Improving What is Learned at University

An Exploration of the Social and Organisational Diversity of University Education

John Brennan, Robert Edmunds, Muir Houston, David Jary, Yann Lebeau, Michael Osborne, John T.E. Richardson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135190972
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Received the 'highly commended' award by the Society for Educational Studies for books published in 2010.

What is learned in universities today? Is it what students expect to learn? Is it what universities say they learn? How far do the answers to questions such as these differ according to what, where and how one studies?

As higher education has expanded, it has diversified both in terms of its institutional forms and the characteristics of its students. However, what we do not know is the extent to which it has also diversified in terms of 'what is learned'. In this book, the authors explore this question through the voices of higher education students, using empirical data from students taking 15 different courses at different universities across three subject areas – bioscience, business studies and sociology. The study concentrates on the students' experiences, lives, hopes and aspirations while at university through data from interviews and questionnaires, and this is collated and assessed alongside the perspectives of their teachers and official data from the universities they attend.

Through this study the authors provide insights into 'what is really learned at university' and how much it differs between individual students and the universities they attend. Notions of 'best' or 'top' universities are challenged throughout, and both diversities and commonalities of being a student are demonstrated. Posing important questions for higher education institutions about the experiences of their students and the consequences for graduates and society, this book is compelling reading for all those involved in higher education, providing conclusions which do not always follow conventional lines of thought about diversity and difference in UK higher education.

Part I

Chapter 1
Commonalities and diversities of UK universities

Introduction

As in most developed countries, higher education in the UK has expanded massively over recent decades. From under 10 per cent of the relevant age group going on to higher education at the end of the 1960s, by the first decade of the twenty-first century over 40 per cent were attending university. Over the same time period, the number of universities in the UK more than quadrupled and individual institutions grew in size substantially.

This expansion has in part reflected national policies based on assumptions of economic need for highly educated manpower and in part has been in response to a growing demand from young people and their parents, especially from more socially advantaged backgrounds, for the credentials and other forms of cultural capital necessary to achieve or maintain advantaged social positions. In this respect, expansion of higher education has been both a major route to social mobility and the means by which those already advantaged groups in society reproduce and legitimise their advantages.

One of the earliest sociological studies of graduates in the UK carried the sub-title, ‘the sociology of an elite’ (Kelsall et al., 1972). Such a term would hardly be applied to graduates today. While all the evidence indicates that graduates as a whole are quite a privileged group in the labour market, they are also to be found in jobs that would never previously have required high level qualifications. And in political and cultural terms, it would be difficult to make any special claims for the role or status of graduates in general, although elite groupings within the graduate population can, of course, quite easily be recognised.

Expansion of higher education has, in the words of the American sociologist Martin Trow (1973), involved a move from elite forms to ‘mass’ and ‘universal’ forms. But Trow also pointed out that the three forms of higher education could, and were likely to, exist simultaneously within individual higher education systems. Thus, the elite, mass and universal concepts can be applied both at the system level and in respect of sub-groups of institutions and students within those systems. So although UK higher education is generally regarded as a mass going on for universal system, within it can be identified ‘elite’ parts with something of a hierarchical ordering of the remainder.

Differentiation is generally regarded as a defining feature of expanded systems of higher education. This may be perceived as being largely hierarchical – some parts of higher education perceived to be ‘better’ than others – or as being largely functional – based on vocational/academic distinctions or range of subjects. Teichler (2007) has made the distinction between ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ forms of higher education differentiation and, along with others, places the UK firmly within the former.

All of this should remind us of very basic distinctions that can be made about the functions of any form of education as being primarily about ‘socialisation’ or ‘selection’. The former would place the emphasis on knowledge and learning, and on personal enlightenment and social development. The latter would place the emphasis on educational credentials as a ‘positional good’ with a central role to play in the stratification of societies and in providing the means for mobility and reproduction within those societies. The former may sometimes appear to be emphasising ‘education for its own sake’ but arguably it is also about the ‘public good’ and about contributing to the achievement of social characteristics such as equity and social cohesion. The latter is typically about ‘doing better than others’, about achieving more and more highly-rated credentials from prestigious institutions and obtaining the social capital available within them.

Of course, most forms of formal education are about both selection and socialisation. Some pupils and students do better in their examinations than others. Even where selection and hierarchy are predominant, most students learn something. Places at a particular university may be sought after because the institution is highly rated, attended mainly by students from ‘top schools’ and ‘good families’, providing clear pathways after graduation to wealth, status and power! But the university’s students may also learn a lot while they are there. Arguably they may learn more or different things than their peers attending less prestigious institutions. Or they may not!

One of the aims of the ESRC ‘SOMUL’ project¹ on which this book is based was to explore ‘what is learned’ within an increasingly differentiated higher education system populated by increasingly diverse groupings of students. As already noted, higher education in the UK is differentiated particularly in vertical terms. From the point of view of individual students, their families and their schools, this can put a premium on getting into a ‘top place’. From the point of view of (certain) employers, this will put a premium on recruiting ‘top students’ from ‘top universities’. But can students expect to learn more or different things from attending some higher education institutions rather than others? Can employers expect to obtain more able and productive workers by recruiting the graduates from some institutions rather than others? Assumptions that they will and that they can are deeply embedded in major parts of UK society, including the most powerful and privileged parts.

In posing the question, ‘What is learned at university’, the SOMUL project was interested in the ways and extent to which differences in the institutional forms of higher education and in the kinds of students who attended them were matched by differences in the outcomes of learning from those institutions. How much does it really matter where one studies? And if some institutions seem to do better than others, are there lessons that can be learned and applied more generally across our universities, irrespective of where they stand in contemporary hierarchies, league tables and the like? The project’s central concerns with the ‘social and organisational mediation of learning’ assumed that differences can and do matter, but differences in terms of how studies are organised or of the aspirations and lifestyles of the students, rather than in relation to simple hierarchies of institutional prestige. But the project was also interested in the commonalities that existed across all forms and settings of higher education: commonalities derived from the subject content and disciplinary norms of courses in particular fields; commonalities derived from longstanding traditions of what higher education – or more particularly a university education – represents in the UK, or more accurately in its constituent nations; and commonalities derived from the regulatory apparatus applied by various state agencies to ensure common standards and comparable experiences irrespective of where learning actually took place.

In setting the scene for an exploration of what is shared and what differs across the diverse settings of higher education in the UK, this opening chapter will explore some of the main dimensions against which both commonality and difference may be found. This will involve some consideration of how higher education is organised both nationally and institutionally as well as consideration of the backgrounds, lives and aspirations of its students. Although the focus will be on the UK, reference will also be made to experiences and conceptualisations from other parts of the world.

It will be necessary in later chapters to consider whether particular differences actually ‘matter’ and why, and to consider whether certain differences when found in combination may serve to benefit some students rather than others. It will also be important to ask whether there are ‘best practices’ to be identified that would be of benefit to all students irrespective of where they study. Or, within an increasingly diverse system, does practice need to be tailored to the particular and distinctive needs of different types of student? Above all, is the increasing diversity of higher education a reflection of an increasing diversity within the larger society? Or might it indeed be a cause, or at least a legitimiser, of larger diversities?

First, however, it is necessary to flesh out some conceptions of ‘learning’ that can be applied to the experiences and outcomes of a university education. Clearly, whole books can and have been written on this subject. The intention here is simply to map some possible dimensions of learning, to consider the different kinds of answer that might be found to our central question of ‘what is learned at university’.

What is taught and what is learned

The most obvious answer to the question of ‘what is learned at university’ is, depending on the chosen course, a ‘lot of history, or chemistry, or economics’ or whatever the chosen curriculum sets before the student. And, of course, this is a perfectly valid answer and one which we shall explore in this volume through a focus on three contrasting subject areas. Subjects, we would argue, are a source of commonality that cuts across the diversities of institutional settings and student circumstances. In some senses, the economics student (or chemistry or history or whatever) at university A has more in common with another economics student at universities X, Y and Z (whatever the characteristics of those institutions) than he or she has with a biology student at university A. Degree courses in particular subjects involve the transmission of a body of knowledge largely unique to that subject, a ‘way of knowing’ particular to the subject and, most likely, sets of values and attitudes that go along with membership of that subject community. Writers such as Henkel (2000) and Becher and Trowler (2001) have written about subject-defined ‘academic identity’ and an undergraduate education is generally the first step in acquiring such an identity.

An answer in terms of subject knowledge would certainly be the likely answer that most academics would give to the question of ‘what is learned’ at university. For it is the subject that provides them with an important part of their own identities. It is what they are in business to transmit when they teach. This is what they want the students to learn. This is what the university prospectus says the students will learn. But is it the whole story? Or even the most important part?

In later chapters of this book, we will consider how far subject knowledge and identity does indeed provide a common experience across different universities. We shall note that subject communities differ in the degree of consensus about the content of the curriculum and how it is organised. And many students study several subjects simultaneously. Graduate employment in the UK reveals only a loose link between subject studied and job acquired. For the moment, we just want to acknowledge the importance of subject content to any appreciation of what is learned while suggesting that it is far from being the whole story.

A different emphasis and potential answer to the question of ‘what is learned’ sees subjects as the vehicle rather than the content of learning. A university education, from this perspective, is about the acquisition of high level cognitive processes, of ‘learning how to learn’, of ‘doing things’ with knowledge and of gaining competences and skills derived from this knowledge. This is the reason why many graduate employers are not particularly concerned about what particular subject a graduate has studied. It is not the subject knowledge that is important but the abilities and skills to manipulate and exploit knowledge. This seems to be particularly the case in the UK labour market (in contrast to other European countries) where graduates are valued by employers less for their subject expertise and more for their general abilities and competences. However, this does not mean that all graduates are regarded as the same. There will be differences between individual graduates and differences perceived to be related to the subjects studied, the institutions attended and various characteristics of the student experience. In referring to ‘perceived’ differences, we are suggesting a possible contrast between the abilities and skills actually possessed by individual graduates and the perceptions of significant stakeholders, especially employers. There are a number of established instruments for the measurement of various cognitive abilities and competences and these have been used extensively during the SOMUL project and the results will be reported on in later chapters, especially Chapter 6. Here, we might just note that while subject learning tends to cut across institutional hierarchies, perceptions of more general cognitive learning attainments generally follow them, with assumptions that the ‘best’ graduates are to be found in the ‘top’ universities.

Another and rather different answer to the ‘what is learned’ question places the emphasis not on knowledge but on personal confidence, identity and aspiration. It is the personal achievement of getting into university and gaining a degree which is the source of fundamental change in the individual. It is to do with how the individual student sees him- or herself and with how he or she sees him- or herself in relation to others. From the perspective of identity, going to university may be about shedding existing identities and acquiring new ones. At least that may be the experience for some students. For other students, it may be about confirming and reinforcing an existing identity (as a ‘high achiever’, as a ‘leader’, as a ‘success’). And for still other students, it is about acquiring an ability to juggle multiple identities as being simultaneously a ‘student’, a ‘parent’, a ‘worker’.

The acquisition of confidence and aspiration, of course, rather assumes that these qualities were not already possessed by the student before he or she entered higher education. And in this respect, student diversity in terms of social and educational backgrounds may be important. The student who has known nothing but educational success since the first few months at prep school may be full of confidence on arrival at university and have little more to gain while at university which, for such students, takes more the form of ‘status confirmation’, in the words of Brown and Scase (1994). Conversely, the student who left school without qualifications at age 16 and who 10 or 15 years later manages to get into university after years spent in evening classes in further education colleges is likely to have a much greater sense of achievement and boost to confidence from gaining a university place. Whether the responsibility for it lies with the university or elsewhere, the student with confidence and ambition has been equipped to do more things with hi...

Table of contents

• Improving Learning TLRP
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index