NEWS

Overseas students ‘worth 10 times the cost’ to UK, says report

New in-depth look at the price of hosting EU and non-EU students shows benefits far outweigh cost to taxpayer

International students are worth about 10 times more to the UK economy than they cost the taxpayer, according to a new report that will add to pressure currently mounting on the country’s government for a shift in policy on the issue.

The analysis, which, unlike most similar studies in the past, looks at the cost of hosting overseas students as well as the benefits, calculates the bill at £2.3 billion, including use of the NHS and other public services.

This is still far less than the benefits, including tuition fees and spending while in the UK, that amount to an estimated £23 billion for one student cohort, according to the report by London Economics for the Higher Education Policy Institute and Kaplan.

The resulting £20.3 billion net impact is, on average, the equivalent of £310 for every resident, the report estimates, with the effects reaching right across the UK, although London tends to see the highest returns.

California’s community colleges: university gateway, economic engine

Chancellor of world’s biggest higher education system sees Trump immigration plan as ‘antithesis’ of American values

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California Community Colleges System, the largest higher education system in the world, “came from the same background that a lot of students who access community college come from. I grew up in a working-class family in south Los Angeles, son of an immigrant mother and a father who was a [US] citizen but spoke no English when he came to California.”

Mr Oakley, the first Latino to lead the CCCS, which has more than 2 million students, joined the US military after leaving high school. He then enrolled at a community college and, like many students at those institutions, subsequently transferred to university to complete a four-year degree – in his case at the University of California, Irvine.

Uniquely in world higher education, the community college system offers students the chance to enter higher education later in life and transfer their credits to complete their courses at a university, thus adding capacity for universities and widening access for disadvantaged students. And California’s community college system is perhaps the most advanced in the US.

Now the state’s community colleges are trying to protect tens of thousands of students – those brought to the US as children by undocumented parents whose status is threatened by Donald Trump’s immigration policies, which Mr Oakley strongly criticises – while also enduring a bout of “angst” as they wrestle with the rise of online education and how to equip students for a world of work potentially transformed by artificial intelligence.

The CCCS is one element of the internationally admired California Master Plan for Higher Education, which coordinates the different roles performed by each of the state’s three public higher education systems. The research institutions of the University of California form one tier, alongside the mass-recruiting California State University system and the CCCS.

California’s community colleges have three primary functions. The first is to serve as a “gateway to higher education for the majority of Californians”, which “allows them, if they want to, to transfer to a four-year university”, said Mr Oakley. Community colleges thus extend the capacity of the state’s public universities. About 40 per cent of those achieving bachelor’s degrees at CSU are transfer students from Californian community colleges, and some 30 per cent at the University of California are such, Mr Oakley added.

The second function of community colleges is to “prepare students for the workforce, not too unlike the apprenticeship programmes in Europe”, he continued. These courses offer certificates in particular industry sectors – healthcare, for example – but they bear credits that students can use to continue their education at a later stage, even if they enter the workforce.

The third function is “non-credit education” (which cannot be used for further study) aimed at meeting specific workforce needs. Mr Oakley cited a Long Beach City College course training truck drivers to work at the Port of Long Beach.

This combination of functions “sets us apart from higher education systems [not only] in the nation but really in the world”, said Mr Oakley. “[In] a lot of places, those functions are done by different entities,” he added.

Mr Oakley took over as CCCS chancellor in December 2016. He previously served as superintendent-president of the Long Beach Community College District near Los Angeles, one of 72 districts that run the 114 colleges making up the CCCS.

The key contribution that community colleges make to the state’s economy, he said, is that “we touch the majority of the workforce of California. And we are closest to the industries that are creating jobs.” Community colleges can “change curricula much faster” to accommodate workforce needs “than, say, the University of California, which operates more traditionally”, Mr Oakley argued. That is important when advanced manufacturing, for example, is largely “computer-assisted” and requires a different skill set from that formerly required by manufacturing, he added.

Career advice: how to supervise a PhD student for the first time

There are numerous survival guides for doctoral students, but much less advice on how to supervise PhD candidates. Robert MacIntosh offers some tips on becoming an effective supervisor

Supervision will give you a chance to share the accumulated wisdom of your own PhD journey and anything else that has followed. However, you need to start at ground zero with each new student to help build a shared sense of what good practice looks like. 

A good first step is for both of you to take a small batch of seminal papers and agree to read them before swapping notes. This simple exercise will allow you the chance to demonstrate how to scrutinise the key ideas, assumptions, limitations and contributions that each author or authoring team makes in its paper. Doing so in the style of a collaborative, worked example will help to set a particular tone that will pay rich rewards in the months and years ahead. 

Being clear about the level of depth and the practicalities of note taking is as important as showing how you approach the basic task of getting to grips with the literature.

Give the feedback you wish you’d received
Bemoaning the failings of your supervisor represents one of the most common ways of establishing rapport among a group of doctoral students. “They’re never there”, “they don’t give detailed comments”, “they’re always in a rush” and so forth. Each new supervisory relationship, however, represents your opportunity to break the cycle.

Recall your own anxieties and needs as a PhD student and try to offer your new student the kind of supervision that you wish you had received. Draw on your own supervision experiences, whether these were of being micromanaged or of Zen-like levels of uninterest. These formative experiences probably mean that you know what you should offer to your new student. Be bold and strive to provide the right balance between nurturing and challenging. You’ll also need to balance the other demands that arise in modern academic life – maybe you’ll find yourself reflecting on the reasons that your supervisor was always in a rush.

THE Leadership and Management Awards 2018 open for entries

This is the 10th anniversary of the Thelmas, which celebrate the outstanding achievements of often under-recognised individuals and teams working in administration and management at our universities – those keeping a steady hand on the tiller through choppy seas, as well as providing the necessary revs to the engines when advancing through calmer waters.

We will be looking for excellence at all levels of UK institutions, and across the full range of departments, so whether your work is in registry services or estates, knowledge exchange or finance, there should be a category for you.

The shortlist will be published on 12 April, and the awards ceremony will take place at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Thursday 21 June, when the year’s Outstanding Leadership and Management Team will be crowned.

The week in higher education

The good, the bad and the offbeat: the academy through the lens of the world’s media

Few issues in higher education could provoke more than 200,000 people to sign a petition, but the UK government has achieved just this by appointing journalist Toby Young to the board of England’s new higher education regulator, the Office for Students. The petition on change.org claims that Mr Young had once referred to children with learning difficulties as “illiterate troglodytes”, that he had complained that schools having to give access to children in wheelchairs is an example of “ghastly” political correctness, and that he had described state school undergraduates at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge as “stains”. Asked about the comments on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show on 7 January, prime minister Theresa May said that she was “not at all impressed by those comments” but highlighted that Mr Young had apologised. “He’s now in public office and as far as I’m concerned if he was to continue to use that sort of language and talk in that sort of way he would no longer be in public office,” Ms May said.

Ms May may be reluctant to ditch Mr Young but, as Times Higher Education went to press, she was sharpening her axe for a Cabinet reshuffle that could have significant implications for the UK’s universities. Justine Greening, the education secretary, was widely reported to be on her way out of the job, while Greg Clark, the business secretary, was also tipped to move roles. The fate of Jo Johnson, the universities minister, was also unclear. With battles over international students, post-Brexit research funding and executive pay high on the political agenda, vice-chancellors will hope that the individuals who end up in the top jobs in Whitehall get up to speed as soon as possible.

Justine Greening blocked bid to reduce tuition fees, claims ex-May aide

Former education secretary and former universities minister Jo Johnson stymied the plan, says Nick Timothy

Theresa May’s former chief of staff has accused the former education ministers Justine Greening and Jo Johnson of blocking attempts to reduce university tuition fees and reform higher education.

Nick Timothy, who quit the prime minister’s office after last year’s election, said the former education secretary and universities minister blocked proposals to reduce interest rates on student loan repayments and allow institutions to charge different fees.

Justine Greening’s departure is bad news for anyone who cares about education  Melissa Benn

Writing in a column in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, Timothy said the ideas could be revived by the government after this week’s reshuffle, in which Greening resigned after refusing to be moved to a different department and Johnson was shifted to the department of transport.

Timothy also denied any involvement in Greening’s departure, but said the former education secretary “put the brakes on policies that work”.

He wrote: “Young people must be given better choices at 18. Right now, the incentives tell them to go to university. Many emerge with good degrees, but others come out with a costly qualification that makes little difference. On average, they will graduate with debts of £50,000, the highest in the world. Those who do not go to university – still more than half of young people – are neglected by a system guilty of institutionalised snobbery.”

Timothy also urged the new education secretary, Damian Hinds, to support the prime minister’s universities policy review.

“Greening blocked proposals to reduce tuition fees and refused to hold a proper review of tertiary education. Hinds must be brave enough to do that, to ensure universities are better, fees are lower, and young people get the technical or academic education that suits them. He is already touted as a potential future prime minister: if he gets this right, he will be a convincing candidate for the job,” he said.

Higher education policy is rumoured to be an important part of May’s plan to win back young voters, who overwhelmingly backed Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s agenda during last year’s election.

Theresa May is now free to reform university tuition fees after sacking two ministers who opposed her plans, says former top aide

Justine Greening spent two-and-a-half hours in talks with the PM on Monday 

The former Education Secretary resigned instead of accepting a new post 

Theresa May's former adviser Nick Timothy hailed Ms Greening's removal 

Mr Timothy accused Ms Greening of blocking reform of university tuition fees 

Prime Minister Theresa May will be able to reform university tuition fees after removing Justine Greening as Education secretary during this week's reshuffle. 

Ms Greening was the highest profile casualty of the reshuffle after she resigned from cabinet instead of taking the offer of a sideways move from Education to the Department of Work and Pensions. 

The PM's former Chief of Staff Nick Timothy claimed Ms Greening was blocking moves to reform university fees. 

Winning at all costs: US college athletics and the curse of money

College sport is a wildly popular, multibillion-dollar industry, but rampant commercialism has led to numerous ethical, financial, academic and scandals, while spiralling expenses are placing the whole US higher education system under pressure. Jon Marcus reports

A 300-piece marching band leads a parade of fire engines carrying high-spirited cheerleaders past a rapturous sea of more than 80,000 people, almost all of them in red and white. Some of these onlookers wander away from the bedlam to sit in the lap of a nearby statue of Abraham Lincoln, their whispered entreaties to the Civil War president drowned out by the music looping from restaurants and stores.

“On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin, stand up, Badgers, sing,” it blares, over and over. “Forward is our driving spirit, loyal voices ring/On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin, raise her glowing flame/Stand, fellows, let us now salute her name!”

It is football game day in Madison, the home town of the University of Wisconsin, and the pageantry amounts to a uniquely American tradition. The observance of the various rituals is almost religious: the playing of the university fight song, the wearing of its colours, the prayers for victory to Lincoln and the adulation for the Badgers mascot that is omnipresent on the merchandise being snapped up as quickly as sellers can give out the change.

University athletics is deeply woven into US culture and commerce, accounting for emotional loyalties and rivalries and billions of dollars in revenue, divided up among broadcasters, marketers, the universities themselves and highly paid coaches who also stand to earn lucrative endorsement revenue from sponsors.

“Spectators have become addicted to the spectacle, and the universities have swallowed hard and found ways to live with this pact with the devil,” says Jay Smith, a historian at the University of North Carolina who studies university athletics. “And for that reason, the system has become entrenched.”

But US university athletics is also facing yet another round of attacks after a long succession of ethical, financial and academic scandals, an uprising among players who want a share of all that money, and new financial realities that have stretched university budgets and diminished the willingness of non-athlete students to continue to subsidise athletics.

“These threats to the integrity of college sports are an urgent call to reform, if ever there was one,” says Arne Duncan, the former US secretary of education and co-chair of the independent Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a panel mostly made up of university leaders and former college athletes, set up in 1989 in the wake of previous scandals and aimed at promoting academic integrity in college sports.

Quarter of students in UK universities gain first-class degree

More than a quarter of UK university students gained a first-class degree in the last academic year, a significant rise since 2012-13, figures show.

Overall, 26 per cent of students who gained their first undergraduate degree in 2016-17 achieved a first, compared with 18 per cent in 2012-13, according to the latest release from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

A further 49 per cent of students obtained a 2:1, down one percentage point on the previous year.

This means that 75 per cent of students gained a 2:1 or a first in 2016-17, up from 68 per cent in 2012-13.

The figures follow an analysis last year that found that about a third of UK universities now award a first-class degree to at least a quarter of their undergraduates compared with just 8 per cent of institutions five years ago.  

The new data is likely to fuel the debate about grade inflation at UK institutions.

In September, former universities minister Jo Johnson warned that grade inflation was “ripping through English higher education” and confirmed his view that the teaching excellence framework would help tackle the issue.

A recent report from Universities UK and GuildHE also called for more transparency around degree algorithms and told universities to ensure that their policies on borderline scores do not in effect lower the thresholds for degree classifications.

A blog from the Higher Education Funding Council for England in response to the new Hesa data says that the rise in first-class degree holders can partly be explained by changes in students’ school qualifications.

A higher proportion of university students now have BTEC qualifications, rather than A-levels, and the number of students who entered higher education with the highest possible BTEC grades more than doubled to just under 7,000 between 2014-15 and 2016-17, it says.

The Hesa figures also report a continuing decline in the number of part-time students; there was a 4 per cent drop in the number of such students between 2015-16 and 2016-17 to 519,825.

There was also a 1 per cent drop in the number of students from outside the European Union in 2016-17, although the number of first-year overseas students remained steady. This follows a 1 per cent decline in first-year non-EU students last year.

But the number of first-year students from other EU countries increased by 7 per cent to 63,035. Most students starting university in 2016-17 would have applied for the course prior to the EU referendum in June 2016.

Elsewhere, there was a 10 per cent year-on-year rise in the number of first-year taught postgraduate students to 308,985 in 2016-17, its highest point in 10 years. This coincides with the introduction of postgraduate loans for master’s students from England.

While the number of first-year students taking their first degree increased by 1 per cent last year, other undergraduate first-year student numbers dropped by 8 per cent.

Hesa said that this could be explained by the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees in 2012, providers reclassifying their nursing courses from a diploma of higher education to a first degree from 2011-12, and a drop in the number of employers paying for staff to undertake continuing professional development courses since the downturn in the economy.

Greening blocked English tuition fee cuts, says PM's ex-adviser

Former Downing Street policy guru Nick Timothy says former education secretary resisted university funding review and potential tuition fee cuts

Former education secretary Justine Greening blocked plans to reduce university tuition fees, Theresa May’s former chief of staff has claimed.

In a Daily Telegraph column on 11 January, Nick Timothy says Ms Greening, who quit the cabinet this week after he declining to become welfare and pensions secretary, had “blocked proposals to reduce tuition fees and refused to hold a proper review of tertiary education”.

Mr Timothy, who quit his role at Downing Street after the general election, says the new education secretary, Damian Hinds, “must be brave enough to do that, to ensure universities are better, fees are lower, and young people get the technical or academic education that suits them”.

“He is already touted as a potential future prime minister: if he gets this right, he will be a convincing candidate for the job,” says Mr Timothy.

While Jo Johnson, who was moved from universities minister to transport on 9 January, is not mentioned in the article, he is also thought to have opposed any moves to cut university tuition fees in England from £9,250 a year, having initially sought to link fee uplifts to the results of the teaching excellence framework.

Mr Timothy also claims that Ms Greening was “unpopular with officials…frustrated reformers, and…exasperated the Prime Minister”.

“Charged with making Britain 'the world’s great meritocracy', she put the brakes on policies that work, like free schools, and devised bureaucratic initiatives of little value,” he said.

In a tweet responding to the article, Mr Johnson comments: “So wrong, this stuff re Justine Greening.”

“She supported me in every single reform we undertook of our universities, was a terrific colleague and faultlessly loyal,” adds Mr Johnson.

The piece by Mr Timothy will raise expectations that the “major review of university funding and student finance” promised by Theresa May in October will consider significant changes to England's student finance system, having apparently stalled following internal opposition from Ms Greening and Mr Johnson.

The review follows the decision by Theresa May in October to raise the income threshold that triggers student loan repayments from £21,000 to £25,000, which will save students about £8,000 on average and cost around £2.9 billion per student cohort.