Targets

Clearing is here now, and Jessica Guiver’s blog about targets – and what happens if you miss them – has got me thinking about this issue. A recruitment target is a number: it seems clear, precise and very measurable; but in fact a recruitment target is also a cultural artifact that can only be understood correctly in a particular context. Let me explain what I mean.

Broadly there are two approaches to targets. Some Vice Chancellors I have worked with in the past have seen targets as an essentially rhetorical device. Their role is to encourage the troops to try even harder and therefore it isn’t important that they can necessarily be achieved. It may even be detrimental to the intended incentive effect. Dull number crunchers like me tend to see targets as part of a rational planning apparatus in which we work out a budget and resource model robustly based on a realistic target number. Now whilst these approaches to targets can be contrasted in principle, in practice they are continually held in tension. Even the coldest technocrat does not actively wish to discourage recruitment. Perhaps there are some VCs out there so ardent for growth that they genuinely don’t care if the students all wind up in one department whilst the budget to teach them is in another, but they assuredly employ many people – both academic staff and accountants – who do.

Gearing up for Clearing

We are in the final stages, now of preparing for Clearing. My direct role in this process is a fairly limited one - I had a discussion yesterday about what budget code we should assign to the bottled water that keeps the Clearing team hydrated, but actually I don't even sign off the purchase order at the end of the day. Making Clearing happen is a major undertaking: the first morning puts a strain on out telephone and IT systems that nothing else in the year comes close to matching. This post isn't mainly about the mechanics of Clearing, though, because this is a planning blog. It is mostly about more of a macro-level issue: will we all get enough students to meet our budgets whilst staying below our student number control limits? The answer, of course, is no: but not in a very interesting way.

Degree Awarding Powers: Confusion reduced

A follow up to my post from earlier today. Whilst Education Investor repeats the BBC story that two private providers have gained degree awarding powers, a colleague from BIS has responded promptly and unequivocally to my email as follows:

I can confirm that the online list of recognised bodies is complete and accurate. The BBC story is incorrect in its statement that the second institution to be granted degree awarding powers this week is a private college. The other institution is a publicly-funded institution that receives HEFCE funding.

More confusion about Degree Awarding Powers

The news in the BBC and Times Higher that Regent's College has been granted degree awarding powers will come as a surprise to nobody likely to be reading a blog like this one. What came as a very severe shock to me, though, was this language in the BBC report:

'It [i.e. Regent's] is one of two private colleges being given degree-awarding powers this week....The identity of the second college has not yet been made public, with government officials saying it is up to that institution to make its announcement.'

There is nothing like this mentioned in the Higher story, so I very much hope it is a BBC reporter's misunderstanding (The Royal Academy of Music has recently been awarded DAPs, and as far as I can see from their website hasn't made a public announcement, but the RAM is certainly not a private college). BIS maintain a list of bodies with Degree Awarding Powers here. If it is really true that BIS is allowing private colleges with degree awarding powers to stay off this list until they wish to publicise their new powers, that would strike me as a very surprising thing indeed. It would call into question the Government's commitment to a 'level playing field' between public and private providers, not to say basic standards of openness in public administration.

I tried to speak to someone at BIS to gain clarification, but when she discovered I wasn't a journalist, the operator refused to put me through so I've had to fire off an email. When I get a response, I'll post an update.

Muhammad Saleem from Online Colleges sent me this infographic about MOOCs. I don't agree with everything it says (see my post here), but I thought it was interesting enough to be worth sharing.

Cash is fungible

Dewi Knight has an interesting post on WonkHE about the developing Welsh approach to HE. As Dewi highlights, part of the mood music which Welsh politicians use to accompany their policy proposals is the decisive rejection of market (and English) models. The Welsh Government even plans to take powers so that it can fund specific universities directly.

One of my occasional themes on this blog is that developments in different parts of the UK are not as different as they appear, and this is a good example. English Ministers emphasise the language of competition and markets, whilst Welsh Ministers use different language, but both are engaged in projects to reshape their respective HE sectors to the needs (as perceived by Ministers) of students and employers. Both are seeking to enhance their regulatory control over their respective sectors.

It is inconceivable that English Ministers could seek powers to fund institutions directly (even if they dared to bring forward an HE Bill at all...), but the pound a Welsh Minister grants to a Welsh institution will have exactly the same purchasing power as the pound an English student pays in state-subsidised fees when the English funding council decides to increase an institution's Student Number Control. Cash is fungible.

Changing Universities

On Friday I attended the Association of University Administrators' open forum Managing Change. This is the third of these annual events and interesting war stories are always exchanged. Unfortunately the Chatham House rule was in operation, so I can't discuss what I heard very freely.


What I will do is to post a link to the group's online resource Changing Universities, and encourage any readers who are involved in managing change in universities to consider getting involved in the group. If nothing else, the meetings provide a level of social support: it gives me reassurance to know that no-one else has completely resolved the issues that I can't resolve either.