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Future direction of UK Higher Education

Dr. Elizabeth Lawrence discusses the future direction of UK higher education, exploring themes such as academic freedom, privatisation, metrics, and the White Paper. She also examines the impact of student demand, staff employment, workloads, roles, and careers within universities.

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Future direction of UK Higher Education

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  1. Future direction of UK Higher Education by Dr Elizabeth Lawrence UCU Immediate Past President

  2. Introduction – themes of talk • Academic freedom and academic standards • Privatisation, metrics and the White Paper • Students and demand for higher education • Staff, precarious employment, workloads, roles and careers

  3. Academic freedom and academic standards • Academic freedom necessary to uphold academic standards • Dangers of commercial pressures on the sector • The Prevent Agenda – the duties both to safeguard students and to maintain academic freedom • Do some subject areas become too difficult to teach and research? • Is the Government using the Prevent agenda to create a narrow centre-right consensus? • Do mud-slinging political campaigns threaten academic freedom within our universities?

  4. Privatisation, metrics and the White Paper • Considerable privatisation already, changed basis of student funding, tuition fees, outsourcing • Growth of private for-profit providers of Higher Education • Metrics, league tables and goal displacement • Proxy metrics • White Paper proposes easier entrance to the sector and easier exit

  5. The White Paper and degrees • What is a degree education? • An investment by students and parents in their employability and lifetime earning? • A benefit to society • The provision of an educated electorate to enhance democracy • The provision for society of an educated workforce, staffing many socially useful professions and occupations

  6. What might education in private for profit providers look like? • Will there be academic freedom clauses in staff contract, charters or statutes? • What will happen to equality policies? • How will pay and conditions of staff be determined? Will there be recognised unions and collective bargaining? • What will students receive beyond education and assessment? How much academic and pastoral support?

  7. Students and demand for higher education • Why has demand for higher education not fallen? • Will high tuition fees in UK lead to more students studying abroad? • Loss of overseas students because of migration controls • How will cuts in further education impact on access to universities? • How many graduates does the Conservative Government want?

  8. Staff, precarious employment, workloads, roles and careers • What types of jobs will be offered by universities in future? • The growth of precarious employment and deskilling – who writes the learning materials? • Does the lecturer do both research and teaching? ‘Academic fracking’ • How much academic freedom and autonomy? • Is university lecturing a long-term career? Pressures on workloads, job security, pay and pensions

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