The Higher Education System: A perspective from the UK

1. The Higher Education System:A perspective from the UK Dr Katalin Illes and Andrew Armitage L AIBS, Cambridge

2. Running to stand still: HE in a period of global crisis • What is the impact of the financial crisis on HE? • Responses vary from country to country • Budget cuts • Restructuring by downsizing • HE’s contributions to economic growth through knowledge production and human capital formation

4. Structure of Education Undergraduate – 3 FT equivalent years 180-240 ECTs credits Post-Graduate – 90 -180 ECTs credits mostly 1 FT equivalent year Doctoral Programmes – not credit rated

5. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) • Safeguards the public interest in the sound standards of higher education qualifications • Informs and encourages continuous improvement in the management of the quality of higher education • QAA audit of universities

6. What is education for? ‘the distinctive mark of a university is a place where [the student] has the opportunity of education in conversation with their teachers, his fellows and himself, and where he is not encouraged to confuse education with training for a profession, with learning the tricks of the trade, with preparation for future particular service in society or with the acquisition of a kind of moral or intellectual outfit to see them through life. Whenever an ulterior purpose of this sort makes its appearance, education (which is concerned with personas, not functions) steals out of the back door with noiseless steps’ Michael Oakeshott

7. The function of a university Universities must function as places of research and learning for sustainable development.....Higher education should provide leadership by practicing what they teach through sustainable purchasing, investments and facilities that are integrated with teaching and learning....Higher education should emphasis experiential, inquiry-based problem-solving, interdisciplinary systems approaches and critical thinking. Curricula need to be developed, including content, materials and tools such as case studies and identification of best practices. (UNESCO, 2004)

8. The Higher Education Funding Council for England ‘It is not the job of universities to promote a particular political orthodoxy; it is their role to educate students to examine critically policies, ideas, concepts and systems, then to make up their own minds. The Funding Council should support that objective, including, from to time, telling the government that the university curriculum is none of its business’ (Knight, 2005)

9. Principal Inhibitors of Higher Education In the introduction chapter of their book Sustainability Education: Perspectives and Practice Across Higher Education, Paula Jones, David Selby and Stephen Sterling pose two fundamental questions as follows: ‘Drawing on experience of sustainability-related curriculum and pedagogical development at universities and colleges, What appear to be the principle inhibitors to wider and deeper curriculum change?’ ‘What approaches or factors might pre-empt or circumvent each inhibitor to create the conditions allowing change?’

10. Principal Inhibitors of Higher Education They also identify three inhibitors of a sustainability curricula in higher education as follows: Principal Inhibitor1 Academic staff, jealously guarding their academic freedom, see education for sustainable development as an imposition, something not commensurate with their discipline, or student expectations of their discipline. Steeped in their specialism, they are uncomfortable about interdisciplinary teaching for which the multi-dimensional concern of sustainability calls. They see no professional or career rewards in sustainability. Principal Inhibitor 2 Academic staff, consider themselves as lacking in knowledge and skills, and expertise to implement sustainability-oriented teaching and learning. Principal Inhibitor 3 Academics and administrates hold that the ethos of the institution is not favourable for successful integration of sustainability across the teaching and learning programmes of the institution.

11. The Future of HE The challenges we face - competitive, economic, environmental or interpersonal - are of such complexity that acollaborative action, based on collective wisdom will be required - especially the challenges facing the current and future education of financial management accountancy practitioners The idea of Reflexive Practice (Armitage, 2011) • The challenge to the “Banking method” of education • The need for the dialogical process • The concept of conscientization (the process in which individuals , not as recipients, but as knowing subjects, achieve deepening awareness both of the socio-cultural reality which shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform their reality through critical reflection and dialogue

12. Pedagogical considerations Armitage (2010) has advanced the Ten Principles of Critical Learning that are fundamental to challenging pedagogical classroom practice • Principle 1: Learning and teaching is not merely the transference of knowledge. • Principle 2: Learning requires respect, dignity and equity of treatment of students towards fellow students, tutor towards students and students towards tutor. • Principle 3: Learning requires we take control and responsibility for our personal learning journey. • Principle 4: Learning requireswe create knowledge together throughcritical discourse and dialogue. • Principle 5: Learning requires that we discover how the world works; it is not merely the acquisition of facts.

13. Pedagogical considerations • Principle 6: Learning requires transparency, accountability and justification of our opinions before our peers. • Principle 7: Learning requires we develop and build relationships through shared understandings by creating a learning community founded on mutual trust and dialogue. • Principle 8: Learning to be authentic requires immediacy and relevance to our political, social and cultural contexts. • Principle 9: Learning requires the provision of a safe learning environment and is fundamental in making us aware of our own and others’ feelings and emotions. • Principle 10: Learning requires we learn to listen, suspend our prejudices and not pre-judge others.

14. A final thought A Critical pedagogy are practices that uphold ethical and moral values in the pursuit of individual liberty and freedom. They support and create working environments where individuals can critically judge business and management practices without fear of retribution. They uphold and respect the dignity of individuals by giving them a voice and meaning to their social and work environments in their pursuit of intellectual freedom, fulfilment and expression of thought. (Adapted from Armitage, 2010)

15. References • Armitage, A. (2010 ) From Sentimentalism towards a Critical HRD Pedagogy, Journal European Industrial Training (34), No.8/9, pp.735-752. • Armiatge, A. (2011) Critical Pedagogy and Learning to Dialogue: Towards Reflexive Practice for Financial Management and Accounting Education, Journal of Critical Educational Policy Studies, Volume 9, No.2. • Jones, P., Selby, D., and Sterling, S. (2010) Sustainability Education: Perspectives and Practice Across Higher Education, UK: Earthscan. • Knight, P. (2005) “Unsustainable development”, The Guardian, 8 February, quoted in Gough, S. and Scott, W. (2007) Higher Education and Sustainable Development, p.52. • Oakeshott, M. (1950/2003) The Idea of a University, The Listener, reprinted from the The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education in Academic Questions, Winter 2003-2004.

16. Questions? Thank you. Köszönöm