McClaran steps into minefield

New QAA chief executive must deliver on openness as well as safeguarding quality in universities and colleges

By John O'Leary

Some higher education institutions are exhibiting “chronic and continuing problems in the quality of learning and teaching”. Who says so?  Not the MPs whose select committee report so enraged many vice-chancellors this summer, but the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

For the moment, the funding council’s bark may have been worse than its bite – the report of its quality committee was generally interpreted as finding little cause for concern – but it could yet set important changes in train. Not necessarily on degree classification, which was the headline story from the report, but on accreditation and the whole machinery of quality assurance in UK higher education.

If nothing else, Hefce – and the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills select committee before it – have ensured that Anthony McClaran has taken on perhaps the most delicate job in higher education, as chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency. After a notably successful spell in charge of the UCAS, he will need to crack a whip that has seemed less than fearsome in recent years, while convincing the world at large that there is no cause for concern.

Mr McClaran paid the necessary homage to the record of the QAA. But he was not wrong when he said: “There is an increasing need to engage with students and to assure the public that academic standards are being maintained and enhanced.”

David Lammy, the Higher Education Minister, made no bones about it in a speech to the Universities UK annul conference last month. “Even if you aren’t complacent about quality, you sometimes appear to be,” he told the assembled vice-chancellors. “I think you have to recognise that and deal with it.”

David Willetts, the Conservatives’ lead spokesman on universities, has also been critical of the universities for the value for money that they offer students in terms of contact hours. He has warned them that they will have to do more to justify an increase in top-up fees.

But have the universities got the message? Many vice-chancellors insist that they have nothing to apologise for and recent criticism stems from misunderstanding of processes that have become a model for other higher education systems.

To some extent, the Hefce report vindicates that view. Professor Colin Riordan, the Essex University vice-chancellor who wrote the report, found no evidence of “systemic failure”, although he said some changes needed to be made.

In particular, he called for a review of the public information provided by universities and colleges. His other two main recommendations: for a review of the external examiner system and changes in degree classifications are already in train – although progress on degree classifications has been painfully slow.

Exactly what universities will be expected to publish is not clear. But Mr McClaran and his board of vice-chancellors may have to decide whether it is enough merely to pass judgement on processes for the benefit of university administrators, or whether the QAA should also produce material that is useful to ‘consumers’. That has not been the case since David Blunkett, as Education Secretary, brought a halt to the subject reviews that constituted the only attempt thus far to measure teaching quality in university departments.

Those reviews will not be coming back, despite a recommendation by the select committee to that effect. They were bureaucratic and expensive, and universities learned to ‘play the game’ so successfully that virtually all departments were being awarded high scores by the end of the first cycle of reports. John Denham ruled out any return, when he was responsible for universities, and there is no reason to suppose that Lord Mandelson will think differently.

But the Hefce report was critical of the system of institutional audit, which is the QAA’s main published output on individual universities and colleges, for providing “very broad judgements…which are of limited use for a wider audience.” The funding council’s own response to the report suggested that the system should change when the current round of audits is completed in 2010-11. A new system “should include not only reviews and audits carried out by the QAA, but also published information about HE and the wider academic infrastructure.”

The successor to the audit system will be one of Mr McClaran’s big tests. The QAA (before his arrival, but no doubt with his approval) has also given a fair wind to the select committee’s proposal for regular accreditation of universities, although it has no power to introduce such a system itself.

Since universities hold royal charters, even the Government does not have that power. But the unspoken premise of the select committee’s report was that higher education receives billions of pounds of public money, which could be withheld if universities were not seen to be acting in the public interest.

Mr McClaran’s job, as well as safeguarding the quality of higher education, will be to persuade the universities, in their own interests, to open up more. He is both liked and respected within the sector – many expected him to be leading Universities UK, rather than the QAA – but he is not naturally confrontational.

Hefce’s response to its committee’s report showed an appreciation of the growing political and public pressure for greater openness: “We are committed to a quality assurance system which is accountable, rigorous, transparent, flexible, responsive and public-facing. We want to tackle concerns about quality and standards and make real changes to improve the student experience and the reputation of HE.”

With both Labour and the Tories beginning to take more interest in the area, the QAA’s future may well depend on Mr McClaran’s ability to win over still sceptical vice-chancellors.

To find out more about this article, visit: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_40/

6 October 2009

John O'Leary. Editor, Policy Review Magazine