Retention in distance learning

Also on the theme of retention the report of a small project on retention in distance education, which I worked on with Alan Tait and Daksha Patel is now available. The research was funded through a grant from the University of London Centre for Distance Education (CDE). While the core of the report is a review of the literature on retention in distance education, there is some discussion of data from three of University of London International Programmes and some suggestions for questions that course teams might want to reflect on in relation to retention in the first year of study.

Image by Pete Cannell CC0

HEPI report on Widening Participation

HEPI have just published a report on benchmarking widening participation .  The report uses 2016 POLAR data from UCAS to create a GINI coefficient for each institution.  This approach is sadly well established in higher education.  It’s liked by politicians and journalists because it assigns a single number for each institution and allows the construction of league tables.  But it looks at one narrow dimension of participation and assumes that transition from school to university at 18 is the norm.

Martin Weller has written an excellent response to the report – arguing that its’ methodology specifically excludes the institutions that make the greatest efforts to support a diverse student intake.    Martin mentions that the index of multiple deprivation avoids some of the problems with POLAR.  However, he also highlights the problems of single measures that are used as a proxy for complex phenomena.  The University of the West of Scotland (UWS) and the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) provide a good example.  Both are universities that focus on widening participation.  Both are ranked low on the HEPI table but viewed through the lens of the index of multiple deprivation, the measure preferred by the Scottish Government,  UWS performs very well and UHI badly.  This is because UWS draws its students from a densely populated urban hinterland, while UHI recruits from largely rural and less densely populated areas.

Martin’s concludes by saying that

The danger is that such a report reinforces traditional notions of what constitutes a student, and study in higher education, which are at odds with the needs of many WP students. League tables always result in a loss of nuance, and this could make life more difficult for providers who seek to prioritise WP through non-traditional provision.

True for the HEPI report but also highly relevant to recent initiatives in Scotland.

 

Part-time Study

A couple of weeks ago I presented a video talk on part-time study on the Alternative University of the Air. I drew on data from the Scottish Funding Council’s 2017 report on higher education statistics.  Pulling together material for the talk reopened an interest in writing on this topic. As a first, baby step, I’ve collated my notes in the blog.

I’m thinking about trends in part-time study from a UK perspective. The introduction of high fees in England (some suggested this was the advent of parity for part-timers) and regulations that restricted flexibility and barred student with previous qualifications at an equivalent level, resulted in a huge drop in part-time student numbers, falling by 56% between 2010/11 and 2015/16.   This story is well known, although its political and policy repercussions have been limited, reflecting the marginalisation of part-time.

In regard to student fees Scotland is at the other end of the policy spectrum. Full-time higher education is free for Scottish students (and for students from the rest of the EU but not England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Part-time study continues to attract fees but at a lower level. Students earning under £25,000 are entitled to fee remission through the part-time fee grant. Nevertheless part-time higher education numbers have fallen by 27%.

The Open University, based in all four UK nations is a good example of contradictory trends. OU numbers in England have fallen since the change in the fee regime. Student numbers at the OU in Scotland are rising.   In the rest of this paper I make a preliminary dig through the Scottish data to highlight other important processes.

Student numbers at Scottish Universities are capped. Overall numbers have been stable, however, part-time numbers have fallen by 27%. (NB these figures include the Open University in Scotland where student numbers are rising.) Much of the Scotland wide drop is attributable to lower part-time recruitment at a small number of what are often characterised as ‘widening participation’ institutions. Rising demand and capped numbers resulted in a shift from recruitment to selection and full-time recruitment took the place of part-time.

Scottish colleges make an important contribution to Scottish higher education. Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas occupy the first two rungs on the Scottish Credit and Qualifications framework undergraduate ladder – equivalent to years one and two of the four-year degree. Part-time student numbers in college-based higher education have also fallen. Again there has been a shift away from part-time but the drivers of this shift also include funding cuts and a massive reorganisation that has merged institutions. Bigger colleges has meant less of a local focus, less part-time options has meant less evening and weekend opening.

The fall in part-time student numbers is gendered with women disproportionately affected.

Looking at higher education data, however, fails to capture the whole picture. Part-time students tend to follow complex and non-linear pathways that include episodes of informal and formal study often at pre-HE level. Traditionally Scottish Colleges played an important role here. But college cuts, reorganisation and government guidance to focus on younger full-time students has disproportionately affected the type of short flexible provision that makes it possible. As a result the number of students in Scotland’s colleges has fallen by 40% from 379,000 in 2005/6 to 226,000 in 2014/5. Again the fall in numbers is skewed by gender with a 23% reduction in the number of men and a 41% reduction in the number of women. And it’s not just in the colleges that part-time flexible opportunities have been lost. There has also been a decline in courses offered by the Workers Education Association and local authority based Community Learning Development.

On 6 March Shirley Anne-Somerville, Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science spoke in the Scottish parliament about the report from the Widening Access Commissioner and the Scottish government’s aspirations to genuinely widen participation. Although she stressed that targets were for students of all ages part-time

Scottish Government: Shirley Anne Somerville CC BY NC 2.0

received not a single mention. Omitting part-time study from policy discourse is not new. However, its omission makes change much less likely.

In subsequent posts I want to try and dig into why part-time is so consistently marginalised.   In part there are conceptual misunderstandings. Often part-time study is treated as if it were simply full-time study slowed down. The case for part-time is frequently reduced to an argument that it’s an effective mechanism for training for employment. Part-time adult education has a rich history we need to reclaim the relevance of that history for the twenty first century.