There is a familiar ring when people start going on about the ‘good old days’, this was better, that was better .. and most of us start nodding off. The question as to whether a degree was harder to obtain, or exams harder to pass .. and of course, whether a university education was superior to what it is now, persist and are rehearsed routinely in the media.

Every year the A level results are announced, or university expansion ‘celebrated’, brings with it a chorus of dissenting voices, usually lamenting the past and decrying the present. Trouble is, apart from anecdotal evidence, how do you decide if their right or not?

Well, the AUT (the Higher Education Union) has recently flagged the much neglected issue of staff-student ratios as a useful metric - one which sheds some intriging light on the matter. For instance, when Tony Blair went to university there were just a mere 9 students to every member of staff! Of course everyone knows that there is now more people going to university, but this has led to a massive 21 students to every staff member!

You might think that common sense would dictate that this must mean a significantly increased work load and proportinoatley less time devoted per individual student .. and that something would suffer? Well not according to the government; their 2003 White Paper on Higher Education not only refuses to admit that this is emblamatic of a serious decline in the quality of a degree education, but rather that further increases in the staff-student ratio can increase further without detriment! This admission is not only counter-intutitive, its strangely like Orwellian ‘doublethink’ !

Strikes me the matter is quickly settled with a simple thought experiment, if Tony was sending one of his sons off to Uni this year, which would he choose between our two hypothetical institutions, one offering his previously enjoyed 1:9 staff-student ratio, or the contemporary other, offering a 1:21 ratio (assuming all things being equal) - its a no brainer as the Americans say. Our Tony got a good degree education (and not just becasue he went to Oxford). One of the principal reasons was there were plenty of talented staff on hand to devote personnal attention to his needs and flowering academic interests, to encourage and nurture, inform and inspire .. after all reading a book only gets your thinking so far, you have to actually engage with other human beings to really start thinking for yourself - books don’t answer back!

Not that this seems to worry Blair too much, political expediency has won out as is evidenced in their doublethink. I think in this respect University education has become poorer and the dissenters are right to be a tad cynical. At least this is one useful metric that can be compared to what should be the embarrasment of many.

Interestingly, the AUT are now calling for a staff-student ratio off no more than 15:1, still not quite what Tony experienced but an improvement none the less ..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 10:16 am and is filed under Student Staff Ratio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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