Fast track degree to future success?
For many students, Trinity term of third year comes far too quickly, especially when it’s your last as an Oxford undergraduate and you remember your first, alcoholfuelled term as if it were yesterday (or at least you remember waking up the next morning in bed with one shoe and a stranger).
Recent proposals, however, could see an end to three-year courses interspersed with protracted holidays, with two-year degrees becoming an ever likelier option as the cost of studying spirals and the student debts incurred after three years puts more and more students off applying to university in the fi rst place. The concept of two-year degrees was fi rst aired in Labour’s 2005 manifesto where it stated that “twoyear foundation courses in vocational disciplines have a key part to play”.
However many suspect that this time scale could soon be applied to more academic subjects with the two-year scheme being piloted next September at fi ve institutions • including Leeds Metropolitan and Staffordshire • on nonvocational courses such as English, geography and law.
The courses, known as compressed honours degrees, may soon be more widely available as pressures of time and money mean that universities have to start offering a wider selection of options if they are to attract the kind of numbers the government wants.
The reasoning behind the proposal is that despite widespread initiatives to attract pupils from lower income backgrounds to higher education, many have been put off by the idea of coming out of university up to £30,000 in debt when they could start working at sixteen and be earning a decent salary by the age of twenty-one, the typical age of most first-time university graduates.
Thus ministers have been racking their brains to try and fi nd ways of making degrees more appealing to those pupils, and one of their ideas has been to reduce the length of degrees, enabling students to gain some sort of qualifi - cation while still being able to get on the career ladder and begin to ease their debts. However this battery farm approach to higher education has been largely dismissed by universities.
Outside of Westminster, those who are actually involved in higher education are steadfastly opposed to introducing two years as a standard length of time for degrees. AUT General Secretary, Sally Hunt, said: “Whilst we welcome more fl exible approaches to higher education, we are concerned that trying to fi t everything into just two years will diminish the whole university experience.
And this is the crux of the problem: for most people, university is as much about personal development as academic, and three years is barely enough as it is to make friends, socialise, get involved in extra curricular, sporting or political activities and come out with a respectable degree.
It was the introduction of top-up fees in 2004 that effectively began the commercialisation of higher education which has resulted in a market-based approach to university, possibly prompted by the fact that last month, China finally usurped Britain as the world’s fourth largest economy.
That Britain needs to compete with fast growing economies is obvious, but students may well be the ones to suffer as they are rebranded as consumers and universities are encouraged to use marketplace tactics to attract them. “Worryingly a lot of recent higher education policy seems much more concerned with a bottom line and treating students as commodities,” says Hunt.
While politicians bandy around terms like “fl exibility” and “choice”, it often seems as though they are not paying enough attention to those who will ultimately be paying: the students.
A spokesman for Universities Scotland, which represents thirty-three higher education establishments including the University of Edinburgh, points out that some of its institutions do run “accelerated learning” schemes which can be completed in about two years, with students working longer hours and taking shorter holidays, but as their spokesman states, there is “no market” for this type of learning which would make degrees “more functional than they already have become.
Ultimately, the bottom line is that students need holidays, to earn money, do some reading, and just relax.
However the introduction of these two year degrees highlights the eventual struggle between vocational degrees masquerading as arts degrees, and degrees such as classics and philosophy, which do not lead to a clear career path. John Kirwan, the Acting Director of the University of Oxford Careers Office, thinks that “employers are very satisfied with what comes out of Oxford”.
This would indicate that employers are willing to overlook non-useful knowledge due to the assurance of the Oxford brand. How will this brand survive in the newly competitive atmosphere of twoyear degrees, however? Deeming certain degrees as academic, and others as vocational, would lead to a radical shift in how certain universities would be defined.
Would some universites, such as Oxford or Cambridge, be regarded as antiquated for insisting students learn dead languages, while others which offered vocational courses, turn into mere factories? There is no easy answer, for the simple reason that the concept of useful knowledge is relative.
Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Politics and Vice Principal of Brasenose, unequivocally states that Oxford students “need four year degrees” and were the changes to be introduced they “would hit Oxford and Cambridge particularly hard”. But as students increasingly find themselves in jobs which bear no relation to anything they studied at university, it seems that learning for learning’s sake could be more than a touch out of date.
In fact, the idea maybe obsolete for the next generation of students. It would appear that the support for three-year, if not longer, degrees is overwhelming, especially by University of Oxford students. One must remember, however, that the Oxford experience is renowned for its intensity, insamuch that it is crammed into only 24 weeks, while degrees at other universities unfold at a more leisurely pace.
While it is not a necessary life skill to read fluently in New Testament Greek; however, if a theologian wished to proceed into his second year of study at Oxford, he would be required to pass an exam in New Testament Greek. Moreover, one of the hardest hit aspects of two-year university degrees would be extracurricular activities.
With students settling in during their first year and revising for finals in their last year, compressed honours would allow students no time to explore the wealth of opportunities that university has to offer, from drama and sports to archery and wine tasting. Alexis Alexander, former president of the Oxford University Law Society, is someone who gained as much from her participation in extra-curricular activities as her degree.
“My time as the President of the Oxford Law Society furnished me with the kind of experience and insight that a degree cannot provide,” says Alexander. “The ability to communicate with, persuade and endear people in positions of seniority is an invaluable life skill” • and one which can’t really be picked up in a tutorial after the third all-nighter that week. Lauren Duke, who is currently studying a second BA in English, has had experience of both fouryear and two-year degrees.
Lauren, who studied at Auburn University in America for four years before coming to Greyfriars to do a second, two-year course, says that “Two years is enough time for those of us who have been there and done that but I wouldn’t mind an additional year”.
While Lauren has been able to enjoy the best of both worlds, she still feels that those currently on a three-year course still have some advantages to two years: “Having both had Mods, and a third year of tutorials, they know more about what to expect and have a better feel for what the tutors and examiners want to see in an essay.
?? Interestingly, despite the government’s intentions, universities themselves are slowly going back to a four-year degree, which is the standard throughout most of Europe and America. In Scotland, where four-year degrees are the norm, there are currently no intentions of changing to a shorter length of degree, simply because four years seems to be working. Oxford issued a statement saying that the university is “not considering offering two-year undergraduate degree programmes”.
Bill Rammel, the Higher Education Minister was last week quoted in The Times as saying that we currently have “a holiday pattern driven by university rather than student needs” but, as an Oxford spokeswoman points out, the trend is “moving in the opposite direction, towards four-year degrees in many areas of science”.
Indeed, many of those studying subjects such as biochemistry and maths are increaingly choosing to stay on for an optional fourth year simply because they feel they haven’t yet had their fill. Many believe that the introduction of two-year degrees as a way of easing student debt is an acknowledgement that top-up fees could deter more pupils from applying to university. Tuition fees of up to £3000 were introduced in January 2004 with the government winning by only five votes.
The issue then threatened to shake the government and they are still dealing with the after effects of such a change to the higher education system. Other measures they have toyed with introducing include a PQA (Post Qualification Applications) system which they claim would make university applications fairer than those based on predicted grades and an American style credit system.
With a target, however, of half of all eighteen to thirty year-olds in higher education by 2010, critics have accused the government of revolutionising higher education to make the numbers fit. Some benefits of the two-year degree would be a greater opportunity for those in the work place to gain qualifications, although it is this discrepancy between getting onto the career ladder and gaining a qualification which has resulted in the perceived need for compressed degrees.
The proposed changes to honours degrees come on top of more recent significant changes to higher education which, as well as constant targets to be met, has meant that many involved at the heart of university teaching are becoming increasingly fed up with the infiltration of policy making in academia. As Bogdanor states: “The sooner Oxford is free of the government, and privatised, the better.
27th Apr 2006