Good heavens, a university academic who has actually spoken up and told the truth about the decay of higher education! Professor Anthony King, the psephological guru from Essex University, has written a heartfelt piece in the Telegraph which accurately skewers both the collapse of education standards and the extreme pusillanimity of the universities, who for the past two decades at least have refused to inform the public about the calamity. Key quotes:

'The truth is that most people outside universities have no idea how far the whole of British higher education has been degraded in recent years, and the reason they have no idea is that every teacher at every British university – from the vice-chancellor down – is engaged in a conspiracy of silence. They have no desire to engage in such a conspiracy but they have no choice, because to say publicly what is wrong at their own university is to run the risk of damaging that university, even though conditions may be worse elsewhere.

'So we cover up. We moan, but we refrain from revealing a fraction of what we know. British higher education has become highly competitive. Most of us are loyal to our own university. We do not wish to harm it, let alone give a competitive advantage to other institutions. We therefore remain silent – and the public are thereby deceived. Britain's universities still have areas of tremendous strength but they increasingly resemble those elegant mansions in the American South that one sees in films, with imposing facades in front but decay and ruin concealed behind.'

And then Prof King details some of the practical effects:

'When I first arrived at Essex, each student in my department took five courses throughout each academic year. Each student was required, in connection with each course, to submit five substantial essays – a total of 25 such essays each year. In addition, third-year students wrote a short dissertation or "project". Students were taught in smallish groups and were taught for at least 25 weeks each year.

Now students take only four courses and write only three essays in each of them – a total of 12 compared with the previous 25. The compulsory third-year project has been abandoned, students are taught in far larger groups, and there is now intense pressure to reduce the length of the teaching year from 25 weeks to 20 – roughly the length of a single US semester. The position at less favoured universities, including some of the best known, is even less satisfactory. Students in Britain are thus being systematically short-changed.'

What an appalling situation. And now students are being expected to pay for the privilege of participating in an education system that is no longer worth its name. Instead of conniving at their further emasculation by cravenly grasping the poisoned money the government is offering them through top-up fees, the universities should be blowing the whistle on an overall strategy which has brought higher education to its knees and declaring their determination to fight it.

Posted by melanie at January 13, 2004