More significant than the Dearing Report?

Editorial from the Spring 2003 issue of Directions looking at recent government policy pronouncements on higher education.

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Reports on aspects of higher education are plentiful these days, but the long awaited white paper, The future of higher education, is potentially the most significant for decades. It arrived at the same time as the final report of the Teaching Quality Enhancement Committee (TQEC). The latter analyses the future needs and support for learning and teaching in higher education. Both are consultative and call for responses.

The needs

The white paper seeks to address the chronic under-funding in the higher education sector of recent years – a 36% fall in funding per student between 1989 and 1997 and an investment backlog in teaching and research facilities of £8 billion. It’s official – the “whole system is undoubtedly under severe pressure and at serious risk of decline”. Whether the proposed 6% increase above inflation over the next three years will be a realistic compensation for the past neglect is open to doubt. The white paper identifies increased access, student support, quality enhancement and investment in teaching, including top up fees, as the areas for additional spending. One of the declared objectives is to reassert the importance of teaching proficiency and to reward teaching excellence; another is the emphasis upon regional development. Whilst the efficacy and sufficiency of the response is being hotly debated, the proposals hold potentially significant implications for the study of law.

Increased access

Much of the desired expansion is sought at the ‘associate professional’ and ‘higher technician’ level, and will occur through the promotion of new two year foundation degrees. These are planned to be delivered by FE colleges and university colleges. The re-labelling of some of these as universities will at a stroke increase participation from the current 43% of 18-30 year olds towards the aspiration of 50% by 2010. Expansion of the traditional three year honours degree is not favoured. Increasing access therefore should not be taken as requiring sudden further increases on LLB programmes, although steady increases may be expected across the sector as some permeate upwards from foundation degrees and as measures to increase admissions from those from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds are felt.

Student support

Whilst the reinstatement of a grant of £1,000 for low income families will be welcomed by many, it is likely to be more than offset for many prospective law students by increases up to £3,000 in tuition fees. These are expressed as ‘freedoms’ for each university to set, and are expressly designed to allow increased fee charging for courses which provide ‘earnings premia’ for their graduates. Law is claimed to top this league for women, with a 44% difference in average returns between graduates from institutions at the two extremes of the graduate pay scale.

These ‘top-up fees’ for law students pose a serious challenge to recent efforts to increase access to the professions. The upper echelons of the professions are notorious for recruiting largely from the law schools with high admission requirements – the same institutions which will be amongst the first to introduce top-up fees. The prospect of students from non-traditional backgrounds enrolling on any undergraduate degree which incurs long-term debt may be bleak. For those embarking on a law degree the high costs of the vocational programme added to degree debts are likely to deter even the most enthusiastic.

Dismembering the market

Against the background of severe pressure and serious risk of decline throughout the sector, it is not surprising that the funds available are to be distributed piecemeal. The most significant classification for universities will be between those that are research intensive and those that are less so. The white paper dismisses connections between research activity and teaching and instead sets out to celebrate difference and diversity of mission. Institutions and departments with 5* achievements in the last two rounds of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) will be the focus for future research funding. Research collaboration between departments and institutions will receive a 38% increase in real terms between 2002 and 2006 (excluding capital). Teaching and learning in the same period will receive a 26% increase. Funds will include an increase from 20 to 50 in the number of National Teaching Fellowships, each worth £50,000 (of which law currently holds three) and the establishment of 70 Centres for Excellence in Teaching.

The plans for the latter are sparsely explained – Margaret Hodge recently admitted (at the annual conference of the Learning and Teaching Support Network) that their financing had been worked out “on the back of an envelope”. If departmentally awarded, the funds are generous at £500,000 a year for five years. An award would also include the ability to bid for up to a further £2 million each for capital funding, providing a massive incentive for the eventual winners. The criteria for excellence and the mechanisms by which such excellence would be passed on are as yet undefined. Whilst the amount for each is significant, if the awards are departmentally based the 70 centres will be relatively thinly spread, whether between the 69 subject areas adopted for the RAE or between the 24 subject areas singled out to form the Learning and Teaching Support Network (the LTSN – of which your very own UKCLE is a part).

Enhancing quality

The white paper contains a raft of proposals for improving the quality of staff teaching and student learning. The external examiner system is to be strengthened. All new teaching staff will receive accredited training by 2006. Additional money to institutions will be dependent upon their introducing promotion strategies that reward good teaching. The National Union of Students will oversee a guide to universities, including external examiner reports and other information about standards.

A new Academy is proposed as a national body to take over the role of three existing organisations devoted to improving learning and teaching. The remit of the new Academy involves an expanded role for subject centres such as UKCLE, although LTSN staff has recommended and have been assured that this new role would not include evaluative judgements involving the ranking of individual departments or teachers.

Professional and business links

The white paper deals with an already disparate collection of subjects, disciplines, interests and perspectives. It seeks to harness higher education to local concerns. Institutionally this is to be achieved via the Regional Development Agencies. Many of these proposals seem more appropriate for science and technologically based interests, or, in the proposals for the creation of foundation degrees, vocationally based subjects that may be relevant to local business concerns. These discussions however could suggest a reconsideration by law schools of their links with the profession. If funding is linked to supporting local business, law schools may be able to benefit from collaborating with local law societies or firms. The pervasive tone of the white paper encourages a closer relationship between the worlds of scholarship and work. Law teachers have vociferously rejected vocationalism in the undergraduate law degree. The proposals in the white paper do not directly challenge the idea of the liberal law degree, but perceptive departments may be able to harness the influence of the local profession to strengthen their claims for greater recognition of their learning and teaching efforts, or even to widen their scholarship to embrace the practice of law as well as its doctrines.

In conclusion

The white paper is potentially more significant for higher education than the Dearing Report, and deserves close consideration and deliberate response from all those involved in the business of higher education in the UK (although its provenance peculiarly restricts its recommendations to England). Its controversial recommendations for differentiation between research and teaching institutions is likely to attract most comment and anxiety, although there are far reaching implications contained in other proposals.

In addressing the spectrum of higher education provision for the future it is not easy to discern its specific relevance to law, which along with other professionally focused disciplines reflects wider interests. In doing so law often struggles to assert its identity in universities. The consultation process could be treated as offering an opportunity for rethinking the law school role, and institutions could accept the challenge of diversity of mission by devising new law programmes suited to the new aspirations for students and the widening demand for legal expertise beyond the professions.

The UK’s current strong reputation for delivering effective higher education is a valuable if transient asset. UK law degrees especially command respect overseas at a time when the values that we teach are in short global supply. A radical and sector-wide review of the role of UK legal education in the pursuit of just governance and humane development is long overdue. In spite of successive reports on legal education, the only radical change that has taken place in the past 30 years is the emergence of the Legal Practice Course and the Bar Vocational Course. A rethinking of the function of studying law in higher education could transcend ancient debates about vocationalism and liberal study, concentrating instead upon scholarship and the paths to creativity, intellectual development and the practices of justice. Law schools are ideally placed to research the empirical and theoretical issues, analyse the needs, and recommend alternatives. The white paper could offer an environment where such developments are possible.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010