‘Clovis Sangrail’ points out that the ‘dumbing down’ of educational standards is politically and ideologically motivated.
In the most spineless demonstration of inadequate journalism we get the following report from the Times Higher Education Supplement.
“Hefce report questions value of costly initiatives and argues for open entry to university, writes Claire Sanders. Universities would need to scrap entry requirements to make any real headway in admitting students from a broader range of backgrounds, according to a highly controversial report commissioned by funding chiefs.
The review of widening access raises doubts about whether policies to reduce inequality through education can ever work and will fuel the debate over why the participation of disadvantaged groups in higher education has stalled despite billions of pounds being ploughed into the area.
A review team led by Stephen Gorard of York University argues that in the near future discrimination based on school qualification could seem as “unnatural as discrimination by sex, class, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and age do now”. Instead, a “threshold level” could be introduced, equivalent to perhaps two A levels, and places to specific institutions could be allocated according to students’ location, disciplinary specialisation or randomly.
Professor Gorard, who led the team from York, the Higher Education Academy and the Institute for Access Studies, said: “As research indicates that qualifications are largely a proxy for class and income, then why use them as a means of rationing higher education? The Open University has operated an open-access scheme for years that has clearly not damaged standards.”
This is either ignorance so vast that it clearly indicates the man should not be employed by York or else a deliberately misleading set of statements driven by a political agenda. Firstly, as any half-arsed tyro knows, evidence of association is not evidence for causation. Thus, in particular, we do not know that [high] class and income cause qualifications, indeed the reverse causation might hold: qualifications make people rich. Secondly, even if the causative link might be asserted, where does this leave the universities? In order to widen access they should accept those with poor education, because they have been discriminated against. Ignoring issues about positive discrimination this can only be true up to a point-or should they accept the innumerate to do mathematics and the illiterate to study English? “No, no, don’t be ridiculous” Professor Gorard would say, “two A levels rule that out. Look at the Open University”.
Well, I do look at the Open University. Ignoring the fact that in my subject an Open University degree is not taken to be evidence of high ability, the OU (as I am sure Gorard knows) has a requirement for a Foundation Year. And this is intended to make up for the absence of standard academic qualifications at a reasonable level.
Why do I get the feeling that Professor Gorard (a former teacher of maths and computer science who is quoted as saying on his appointment “I want to help build a centre of excellence for research on the effectiveness and equity of education systems.”) views equity as meaning “without regard to proven ability”?
I do not argue that wealth or class (whatever that means these days) does not help a child, I am sure it does. My problem is that opening the Universities to anyone with 2 Es at A level does not redress the balance. This is just another way to hide the rolling avalanche of failure that is (the average of) state education in the UK. It is not the (semi-private) universities’ job to fix the inadequacies of the pre-18 education system. If we attempt to do so, then we do so at the cost of miserably failing to train the top 10%. In a few years we have lost our research base and then we are stuffed. No industry, no educated ‘elite’, nothing to give us an economic edge in anything.
This is the route that the USA has partially gone down, and they only stem the rot by recruiting able PhD students from overseas.
Reposted from ‘Canker’
It’s a fringe argument, and it’s probably wrong, but I don’t think it’s stupid.
I’m continually struck, in my field (software engineering) how little academic qualifications mean. They certainly measure something, but it’s hard to say what. Candidates include:
Ability to do what you are told
Ability to memorise stuff (unlikely these days)
Ability to understand the exam-setters mind
Lack of imagination (see also ability to do what you are told)
Ability to read a lot of textbooks without getting bored
Ability to work long hours
None of these interest me much. I always reckon the only use of academic qualifications is to gain entry to the next academic instituation in order to get the next academic qualification.
Generally speaking, someone who leaves school at 16 with an f in GCSE maths, but still teaches themselves how to write software is likely to me smarter, more independent, and harder working, than someone who completes another 5 years of tax-payer and debt funded education to achieve the same thing.
I suspect that being clever just about has enough effect on your exam grades to make them worth considering in university applications, but I dount there’s nearly as much in it as people think. I’d welcome a move to universities interviewing candidates or setting their own aptitude tests in preference to A levels. I can certainly tell more from a 20 minute conversation than I can from GCSEs, A levels, University, course and degree result put together.
Overall, based on the CVs of 21-25 year olds in the software industry, I would say there is better correlation between ethnicitiy+english grammar and ability than between academic grades and ability. Depressing but true.
Well, everything is important though but i think without the foundation you cannot create a building.
Get the government out of higher education and then the (now-private) universities can set whatever the hell standards for admission they like. Some will set extrememly low standards to get as many students (and therefore income) as possible. Some will specialize in reputation and have extremely difficult standards. Everybody wins.
What is the first priority of a University?
My answer is: the maintenance, expansion and propagation of knowledge.
Anything else is secondary.
Whenever this priority is forgotten expect confusion.
David Roberts
Many countries in Europe admit anyone to university with a basic high school qualification.
It makes the first year pretty crowded and incentivises teachers to make it quite stringent too, to weed out the weaklings and timewasters.
I’m not convinced that that’s any worse than our former system of setting the barrier for entry so high that you’ve already done (in many subjects) much of your required learning before you get there, thereby giving university teachers an easy ride.
I agree with most of the comments above but I have some provisos:
1)government tries to have its cake and eat it with respect to universities; seeking to control them endlessly whilst claiming they are private;
2)at my university, 3As are required for entry to a maths course and we regard students as sadly lacking in education nevertheless. We try quite hard to get the students to (what we regard as) an adequate level in 3 or 4 years, but, sadly, many of them seem to think that they’ve achieved the pinnacle of their ambition by getting in and just want the degree certificate.
3)the government largely agrees with this: graduates are required for a knowledge based economy so make everyone a graduate is the fundamental attitude.
When 80% of children from middle class backgrounds now go to university there can only be one conclusion. Many people of below average intelligence now go to university. Apart form a few top institutions, UK universities are nothing more than a finishing school for the children of moderately affluent, almost regardless of their ability.
Pete, I disagree. A university education is what one makes of it. If someone treats it as a three-year party he will be useless to the economy and worthless in the market; but, if someone is committed to learning, he can gain marketable skills from any institution. Of course, there are more of the former type at the lesser universities because the students will not have had to work as hard to be there; but don’t assume that one can’t get an education outside Oxbridge.
Just to make this a proper samizdata post, I propose that more privatisation is the solution to the attitude problem of students. I am at university at the moment (and, yes, a world away from Oxbridge), and I have seen the problem first-hand. I remember numerous occasions where professors have not arrived on time to conduct a lecture and, consequently, at least a third of the gathered audience gleefully leaves the theatre at the first opportunity, as if they have been released from prison. There is no finer example of customer ignorance: we pay £3000 a year for tuition and some of us are celebrating when the service isn’t delivered!
If education wasn’t forced on people as an entitlement by the state we would have a populace that understood the potential value of learning; an unmistakable link is forged between investment and return; and we wouldn’t have anyone treating university as an 18-30 holiday or as a finishing school.
Aptitude tests and interviews conducted by the university that are free from interference from a state syllabus would also be a far superior measure of a student’s potential to thrive at the university than the current A-level system, which is little more than an extended exercise in by rote learning.
You are right. we have forgotten what A’ Levels were for. They were for measuring ability and identifying an elite who wanted to go on to university. If standards aren’t important, then maybe we should just hand out certificates without grades. But they are important and this is why universities and businesses need them for identifying those with ability in certain areas. That base of skills, is however only a basic foundation that needs to be developed.
Obviously children from families where their parents are interested in them and encourage their educational success will flourish. This isn’t ever going to change. Not everyone suits academic education, however, no matter how wealthy their parents or how fiercely they are encouraged. Viscount Lindley has made a terrific trade out of being a cabinet maker. Why don’t we provide more vocational training and trade based courses nurturing those whose skills talents lie in different areas? We shouldn’t consign those who don’t achieve academically at school to the scrap heap.
We seem to have forgotten that there are different ways of being successful – not, “one size fits all”. Different people also flourish at different times, maybe a degree would be better for some people a little later in life when its really relevant. Other people create their own opportunities, look at Alan Sugar and Richard Branson. We need some perspective and a bit of lateral thinking to encourage a new generation of entrepreneurs.
And lets not forget the terrific debt that many of those herded into University get into. What’s the point of it if you stand no chance of getting a job. I really think our government have betrayed a generation here with totally unrealistic expectations. We can’t all be lawyers and doctors and there aren’t even jobs for all those who are well qualified and want to be.
Why are we scared of our differences in the UK? Why can we build on them to create real opportunity? If we don’t, I really wonder what our economy will come to. We really need to think outside of the box and really make the most of everyone’s abilities!
“How can a man who makes such false statements be employed by the University of York?”.
On the contrary – if this person made sensible statements he would not be employed by the University of York. These days he would not even get his doctorate from such a place if he made sensible statments.
It took a long time (longer that I would have expected) for government finance to totally corrupt the institutions of higher education (for example, some of the last decent academics were dying off when I was a student at York) and there are still a few decent academics in government financed insititutions of higher education in Britian.
However, as far as the humanities and social sciences are concerned such institutions are now essentially worthless, at best. In fact they are harmfull as they spread misinformation among the students who go to them and to the wider community.
I swear all the lecturers in politics at my university are sociologists craftily collecting two paycheques.
You can’t spell statistics without ‘statist.’
Cheers,
RK Jones
If you aren’t really going to have any qualifications for college entrance at all, in functional terms, why waste billions on lower-level schools? Why not just have colleges and children can pick up whatever education their parents want them to have until they’re of an age to attend college. A simple IQ test at 18 should identify those who have any chance at all to benefit from university training. It’s only the lower school “assembly line” that makes people think all kids should go to college.
J said:
What correlation between ethnicity and ability is there?