Top of the League Tables: the Social Mobility Index

Bernard Baruch College, City University New York

I sometimes think that what higher education really needs is a league table of higher education league tables. No, not really – but here is one league table that I would actually find useful: the Social Mobility Index sets out to identify which universities best serve the public interest. And the results are predictablly intriguing.

Basically, the Index measures performance against five criteria:

1. the level of tuition fees, with the lowest fees being ranked highest;
2. the socio-economic background of the students;
3. the graduation rate, which effectively includes retention and success;
4. the average early career salary of graduates;
5. income from endowments, which like tuition fees are measured negatively, on the grounds that a university which does something without endowment income is likely to be more efficient than one which does the same but with high endowment income.

These seem pretty reasonable criteria, and they can be measured fairly robustly.The Index seems to me to combine effectiveness measures with indicators of equity and student success. You won’t be surprised that I am quite keen to persuade someone like Phil Baty and the Times Higher to undertake a similar exercise in the UK, where similar data are readily available.

Indeed, with a pinch a suitably powerful government body (such as the European Commission) could probably collect such information for the whole of Europe. I wonder which universities would do well, and which would do badly, in a European Social Mobility League Table?

In the USA, which is what the current table covers, there is one clear winner. City University New York and its constituent colleges dominate the top position. What a great track record: best in the USA at taking disadvantaged students, ensuring they succeed, getting them valued in the labour market, and doing all this with low fees and low endowment. Yes, this is a league table I’d love to see replicated more widely.

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NIACE is dead, long live the Learning and Work Institute

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education announced in the summer that it was to merge with the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion. CESI, itself the product of a merger of the Unemployment Unit with other research and lobbying bodies, had already formed a ‘strategic alliance’ with NIACE. The merger was widely expected, and I fully expect NIACE members to endorse the merger at the annual meeting next month.

I’ve already arranged for my postal vote at the meeting, which will be to support the final stages of the merger. This will mark the end of an era: the British Institute of Adult Education was created in 1921, becoming the the National Institute of Adult Education in l949, and adopting its present name in 1983.The inclusion of ‘Continuing’ in the name was controversial at the time; supporters felt it signalled a commitment to working across all parts of a changing field, opponents believed it represented a capitulation to the vocational agenda of the then Tory government.

The name was not all that changed. The Institute shifted from an association of individual members in 1921 to one that was largely dominated by institutional members; it also attracted increasing levels of funding from government, local and national. Initially dominated by the Workers’ Educational Association, its role broadened steadily, expanding particularly in recent years under the energetic leadership of its director, Alan Tuckett, at a time of considerable government interest in adult learning. It has also merged with other bodies, notably the Basic Skills Agency which it had helped create in the first place.

NIACE became, in many respects, the model for a representative umbrella group. It provided a wide range of services, from publishing to research to staff development to a quiet word in Ministers’ ears. It was respected overseas as a willing and competent partner, an informed source of information, and as the producer of invaluable resources. It managed to negotiate a delicate balance between the two UK nations that it was charged with representing and the two that had much weaker representative structures. It was a source of creative thinking and energy, manifested in such influential developments as the annual Adult Learners’ Week.

After such a glorious past, why has NIACE felt such an urgent need to change?  One factor was undoubtedly a sharp collapse in funding, as central government and its agencies felt the impact of austerity.NIACE has already had to shed staff and abandon activities (including much of its publishing arm), and CESI is in the same position.

Financial retrenchment has been accompanied by the weakening or demise of many established adult education programmes, above all in local government. Formerly powerful allies such as the universities were cutting back on general adult education, and even on part-time degrees, while colleges’ capacities to deliver local adult programmes were throttled.

The other major factor is surely the clear vocational turn in adult learning. In many ways this represents an opportunity: from adult apprenticeships to employee development, from personal learning accounts to MOOCs, there is a huge role for a national representative body to engage with providers, help support teachers and trainers, and lobby and advocate at national level.

I can see that the merger with CESI will add to NIACE’s capabilities, as can be seen in the impact the two organisations are having jointly on the Government’s Welfare-to-Work programmes. And I very much welcome the clear focus on equity and inclusion that both organisations already share, and are promising to pursue in the future.

Do I have concerns? Of course I do. I fear that the need to adapt and change will damage core values, and that the new, merged body will find itself drawn to focus on young adults, to the cost of learners aged 25 and over – let alone those who are learning in the third and fourth age. And there is a risk that the merged Institute will be pushed into becoming a partner of government rather than its critical friend. But drifting on as things are is a strategy for irrelevance and marginalisation; better by far to work with those who will join from CESI, and who will bring new skils and capabilities.

That does, though, leave the vexed question of the name. Last week NIACE sent out the papers for its annual meeting, which spelt out the proposed new name: the Learning and Work Institute. The online weekly, FE Week duly ‘revealed’ this news. The name will duly be debated at the annual meeting on 4 November. Is this a name which trips off the tongue, and will it lend itself smoothly to an acronym? How will it play in Wales, where NIACE Dysgu Cymru has established itself as an important player in the devolved nation?

We shall see, of course. But whatever the name, the task of representing and supporting a large, diverse and rapidly changing field is going to present much more significant challenges than a bit of rebranding.

Do my Tweets reflect my own opinions?

I’m struck by how many people announce on their Twitter profiles that their comments do not express the views of their employer. This rather saddens me, as it implies that their managers might take a pop at them if they tweet something deemed ‘unfortunate’. It particularlyworries me when academic researchers include such statements, because higher education leaders have actively encouraged us to communicate our views on social media, as a way of engaging a wider public in our work.

I am sorely tempted to add my own announcement at the top of my Twitter feed. The first draft is far too long, but here it is:

All the views on this account are identical in every respect with those of the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities of Stirling and Warwick. They are also identical with the views of the Leader of Scarborough Borough Council, the First Minister of Scotland, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the President of the European Commission. On the other hand, my tweets reflect neither my own views nor those of my mother.

Then I will sit back and wait for the first of these good and great individuals to berate me for my views.

We’re all living longer lives, and lifelong learning has to change

The human life span continues to extend. In England, life expectancy from birth has doubled since 1840. Between 1982 and 2012, it increased by about 8 years for men (from 71·3 years to 79·2 years) and 6 years for women (from 77·3 years to 83.0 years).

And because of improvements in health care for the elderly, as well as changes in diet and other lifestyle factors, this trend is predicted to continue. According to research summarised in the Lancet, by 2030 life expectancy is expected to reach 85·7 years for men and 87·6 years for women.

Of course, these figures are averages, and they cover England only, and so are the projections. All the same, they are impressive, and two features really are striking. The first is that the gap between men and women is falling: it was 6 years in 1982, falling to 3.8 years in 2012, and it is expected to continue narrowing in the future.

This has significant implications for education. Generally, in most if not all countries, participation in adult learning falls sharply after the end of working life. But if we are all living much longer, including men, then it is highly likely that the end of working life will come much later than it did in industrial societies. Even though employers invest far less in older workers than younger ones, they still invest enough to have an effect on older adults who continue working. And if healthy life after work is going to be considerably longer, perhaps we have to start preparing for it more effectively.

So if male and female life expectancy is conversing, will be see a shift in the gender profile of adult learning? I think this is possible, though it will be so slow that it will attract very little attention. And it will also require a change of behaviour by providers if they are to become more ‘male friendly’ without compromising their principles; this is probably easier for private sector providers than those who are largely publicly funded, for obvious policy reasons. And of course male-friendly spaces such as the Men’s Shed movement are already growing apace.

At the same time, social class differences in life expectancy are rising. Many of these are caused by life style patterns, such as the likelihhod of smoking, drinking excessively or eating badly. While education can help to moderate these life style choices, it can’t do a great deal unless the underlying economic and social inequalities are tackled. If your expectation of a healthy life is only a few years after retirement, your opportunities for learning are constrained, so don’t expect greater longevity to do anything to reverse the well-established socio-economic bias of adult education.

‘We need a cultural revolution’: Alan Tuckett’s inaugural

Alan Tuckett at Wolverhampton University

Last night, Alan Tuckett gave his inaugural lecture at Wolverhampton University. As you’d expect from the much-loved former director of the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education, it was warm, self-deprecating, funny, and incisive. And although he had a lot to say about the history of the adult education movement, the lecture firmly directed us to look towards the future.

Alan gave his lecture a typically perplexing title: ‘Jesus and History, Thunder and Lightning: Lifewide learning for adults’. Equally characteristically, he had taken the first phrase from a learner, when asked what he wanted to learn about. Alan also quoted Alan Johnson, the much-admired Labour MP, who scoffed at adult education as dealing with frivolities like Pilates; needless to say, Alan had encountered a middle-aged plumber who took to Pilates as a way of making sure he could still crawl under a sink.

In short, Alan was arguing for a broad approach to publicly funded provision, which didn’t try to prescribe what adults learned, or whether they decided to take a qualification at the end of it. He name-checked Thomas Carlyle (‘It is the first duty of government to see that the people can think’), Paulo Freire and Raymond Williams, as well as the second wave feminists of the 1970s, as formative influences on his thinking.

The high point of this approach in recent decades was the early period of New Labour, which – as in other areas like pensioner poverty, child poverty and public health – had proven decisive, innovative and progressive. He also noted that when New Labour came to power, the main opposition parties were also interested in adult learning; he modestly forebore to mention the role of NIACE, and Alan Thomson and Alan Tuckett in particular, played in schmoozing with and persuading leading Tories and Lib Dems. The result was that the initiatives of 1998-2003 were largely uncontroversial politically.

Since then, adult learning has slipped progressively down the policy agenda. Alan pointed out that over two million adults have been lost to the further education system since 2003. The only nations which had managed to reduce employees’ participation levels in continuing training since the recession were the PIG nations (Portugal, Italy Greece) and the UK.

This policy neglect will, Alan predicted, command a heavy cost. We are much better informed about the evidenced benefits of adult learning, for one thing; for another, the external forces that drove the European agenda for lifelong learning in the 1990s are still there, with knobs on.

Some of the response may take place through private provision, or by self-help initiatives such as the U3A and reading circles. In an aging society, it may be that health agencies concerned about cognitive resilience will provide adult learning, but it will still be there. And similarly in other policy areas.

‘Adult learning is like ground elder’, he concluded. ‘You can’t kill it off, it grows up somewhere else’. But for it to include those who currently avoid adult learning, who see it as a threat or are excluded by providers’ structures and funding restrictions, we need a long term cultural change.

And there Professor Tuckett finished – only to be asked immediately by a member of the audience just how we might achieve this revolution in attitudes. Alan answered her, citing the learning cities movement as one positive current initiative, but I rather formed the impression that he is inclined to see this challenge as one that he is now ready to delegate to us all.