The Times Good University Guide 2009

Universities face the prospect of being overhauled with changes to the traditional academic year and the scrapping of the current degree grading system after a radical review ordered by the Government.

Year-round enrolment at universities, instead of recruiting students only in October, was another of the more radical suggestions contained in one of the nine papers written by vice-chancellors and leading academics which were published yesterday.

The report by Christine King, Vice-Chancellor of Staffordshire University, also proposed that institutions would be encouraged to introduce more flexible teaching, via the internet or in the workplace, as well as on campus.

Another report said that universities should follow the example of leading American institutions by building campuses overseas.

In his report, Paul Ramsden, chief executive of the Higher Education Academy, said that universities should no longer class degrees as firsts, 2:1s, 2:2s or thirds. Instead they should issue report cards.

“The present system of classification was designed for a smaller higher education world,” he said. “It does not describe the range of knowledge, skills, experience and attributes of a graduate in the 21st century.

“It reduces the complexity of a graduate’s performance to a single category. And it is not reliable across different subject areas.”

The ageing population of Britain’s academics was remarked on by the authors of another report. More than one in six is due to retire in the next decade, according to Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors.

Its report said: “It is simply naive to suppose that UK universities can operate effectively and compete with emerging global giants while funding remains at about one third of US levels. By 2023, a significant proportion of higher education may be delivered by further education colleges, private and international providers. The challenge for institutions will be to ensure that the UK retains its reputation for quality and excellence, and that diversity and differentiation do not lead to incoherence within the sector.”

Predicted demographic changes over the next decade should prompt fairer policies for part-time students, it said, as there will be fewer full-time, teenage undergraduates.

“Part-time fees are unsubsidised, students studying part-time do not have access to interest-free loans to cover fees and receive much lower levels of financial support for living costs. There are clear barriers to the expansion of part-time delivery.”

The raw deal for part-time students was driven home in Professor King’s report, which could sound the death knell for the traditional academic year. She said: “If the UK is serious about wanting to claim its place in the world economy, then we have to recognise the majority of higher level skills will be acquired on a part-time basis [by people already in employment].

“The higher education sector will need to adapt its calendars and working practices to accommodate the flexibility that part-time students need.

“They are consistently disadvantaged by the current system . . . constructed with little reference to the world of employment. Timetables are still constrained by the concept of semesters and long summer breaks.”

Professor King suggested setting up a system of credit points, awarded after each module, so that students could transfer between universities, or leave and rejoin without penalty.

In another report, Drummond Bone, Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool University, said that British universities faced growing competition abroad, and that the credit crunch had made distance learning programmes more popular. “The figures for a massive increase in international education are no longer tenable,” he said. “The last 13 years have seen an extraordinary expansion of global trade and an extremely benign financial environment, neither of which can be relied upon in the future.”

Professor Bone said that universities needed to broaden their perspective on overseas work, perhaps by building campuses abroad. This is an area in which US universities have been active, particularly in the Middle East.

Key points

— More postgraduate scholarships are needed to stop the “brain drain”

— Universities should be rated on the quality of graduate jobs

— More part-time degrees, and courses for those who have dropped out

— Parity for part-time students in grants and loans

— Universities should derive more financial benefit from their patents

— More funding for research

— Research findings should go into a national database

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