HEFCE Annual Conference 2009
Quality, access and institutional missions: Current global challenges and their future implications
David Ward, past President of the American Council on Education and former Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison
The topic of this meeting is the way in which global or national crises create both opportunities and challenges for higher education. The current global economic crisis is one of several periodic shocks that have profoundly affected higher education. In the past, the launch of Sputnik, social unrest in the late ’60s, economic stress in the late ’80s and of course the terrorist attacks of 9/11 greatly influenced US higher education and especially the relationship between the federal government and universities. ACE (American Council on Education), the association of which I was President from 2000-08, was founded in response to similar challenges. An embryonic structure was created during World War 1 to facilitate connections between strategic national interests and the potential resources of higher education. The number of associations representing the different sectors or niches of US higher education made it difficult for the national government to collaborate and negotiate with colleges and universities. With the conclusion of World War 1, ACE was formally established to improve communication among different kinds of higher educational institutions and to provide "one-stop shopping" and coordination in discussions of government policies.
Today we are confronting another crisis and we should reflect on whether this crisis and our responses to it will be different in scale and tone than those in the past. Obviously, the relationship between higher education and government is nationally specific but during the course of the current crisis it does appear that there are some shared and parallel effects. Despite variations in the directness of the government's role in higher education and in the institutional diversity of colleges and universities, most national dialogues stress a critical role for higher education in resolving the current crisis.
For some time, the kind and rate of regional economic development and especially international competitiveness within a global knowledge-based economy have been linked to investments in higher education. In many respects the funding of higher education resembles a cyclical or pendulum pattern whereby diminished public funding during a downturn is expected to be reversed as renewed economic growth increases confidence in public expenditures on higher education. We need to reflect on the depth and character of this crisis and whether the kinds of assumptions about the relationships between higher education and the global knowledge economy are appropriate to address the challenges that we now face. Will the pendulum pattern prevail or will the conditions for reinvestment differ from past experiences? In each of the most recent swings of the pendulum, renewed investments in higher education have been associated with heightened accountability to document enhanced expectations and a drift towards a more instrumental view of the value of higher education. The appeal of accountability is now global as national rankings of various indicators of educational attainment have become part of the dialogue about the relationship between higher education and social and economic well-being. To the degree that the higher education sector itself limits its justifications for reinvestments to the needs of national economic competitiveness, we inadvertently narrow the broader intellectual purposes of higher education including commitments to long-term pure research. Irrespective of shifts in the priorities of higher education, the circumstances that made it possible for reinvestments to succeed each prior crisis may no longer prevail. Is it plausible to imagine that the pendulum has fallen off its pin and that we need to consider that the conditions of prior reinvestments no longer prevail?
The Demise of Old Assumptions:
1. Universal low-cost access
While there will be a variety of national policies designed to address the current global crisis, it is likely that there will be a broader recognition of the degree to which the expectations and costs of increasing access to higher education have outrun the assumptions of the public policies upon which they were based. These policies attempted to combine a commitment to extremely high levels of access to higher education including continuing higher education for adults with an equally ambitious agenda to support research capacity. These aspirations were most prevalent in the United States immediately following the end of World War 2 and over the past half century they became an international framework for expanding higher education. In the case of the United States, the GI Bill of Rights provided the funding for the first surge in enrolments but subsequently there were both federal and state commitments to assist students and their families in paying the cost of higher education. It was never clear what ratio of the population would represent mass higher education but eventually the cost of increased access outran the political will to maintain what amounted to a general entitlement to extremely low tuition.
The genesis of high-access policies occurred at a time when perhaps less than 15% of the traditional college-age population participated in higher education and when older returning adult students were relatively rare. Under these circumstances, the magnitude of the public responsibility to support the entire cost of higher education were manageable. Grants and subsidies sustained low tuition. Low-cost higher education was viewed as a democratic vision and as a foundation for generational social mobility but the initial beneficiaries of enhanced low-cost access were overwhelmingly from the middle class. Minority populations, women, and more broadly low-income groups remained under-represented throughout this low-tuition higher education regime.
Paradoxically, in the more recent phases of expanded access, efforts to address various kinds of under-representation have occurred at a time when the growing cost of access has stressed both the fiscal resources and the public commitment to universal low cost higher education. Discussions about access to higher education now include the possibility of tuition fees as a necessary personal or family contribution to the cost of higher education, but exactly how the individual and public contributions should be divided remains unclear. Similarly, discussions of financial aid policies that at one time were almost exclusively direct grants are now focussed on loans. Consequently the most deprived segments of society face many financial obstacles in their efforts to access higher education. Political resistance to the expanded role of tuition, however, is still based on the original mid-twentieth century concept of a universal entitlement to mass higher education but the same constituency is also committed to fiscal policies that make it impossible for public subsidies to meet to extraordinary cost of mass higher education.
2. Uniform Standards
Discussions of the new cost environment of higher education have also become inextricably linked to concerns about the quality of higher education and specifically student performance. Another prevailing assumption about mass higher education was that it would be possible to double the proportion of school-leavers attending college or university with no change in average academic performance. We know that variability in preparation for higher education is influenced by secondary school quality, parental income and status, family values and host of other factors, and since none of these variables have drastically changed it does seem reasonable to expect a greater variability in initial academic performance in higher education. This variability is usually measured in relation to some general set of competencies but as the proportion of secondary school students and also of adult learners has increased, more students will exhibit variable strengths and weaknesses across a range of competencies and subjects. They will also exhibit a greater variability in the time it takes to attain either minimum standards or higher levels of competency. It may be possible to expect individuals to attain an age-based minimum standard but it is extremely unlikely that there is a standardized age-based measure of higher-level performance. Mass higher education may require us to confront the variability of competencies rather than raising expectations about some uniform age-specific performance across a wide range of competencies and subjects.
In the United States, concerns about quality focus on remedial education in the first year of college or employer complaints about initial professional competencies. While improvements in the academic expectations and performance of secondary school students are critical, we must also recognize the social challenges of schools in areas where poverty is endemic, where high immigration is associated with limited capacities in English language, or indeed, where the fiscal priorities do not provide adequate resources for schools. Do we punish inadequately-prepared students or do we in fact decide that, with the right kind of remedial intervention, we can confront a major consequence of the rapid expansion of access to higher education? Mass higher education will engage a more diverse range of student abilities and we have not customised our system to deal with that outcome nor have we confronted the public expectation that mass higher education will require some adjustments to cope with a more variable student body.
Mass higher education has created both a cost problem and a quality problem but both problems are defined in terms of the unfulfilled performance expectations developed in the mid 20th century. These expectations assume that mass higher education can be achieved without serious debates about the fiscal capacity to provide low tuition as a general entitlement and about coping with a higher variability of standards and preparation. These related considerations have to be confronted and the higher education sector needs to be as engaged in this task as are policy makers. We should more forcefully engage the debate about the often extremely instrumental assumptions about mass higher education. If our assumptions need to be modified or abandoned, then the pendulum of cyclical changes between cuts and reinvestment may no longer have an "anchoring pin".
A single institutional model has and will not meet the demands of mass higher education. Institutional diversity has begun to meet the needs of increasingly varied levels of student preparation, performance and specialization. This diversity of institutional missions has proceeded furthest in the US but it is also present elsewhere. We do need to explore more completely the range of missions within higher education institutions and especially how to establish strategic niches within the increasingly variable demands for higher education. Judgments about excellence or quality are then based upon the degree to which any specific niche meets its strategic purpose. Since institutional diversity might result in the "streaming" of students it is critical to facilitate inter-institutional transfer when appropriate. In any event, institutional diversity is not confined to differences in student preparation or aptitude at some particular age since even precocious students have preferences with respect to institutional character. While institutional diversity has been explored most completely in the US, the global drive towards mass higher education and the global reach of the current economic crisis will clearly amplify the problems of cost and quality and alternative national solutions may also prevail and enrich our current experiences.
3. Public Funding the Research Mission
The cost and quality of the research mission as well as the cost and quality of instruction have created conditions leading to the development of a diverse rather than a single type of institution. Another policy assumption in the period following the end of World War 2 was that eventually all higher education institutions would have a significant research capacity. It was soon clear that the costs of large-scale research had increased dramatically and in most countries only a limited number of universities attracted the resources to sustain a comprehensive research capacity. Clearly most institutions have some research activity but the scale and scope of that activity and the degree to which it is an institutional rather than an individual commitment varies a great deal. Only extremely small allocations of public research funds would be available if they were to be distributed on the basis of student or faculty size to all institutions. Selective allocations of public funds have resulted in the concentration of resources at a limited number of institutions and those funds are then leveraged to obtain significant foundation and private grants for research activities.
To justify these selective allocations, research activities like instructional effectiveness have become the subject of accountability and especially of ranking exercises at great expense and with varying levels of accuracy. One critical question is whether the institutional allocations should be primarily based on prior surveys of performance or whether the bulk of these allocations should flow directly to individual researchers and then the outcome of the research competition itself would become the measure of performance. Obviously, some base level of institutional support is critical but most highly-ranked research institutions rely on faculty and staff initiatives to apply for competitive grants. Under these circumstances, the main role of institutional support is to provide adequate facilities and to create incentives and insurance for those who are active and successful in sustaining their own and their colleagues’ and students’ research.
Irrespective of the sources and of precise mode of allocation of research funds, it has been difficult to make either public or institutional decisions on how many institutions can afford to be engaged in high cost research. This challenge has for long been a real strategic issue in almost every state in the United States. How many public universities in any given state can support a comprehensive research mission, offer postgraduate and postdoctoral work, provide release time from teaching duties and construct and maintain the capital infra-structure of research facilities? Most states concluded, usually in the 1970s, that the comprehensive research mission would necessarily be limited to specific institutions and that the state support for this mission would be insufficient without the leverage of federal, foundation and private funds. In Wisconsin, where I spent my own professional career, only two institutions were authorized to grant doctoral degrees and to provide a transatlantic perspective I should mention that Wisconsin has a population size very close to that of Scotland!
Perhaps the most comprehensive and ambitious effort to create an institutional framework capable of responding to the cost and quality implications of mass higher education is the tripartite structure of higher education in California developed under the leadership of Clark Kerr in the 1960s. Some of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in the world stand side by side with some of the most effective community colleges in the world. Student transfer between the three segments leaves much to be desired but as a system it has confronted the challenges of mass higher education with remarkable effectiveness. It is tragic that fiscal constraints compounded by the global crisis have stressed and perhaps now threaten this remarkable structure. In other states without the benefit of this systematic vision, an informal market principle of resource competition defined the number and scale of comprehensive research institutions. As we consider the role of higher education in promoting recovery from the global crisis, it is critical that we recognize that many of the assumptions that drove public policies in the direction of mass higher education no longer prevail and as a sector we need to contribute more coherently to the overall architecture of a higher education system rather than to specific institutional needs.
Responding to the New Environment of Reinvestment
1. Partnerships with Government in the Public Interest
If we are to question many of the assumptions about the funding and institutional framework of higher education, we do have to explore and clarify our relationship with government. Our first claim in this relationship is often the need to recognise our autonomy but to many legislators the word implies a privileged status that is unresponsive or indifferent to the public interest. While I am absolutely committed to the academic autonomy of higher education, there is an inevitable reciprocity in our relationships with government. We do need to be clear that we value a partnership with government not only because of our dependence on some level of public funding but also as a means to serve the public interest. That interest is, however, best served by bodies that represent not only higher education and government but also third-party interests.
In addition to confusions about the extent and meaning of autonomy, there is a tendency on the government side to assume that higher education is similar to any other public agency and that it is afflicted with many of the inefficiencies associated with a public bureaucracy. Clearly, the partnership needs to allow higher education to explore a variety of non-government relationships and strategies and to conduct its purpose with much greater flexibility than most public agencies. Recognition of these distinctive attributes in the government - higher education partnership does carry a responsibility for us to provide transparent information on our practices and performance. Too often negative legislative judgements are based on anecdotal reports of questionable quality or of an extremely eclectic nature but in the absence of a readily-available data-driven source of information on the sector and its institutions, it is difficult to mount an effective response.
In these efforts, we need to clarify the demands for accountability with respect to cost, productivity and access for which there are appropriate measures from the assessment of learning outcomes which will require much more nuanced and prudent research and reflection. Moreover, we need to be clearer about the balance between a legitimate public interest in transparent availability of useful information on higher education and the responsibility of colleges and universities for academic standards and curricula. The effectiveness of higher education is in my judgment based on an appropriate but sensitive recognition that this public interest cannot be achieved by government alone.
2. Clarification of Accountability and Assessment
The most effective way to express our transparency is to make a stronger commitment to accountability and assessment. The high cost of collecting, maintaining and reporting data on an infinite variety of institutional and student behaviour has made higher education somewhat sceptical of any effort to increase this burden. Much data is collected independently and is rarely cross-tabulated, and if we are to measure rates of program completion effectively it will be necessary to collect information on specific individuals on a longitudinal rather than a cross-sectional basis. A growing proportion of students attend college part-time, drop out periodically before dropping back in to complete a program. A large proportion of all students now take courses at more than one institution, sometimes simultaneously, and completion rates that do not account for the high rate of student transfer will result in misleading underestimates of performance and an excessively negative interpretation of drop-out rates.
We do need improved data calibrated at the individual level and it would also be prudent to review the value of much other data that is currently collected at great expense. More comprehensive institutional and perhaps inter-institutional peer-group efforts to measure and improve performance would certainly help address the growing external pressures for accountability and assessment. A more accessible indigenous culture of assessment would go far to discourage an external culture of regulation.
3. Tuition as a Social Compact
A third issue in need of clarification is the role and appropriateness of tuition. There are major national differences in how this issue may be resolved largely because of different political attitudes to the balance between public subsidy and individual contributions to the cost of higher education. The increased costs of mass higher education have placed limits on the size of public subsidies and in the absence of alternative revenues increased enrolments threaten capacity and quality. If some level of tuition is viewed as essential to maintain capacity and quality, then we need a more serious dialogue about the proportionate contributions of the state and of individuals – a new compact that sets the parameters of this compound obligation. This compact should also define the role of simple and direct financial aid programmes whereby tuition is discounted on an income based scale in order to maintain access for under-represented low-income groups.
Graduated tuition provides new revenues to support capacity and quality but with the right financial aid policies it also supports continued growth in access. Decades of zero or low tuition alone has not been especially effective in sustaining the recruitment of university students from low-income families and a new social compact based on graduated tuition would also have to recognise the need to address many other factors involved in the low representation of deprived groups in higher education. Institutions of higher education remain remote and unfamiliar to many deprived families and without effective communication and advice in both a school and family setting, no amount of financial aid will resolve the problem of inclusiveness.
4. Inter-Institutional Interdependency and Collaboration
If another outcome of mass higher education is an increased diversity and scope of missions among colleges and universities, then it is critical that the emerging sectors are familiar with each other and attempt to foster public policies that serve the entire range of institutions. One of the exhilarating aspects of my role as President of ACE was our efforts to focus on the common interests of institutions with different missions. Clearly differences in scope and mission define specific interests but we must also find ways in which the leadership of different kinds of institutions are in more communication with each other. We do need our own special meetings about our own special issues but there is a greater need for us all come together and talk about the complexities of mass higher education. Inter-institutional collaborations are often the result of personal institutional leadership and are therefore prone to uncertainty but there are many opportunities for shared strategies both among similar institutions and between different kinds of institutions.
So these are four issues that will reveal whether the pendulum of cuts and reinvestment will continue its cyclical course or whether anticipation of new reinvestment will require us to question some of the weak assumptions upon which mass higher education has been built. There are, of course, other issues that require further exploration including the role of instructional technology and the degree to which our institutional organizational structure fits the changing taxonomies of knowledge. But these issues will I think require us address the cost and quality of instruction and research first. To that end it will be essential to rethink the government partnership, take ownership of accountability, restate the social compact, and foster inter-institutional collaboration.
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Last updated 18 May 2009