Money Makes the World Go Round

It seems that we academics help to add £59b to the economy. Strange how I have had to fight all my life for a simple piece of the pie. Who makes this money then when it patently is not me?

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Universities ‘worth £59bn to UK’

The study says universities make a substantial impact on the economy

Universities in the UK are worth £59bn for the economy, says a report into the economic impact of higher education.

The report, based on figures for 2007-8, highlights the growing role of universities as major employers and revenue earners.

Universities created, directly or indirectly, over 668,500 jobs – or 2.6% of the workforce, says the report.

The figures follow the launch of the government’s blueprint to increase the economic importance of universities.

‘Substantial industry’

The overall figure of a university sector worth £59bn represented an increase of 25% compared to four years before.

The study found the revenue earned by UK universities – for example by consultancy work, intellectual property income or hosting conferences – stood at £23.4bn, comparable to the printing and publishing industry.

It also suggested that by attracting foreign students the sector generated £2.3bn in 2007-08 in off-campus expenditure.

In terms of spending and supporting local economies, the university sector bought £19.5bn worth of goods and services produced in the UK.

The study, produced for Universities UK by researchers at Strathclyde University, concluded that higher education was a “substantial industry, with a substantial impact on the national economy”.

“It is increasingly recognised in the UK that the sector has become a core part of the economic infrastructure of the country and its regions, generating employment and output, attracting export earnings and contributing to gross domestic product,” says the report.

“The strength of the sector and its effectiveness in generating economic activity become all the more important in an economic recession when other sectors are contracting.”

Employers

The report found universities directly provided 314,632 full-time jobs, representing more than 1.2% of the workforce in 2007.

And for every full-time job in universities themselves, more than one other full-time job was generated through “knock-on effects”, the report said.

“Their importance as employers is well recognised at the regional level, since they are frequently among the largest employers in their regions,” the report said.

“Universities are recognised for providing skilled and relatively high paid employment and attracting highly qualified people to an area (which in itself can contribute to increasing a region’s capacity to absorb new ideas and innovations, making it more competitive).

“However, they are also important in providing employment in occupations across the entire skills spectrum.”

Economic importance

Ursula Kelly of the University of Strathclyde, the report’s co-author and director of the project, said: “This new report confirms the growing economic importance of higher education to the UK.

“The results highlight the increasing policy significance of higher education, both in terms of its contribution to GDP and its relative effectiveness in generating economic impact.”

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said: “Universities are critical to this country’s economic performance contributing about £59bn.

“This importance will only grow over the next decade which is why we are publishing a blueprint for the future of higher education and the role it will play in securing the country’s long-term prosperity.”

Professor Steve Smith, president of Universities UK, said: “These figures show that the higher education sector is one of the UK’s most valuable industries.

“Our universities are unquestionably an outstanding success story for the economy.”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8340552.stm

Running Interference

It seems that we are about to find ourselves being interfered with by the govt.

In an article today they say “Research money should focus on science clusters, and teaching must improve.” you know what that means?  Roll back to the old divide with polytechnics. Only the old universities will be able to support ‘clusters’ of excellence, particularly when it will now be about who quotes whom.

On the other hand, I’ve always said that teaching needs to improve and so does the infrastructure around it. How many times have I had to struggle with IT equipment that I had to take to the room myself, set up and get working with the ‘odd’ room system. I think the notion of students as real consumers will scare the pants off some of my colleagues. No longer will they be able to go to a lecture and waffle, or not update their lectures for 10 years.

Naturally this creates a two tier system and from the Labour govt as well!

 

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University ‘merit tests’ to grow

Lord Mandelson wants closer links between business and universities

A-levels do not suffice to recognise the aptitude and potential of all those who should benefit from a university education, the government says.

A framework for higher education in England over the next decade says social mobility must be reinvigorated.

Innovation and Skills Secretary Lord Mandelson said priority would go to new routes into higher education, especially for older students.

Research money should focus on science clusters, and teaching must improve.

Students, as consumers, needed to have far more information about courses, such as teaching quality and future employability.

Lord Mandelson said he would also shortly be announcing the promised independent review of tuition fees.

He said that would seek “a balanced approach without placing a burden on any single source of funding”.

Families and schools

Launching the framework document, Higher ambitions – the future of universities in a knowledge economy, Lord Mandelson said ministers’ vision was one of strong, autonomous institutions with diverse missions.

But they needed to promote opportunity more widely to those who could benefit, and to narrow the attainment gap between the higher and lower socio-economic groups highlighted by Alan Milburn’s report earlier this year.

He told reporters: “What we are saying is that nobody should be disadvantaged or penalised on the basis of the families that they came from or the schools they attended, and the way in which a simple assessment based on A-level results might exclude them.”

This was not a class issue: “There are middle class pupils who don’t perform well, that have a strong aptitude and strong potential,” he said.

He said many prestigious institutions already used contextual data about applicants’ backgrounds to consider their aptitude and potential alongside their academic attainment.

The Director of Fair Access, Sir Martin Harris, has been asked to produce a report next spring on how more can be done to widen access to the most highly selective institutions for those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Lord Mandelson added that this was not something that he could compel universities to do and he was not seeking to dictate or control their admissions policies.

Arts and humanities

He denied that the call for stronger ties between universities and industry, with higher education as a driver of economic recovery and growth, was too “utilitarian”.

“I would be very disappointed if people saw it in that way,” he said.

“There is public value in every subject and academic discipline provided by universities.

“They are there to provide us with both civilisation and competitiveness.”

Higher Education Minister David Lammy said the arts and humanities also enriched the country – but it had fallen behind so much prior to 1997 that a Save British Science campaign had been launched.

Lord Mandelson said “Stem” courses – science, technology, engineering and maths – cost more to run so attracted higher investment, while there was an economic need to stimulate demand for them.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8339454.stm

Notions of Emotions

I saw this training session advertised last week:

“Emotional Intelligence for Managers”

I wondered how many of the managers I’ve had have ever been on this course? Not many I would suspect. They seem to have had the emotional intelligence of an amoeba (with apologies to amoeba).

The essential truth about managers is that they cannot be bothered to, or maybe they are not able to, differentiate between staff members. To them we are all the same, robots of lecturers, all thinking the same, acting the same, responsive to the same things. This is the fallacy of management they still teach in books. Unfortunately modern society made us individuals to subserviate ourselves to capitalism as isolated individuals. That means we are not the same and need to be treated differently. Anyone can see that. Or should I say, anyone earning £80k should be able to see that as part of their management training.

It does of course require managers to put in effort to deal with their subordinates fairly. Unfortunately most managers are not able to cope with the dual role of money manager and people manager. After all, people are harder to deal with and you really need to put your heart into it. You need to anticipate their needs to get the best out of them. It’s almost like a good marriage that lasts.

I’m not talking about charisma here, anyone can have that and it doesn’t treat people differently, but forces them to conform to the will of the manager. I’m talking about the manager earning their £80k by being proactive in shepherding their charges and protecting them from the vagaries of senior management. This encourages staff to be creative and give their best effort.

For all the new fangled management techniques that come out every few years or so that talk of the employee as a valuable resource and a person, they always miss the real point; that employees are individual people, not a mass, and have to be dealt with as such on a daily basis. Capitalism unfortunately avoids that like the plague as it costs money and doesn’t view people as raw material inputs that leads to profit.

Even those organisations like Google who allegedly provide a ‘fun’ place to work have high capitalist expectations, which they expect to be fulfilled. For now it works, but what it expects from staff means that employees are still not seen as individuals, it’s more akin to the charismatic organisation that the caring one.

Maybe I’ll ask my manager if they have signed up for the course.

Lottery of Life

While I always laud the opportunity to increase equality of opportunity, in some instances good intentions are wide of the mark.

To suggest as the UCU does that there is a postcode lottery for HE, is just taking a broad term, more usually, and more accurately used in health, and applying it to HE to get a big headline. On this occasion, it’s probably to detract from the fact that the UCU rejected a very sensible pay offer in these straightened times. When a lot of people are losing their jobs, the UCU wants a high pay rise across the board. Not that I’m against a pay rise, but I don’t see it as anything other than vulgar to be seeking a massive pay rise this year as long as the VC’s and all the other desk monkeys are in agreement and stop having a personal beano when others cant.

Nevertheless, back to the postcode lottery. It seems obvious to some of us that certain areas of the city will not exhibit the same graduation levels as others. For a start, the whole purpose of going to university is to better oneself, to improve. Why does the UCU think that begins and ends at education. Most people consider moving out of a less than salubrious area a first priority over education, and do so at the earliest opportunity – usually before their children reach the age of university entrance. So naturally the more genial areas of a city will have more graduates, that’s the whole purpose of self improvement. By default, those left who do graduate do not have the ability to move out before going to university and hope to use it to do so afterwards.

Not only that, but some communities do not yet value HE as important – assuming of course that it is important. The example of Sparkbrook used below is a case in point. The mainly Asian community comes from the the groups of Asian society that traditionally do not value education. That’s not to say they cant, or wont at some stage, but that they choose not to access this particular avenue. It’s not that they aren’t able to access HE, it’s that it is not a priority.

The real fallacy here is that everyone ‘must’ want to give their children the HE experience, that those children are crying out for the HE experience, if only. Some people don’t see the value and forcing them to accept it is as bad as colonialism. The assumption here that our way is the best way is a rather arrogant and patronising one.

It may be that all children are better off with a degree, but look what happened to ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels when too many people had them, no one valued them any longer. One day soon it will be necessary to have an MSc or MA and so the process moves on and on.

A cynic might be tempted to say that the UCU is pushing for greater HE access so that it can bolster its position through greater numbers of academics and a better ability to bend the ear of government.

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‘Stark split’ in education levels

By Sean Coughlan Education reporter, BBC News

Deptford has more graduate residents than Oxford or Winchester

The qualifications gap between the most and least educated areas in Britain is growing wider, says a lecturers’ union.

Richmond Park in south-west London has the highest proportion of graduates, 64%, compared with the lowest, 10% in Hodge Hill, Birmingham.

“The current divide between the haves and have-nots is growing,” says UCU general secretary Sally Hunt.

The lowest-achieving areas are found in industrial cities of England’s North and Midlands, and parts of East Anglia.

Polarised

The government has pursued the cause of social mobility and widening university numbers, but Ms Hunt says the survey shows “the problem is even more deep-seated than previously thought”.

This study of England, Scotland and Wales reveals a picture of stark divisions in educational achievement – measured in terms of adults of working age with degrees and those who have no qualifications.

Across Britain as a whole it shows that on average there are now more than twice as many people with degrees – 29% – as there are without any qualifications – 12.4%.

But behind these averages, based on the populations in parliamentary constituencies, there are increasingly polarised experiences.

The top 20 constituencies in terms of degree-holders have increased their graduate numbers on average by more than 8% to 49% between 2005 and 2008 – while the 20 constituencies with the lowest proportions of graduates have fallen from 12.6% to 12.1%.

The figures for people without any academic qualifications are as deeply divided.

In Sparkbrook in Birmingham, 37% of the working-age population have no qualifications of any kind – while in Oxford West, the figure is less than 2%.

There can be wide differences in the same city. In Sheffield, almost 60% of people in the Hallam constituency are degree-holders, while in Brightside the figure is 15%.

In Glasgow North, 53% hold degrees, while in Glasgow East, the figure is 16%.

The gaps in different parts of Cardiff is much narrower, with the proportions of graduates ranging between 43% and 36%. And in Edinburgh, the divisions are less extreme, ranging between 54% and 39%.

The lowest-achieving areas are concentrated in the industrial cities of the north and midlands of England, particularly the West Midlands – but also include parts of East Anglia, such as Great Yarmouth and South West Norfolk.

Capital appeal

The survey also has striking figures showing how London has become a magnet for the highest educated workers. Among the 25 areas with the highest numbers of graduates, 17 are in London.

MOST DEGREES Richmond Park Bristol West Kensington and Chelsea Hampstead and Highgate Hornsey and Wood Green Full list of rankings and data

This influx of graduates creates some unexpected inner-city results.

Deptford in south London has 49% of its population with degrees – a higher proportion than leafy areas such as Henley, South West Surrey or Epsom. This traditionally working class constituency has more resident graduates than Oxford.

Hackney North in east London, with 50% of its population with degrees, is better educated than more affluent locations such as Winchester and Cheltenham.

FEWEST DEGREES Birmingham, Hodge Hill Doncaster North Walsall North Bootle Harwich Full list of rankings and data

But this snapshot also shows the social divide within inner-London’s communities, which the survey describes as a “tale of two cities”.

Hackney North might have well above average numbers of graduates, but it also has above average numbers without any qualifications at all, these two groups living side by side.

Within the London area, the lowest achieving constituencies are not in the inner cities, but are clustered on the eastern outskirts. Romford has the lowest proportion of graduates while the highest level of people without any qualifications is in Barking.

The most successful areas in London are gathered in the south west – where in places such as Richmond, Putney, Battersea, Tooting and Wimbledon a majority of working-age people have degrees.

‘Healthier and wealthier’

This is unlike any other city – not a single constituency in Birmingham, Liverpool Newcastle, Southampton or Leeds has such a graduate majority. There is only one seat in Manchester, Withington, which reaches this.

Getting a university degree remains a key indicator for the likelihood of getting a well-paid job – and a report by former minister Alan Milburn on social mobility called for greater efforts to widen access to higher education.

“Education holds the key to improving social mobility, tackling poverty and extending opportunity for all,” said the UCU’s Sally Hunt.

“Those with the greatest access to qualifications tend to be healthier, wealthier and more active citizens.”

But she says that at present where you live will “largely determine your chance to educational success”.

A spokesperson said for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the government in England “has worked hard to widen participation with the overall number of students from lower socio-economic groups going to university at its highest point in seven years”.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8311447.stm

Dress 2 Impress

Saw this today. It seems a far cry from the old days when to wear scruffy clothes was frowned upon.

Sorry, did you hear me say frowned upon? Well, yes. It’s never been the right thing to wear scruffy clothes at university, unless you were about in the 1970s. I can remember as a young academic wearing casual clothes, nothing outrageous, just casual and being looked down on by my colleagues as somehow, not professional, not keeping the side up or pretending I was still a student.

Back then I didn’t really care what they thought, it didn’t stop me from doing my work and being good at it. It was just their sensibilities being bent out of shape. Much as it is when anything that doesn’t fit a stereotype is visible to others. I suppose it has much to do with expectations – “how can a scruffy, unkempt person be any good at anything? If they were any good, they would have spent some time presenting themselves better.” This is is the business “dress it up as a silk purse and the punters wont know its a sow’s ear” school of logic. Unfortunately most of us subscribe to it – you wouldn’t necessarily trust a doctor who hadn’t shaved or had bad BO. That’s unfortunate because it forces us all to conform to unnatural stereotypes when the time spent creating false images could be better spent doing the job or feeling less stressed about doing it.

Such is the life of the emperors clothes.

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Lecturers get ’scruffy’ jeans ban
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter

History Man, 1981
What would campus radicals in the History Man have made of a dress code?

Lecturers have been told they will be sent home to change if they come to work in jeans or scruffy trousers.

The UCU lecturers’ union is protesting against Birmingham Metropolitan College acting like the “fashion police”.

The dress code for staff requires tidy hair, business suits and skirts, no visible tattoos, no slogans on T-shirts or “ostentatious ear-rings”.

The college defended the rules saying it was “important that our staff present a professional image”.

Once stereotyped with an image of fading 1970s fashion, lecturers are now being told they could face disciplinary measures if they fail to comply with the dress code.

‘Outrageous styles’

Lecturers are being told to wear a “business suit; smart jacket and co-ordinating trousers or skirt; smart shirt/blouse/top and trousers or skirt; smart dress”.

Hair must now be “neat, tidy and well groomed. Outrageous styles and colours are not acceptable”.

“Unconventional” jewellery is barred and earrings must “not be excessive, obtrusive or ostentatious” and any tattoos must be covered up.

The ban on jeans also extends to “scruffy/torn trousers; shorts; sweatshirts or t-shirts with slogans”.

The lecturers’ union says that staff have been “astonished” by the dress code imposed by the college management – with claims that it reflects a “Victorian attitude” to staff.

UCU representative Nick Varney says that it “undermines the professionalism of staff, they can determine for themselves what’s suitable when they’re teaching”.

Staff at the college are “seriously angry” about the dress code, he says. “We’re not bank managers.”

The college guidelines emphasise the importance of the staff having an appearance that “promotes the values” of a professional and business-like organisation.

“Staff must adhere to a smart and conventional standard of dress and appearance,” the rules stipulate.

And a spokeswoman for the college says the code was published “as a result of requests from staff as to what was acceptable ‘work wear’”.

“We deliver qualifications to over 8,000 16-19 learners and 30,000 adult learners, along with meeting the training needs of a range of businesses – it is therefore important that our staff present a professional image and a dress code is one of the policies we have always asked them to adhere to,” says the college spokeswoman.

The setting out of a dress code is the latest example of higher education being put under pressure to be more business-like.

Earlier this year students in Manchester set up a hotline to contact if lecturers were more than 10 minutes late.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8292429.stm

Student’s Today

Branford Marsalis’ take on students today.

Judge for yourself if he is saying something with value in it about students.

Don’t Rock the Boat

I see HEFCE are again questioning whether letting academics adjudge the standards of other’s marking is the right way to go. They argue there is no way of establishing the relative merits of  degrees with any consistency.

I think they may find the proof is in the practice. Most of us are capable of seeing which grade band a script should be marked in; it’s just the fine tuning of the mark that’s important. Is it a 51 or a 59 is where the wide variation comes in.

Having said this of course, it also seems churlish to suggest that academics are the best people to adjudge the quality and acceptability of submissions to journals and publishers. Most people can tell a good read, but being able to adjudge the content is a different matter. Yet careers are made and broken on this rather fluid ability of academics to pluck ‘quality’ out of the air. Mostly this translates as “does the author have the same views as me?” and “Do I find these views acceptable, covering the sources I might use?”

In the end getting published is down to something other than the content you write. Of course if you are on the treadmill of publishing you want to follow the ‘right’ way to get published, it stands to reason. So no one is going to rock the boat they want to climb aboard.

MORE FOR LESS

I see that Brown has promised an expansion of university places again in his party conference speech. Shame that he hasn’t backed it up with the money to deliver it.  I know for a fact that my university has had to make 20-odd redundancies this year to keep on an even keel. If we take on more students next year we wont have enough staff to cope. Already this year we are struggling to find classrooms big enough to fit everyone in. I cant imagine what it will be like if class sizes rise again next year.

Brown – get yourself down to a university and spend a week there to see what’s it’s really like.

Research My Navel

I’ve often wondered about my colleagues desire to do research at the expense of students and teaching. It’s as if students don’t really matter and they will pick up some benefit from research off lecturers/researchers coattails as they waft through the lecture hall – at least when they deign to appear. That’s the staff by the way. In my experience, professors feel they have the right to cancel lectures on a whim because they cant really be bothered to turn up.

Now it seems even the press has realised that teaching is a poor second to the education progress of students (see the section titled “silly science” below). For most academics being a teacher of knowledge and helping people to achieve is not enough. No, they need to feel loved, wanted, respected, admired, valued, worshipped by their peers. After all, they spend their days teaching the work of other people. Why, they argue, shouldn’t they be taught in other classrooms?

Well, the reason is that frankly they probably don’t have a lot to say that makes sense or perhaps because their egos usually get in the way. Anybody who feels that they should be revered is probably not worth the time of day.

Having read the work of so called revered authors in my field there is probably some truth in the argument that that most people are 90% bull****, 10% worth listening to. Most of them repeat the same research or apply the same methods to different areas, but really only provide the illumination of a firefly to any real problems.

Call me cynical if you wish, but the only axe I have to grind is that their unfailing incompetence in teaching and administration has forced me to sort it out for the sake of students. It seems that old saying is true when applied to them, “Jack of all trades, master of none”.

We overlook what education is really about at our peril. It is a job after all, just like any other and was designed to drag people out of ignorance and poverty, kicking and screaming if necessary. Pointless research to boots one’s career does nothing to meet those aims. Unfortunately for most people, the emperor is wearing rather natty togs this year……

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Is there any point to ‘frivolous’ academic research?

Is there anything to be learned from academic research on how to make the perfect slice of toast and whether monkeys can write Shakespeare?

If you sit monkeys at a computer, will they type the works of the Bard? No, they will partially destroy the machine, use it as a lavatory and mostly type the letter “s”. It took university researchers one month and £2,000 of Arts Council England money to find this out.

Changes are now being proposed for how public money is awarded for university research. In future funding for researchers might be assessed in part on the impact their work has had in social, economic and cultural terms.

There are reports that if such changes are introduced it could put an end to seemingly trivial research projects – which often make great headlines in the newspapers but seem to have little, if any, intellectual rigour. But is this fair? Are populist papers just a waste of time?

GET THE POINT? The side effects of sword swallowing and other studies What three pieces of research taught us. Read more here

While there is plenty of sniffiness about headline-grabbing research stunts in the fusty corridors of academe, there are many willing to defend this type of work. The findings seized on by the media – often with the help of sharp-minded university publicity folk – are often not the aim of research, just a by-product of it, say those in the field. An academic’s life work will not solely be about finding the formula for the perfect cheese sarnie.

“These more trivial findings often come out of long-term work on much more serious stuff,” says Paul Cotrell, of the University College Union.

“Or a professor might do something frivolous to promote a university in the media or the course they teach. It’s a brilliant way of getting headlines, but they are not being employed just to find out the formula for the perfect cheese sandwich.”

This formula, which all comes down to the thickness of the type of cheese you are using, was in fact funded by the British Cheese Council, and carried out by Dr Len Fisher at Bristol University. He had previously researched the issue of the perfect way to dunk a biscuit.

“Often industry funds this type of stuff,” says a spokesman for the Science Media Centre, which promotes science in the news. “It usually doesn’t involve much time on the part of the academic but earns them money and gets their name and university in the paper.”

Silly science

For many academics, research is the most prized part of their job – a chance to broaden their knowledge in the hope it will lead to breakthroughs in understanding and contribute to the wider intellectual discourse. While populist research papers can make a splash in the news, its in academic journals and books that their work is evaluated by peers.

While it may be a mysterious world to those on the outside, in one way it operates like most other industries – it is highly competitive. A key to career progression is the “impact factor” and getting published and your name known.

“A high impact factor is important because it means more kudos and respect within the research world, which can translate into more funding for other work,” says the centre’s spokesman.

Celebrity does not further careers in academic research, excellent research does Paul Cotrell University College Union

Such studies also get “unsexy” subjects like science in the media, making it accessible to the man in the street.

“The sillier aspect of science is often publicised and that does have benefits,” says Nick Dusic, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering in the UK.

“But most of the work that is done is serious and about advancing knowledge. That needs to be covered by the media as well. There is a place for both.”

Reputation needs to be carefully managed though, as being too populist can lead to prejudice and handicap someone’s career.

“Celebrity does not further careers in academic research, excellent work does,” says Mr Cotrell.

Missed message

In 2003, the papers were full of reports of a formula for the “perfect slice of toast”.

The man behind the research, Bronek Wedzicha, a food scientist at Leeds University, appeared on news bulletins in the UK and abroad, explaining the optimum temperatures of bread and butter for the tastiest toast.

“The equation, which was spurious, captured the imagination but we didn’t get the flavour-release message across. It was aimed at the food industry and scientists working in flavour science and people who are formulating food and trying to work out what properties they need.

The frivolous can come from the serious

“What we had done with butter applied more widely to food formulations, the way flavours are released and flavours absorbed by bread or other foods like potatoes.”

Butter manufacturer Lurpak wanted some publicity and funded the research to the tune of £10,000 – half of it funded the toast research, half went to the university to fund projects like student scholarships.

“We wouldn’t work exclusively to do PR, we have to have an economic return, which in this case was a greater understanding of flavour release mechanism,” says Professor Wedzicha. “We got £10,000 and Lurpak got some very good PR out of it.”

For about two years, academics have had to demonstrate the impact of research, he says. But it’s very easy to make a joke out of food stories because everyone thinks they know about food and it’s very easy to rubbish the science.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8270688.stm

Aid

Thought you would be interested to see just how muc… little we spend on education as a nation.

The CBI argues that while UK higher education funding is below the OECD average, the portion of that funding spent on student financial support is well above average