US unis increasingly moving to online teaching for the coming semester     Permalink

It is interesting to compare the reports from the USA versus those in the UK about students’ return to campus.

Forbes reports a “daily drumbeat” of universities in the USA delaying the start of teaching or moving teaching online.

Early last week, several major universities, including Duke, Miami University, West Virginia, Washington State, and George Washington, announced they were pulling back from their original reopening plans. By week’s end, several more institutions revealed they were also revising their approach.

Forbes separately reports of incidents of faculty writing publicly to encourage students to study from home, students suing over lasts semester’s curtailed teaching, launching petitions and threatening lawsuits demanding tuition discounts for the coming year, and parents getting into the mix.

There are key differences. In the USA the university teaching year starts four to six weeks earlier (mid-August) than in the UK, meaning institutions, students and parents are doing the health calculus sooner. Coronavirus infections and deaths are high and growing. Universities in the USA still have tenure, giving tenured faculty a stronger voice against university management.

What is clear is the tensions seen in debates around coronavirus mitigation are present in debates around the return to campus. The looser regulatory environment, higher fees at the most expensive universities and litigious nature of society create a more tense dynamic.

However, much of this could come to the UK in early- to mid-September, especially if coronavirus infection and Covid-19 deaths increase.

In order to assure universities’ finances, vice chancellors in many universities in England have locked themselves into an on campus and blended promise that they will find it hard to reverse.

Yes, the market-based regulatory environment is largely to blame, but vice chancellors and their lobby group (Universities UK) have failed to deliver a compelling argument for greater government support.

Students and their parents have something of a whip hand. They could easily demand that all teaching goes online if the health prognosis looks poor. In addition to their market power, the the Office for Students (OfS) and consumer protection law creates a regulatory framework and Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) provides an enforcement mechanism.

Staff on the other hand, will be victims of their bosses pandering to the market and desperation to please the government by treating the pandemic as over. Their only protection is health and safety legislation, where institutions are largely covered if they follow government advice. Advice that gave the diminutive UK the third worst Covid-19 death toll, until topped by Mexico this week (with double the population).

The Marketisation of English universities could make them catalysts of the second wave     Permalink

Last month Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at Oxford, eviscerated government policy on higher education in England, showing the connection between marketisation, overpromising, student responsibility and likely consequences.

Throughout the pandemic, the implications of this relentlessly anti-social logic have been made clear: If students enrol face to face at a time when the risk of on-site attendance is high enough to mean that some catch Covid-19 and die, they have themselves to blame. If one institution attempts to secure a market advantage by opening before it should, and thereby forces other institutions to do so, then its freedom to do so must be respected. If institutions go bankrupt because it is impossible to sustain themselves it is their fault, and this can be celebrated as a healthy cleansing by market forces. It is not far from celebrating death itself as a healthy cleansing and in a global pandemic that is too close to the bone.

The mix is a perfect storm.

Universities are motivated to over-recruit and over-promise. If they follow government guidance their legal liability for illness, death, cancellation, etc., should be limited.

The Telegraph reports comments by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, on the risks of young people letting down their guard catching and spreading coronavirus, something more likely to happen with high concentrations at universities.

Speaking at a virtual press conference in Geneva, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there is evidence to suggest that this resurgence has been driven by young people enjoying the summer.

Missing in this story is the recognition that universities are also places of work, with many academics, administrative and other support staff, much older and more vulnerable than students.

Modelling by researchers in the USA found that for a small (by UK standards) university, testing students for coronavirus every two days would be necessary to control outbreaks.

UK universities seem unlikely to put in place, for staff and students, the rigorous testing, and subsequent closures and isolation, required to control outbreaks.

It is clear that online education is less effective than study that includes the traditional classroom. However, the weaknesses are understood and, with an honest conversation between universities, students and their parents, and with appropriate support from the government, UK universities can deliver a valuable education bundle.

That new bundle can reflect our changed circumstances. It will have more study and expertise building, and will be heavier on the ‘educational experience’ and lighter on the ‘student experience’. It will be more bookish, at least for the next year, but that is what is needed.

Doubling down on building analytical and communications skills is a rational response to the current crisis. Only the most skilled will get employment. Only education can fight the misinformation and sloppy decision-making that has seen too many countries (including the UK) have sub-optimal responses to the current crisis.

USS Pension Chief gets underperformance bonus     Permalink

The latest USS valuation is out and it is a harbinger of another bunfight.

Josephine Cumbo reports the details for the Financial Times.

Over the year the scheme’s liabilities, or cost of meeting pension promises, climbed from £72.8bn to £79.4bn, according to its annual report published on Wednesday.

This increase in the hypothecated deficit will provide ammunition to VCs and governing bodies that want to continue to shift risk from institutions to employees. Listen for choruses of “everybody else has closed their defined benefits pensions” and “Institutions are facing bankruptcy, this is no longer affordable”.

But it is not all bad news. The CEO of the pension fund is doing very nicely, thank you.

Over the year to March the total value of USS’s assets also slipped from £68.4bn to £67.6bn as its investments underperformed by 1.7 per cent.

Over the period, Mr Galvin’s salary rose from £459,000 to £486,000. Mr Galvin also received performance-related payments of £212,000 more than double the £103,00 of the year before.

How can the USS remuneration committee justify an underperformance bonus?

Almost £700000 in salary and bonus is not huge against the size of the fund. But, senior salaries in the sector and its dependents serve only to highlight that it is not academics that are disconnected from the real world.

See also: BBC Times Higher