Funding higher education in Scotland

Since mid-November, this blog has been silent, largely because I was still out in the Caribbean - specifically St Kitts and Nevis - working on the EU-funded technical assistance project mentioned in a couple of earlier posts. There just hasn't been enough time to keep up with what was going on in higher education back home in the UK, while also working on my project. Now I'm home - after a day's delay due to snow at Gatwick (and the Caribbean is not such a bad place to be stuck for an extra day!) - and have enjoyed a quiet, relaxing family Christmas, so the time has now come for me to start catching up.

And a lot has been happening while I have been away, with the English decision approving higher fees for undergraduates studying at English universities from academic year 2011-12, the Welsh Funding Council announcement that it expects the number of higher education institutions in Wales to fall in the next two-three years, Scottish and English Funding Council announcements on much tighter institutional budgets for the coming year and last - in Scotland - the recent publication by the Scottish government of a consultation paper on higher education funding in Scotland (the Russell Green Paper).

What really caught my eye this week, however, was an article in the latest Times Higher Education by Kate Smith, a lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, in which she asserted, while referring to the above Green Paper: "Scotland must stand against tuition fees and preserve universal state-supported access to higher education or risk a return to Dickensian darkness". This is such a ridiculous statement, that I couldn't resist commenting on it here.

For a start, talk of 'Dickensian darkness' is just nonsense, whatever decisions are taken about funding Scottish higher education. Scotland has a good higher education system and some outstanding institutions, and that is not going to change in a hurry. It doesn't therefore seem to me very conducive to intelligent debate to have such apocalyptic warnings thrown around. Yes, of course, things could get difficult financially, and quite possibly some Scottish institutions might sooner or later need to restructure, merge, or even close down altogether in the coming years. But none of that, uncomfortable though it might well be, marks the end of civilisation as we know it.

The more sensible parts of Kate Smith's assertion really say two things, namely:

• Anyone who is suitably qualified should be able to get a place at a Scottish university (I assume this is what she means by universal access);
• Scottish universities should be funded by the Scottish government, with no use of fees levied on individual students (either up front; or deferred and income contingent as in the English system).

In the first of these points, the word 'anyone' is ambiguous. I assume it means anyone resident in Scotland, for otherwise Scotland might find itself offering free higher education to the entire EU, and perhaps even more widely. I don't think anyone seriously expects this to be Scottish policy. But then Ms Smith is apparently opposed to fees in general and is not happy about the idea that Scottish institutions might charge English students significant fees, even when Scottish students enjoy free access to higher education. However, what would then stop large numbers of English students from migrating north to enjoy good quality - and free - Scottish higher education? This is not clear.

The second point argues for government funding of the university sector, but in conjunction with the first point it seems to imply a disturbingly open-ended financial commitment. For if anyone suitably qualified can get a Scottish university place, and the government has to pay, then the scale of the Scottish higher education system is determined wholly by the effective student demand. In a world of shrinking budgets, this simply cannot make sense. No government, even in good times, would accept such an open-ended funding model, and in bad times it is completely out of the question.

So if the Scottish government accepts that there will be no fees - either up front or deferred - then surely it follows that it has to decide how large a higher education system it can afford to support. In other words, the scale of Scottish higher education - essentially determining how many students can be admitted each year - must be a government decision. Once the scale is determined, institutions would receive an allocation of places, and they would presumably determine whom to admit by setting suitable entry standards, sufficiently high to ration demand to the available places. One could argue that this would be a good way of gradually raising the academic standards across Scottish higher education, though it would be accompanied by a good deal of pain as some institutions down sized or possibly closed. On the other hand, I can imagine that some would see this as a rather elitist way of handling the current funding difficulties, something that the Scottish government might not be too happy about.

But again, if we are not to have fees for Scottish students, what are the alternatives? The only alternative that I can see is that our unit of resource - the amount we get from the Scottish Funding Council per student - could gradually be allowed to decline, enabling us to keep on admitting the same number of students as at present, or even more. However, the problem there is that it would be really hard to do that without drastically worsening the student experience, as we would have less and less resources for the sort of individual student-teacher contact that is so vital to effective higher education. Maintaining a reputation for high quality would be increasingly difficult under these conditions.

Hence my own - not necessarily very popular - conclusion is that we should either move towards a smaller, more elite higher education system in Scotland, fully funded by the government, or we start to accept the realities of life and adopt some form of fee-based system, preferably something like the English model with no up front fees and future repayments being income contingent - this seems to me very fair.

How to decide on academic promotions

The latest research findings on promotions practice could save us all a huge amount of trouble, and even save some resources.

For a recent study by three Italian researchers has shown that random promotion is pretty much as good as anything else we can come up with. Their analysis was based on a multi-level hierarchy in which, in each period, some promotions were going to take place, some people left the organisation, and new people came in at the bottom. At each hierarchical level, people were ranked according to their performance in the tasks needed for that level. And then selection for promotion could be based on choosing the best, the worst, or a random person at each level for promotion to the next level. If, as is often the case in real life, and demonstrably so in academia, the skills needed at one level of the hierarchy are not highly correlated with the skills needed one level higher, then good performance at one level is not a good predictor of how well someone would perform when promoted. Under such conditions, the finding that random promotion is pretty effective in terms of overall organisational performance is perhaps less surprising than one might have thought.

But what does this mean for the way we ought to handle promotions in a university? All that form filling, interviews, promotion boards and the like, is it all a waste of time and effort? Well, perhaps much of it is! For even with all the effort we put into the process, it's still quite common for people to ask, 'why did he get promoted this time?' and 'why didn't she succeed as expected?'. For despite all our efforts to be 'objective' and thorough, I'm sure there are still big elements of subjectivity in promotions exercises - we promote people like ourselves, we promote 'agreeable' people who don't make too many waves, we promote a 'safe pair of hands', sometimes we even take a risk and promote someone known to be outspoken and opinionated.

And do we always get it right? No, of course we don't. We can all think of folk who've been promoted and somehow flopped at their promoted level, not really delivered the goods. Equally, now and again there is the unexpected promotion, someone not thought to be 'ready', whatever that means, who rises to the challenge and does surprisingly well.

So if universities in the UK are coming under pressure to cut costs, here's an area where some savings could be made. Introduce random promotions, saving on HR and administrative costs 'at a stroke'.

Thinking about a small open economy

Sitting out here in St Kitts, as the Caribbean sun is setting, it's rather easy to see why people are attracted to come out here as tourists. So it's no surprise, when we study the economic structure, to find that tourism is one of the biggest sectors, in terms of the employment and income it generates for the local economy. However, the past couple of years, in the wake of the financial crisis and world recession, have been pretty grim, with visitor numbers and spend per visitor both well down and hotel occupancy rates very low. Naturally, everyone out here hopes this situation won't last too long, but the signs are quite mixed. On the one hand, the US and other major economies are slowly recovering from recession and that might soon bring more tourists back to the Caribbean, including St Kitts and Nevis; and visits by cruise liners did very well last month. On the other hand, some of the local facilities look a bit 'tired' and need more investment - though the best are wonderful - while some countries have raised taxes on long-haul flights (e.g. the UK, just last week). So as things stand right now, it's quite hard to predict how the tourism sector will develop.

Last weekend we managed a really interesting trip around the island of St Kitts, a total drive of just 30 miles, with nice views of the coast for most of the way and impressive views of the (dormant) volcano in the middle of the island as well. For lunch we stopped at a Plantation Inn, shown in the picture. Well kept grounds, ruins from the former sugar industry (finally shut down in 2005 when the EU changed its 'sugar regime'), and a great hotel; and a nice lunch, too.

Thinking more generally about the economy here, we're on a very small island with a highly open economy. Yet when we read various reports on the economy, as part of our project here, it's hard to find much that pays serious attention to foreign trade, either in goods or in services. It's hardly mentioned except in passing in routine reports on the economic situation. Yet there has to be some potential here for expanding exports both of goods (the island already has a successful niche in electronic components) and of services. On the latter, one surprise was to find several US universities established here, including a veterinary school and part of a medical school. These offshore education establishments appear to be doing well and must be contributing significantly to the island's GDP - except that this contribution is not yet being measured! It's not totally clear what has attracted these institutions here, which makes it hard to assess whether there is potential for further expansion; but we suspect there probably is. In any case, we'll soon visit one or two of these institutions to learn more about them.

Meanwhile, my colleague and I are extremely busy right now preparing material for our first training workshop, due next week. We've already written a lot but we're still debating exactly what we should present this time, and what to leave until December. Personally, I think it's vital that we emphasise the regional and international setting in which this small economy has to operate, and that includes highlighting some of the trade issues - and opportunities - which I've been thinking about this week.