify those who truly deserved these Fellowships. Although increasing the number of AFs from 9 to 12 isn’t going to make it perfect, it will allow them to be awarded to a larger fraction of those with great potential. Since the PDFs are aimed at early career researchers one could argue that it’s even harder to reasonably identify who amongst them will be the research leaders of the future. With a cut of 25%, it might have become too much of a lottery to make it fair and worthwhile.

Assuming that I have interpreted the decision correctly, the main problem I have is what it does to the total number of jobs that will be available next year. Instead of having 9 PDFs and 9 AFs (total 18) we will have 12 AFs (plus something like 20 additional studentship), a net reduction of 6 postdoctoral positions. Again, I’m not entirely sure how many postdoctoral positions will be funded by STFC next year (remember that most come through the grants line not through Fellowships), but I expect that this will reduce the number of postdoctoral positions by a few percent (on top of the 10% cut in grants announced last Wednesday). I would, therefore, have been much more comfortable with a decision in which the number of AFs was increased back to 12, and in which at least some of the remaining money was sent back to the grants line in order to try and preserve the number of postdoctoral positions (admittedly after the cuts announced last week). I might even have been comfortable with some money going into studentships and some going back to the grants line.

Of course at this stage all I know is that all the PDFs have been cancelled. Maybe once we know more, it will all make a bit more sense and those on the committee will have thought of all the implications of their decision. It’s of course also possible that I have completely misinterpreted the situation and will eat my words tomorrow. However, I do think that people should not necessarily be angry about the cancellation of the PDFs (apart from the fact that it took a lot of wasted effort), but they may well be right to be angry if this decision has effectively further reduced the number of postdoctoral jobs that will be available next year. Some might argue that studentships are also important and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but right now I have more sympathy with existing young researchers than I do for as yet unknown undergraduates who still have to apply for a PhD studentship.

Degrees from 2 different universities

Not many people are reading this blog, which may actually be quite a good thing since it is turning into a bit of a personal core dump. Someone did, however, end up here after doing a search about whether or not they should get degrees from 2 different universities. I don’t know the answer to this, but it did remind me of some discussions I’ve had in my own department about attracting and keeping good PhD students.

A few years ago – prior to my arrival back in the UK – it was apparently fairly common to encourage students not to apply for a PhD place at the same university from which they got their undergraduate degree. The idea, which is probably quite reasonable, is that it would be advantageous to study at more than one university and if everyone does this, good students will ultimately be shared around evenly. This, however, seems to have changed a little. More and more departments are starting to offer PhD places to their own good students. This is probably because we have many more places to fill than was the case a decade or so ago. Trying to fill these places with potentially good students can be hard, and so if you can attract a few good students from different universities, and offer places to some of your own good undergraduates, you will do better than if you encourage your own students to go elsewhere.

Of course, the above policy will only work for a short while, since eventually all departments will be trying to keep as many of their own good students as possible. This may not seem to make much difference but I think it has the potential to make future generations very narrow. Not only do different departments focus in slightly different areas, they also have different research philosophies and practices. Exposing students to a wide range of different topics and different research practices and styles will help our future research leaders to have both a broad understanding of their general area, as well as a detailed understanding of their particular topic. It’s not that those remaining at a single university will not have a broad understanding, but it may be harder to gain that if they’ve never been anywhere else.

I should at least acknowledge that I actually did all my degrees at a single university, but did hold postdoctoral and faculty positions at a number of different universities and in a number of different countries. This too can help – I think – develop breadth and an understanding of different possible research styles. I do think that studying and working in different universities and countries can be very advantageous. It does, however, have some side effects and can disadvantage those who are not able to easily move around – although that is probably a topic for a future post.

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.

The value of a PhD

As I mentioned in my first post, I am an academic at a British university.   As many people are probably aware, the number of students going to University in the UK has increased dramatically in the last decade or so. Although this a subject that could be debated at length, this is not the subject of this post.  What concerns me is the apparent desire to increase the number of students doing PhDs.  My impression of why this is happening is that some – politicians for example – believe that industry likes people with PhDs and therefore we should generate more of them. Although I can quite easily believe that people who have done PhDs and then gone into in industry have generally done well, it’s not obvious that this implies that we should generate more people with PhDs.

One of the reasons I feel that simply generating more PhDs is not the right approach is that – in my view – there are primarily two reasons why people with PhDs do well in industry. One is that a PhD teaches skills that will be useful in whatever career a PhD graduate ends up choosing.  The other is that these people are in general highly creative, motivated, and academically gifted. What, I presume, industry really likes is creative, motivated people and if they have the skills that a PhD teaches them, even better. If there are plenty of people with these basic skills who wanted to do PhDs I would have no real problem with increasing the number of PhDs. It is my view, however, that although in some academic fields there may be plenty of potentially talented PhD students, it is generally not the case (or at least if there are plenty of potentially talented PhD students, they are not clamouring to do PhDs in these fields).

The concern I have, therefore, is that universities will feel pressured to increase the number of students graduating with PhDs and to do so will select students who are not particularly suited to the degree.  Currently, at least in my field, a PhD student is expected – with some help from their supervisor – to work independently and ideally to take control of their project and make it their own. A PhD student is therefore, to a certain extent, someone who could later have an academic career. It doesn’t matter if they don’t actually go on to have an academic career, their abilities and skills will be valuable assets in whatever career they choose to follow. 

There are some,  however, who feel that  a PhD should simply teach students certain useful research skills because this is what UK industry wants.  It may well be true that UK industry would benefit from an increase in the number of people with research skills, but it is not completely clear that the best way to do this is to increase the number of PhD graduates. It is my opinion that it would be better to introduce degrees (such as research Masters) that are shorter than PhDs and focus on teaching research skills, and leave the PhD as a degree for those particularly interested in independent research and potentially interested in a career in academia.  This would protect the value of a PhD degree and still increase the number of graduates with valuable research skills.

A concern I have had in writing this post is that – if anyone actually reads it – it will be interpreted as an argument for keeping PhDs selective and exclusive, and that is certainly not the case.  I have no particular issue with there being more PhD students as long as they have the necessary skills and abilities to carry out a PhD.   My basic argument is that if UK industry would benefit from an increase in the number of people with basic research skills (as I suspect it would) we should have degrees specifically designed to teach these skills rather than potentially damaging a degree that has already proven its value and that does more than simply teach research skills.