Universities’ loss

Published on 08/10/2012 00:00

The decline of Scottish universities in the world ranking (your report, 4 October) is not purely due to funding – although that is, of course, a factor. I argue that it is equally the result of the higher education sector here almost wholeheartedly and uncritically adopting the structural methods and institutional culture of further education during the past decade. The emphasis on modules, credits for passing modules and pre-ordained learning outcomes surely has stymied open-ended inquiry and genuine innovation in 
favour of an instrumentalist culture, which fears litigation more than anything else.

Furthermore, the influence of the Quality Assurance Agency, which appears to be more interested in universalising minimum standards, rather than in celebrating the outstanding and exceptional – or even encouraging variety – is also a factor. Typically, academic managers of the type attracted to the QAA apparently seek to make everywhere else like their own employer.

Meanwhile, as part of this culture, numbers of front-line teaching and research staff have been reduced in favour of layers of administrators, managers and co-ordinators, passing around mountains of “course documentation”, the relationship of which to actual teaching and research is often at best tangential.

Dr Bruce Peter

Cloister Avenue

Airdrie, Lanarkshire