The Great University Con

by David Craig

  Literacy and numeracy

  Schools failing to develop self–study skills and spending too much time “teaching to the test” are problematic issues. But they might be regarded as some of the expected difficulties involved in a massive university expansion over a relatively short timescale. These types of problem highlight the issues involved in trying to scale up a system designed for the smaller, more academically–able cohort of students in the 1980s to the much larger, less able cohort of students today. In this it is possible to have some sympathy for schools – after all, finding nearly 50% of potential undergraduates from each and every year group was never going to be easy.

  What was certainly not expected from schools, however, was a growing inability to provide university applicants who meet the minimum requirements of school leavers in the developed world, namely that they have basic numeracy and literacy skills. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that during expansion many schools have failed to equip their leavers with these prerequisites (despite doubtless encouraging them to apply to university). As the Telegraph noted in 2012, the net result of this was that:

  “Some six–in–10 academics are providing ‘additional support classes’ for first years..... universities stage basic lessons in writing skills amid complaints that too many school–leavers struggle to structure an essay, spell properly or use correct grammar. Many institutions also provided additional tuition in basic numeracy.”344

  Thirty years ago, it was unimaginable that universities would run remedial courses in grammar, punctuation, essay–writing and basic numeracy. But this is now a widespread phenomenon. These remedial courses cut even further into the resources available for degree–level study. This, in turn, creates pressure on universities to reduce the actual content covered during a degree. The unseen victims of this are the bright and talented undergraduates who have received decrementally less academic substance during expansion.

  It is also striking that these problems in literary and numeracy occur right across our universities, despite students having achieved top grades and regardless of subject. In 2007, Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, commented:

  “Most universities have to offer remedial maths courses for new science undergraduates because they are giving up the subject after GCSE. Many chemistry students have not opened a maths textbook for two years because A–level maths is regarded as too difficult by students and schools.”345

  In 2006, a Nuffield Review report, based on research with 250 academics at 16 universities (including Oxbridge), identified similar concerns with tutors complaining that many school leavers lacked: “...a good grip of grammar and had a ‘fear of numbers’. They believe the relentless burden of school exams is leading to an attitude among students that ‘if it’s not assessed then it’s not important’.”346

  Students lacking motivation

  Even more challenging for universities post expansion is the reality that many school leavers arrive without the motivation to study. Given the importance Higher Education places on independent learning, this is perhaps the greatest failure of expansion. In 2009, the Institution of Engineering and Technology argued that: “…the ‘teach to test’ regime in schools is leading to an increase in students with problems of poor motivation and attitude to learning.”347

  This is a problem of institutionalisation amongst many school leavers. Like today’s undergraduates, they are the products of a bureaucratic factory system which values targets rather than learning. A lack of motivation is even harder for universities to tackle than an inability to think independently or an absence of basic numeracy or literacy. Whilst the latter could be taught, how does an academic even begin to motivate a lecture hall of students with little interest in their subject?

  Students don’t simply adopt a mechanised approach to learning upon arriving at university. Rather, they have generally learned it through thirteen years of the school system. All of these issues – remedial literacy and numeracy classes, disengaged students and rising class sizes suggest that expansion has slowly started to turn universities into comprehensives, a de facto extension of the compulsory education system. Or, as PM Wetherill, Emeritus Professor of French, University of Manchester, stated in a letter to the Guardian:

  “For a long time now, university departments have been invaded every year by ill–prepared students who don’t realise that learning a foreign language is a hard slog which involves boring things such as gender, conjugation, when to use the subjunctive and how to put a sentence together. Far too many of them have been led by their teachers at school into thinking that anything goes.”348

  The decline of key subjects within schools

  Schools are also failing to deliver sufficient numbers of students with the qualifications necessary to study for degrees in subjects of strategic importance, such as STEM and modern languages. This is reflected in the decline or stasis in the number of students studying these degrees during expansion.

  This failure is also visible in the closures and mergers of a number of STEM and modern language schools and departments across UK universities. There is little universities can do to resolve this issue. Student subject choices at A–level and GCSE have been heavily influenced by government policy. This has encouraged state schools to widen participation and support expansion by focusing on delivering quantity rather than quality to universities. As is so often the case with expansion–related policy, this drive has generated a series of unintended consequences. It has, for example, provided a perverse incentive for schools not to offer what are perceived to be hard subjects to pass or get high grades in, for example STEM subjects and modern languages. The system therefore encourages schools to ensure that their students achieve the best possible exam results, regardless of subject or indeed an individual pupil’s interests or aptitude.

  This creates a powerful influence to push schools towards the easiest possible subjects at GCSEs and A–levels, towards watered–down vocational qualifications and the easiest possible exam boards. It also incentivises schools to shy away from pushing their brightest and best students to take hard or difficult subjects as this might drag the average grades of the school down. It means that “difficult” subjects such as German, economics and physics are often avoided by schools and students. The final Select Committee report in 2009 noted that the:

  “....Royal Society and the Institute of Physics stated some subjects at A–level were more difficult than others and it was easier to achieve top grades in subjects like media studies and psychology than it was when taking subjects like maths, physics and chemistry.”349

  This shift in subjects has created a vicious cycle. As student numbers in hard subjects decline, so do staff numbers. As fewer students within schools take these hard subjects, it becomes more difficult for schools to justify the existence of departments and teachers who only look after a minority of the schools’ students. Eventually whole subjects can disappear from schools and with them departments. In 2009, Elizabeth Truss, Deputy Director of the think tank Reform, noted that: “Mathematics teachers are already in short supply, only 76 per cent of those teaching maths (in schools) have a maths qualification.”350

  This reflects a wider problem of a shortage of STEM and language teachers within schools. Schools, like universities, provide one of the worst–paying employment destinations for graduates with degrees in these subjects. Given the overall shortage of STEM graduates within the economy, it is also reasonable to assume that those STEM graduates who do decide to teach in their subject are unlikely to be the brightest or the best from their cohort.

  Government policy has had further indirect impacts on subject choices at schools. The long–term decline in students applying for language degrees was partly created by the government’s decision, in 2002, to allow students to drop languages as a compulsory subject at the age of 14.351 Again, this was a decision driven by a desire to improve overall pas
s rates and in turn to boost the available cohort described by the Robbins Report as “qualified by attainment” to apply to university. It had a dramatic effect on the number of modern language GCSEs awarded (Figure 1).

  Subject

  2000

  2016

  French

  347,007

  144,892

  German

  133,659

  50,271

  Figure 1 - Decline in modern language GCSEs

  We can see a similar pattern in A–levels. Figure 2 shows that the numbers of students taking these subjects fell by two thirds between 1993 and 2016.

  Subject

  1993

  2016

  French

  29,886

  9,672

  German

  10,857

  3,842

  Figure 2 - Decline in modern language A-levels352

  Figure 3 shows reductions in students taking A–levels in “difficult” subjects such as economics and physics. It is worth emphasising that these declines occurred during a demographic increase within schools.

  Subject

  1993

  2016

  Economics

  36,248

  29,385

  Physics

  38,168

  35,344

  Figure 3 - Decline in economics and physics A-levels353

  Whilst figures for students taking A–level chemistry and biology have increased during expansion in absolute terms, they have done so at a very modest rate and their current improvement masked serious declines in the 2000s in chemistry. In 1993, physics A–levels represented 5.2% of all A–levels taken. In 2016 this had fallen to 4.2%. For biology these figures fell from 7.5% to 6.5% and for chemistry from 6.2% to 5.6%.

  Despite growing numbers of pupils during expansion, schools failed to significantly increase the numbers of students taking STEM subjects at A–levels. This failure is highlighted by a corresponding growth in soft subjects such as media, film and TV studies, expressive arts, psychology and sports studies. Many of these subjects doubled or even tripled their A–level enrolments during expansion (Figure 4)

  Subject

  1993

  2016

  Sports Studies

  7,686

  16,896

  Psychology

  22,111

  59,469

  Media, Film and TV Studies

  7,056

  28,140

  Arts and Design

  34,751

  43,242

  Figure 4 - A-level subjects on the increase354

  Not only has the school system failed to provide an adequate subject mix across all university applicants, it has also failed to provide an equal distribution of subject choices to all students.

  A further concern is that there are increasing socio–economic and geographic dimensions to the subject choices being offered to students for their GCSEs and A–levels. The decline in GCSE languages is most visible within the state sector and is particularly concentrated amongst students from the poorest families. In 2010, a survey of 668 secondary schools by CiLT, the national centre for languages found that: “Languages (are) least popular in comprehensives: in 60% of them, three–quarters of pupils are not taking a language at 14.”355

  The same phenomenon is also apparent in science subjects. In 2015, the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) published research showing that in North East Lincolnshire 50% of local schools did not offer triple science GCSEs, whereas in Sussex every school did. The RSA report warned of growing numbers of “subject deserts” in local authorities and noted that this was disproportionately affecting young people within poorer neighbourhoods.356

  This means that students from poorer backgrounds are often provided with limited subject choices by their schools, but are still being spurred on to apply to university where these subject choices may constrain them to less prestigious universities and less than useful degrees. For this they will still accrue maximum debt but receive little or no increase in earnings. It is tricky to reconcile this with the ongoing governmental quest of delivering “social mobility” and “social justice” through the expansion of Higher Education.

  Curriculum shrinkage

  “A–levels were a good proxy for first year university entry; A–levels do not fulfil that need now” Professor Roger Brown, former vice chancellor of Southampton Solent University 357

  Previous evidence has suggested that many degrees now cover less material than would have been the case prior to expansion. There are many reasons for this phenomenon including a declining number of contact hours, larger class sizes and broader ability range amongst undergraduates. Another crucial factor in this shrinkage is that the curriculum of GCSEs and A–levels has also reduced significantly. The most alarming evidence for this comes from elite UK universities. In 2002, the Director of Imperial College, Sir Richard Sykes, noted that: “Imperial has had to turn most of its science courses into four–year degrees. That’s a big change because the standard of the A–level has fallen so much over 10 years that we have to bring them up to speed before they can get on with their courses.”358

  Geoff Parks, the director of admissions at the University of Cambridge, made a similar point about his university’s undergraduates in 2005, stating that: “Cambridge had admitted 142 fewer undergraduates this year than last because of an increase in four–year degrees, which are now common in engineering and the sciences, the result of pupils knowing less than they used to.”359

  In 2003, research by the campaign groups Save British Science and the Deans of Science described a mismatch between:

  “...what students were learning in schools and what they were expected to know once they arrived at university… (58%) of science course leaders polled claimed less than half their intake had strong enough mathematical knowledge, while 47% claimed their students did not have basic practical skills. The problem was worse on physical science courses, where 70% reported that less than half their intake had sufficient knowledge of maths.”360

  Dave Robb, a senior academic at Imperial College, reiterated the same concern six years later. He added that this situation was not just worrying for the UK’s economy, it was also potentially hazardous for people who depended on the knowledge of these graduates in the future:

  “We need students coming into our university who are really confident with their basic mathematical and physical principles. Engineers have got to get things right. You can’t say, ‘this looks about right’. You have got to believe in those calculations. There are people’s lives at stake. If you get the calculations wrong, engineers can kill.”361

  The difference in subject knowledge between today’s students and those of previous generations was made apparent by comparing the results from a long–running induction test run by York University’s electronics department. The test had been created to identify any subject areas in which new students might struggle, so that they could receive additional support from the
department. The results of the test over time were depressing, if predictable: “If today’s A–grade students had sat the test 15 years ago, they would have come bottom of the class. The report showed that the average test score dropped by almost half over the 15–year period – from 78% in 1985 to 42% in 2000.”362

  Similar evidence was provided by a variety of bodies to the 2009 House of Commons Select Committee on universities. The submission from the Engineering Council painted an analogous picture to that of York University but across a wider canvas: “At least 60 departments of mathematics, physics and engineering give diagnostic tests to new undergraduates. They reveal ‘strong evidence’ of a steady decline over the decade up to 1999 in basic maths skills and the level of mathematical preparation.”363

  So, in addition to equipping their students with remedial classes for literacy and numeracy, many undergraduate degrees now spend a huge amount of time in the first year providing essential subject knowledge for students and developing an understanding that would have previously occurred during A–levels. In 2004, York University revealed that it spent 40% of its first–term lectures on maths revision. Ken Todd a lecturer at the university outlined the issue: “Ten years ago we had one person teaching maths; today we have a team of six – plus support staff – who are all needed to get the students up to speed. Today’s students are weak – they simply don’t read and write maths as well as they should.”364

  This solution can also have potentially expensive and distressing consequences. The sudden introduction of complex mathematical material during these remedial sessions leaves some students unable to cope. If they had made this discovery during A–levels, then they could have made their university applications accordingly. Discovering this at university leaves them to choose between struggling though material that might be beyond them or dropping out, accruing student debt without academic credit. This problem was outlined by the Institute of Physics in 2009: “In physics, engineering and some other sciences, one of the most frequent reasons for non–completion is the lack of preparation for the mathematical content of the course. The physics in A–level physics is not described mathematically but it most certainly is at university.”365