Cambridge University Reporter


report of discussion

Tuesday, 9 December 2008

A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Mrs Sarah Squire was presiding, with the Proctors, one Pro-Proctor, the Registrary's deputy, and fourteen other persons present.

The following Reports were discussed:

Report of the General Board, dated 12 November 2008, on the establishment of a Professorship of Diagnostic Veterinary Pathology (Reporter, p. 183).

No remarks were made on this Report.

Report of the General Board, dated 12 November 2008, on Diplomas and Certificates awarded by the Institute of Continuing Education and other bodies (Reporter, p. 184).

Professor J. M. RALLISON:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the Institute of Continuing Education has a long and proud history in adult education. Educational provision for lifelong learning continues to be a government priority, and so far as the University is concerned, the bulk of this provision lies with the Institute. At the present time there are some 12,000 adult learners on the Institute's books. Many of these students take courses that qualify for credits under the national Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme. With sufficiently many credits, students can qualify for certificates and diplomas awarded by the Institute. In addition, accumulated credits can be used in conjunction with credits awarded elsewhere to obtain part-time degrees at other universities.

The Quality Assurance Agency has recommended that the Institute's certificates and diplomas should in future be subject to accreditation by the University of Cambridge rather than by the less formal 'local accreditation' procedure presently used. For the first time, cognate Faculties will have a formal role in approving the curriculum and content of courses provided by the Institute. The awards, including their quality assurance through, for example, reports of external examiners, will fall under the remit of the General Board's Education Committee, as with other University awards. Operating the new arrangements will involve increased work for Faculty Boards and others, but the new procedures will also open channels of communication between the Institute of Continuing Education and other parts of the University, potentially to the benefit of both, and to the courses themselves.

In part as a result of government funding policy in relation to Equivalent and Lower Qualifications, the cost of accredited course provision for individual students will need to increase, and the Institute expects that the number of accredited certificates and diplomas that it offers will decrease. A reduction is also expected by the committee currently undertaking a strategic review of the Institute, but there are no plans for accredited course provision to cease.

It is important for reputational reasons that the University should now establish an appropriate quality assurance regime for these certificates and diplomas. This proposal will put the new arrangements fully in place by September 2010.

Professor R. K. S. TAYLOR:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, as Director of the Institute of Continuing Education, I welcome the proposal that the Institute's currently locally certificated provision should be translated to full University of Cambridge awards. Amongst other benefits, this will facilitate closer academic collaboration between the Institute and the relevant Faculties, and will bring our adult learners and our programmes more into the mainstream of the teaching provision of the University.

The Institute provides a diverse and wide range of high quality courses, both accredited and non-accredited. The accredited and award-bearing work is likely to decrease proportionately over the medium-term, as our other non-accredited provision increases. Nevertheless, the accredited programmes will remain at the core of our work, and will enable quite large numbers of adult learners to gain University certificates and diplomas, which conform fully in terms of quality assurance procedures and academic rigour, to other University of Cambridge awards.

Professor G. R. EVANS:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I wonder how many readers of the Reporter realized how important this Report is and how far-reaching its implications, as they browsed through the copy in which it was published? The statement 'responsibility for awards rests with the General Board' may be true in some sense, but that is not the same thing as having ultimate authority over their content, assessment, and bestowal. The University of Cambridge exercises its degree-awarding powers under a regime which requires the General Board to submit proposed changes to the Tripos to the Regent House for approval. This will not happen in the case of these awards.

The list of offers of awards made by Continuing Education, the Cambridge Programme for Industry, and the Executive Education arm of the Judge has been proliferating. It has been a matter of concern for some years that these were not being properly supervised by the University whose name they confusingly bear. Executive power weekends to study Greek philosophy for those seconded at considerable expense by their employers may be a nice little earner but what would OFFA say about fair access to such courses? And do we want them to lead to awards of the University of Cambridge made under its degree-awarding powers?

Yet, as this Report says, 'the public perception is that award-bearing courses are University awards'. Now there are two ways in which this could be tidied up. One way is to create a clear separation of the two. Then huge fees for short courses for 'executives' with no admission requirements could go merrily on and also the arrangements under which humbler seekers after knowledge who seek admission to continuing education courses just send in a cheque in order to have their names put on the list. There would need to be a distinct nomenclature and no possibility of confusion.

The second route is the one proposed in this Report. It will bring 'within' the University as holders of its designated awards, non-members who do not matriculate. 'Such persons are not expected to matriculate or become members of Colleges.' What will 'successful candidates' say to the world? 'I was at Cambridge'? What will happen to the category which has been allowed membership of a College on completion of the course, though not membership of the University, which has allowed a partial getting round Statute G's insistence that no student may be admitted by a College who is not presented for matriculation at once? Aha, but it doesn't say they cannot have membership of a College at the end of a course. Clever, eh?

'The distinction between locally certified and University awards is artificial' says this Report. Really? Is it seriously proposed that those who do credit-bearing courses outside the Tripos should be able to transfer them in and move onwards towards the completion of a Cambridge degree? No?

So it is not an artificial but a real distinction of kind. If it is to cease to be so, how will admission be organized, so as to satisfy OFFA that Cambridge is ensuring fair access to the students who apply by the usual route against the worthy students who have paid for a course, got a credit, and now want to enter the same undergraduate courses for which the ordinary applicants are hotly competing?

It is perfectly true that the QAA Institutional Audit flagged up a problem area here in paragraph 41 of its Institutional Audit Report, but I think the QAA did not recommend accreditation, as has just been suggested. It points out that, 'the Learning and Teaching Review of the Institute (dated July 2007) identified severe problems'. The QAA's concern is that 'the quality assurance of such programmes' should be put 'on a par with that of the University's other awards'. It could be argued that that is what is proposed here except that it is the General Board and the Board of Graduate Studies which will be doing the approving and not the Regent House: 'A subject for any Diploma or Certificate under these regulations and listed in the Schedule, together with a syllabus for the course, the special regulations for the examination, and any subsequent amendments thereof, shall be approved by the General Board, and the Board of Graduate Studies where appropriate.' That is not 'on a par'. What academic supervision and quality assurance will this involve?

Instead of matriculation: 'A date shall be agreed between the administering body and the Registrary by which the head of the body administering the Diploma or Certificate shall send to the Registrary a list of all the students who have been newly admitted by that body and who are studying towards a Diploma or Certificate listed in the Schedule to these regulations.' Prior learning and inwardly transferred credit from elsewhere is to be counted towards these awards (by the General Board, though for some non-Bologna compliant reason, not by BOGS): 'The General Board, on the recommendation of the administering body, shall have powers to recognize periods of previous successful study as meeting part of the requirements for the award.' Resitting will be allowed.

Successful candidates will get a certificate which will surely be hard for the world to distinguish from a genuine Cambridge degree certificate? That this kind of thing can be a real problem was already apparent in the late nineteenth century when the women who had only certificates to say that they had passed Tripos Examinations complained that they were disadvantaged because they did not have real Cambridge degrees. There is a long list of such complaints in the Report of the Syndicate published on 1 March 1897 (Reporter, 1896-97). Woman after woman who had been students at Girton or Newnham described the disadvantages they had suffered professionally from the fact that they did not have actual degrees, for example, 'among parents of pupils in a manufacturing or country town' (p. 604). Miss Eleanor Purdie had 'experienced difficulty in getting her Tripos Certificates accepted as substitutes' when she had sought 'admission to the examination for Ph.D.' 'at the University of Freiburg' (p. 608).

Is the reverse now to become the case? Will these new certificates give students entry to courses elsewhere or appointment to senior posts, under the impression that their holders have Cambridge degrees? There have been some alarming instances in the press recently that suggest it could easily happen.

Please can we focus on quality assurance of these courses and not create new animals, half Cambridge degree, half nothing of the sort, by a form of academic genetic manipulation. Who knows what monsters may result?

Mr A. C. NORMAN (read by Mr E. WARD):

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this University is a university, and this should be remembered particularly when making changes to the awards it confers. The distinction between locally certified and University awards is real and essential, given the University has degree awarding powers conferring membership of the University on those who attain them.

There is no reason why the present situation with regard to these awards should be flawed, with the Institute of Continuing Education being devolved responsibility for awarding certificates as appropriate. The General Board already has responsibility for approving subjects of the awards of the Management Board of the Institute, and the Institute itself is under the supervision of the General Board.

We ought not to be so very anxious to appease the QAA, or indeed any external or internal body, that we make changes which have not been properly thought out. The recommendations of the Report under consideration are the most unimaginative possible way to standardize quality assurance for the University's lifelong learning qualifications, by making them awards of the University under the University's degree awarding powers, and thereafter treating them just like Tripos and other degrees.

I conclude with a remark of the Chancellor's: 'I'm not the Chancellor of a biscuit factory, and I'll stop if we move in that direction.' Let us not make that move by adopting the proposals contained in this Report.

Mr M. PEIRCE:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, on behalf of the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry (CPI), I welcome the proposal that the CPI's currently locally certified provision should be translated to full University of Cambridge awards.

CPI provides executive education programmes for senior executives in the field of sustainability leadership. The majority of these programmes are non-accredited. However, we currently run two accredited Master's-level programmes: the Postgraduate Certificate in Cross-sector Partnership, now in its eighth year, and the Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business, now in its tenth year.

These accredited programmes are particularly important in enabling CPI to offer companies a deeper engagement with sustainability issues, and to do so at the highest standards of quality assurance and academic rigour that is required of a University of Cambridge award.

The provision of full University of Cambridge awards will provide further confidence to our adult learners, and will have the added benefit of enhancing CPI's links with the relevant Faculties across the University.