Historian Geoffrey Alderman's Assessment of the British University Sector Has Relevance for Australia. (March 15, 2010)

Writing in the March 10  Guardian Professor Geoffrey Alderman* writes a scathing evaluation of the current British university sector. Whether or not Britain's parliamentarians and university administrators will take much notice is a moot point, but they, as well as Australia's, should.

His contention that there has been a decline in academic standards overall in British higher education over the past two decades is summarised in the following five points:

First, the league table culture that has permeated the senior leaderships of many British universities, resulting in intolerable pressures on academic staff to pass students who should rightfully fail and to award higher classes of degrees to the undeserving.

Second, pressures to maximise non-governmental sources of income, primarily from "full fee-paying" non-European students, to whom it is deemed prudent by these same senior leaderships to award qualifications to which they are often not entitled, so as to ensure future "market share".

Third, the increasing and increasingly stupid use of students' course evaluations as pivotal factors in the academic promotion process. To put it bluntly, a conscientious academic with poor student evaluations may find it difficult or even impossible to obtain promotion because her/his students do not like getting the low grades they may well richly deserve.

Fourth, the breakdown of the external examiner system, due partly to the near-universal modularisation of degree programmes and partly to the abysmal remuneration for work of this sort. The evidence given to the select committee of improper pressure on external examiners makes exceedingly grim reading.

Fifth, the relative leniency shown towards academic dishonesty, coupled with the tendency of university administrators to insist that plagiarism be viewed through the prism of what I believe is termed "cultural relativism".

Professor Alderman concludes: "[T]he toxic combination of factors I have listed above, and which are obviously interrelated" are responsible for the worsening standards in British universities.

He also argues that not only is there a palpable need for additional support for primary and secondary education but: "The current cap on university tuition fees should be removed, but the removal should be accompanied by a comprehensive system of financial aid, so that admission to university is 'needs blind'".

However, he saves this rocket for his finale:

[A]cademics must be re-empowered, and the pseudo-corporate model of university governance... must be replaced by the collegiate model, which alone has the capacity to restore national and international confidence in the high standard of the British university degree.

In Australia the increasing governmental micromanagement of the university sector strongly militates against any implementation of Professor Alderman's suggestions. 

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*From 1972 until 1994 Geoffrey Alderman taught history and politics at the University of London, where in 1989 he was promoted to a personal chair. He is currently Michael Gross professor of politics and contemporary history at the University of Buckingham.