Press release

Professor Geoffrey Alderman's public lecture: Academic standards in danger of collapse

Wednesday 18 June 2008

Academic standards at many British universities are in danger of collapse - and at some have already collapsed - because those responsible for them are unwilling or unable to withstand the pressures coming from the culture of league-tables that many vice-chancellors have been only too happy to embrace.

This was the stark message delivered by Professor Geoffrey Alderman in his inaugural lecture as Michael Gross Professor of Politics & Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham on 17 June 2008.

In a wide-ranging review entitled "Teaching Quality Assessment, League Tables and the Decline of Academic Standards in British Higher Education", Professor Alderman traced the origins of this decline to the secret deliberations of a Joint Planning Group established at the behest of the Conservative government in 1996, and whose conclusions were enthusiastically adopted the following year by the incoming Labour administration.

Quoting from the hitherto confidential minutes of the JPG, Professor Alderman accused its members of cynically betraying the self-regulation that British universities had enjoyed hitherto, and of handing this regulation over to a body - the newly-created Quality Assurance Agency - that has, perforce, been the tool of government in the sacrifice of academic standards on the altar of 'public information'.

"For the current multiple confusions - and cynicism - over how academic quality is guaranteed and how academic standards are assured", said Professor Alderman, "the members of the JPG, meeting privately once a month throughout 1996, bear a major responsibility."

Citing examples from both the 'old' [pre-1992] and the 'new' [post-1992] universities, Professor Alderman declared that in the frantic quest for high league-table rankings basic standards of literacy were brushed aside:

Standards of English literacy at UK universities are often poor. To compensate for this, lecturers are pressured to "mark positively". This is particularly true in relation to international students, whose full-cost fees are now a lucrative and essential source of much-needed revenue. I have heard it seriously argued that international students who plagiarise should be treated more leniently that British students, because of "differential cultural norms".

Ultimately, said Professor Alderman, "quality in higher education cannot be reduced to a dangerously simplistic rankings list, however appealing rankings may be to certain newspapers and their gullible readers, not to mention university governors whose attention span cannot (it seems) extend beyond a set of numerical performance indicators laid out tabloid-style. Nor can academic quality be policed without the willing and overwhelming consent of the practitioners. Why did the august members of the JPG not grasp this simple fact?"

For further details, please contact:
Anne Matsuoka / Bethany Carter
Publicity Office
University of Buckingham
Tel: +44 (0)1280 820338 / 820213
email: anne.matsuoka@buckingham.ac.uk or bethany.carter@buckingham.ac.uk
mobile: +44 (0)7850 645 103 (Anne) or +44 (0)7756 512 785 (Bethany)

NOTE FOR EDITORS

Further information about Geoffrey Alderman can be found at www.geoffreyalderman.com (external link). He can be contacted at geoffreyalderman@gmail.com and on +44 (0)7850-457289.