I work on this document in my drafts every time I am angry about HE in the UK, which is quite often. I graduated this month (SOAS 1:1 Chinese and Linguistics) and received a course of study far inferior in scope and rigour to the one originally marketed to me. I do not think any part of the system works at present. This is mainly because there are incentives for profit, as in any other industry, but not for quality. Below, I outline my suggested fixes for the situation:
Initial points and preconditions
New university entrants are capable of making decisions about their own education, but to do so responsibly, they need access to far more information than they currently have.
I am in favour of returning to the pre-Blair funding model, but this currently appears impossible. In the meantime, I think authorities should do their best to prevent ‘shrinkflation’ by raising educational standards.
Words are useless, especially sentences! We operate in a post-literate world. The answer is not to change the university curriculum, but to give students a safe, predictable, exploratory space in which to level out and become literate - ideally before they go at all.
The state school system was not built to create people who do well at university - it was built to create obedient factory workers. To accommodate a massive increase in university entrants, schools will need to change.
Years out before university should be actively encouraged, and their normalisation underlies a lot of my suggestions. The government would serve their own best interests if they helped deferring students find work placements, even if just as part of the general minimum wage workforce.*
1. Scrutiny of HE should start in FE
British FE institutions should teach their students to see universities as businesses, with recruitment incentives and profit motives. Students who have spent their entire lives in state education will be unused to the idea that educational institutions gain financial value from them, and that they will seek to recruit even when enrollment might not be the best life choice in the long-run. 18-year-olds are not incapable of making large life decisions, but they should be uniformly briefed on fee and loan structures, graduate outcomes, and the time/depth expectations of higher study. (Instead of just saying something is ‘intense’ or that you’ll be working ‘all the time,’ it would be good to ask how many hours the highest-performing students use per module, how long it takes to do a dissertation, etc).
In the absence of detailed graduate data (more below), students should be encouraged to take to LinkedIn and message people who studied the courses they are interested in.
2. University probably is right for everyone, just not at the same time. We should change the application process to actively increase readiness rather than to simply measure it
I believe that most people in Britain are capable of doing well in a humanities degree.
I also believe there is a foundational gap between A-level studies (which are valuable, but can get you As without straying from textbooks, past papers, sample essays etc) and university-level independent inquiry (where you will need to read widely of your own accord and independently assess fields of linked research). More people are going to university but fewer are reading - this is our fatal flaw. Independent reading also has potential as a class leveller, bridging gaps between different sorts of curricula and possibly between industries.
The UCAS personal statement:
is very short, and thus an extremely surface-level measure even just for demonstrating interest in a subject - someone can spend a few sentences talking about a few books/online courses to convince admissions officers that they’re into a subject, and these can easily be cribbed from existing online reviews. You don’t need to ‘show your working’ or evidence any consistent trail of study
Is sometimes just not read by admissions departments!!
All students who apply for a degree in an essay subject should have to prove that they’ve done a foundational amount of related extracurricular reading and legwork before they are admitted onto a course. This could be examined through, eg. a portfolio of relevant book reviews exhibiting coherent argument, research skills, and original thought. This would evidence someone’s readiness for a humanities course to a more effective standard than A-level grades (reliant on exam technique and points studied beforehand) or the personal statement (too American, not enough space for expansion, reliant on narrative and middle-class gloss). These materials should be assessed to a consistent standard by a central authority of disinterested, underemployed academics, not by the universities themselves. They could contribute towards extra UCAS points.
This is not to gatekeep higher education - it is to prevent teenagers from making a financial and time investment in an endeavour they know little about and have little intrinsic interest in. The extra legwork will improve levels of class discussion on university courses, develop foundational academic reading and writing skills, ensure students are prepared for university-level independent inquiry, and counter existing trends of grade inflation. It will also prevent HE providers from making educational offerings look more thorough and rigorous than they really are - if you’ve got a basis of subject knowledge, you can begin to cast a critical eye on what is being taught.
3. We should abolish unconditional offers for students who are yet to receive their final grades
Unconditional offers are a barrier to class mobility - universities with the lowest grade tariffs give them out at the highest rate, and generally to students who have low expectations about their own achievement. They do so knowing that their prospective students are likely the most stressed they have ever been, and may firm the university just so something is secured in their future. These offers encourage students to underachieve at A Level, meaning they won’t benefit from the foundation of post-16 study.
Some universities used to change your conditional offer to an unconditional if you put them as your first choice. This was outlawed in 2022 (thank GOD) but the fact that the practice ever existed at all is proof that providers are getting increasingly unethical.
4. We should rethink UCAS Clearing
Clearing phone lines are staffed by internal employees who have a financial interest in recruiting students. There is nothing stopping them from misrepresenting the quality and career potential of their courses - and they’ve got a captive audience. They are speaking to stressed, desperate young people who have likely just had their future plans upended, and who have probably seen their friends gain access to university while they missed out on a place. I do believe in eventually moving to a model where you apply to university after getting your grades. This would eliminate the need for Clearing. A temporary fix would involve an evidence-based, stat-driven central database, so students can quickly evaluate their prospective courses against each other. We should get rid of the telephone.
4. We should legally require universities to disclose all available information about educational provision before any money changes hands
This seems like basic logic in an industry where hundreds of thousands of people pay tens of thousands of pounds for a specific service, but it currently isn’t. Before they even apply to a university, students should be able to find out:
What happens week-by-week on all of a course’s core and compulsory modules, as well as on available optional modules (these obviously change all the time, but it’s good to a) have guidance, b) give students their own study plan based on the work of employed academics if they’d like to read into something that’s been discontinued)
What the educational objectives are for each current module, and indicative examples of essay questions and student work from previous years
Essential for those who are concerned about ideological balance - it’s often very hard to work out what the lecturer’s aim is in the modern university. Are you being taught to understand a field and its shortcomings for yourself, or to take on someone else’s view of it?
Obviously, this may change - but it will give students an idea of departmental aims and ethos.
What % of teaching is done online for each module
You may laugh, but SOAS still teaches some very popular courses over Zoom, four years after COVID (last year: Japanese 1 and at least one big economics one) - and there are no indications of this in the module catalogue or on their website! This would be a tie breaker for me if I were signing up for a degree in 2024.
These measures would empower students to take ownership of their own education, while lessening the risk of false advertisement about a course’s educational value or relevance. Outsiders would also be able to put curricula under public scrutiny (a good thing).
5. We should require universities and regulators to provide qualitative student feedback
As WonkHE helpfully point out, the National Student Survey (NSS) is not fit for purpose as a tool to help young people select a future institution (its designers deny that this was ever the intention - but, as is also noted in the article, this is revisionism! NSS results make up the bulk of websites like Discover Uni and are used in HE marketing all the time). The survey solicits both qualitative and quantitative feedback from final-year students, but keeps qualitative feedback private - only the university itself has access. Here are some issues:
The quantitative feedback (‘X% of students say the course was well-organised/the lecturers are good at explaining things’) lacks wider context. For example, universities with lower entry tariffs appear to tend towards higher approval rates on this sort of question - what benchmarks are students going by? Could they differ based on the quality of teaching they received from previous providers? Could it be that students expect more from their education when they sign up to prestigious courses?
My favourite statement in this poorly-designed survey is ‘this course has the right balance of directed and independent study.’ Yes, and what IS said balance? Of course this will differ from student to student - everyone I talk to has a different idea of how much intervention they would like on their course, fuelled by previous educational experiences, personality, and notion of what a university should do! Surely it would be much more helpful to broadcast an average number of contact hours per week?
And ‘lecturers are good at explaining things’ means nothing when lecturers change or go on leave every year - and when new students have no idea which ones are good! I had some who were dreadful and didn’t care and some who were passionate and engaging.
Universities have no incentive to improve if they can keep qualitative feedback to themselves! They are not accountable to students, who must more or less either finish their degree and keep giving them money or go into debt for nothing. The only way you can really ‘stick it to’ your university is by becoming a journalist during your degree and tarring them in the national press (like me) or by transferring somewhere else (rare and difficult in the UK - and your new university could be just as bad!).
In my time at university, I made and/or participated in several official student complaints (re. quality of language teaching, relevance of compulsory modules) which resulted in some face-value consolation but no resultant action. If the admin and staff had no obligation to students who were still there and who they knew by name, why do regulators think they’ll adjust their offerings in accordance with totally private feedback made by students who have already left?
On the Chinese side of my course, which is where all the issues were, only 39% of NSS respondents said ‘It is clear that students’ feedback on the course is acted on.’ (This drops to 32% for the equivalent at Durham, which generally tops it in rankings! For every course I look at on Discover Uni, this question has one of the lowest percentages of positive responses).
Qualitative NSS outcomes must absolutely be made public. If the sector were in my hands, this would be the first quick fix I’d make. I’d censor ad hominems (probably) and personal info, but I’d stop there. To make an informed decision about the £27,750 they are about to spend, prospective students need to know about aspects of a course that are poorly captured by quantitative statistics - design and relevance, breadth, ideological capture, quality of discussion and engagement, niches that are taught particularly well, uses of alternative assessment, and quality/nature of feedback. (This is obviously a non-exhaustive list).
The publication of this information would also increase pressure on the sector from those who have more power and discernment than 17 or 18-year-olds: journalists, parents, academics at other universities and in other countries, politicians, and people who research HE. University offerings should be a matter of public debate. My lecturers acted like it was completely normal to make a module specifically on regional colonialism and imperialism compulsory for students doing one-half of an undergraduate languages degree, and that I was being unreasonable for complaining. Then I talked to a high-profile academic in the same field from another, more prestigious university, and he said they were being unreasonable! These checks and balances are essential if we are to avoid slipping standards, inter-institutional inequality, and ideological capture.
6. We should require universities and regulators to provide more transparency about postgraduate outcomes
Institutions also use postgraduate outcomes to advertise their courses. But our current regulatory landscape means they are able to do so in a misleading way. We should stop them from doing all of the following:
Cherry-picking destinations (‘our graduates have gone on to work at X impressive companies’ - but how many get to this point? How long did it take them? What other skills and experiences did they need, and did the university do anything to help with this?)
Conflating different course outcomes - doing the ‘our graduates’ spiel without specifying which subject those graduates were studying, even within the same department. (SOAS stuffed ‘China and Inner Asia’ into ‘East Asian Languages and Cultures’ years ago and now the prospects of Korean graduates are our prospects too. But they are a larger cohort and get much more specialist provision than we do, so it doesn’t quite seem fair. )
Simply saying ‘X% of our graduates are in full-time employment or further study a year after finishing the course,’ - but what kind of work, graduate-level or entry-level? Are they working in fields relevant to their degree? Are they doing ‘panic Masters’ because they can’t find jobs? Are they funded to do Masters? Are they ‘reskilling’?
Not distinguishing between domestic and international graduates in their data - international students must eventually secure expensive visa sponsorship from an employer to gain the right to stay in the UK, which considerably narrows their options (a lack of transparency makes it very easy to trick these students into paying high international fees!)
7. We should implement general subject knowledge tests for final-year humanities students (this will be incredibly unpopular but I don’t care)
A degree in a subject no longer means a general mastery in the foundations of that subject, and is no guarantee of breadth. This is exacerbated by a) the structure of the modern university, where you jump around learning about the specific research interests of individual faculty instead of building on a standardised body of knowledge, and b) a focus on ‘skills-based’ education, which starts from primary school and deprioritises heavy reading or linked subject knowledge in the interest of modelling ‘analysis’ and ‘evaluation’ skills on small samples of text.
Most universities encourage students to read widely and beyond the curriculum to gain general subject knowledge (as they should), but it’s now generally possible to get Firsts in the humanities by ‘gaming the system’ - focusing 100% on topics that will come up in marked essays, to the detriment of the bigger picture. In my final year, I only had one exam (for Chinese language) and each of my modules was assessed on about 3000-4000 words of open-book essay-writing. The questions for these essays were usually released at least a month in advance, meaning you could consistently ‘treat university like a 9-5’ (as is the general advice) while spending all of your time solely on the preparation of assessed work.
At the same time, degrees are slowly becoming devalued. We have seen no particular improvement in the knowledge or employability of graduates over the past 30 years, but we have seen a huge rise in Firsts, sometimes by up to 30 or 40 percentage points from the 1990s. A huge gap between degree courses at different institutions exacerbates gaps in regional and class achievement.
My answer: implement a single, massive, standardised multiple-choice test of subject knowledge, to be sat before graduation. These should be pass-fail and have an unchanging pass mark (marking on a curve will only lower standards). They should be offered consistently among all institutions which offer an undergraduate degree in the same subject.**** Someone who passes everything else but fails the knowledge test will also fail their entire degree and have to take a year out to read more. The tests would be so large and varied as to be impossible to ‘game’ strategically, or to sit down and study for - you’d need to build up a strong, broad knowledge of your subject domain over three years of regular and immersive reading.
People who are not in the habit of this will be angry at the suggestion. The truth: even if you only stick to books for the ‘general reader,’ and even if you spend three years reading but actually only do so within one or two limited areas of your subject, everything will eventually converge. All things are linked. People exist in places and during times, influential people are usually friends with each other, etc. A general subject knowledge test for an undergrad degree in Chinese would include questions on Chinese geography, business, literature, music, historical events, architecture, monarchs and dynasties, 20th-century politicians, art forms, and advances in pop culture. There would be enough questions (hundreds) to flatten out small knowledge gaps and to reward breadth.
*I am very lucky to have had a reliable-ish part-time job since my second year of university and I do not take it for granted. This allowed me to take a year off university when COVID regulations prevented me from studying abroad. I was able to avoid the diminished value of online classes, work on my reading/writing skills in my own time, and save some money. Since the start of 2021, many of my ostensibly-qualified friends have found it nearly impossible to pick up seasonal and part-time work, eg. in supermarkets. I see similar testimonies from young people on r/UniUK and r/SixthForm: it is now practically a rite of passage to apply to a large number of unskilled summer jobs and to come out without a single interview. The gap in the employment market on paper does not correlate with the reported situation of a real-life applicant. A proper inquest into the process of finding youth employment would likely save public money in the long run - a lack of financial support and stability may contribute, again, to students getting funnelled into expensive HE when it isn’t right for them.
**I think educational providers should ‘get with the times’ and ‘be relevant,’ as is their eternal obsession, and focus on filling the tech-enforced generational reading gap. IE. don’t stop intervening at the primary level - take all phones away for starters and then ring-fence 45 minutes of each school day, both pre-and-post-16, for free and independent reading. This should be non-negotiable. Preserve all breaks. The trade-off is a slightly shrunken timetable. I guarantee remaining grades, general knowledge and verbal reasoning will go up anyway. And students will have a better idea of what they’re interested in beyond the curriculum, so we’ll see fewer people go onto courses that they regret.
***Important note: my friend points out that some students will find it easier than others to access specific non-fiction books. He is right and this is a travesty. BUT.
My old (state!) secondary school now requires every student, from Year 7 onwards, to bring their own Chromebook to lessons (insane).
When I was there, the Classics dept somehow got their hands on 30 iPads to use for interactive vocabulary games (EVEN MORE INSANE, and came after the headteacher went on local TV news to complain about state school underfunding!)
Here’s a news article from 2016 about state schools asking parents to buy mandatory iPads, at £400+ each
And a more recent one (2021) from the Irish Times
We currently lack really sound unbiased research about the benefits of this sort of policy. When I searched for some today, I found a 2023 article from The Educator, reporting from recent research that laptop provision can improve educational attainment by an incredible 23%!
And the LEO Academy Trust regularly ‘partners’ with Google on Google-sponsored initiatives - most recently showing their teachers a presentation about how to use Google’s Gemini AI in lesson plans, summaries, and feedback.
What other UK-based ‘independent’ educational research does Google have its fingers in?? I don’t suppose they have any financial stake in the matter???? Hahahaha (we are selling England by the pound)
There is LOTS of evidence about the impact on reading on educational achievement!
I love my basic-model 2022 Kindle. I got it for around £70 on Prime Day but it’s usually £100 (other brands of e-ink reader can sell for much less). It can carry a library’s worth of books, the battery lasts for ages, it has integrated dictionaries for lots of languages, and it doesn’t cause eye strain. It is not designed to create an addictive use pattern - there are no loot box mechanisms, bright colours, or prompts to scroll. If tech is such an important learning tool, why aren’t we trying to get these into schools? They could easily be linked to county/borough library catalogues to form a legal ‘borrowing’ system (these programmes already exist), allowing students instant access to all sorts of niches of fiction and non-fiction.
**** RE. the issue of different providers offering wildly different educational experiences in exchange for the same degree title, to the educational detriment of those at the worst universities and the economic detriment of those at the best. There’s an argument for a ‘central curriculum’ but an even stronger, pro-freedom argument against it. This is a better way forward - make sure a degree means something by creating an incentive for constant, independent reading to fill knowledge gaps, but give academics the power to design their own course.
Because you read this far I am embedding the unknown standout of the Tarantino Turn of 1970s Mandarin pop, ie. Jenny Tseng’s version of Tearstained Wildflowers by Liu Jia-chang. You deserve it!!