The fact that the first Teaching Excellence Framework results will be published the week after the election wasn’t planned that way, but feels appropriate. Somehow it seems as though that the entire process of TEF-construction has been conducted in the shadow of a dysfunctional political system which has more pressing matters on its mind.
Indeed, looking back on the hurried, slightly chaotic passing of Higher Education and Research Act in the days after the election was announced, I wonder whether we will this as the moment when the TEF started to assume rather more docile a shape than we had been led to expect. The review of the TEF, scheduled to happen ‘by the end of 2019’ – in other words, about as soon as possible – looks ominous.
So here, having followed the TEF through its development (like, here and here, and a bit more here), and having got a couple of predictions right already, I’m going to make a few more. I have no evidence for my claims; just a few hunches.
Gold, silver, bronze: bin
This is the easy bit. The ‘gold’, ‘silver’ and ‘bronze’ rankings, announced in the euphoric wake of Australia’s (or maybe that was Great Britain’s – but surely not) medal haul in 2016, is universally accepted as bonkers. It belittles the whole process of assessing teaching excellence, and it unreasonably stigmatises universities that are in actual fact doing a perfectly good job.
So this will go, as soon as it can be shuffled off stage in a seemly manner. I’d even bet that people in the Department of Education – maybe even the halfwits who dreamt it up in the first place – have discussed whether it might be ditched for this round, given the way that it undermines the image of the entire TEF enterprise. But that possibility looks just a little implausible, even in these turbulent times.
That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that it would revert to becoming a pass/fail exercise, like a parallel version of a QAA review. I expect there will be gradings of some kind, and that these will be fed into existing league tables; however, they will be more nuanced – and, frankly, also more useful – rather on the model of REF results. In this way assessments will provide objective and constructive information, both for universities and applicants, without being unnecessarily damaging.
‘Fee-rises’: believe it when you see it
So TEF results were all set to be linked to ‘fee rises’ (albeit that these were never rises at all, merely – at best – increases in line with inflation). But here’s me back in November last year:
One question I’ve been asking since the TEF was first proposed goes roughly along the lines: what happens when people at the highest levels of government realise that some of the universities most likely to lose from the exercise are some of the country’s biggest higher-education brands?
I must admit that I never equated the House of Lords with ‘the highest levels of government’. I rather overestimated the capacity for people elsewhere to behave sensibly, and underestimated the influence of this curious remnant of British elitism.
But it happened. In my imagination it was just a matter of a couple of vice chancellors of high-profile universities that were looking down the barrel of a ‘bronze’ sitting down to dinner with a few influential alumni in the House of Lords and explaining the outrage about to unfold. Their grand alma mater will be forced to charge lower fees than the scruffy post-92 down the road. Really. Perish the thought.
And so, one way or another, I’d bet this will happen again. The sensible compromise option – submit yourself to TEF, get a satisfactory rating (i.e. anything from bronze upward, in this round’s terms), and you can raise your fees in line with inflation – seems to me like a long-term solution. Such an outcome would also help to revive the battered reputation of the National Student Survey, on the back of the National Union of Students’ boycott. (That worked a treat, didn’t it?) Maybe those running the TEF might even see their way to promoting the NSS, rather than questioning its value.
Subject-level TEF: yeh, right
Sorry, but I just see the prospect of subject-level TEF as madness. I was involved in preparing Exeter’s institutional response, which was hard work but served a purpose, usefully prompting us to reflect on what we’re doing. Moreover, when the institutional statements are all published, universities across the land will have at their fingertips a huge bank of ideas for educational innovation. That’s great for everyone, most of all for students.
But what’s to be gained from a subject-level exercise? In sheer bureaucratic terms, I can’t see how the labour – on the part of the academic departments or the reviewers – will justify the outcomes. In financial terms, I can’t realistically see how results could be factored into course fees, creating a weird patchwork of slightly different fees across any university. And – most importantly – as an exercise in driving forward innovation I’m not sure this will add in any credible way to the achievement of the institutional exercise.
Get a future; get a logo
Finally, the TEF is suffering a serious branding deficit. It needs a logo. It needs some pictures on its website, for God’s sake. Everything about it screams: ‘bleak and bureaucratic’. It sits up and says, ‘Hate me’. I’m predicting this might change; although, to be honest, I’m less confident about that than any of the above.
So that’s all settled, then. What could possibly go wrong from here?
