Driving into work this morning, Radio 4’s Today programme had an item on this publication  jointly provided by Which? and HEPI. The news programme focused on the number of contact hours received by students  and how this related (or not as the case may be  to quality. The other assertion was that as students are now paying more for their higher education, their expectations have gone up.

Before looking at the report in more detail, just a couple of criticisms of the BBC coverage – there is no relationship between contact hours and quality, and although students are borrowing more to pay for their education, universities do not receive any significant increase in funding overall.

Right, rant over, let’s look at what the report actually contains. (from HEPI website)

Contact hours are important to students and in the 2013 survey, the great majority of students were satisfied regardless of how much contact they received but within this overall general satisfaction, those with the least contact were least satisfied. Universities that do not satisfy students about the amount of contact they provide will have more dissatisfied students.

Students were asked for priorities for the use of the additional fees they now pay. Increasing contact with staff together with reductions in the size of teaching groups were the two options whose mention had increased over the years more than any others.

Students who have term-time employment are marginally more likely on average to miss time-tabled lessons (9% compared to 7.2% among those who did not have employment). Considering the evidence that students with term-time employment tend to do less well in their studies than others, this will be of concern if the new funding arrangements lead to more students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds taking such employment.

The QAA guidelines assume that a full-time student at a UK university studies for a total of 1200 hours per year (with the QAA judging that 10 hours of study provides one credit and a three year honours degree requires 120 credits per year for 3 years). The implications of the findings of the 2013 survey (which are consistent with the findings from earlier HEPI surveys) is that on average students at English universities study for no more than 900 hours per year ie students study for less than 3/4; of the time that is expected for a degree programme. This suggests that on average the standards of degrees are not as has been assumed – or that the calibration of a credit against 10 hours of study needs to be reconsidered.

 

interesting to see the variations by subject, and whether the comment above about the validity of the idea of 10 hours per credit applies equally.

There is a large variation between those universities that require the most and those that require the least amount of effort in any one subject. In addition, the findings also reveal that there are many institutions where formal lessons are relatively few and that is not compensated by the amount of private study required – which raises again the question about the comparability of standards between these institutions. It is unlikely that on average students studying for less than half the time studied by other students in the same subject will achieve the same outcomes but almost all obtain degrees, no matter the differences in the amount of studying they have done.

Nearly one third of the students surveyed said they would definitely or possibly have chosen a different course if they had been given the chance, with a significantly larger proportion of students from new universities saying so than old (which is not surprising given that so many more students enter new universities through clearing than others and by definition such students are not entering courses they had chosen to enter). This points to the importance of reforming the admissions process to create a better match between student aptitude and course selection.

 

The full report is available here, and for those who want to look at some interesting interactive tools, then the Which? website provides a comparison tool for contact hours where variations between subjects and institutions can be explored.

Implications?

• How can students be guided to look beyond just the headline KIS contact hour figures, to understand better the type of tuition and support that they will receive?
• Do we need to rethink the way in which we set student-directed learning, to ensure that enough work is being done by individuals to meet the QAA expectations?
• Who fancies downloading the original SPSS file and doing a bit of benchmarking work?