Snobbery towards modern universities is unfair and outdated

If NTU wants to be a university, then it will have to live with being ranked and scrutinised as a university. The QS world ranking of NTU is 801-1000 The THE world ranking is 601-800 The QS national ranking of NTU is 72 The THE national ranking of NTU is 83 These rankings are telling us that NTU is barely recoginizable as a university. The reason for this is research. Even if the VC doesn't like to believe it, reputation and rankings are almost exclusively determined by research output. This is, after all, the main function of a 'university', i.e., scholarship. The UK model of a university as a glorified school (and I include most of the RG in this too) will not bring any accolades on the world stage. To be a successful university, NTU could look at the other NTU, in Singapore, which is ranked very highly and is <50 years old. It got there by focusing on high-quality research, as well as providing a solid education to its students, not by building quadrangles and writing articles in the THE.

In his challenge to the established hierarchy of universities, Edward Peck proposes new categories of teaching-intensive and teaching-active universities, to match existing designations for research. He asks why a record of success in the TEF, in widening participation and in graduate employment does not translate into a judgement of prestige. Peck also lament’s the enduring truth of Sir Howard Newby’s observation, who said in 2003: “The English do have a genius for turning diversity into hierarchy”. (Times Higher blog, 03/02/2018). However, as was pointed out recently by Roger Brown, (Wonkhe 01/02/2018) we do not have substantial diversity of mission in UK higher education, and we find “Reduced between-institution diversity of mission, with emulation being the main form of competition in a positional market”. This desire for emulation has meant that the majority of UK universities have sought to signal prestige by research achievement. To that end, many universities have imposed research performance criteria on their research-active staff. Those expectations for readers and professors at Nottingham Trent do not differ significantly from those circulating in Russell Group universities, and neither do the disciplinary consequences for not meeting them. One limitation of his argument is that Peck does not supply any evidence that research-intensive universities are necessarily less teaching intensive. In fact, teaching loads have climbed for all staff at Russell Group universities as new workload models have been introduced. At many universities, much of the teaching is delivered by a casualized workforce of highly-qualified academics whose career options do not allow any other choice but to be teaching intensive. In any case, if we take the student experience as the point of reference, it is not apparent that students enjoy greater teaching intensity at universities in Professor Peck’s University Alliance than in the Russell Group. Hefce has just released the new subject-level TEF measures of teaching intensity and a key factor in the weighting calculation is staff-student ratio. Consequently, if Russell group universities are found to offer a lower staff-student ratio, then this will translate into a measure of greater teaching intensity. The TEF will also include a corroborating Teaching Intensity Student Survey in which students will be asked about their scheduled teaching hours. It remains to be seen whether the metric will provide clarity, but until there is evidence by which we can compare teaching intensity it may be best to avoid introducing unwelcome divisions into a sector which at this juncture would be best served by solidarity. Liz Morrish Nottingham