AcademicMisconceptions

Today is one of those wonderful days when England is the greatest place in the world. The sun is shining and the world has a smile on its face. Dare I say that the winter is being replaced by the first warmer breath of a more gentle spring?

Yesterday was also fabulous but I spent the entire day in a series of meetings as Process Panel Member for two pre-validation meetings preparing new BA degrees. I mustn’t mention any details here but I do want to touch on what this means.

The English validation and external examiner systems are, if used correctly, excellent safeguards for the academic credibility of our country. Despite what you hear about our system being terrible you shouldn’t be too dismayed. Yes, there are faults, but the system is not all bad.

One of the best proofs of this is that so many other countries still envy our system of higher education. This is evidenced when they seek the services of our academics at every level and for all purposes.

Despite being constantly under funded our best universities still compare favorably with the best in the world. Our average institutions continue to be on a par with those of a similar type elsewhere and are better than most.

The poor universities in England are pretty bad if you measure them purely as academic or research institutions. But the truth is that the way we measure these places is not appropriate to their original design. They are more suited to their original vocational type qualifications created when they were still Polytechnics.

What must be understood and rectified is the most important element of the real problem. We are simply not creating enough graduates of excellence in the subject areas that will support our society in future.

We need an ever-growing cadre of engineers, mathematicians, scientists, doctors and computer designers but we lack them in sufficient numbers. This is because we have encouraged a generation of people such as unemployable ill-defined creative folks to accompany too many social scientists and psychologists. I make this statement despite the fact that I work in the creative area. As a country we will not be able to sustain so many people working in the non-productive Public sector, we can no longer afford such conceit.

Not only are we undershooting the number of people required for the essential disciplines but we are also failing to ensure that they are of top international top quality. The future graduate has to be to be able to battle with a chance of winning in the future very competitive fields they will inhabit.

The root cause of this lack of our people excelling in the right areas started in a perverse and seemingly unconnected manner. In the middle 1980’s it became acceptable for our doctrinaire educators to mislead our young children that winning and losing was finished. Competition was actively discouraged. Such positions as first or last were effectively abolished.

The results are self-evident and totally counter productive. How do you tell a student that his exam results matters when it has been drummed into him that competition is somehow evil and negative?

Similar muddled thinking and attempts at social engineering took place in the USA and the consequences in the Community College system has been progressively more dumb students.

This simply has to stop or we will be buried by more motivated and qualified graduates from the emerging powerhouse economies in such countries as India and China. All we will be qualified to do is consume the products of these countries and entertain our new masters in exchange for crumbs from their table.