Fulfilling our Potential
As
we begin a new year and a new semester, I am delighted to introduce our new
blog. We hope that staff and students from across the University of
Hertfordshire will share their thoughts and experiences here. Being at a
University is about creating, learning and sharing knowledge. Every day we
share ideas with colleagues and peers. This blog will enable us to have those
conversations across the University, across our Schools and across our Campuses.
 |
| Vice-Chancellor Quintin McKellar CBE |
To
kick things off, I wanted to share my thoughts on the Government’s latest
proposals for reform in the Higher Education sector, that were published last
year in a Green Paper called Fulfilling
our Potential. The Government has proposed a number of changes which, if
instituted, will significantly change the way that universities such as ours
operate, and the shape of the sector that we operate in. These include: the
introduction of a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to ensure that
universities take their responsibilities for teaching undergraduates as seriously
as they take their duty to carry out original research, the reorganisation of
the current sector body HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for
England) into the Office for Students which will prioritise the student
experience, and measures to make it easier for new institutions to become
accredited as universities, able to award degrees and call themselves
universities as opposed to colleges. The TEF is the main area I want to focus
on.
The
plans for the TEF will be a challenge for the entire higher education sector,
but as a lecturer, a researcher and a university leader, I welcome the TEF.
After all, it is impossible to work in education and be opposed to excellent
teaching. The challenge will come in ensuring that the measurements and tests
used to judge the TEF capture the range of teaching practices that take place
across universities, all of which could be excellent but all of which look very
different indeed. At the University of Hertfordshire, I want a TEF to capture
the advantages of experiential learning, whether in the School of Engineering,
the School of Law or the School of Health and Social Work, where students get
to try and do, as well as read and write. I also want a TEF that values
research informed teaching. For students, that close connection to the academic
investigation that their lecturer is carrying out can be both hugely inspirational
but also incredibly informative as they understand the hard work and skill
behind the knowledge that is shared. And finally, I want a TEF that measures
‘learning gain’, that doesn’t just tell us how many students from a particular
institution graduate and what classification of degree they get, but how far
their learning had moved on from when they started their degree.
None
of these values will be easy measures. And initially, at least, the TEF is more
likely to be focused around proxy measures such as how well students regard
their institution to be performing based on National Student Survey scores, and
the success of students in gaining employment post-graduation that is measured
by the DLHE results. However, I will keep engaging with policymakers as the TEF
is developed, and evaluated and refined over the years, to push for a TEF that
reflects the true diversity and innovation that takes place across the UK’s
universities. It will by no means be a perfect measure of the teaching that
takes place within higher education. But the TEF will at least reflect the
seriousness with which everyone in this university takes their responsibility
to excel in the education of those who choose to study with us.
Vice-Chancellor Quintin McKellar
University of Hertfordshire
