Lesley Riddoch: Three-year degrees may suit Scots too

Dundee University’s offer of degrees after a year less in lectures may be a better learning experience

LAST week Dundee University announced art and design and life sciences will be offered as three-year courses from 2012 – the first higher education institution to formally “undercut” the traditional four-year Scottish degree.

Dundee’s move is unashamedly money-based and England-focused.

“These new programmes will allow students to gain an honours degree in the same length of time as the rest of the UK, reducing the total cost once living costs like accommodation are factored in.”

But three-year degrees may also appeal to Scottish sixth year students whose brilliant university careers currently start with a repeat.

How many Scottish students are in this situation? Precise numbers are not easy to find. Between 2006-9, 20,580 pupils took Advanced Highers and 39,105 took HNC or HND courses in 2008-9. Of course not all went on to university. But they must make up a sizeable proportion of the 46,775 students who began degree level courses in 2008-9 (a total which also included UK and foreign students).

The four-year degree was designed for youngsters entering university after Highers at the tender age of 17. The world has evidently changed. Scottish universities have not.

In theory, “advanced” learners can move directly into second year – in practice most don’t.

In 2009, five universities took just 3,134 college students straight into second or third year but HNC/HNDs/Advanced Highers are still not formally regarded as the equivalent of a first year at university.

Maybe the authorities are right to be wary. A random parachute jump into a four-year course that has already begun is a tough way to start academic life.

So Dundee’s tailor-made three year degree may score with “advanced” students from both sides of the Border. And although Scottish universities are offering four years for the price of three to prospective English students, Dundee also offers them the chance to save a year’s accommodation and living expenses.

What’s not to like? For critics of change – quite a lot.

The dropout rate might rise as better qualified but immature Scottish 18-year-olds are thrown into the deep end of higher education and campus life. The breadth of Scottish higher education might be narrowed and students from poorer backgrounds might suffer if sixth year entry becomes the norm since more leave school early.

All these are legitimate fears.

But Scottish universities already have the highest drop-out rate in the UK and the lowest participation rate by poor kids.

Scottish colleges are doing no better – 28 per cent of college students in Scotland last year failed to complete further education courses. Doubtless some simply changed course or converted to part-time study.

But many quit and must feel they’ve wasted their own time, dented their self-esteem and clocked up £500 million in teaching grants and course fees.

Perhaps the current bleakness of graduate employment prospects encourages the drop-out tendency. Perhaps the expense of longer courses is a deterrent. Maybe both are red herrings.

Let’s look instead at less discussed factors, like contact time. At Stirling University, for example, humanities students get about 12 to 16 hours contact time per week, science students get 21 to 25 hours a week. So brand new students can receive as little as a day’s contact every week for ten short weeks before they’re sent home again for an extended period.

Does that help to make Stirling University feel like home? Does it even help students hold down part-time jobs (encouraged by their gappy learning schedule) when they can’t be there and available for work for large parts of the year?

Work on the impact of long holidays on the performance of American school pupils shows that long lay-offs disproportionately disadvantage pupils from the poorest backgrounds. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell quotes research by Karl Alexander and observes, “Poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session…virtually all of the advantage wealthy students have is the result of differences in the way privileged kids learn while they are not in school.

“An enormous amount of time is spent talking about reducing class size, rewriting curricula, buying every student a shiny new laptop, and increasing school funding – all of which assumes that there is something fundamentally wrong with the job schools are doing. Schools work. The only problem with school, for kids who aren’t achieving, is that there isn’t enough of it.”

Isn’t it possible the same is true for the relatively extensive and leisurely four-year Scottish university degree – at any one minute there just isn’t enough of it? Might that not help explain Scotland’s consistently high drop-out rates? And yet issues like “contact time” and the shape of the undergraduate academic year are hardly discussed, as political debate focuses almost entirely on the vexed subject of fees.

Alexander’s 18-year study of children in Baltimore suggests that when children from poorer backgrounds work for longer hours and for more weeks of the year they turn out excellent academic results. America may be a bad point of comparison – other findings may be contradictory. But surely this is worthy of debate?

Scottish students aren’t paying up-front tuition fees – that’s fine. But that single achievement on its own isn’t enough to create the perfect university environment for every young Scot.

Education secretary Mike Russell is apparently “relaxed” about Dundee’s initiative. His view is that school learning will become more personalised as the Curriculum for Excellence kicks in and that learning speed is a key component of personalisation.

It will make no sense for “flexible” school learning careers to end in a “one speed fits all” university experience.

But it takes time, determination and cash to offer students a choice of three, four or five year degree options. Universities forcing through job cuts will hardly want to cut their own fee income by 20-25 per cent.

But are we certain the focus and fit of university currently suits most Scottish students?

If there’s reasonable doubt, Dundee’s three-year degree experiment is well worth backing.