AUA Blog

Definitions for: BA vs BSc and MA vs MSc

Does anyone have clear definitions of the above that they use within their institution, or are you aware of an "official" website where this is stated. 

Thanks for your help.

Terry Bransbury

Senior Assistant Registrar - Programme Enhancement, City University

t.m.bransbury@city.ac.uk

When will history be in the past?

With 'A' levels, confirmation and clearing, and a nice new batch of league tables, Higher Education is enjoying it's normal high profile in August.  I'm struck, again, however by the way that the press, and perhaps ourselves, are still dividing the world up into 'old' and 'new', especially noting where a university used to be a polytechnic.

I accepted a job at a polytechnic a little over 15 years ago, but on the day I arrived there it had become a University.  15 years is a long time - why is is necessary when writing about Oxford Brookes, for example, that our local paper still feels the need the add the tag, "the former Oxford Polytechnic" to its description of us.  When will this stop?  I don't think that Bath University is now referred to as "the former Bristol College of Science and Technology", or Leeds as "the former Yorkshire College".

There are still some structural differences between the pre- and post- 1992 sectors: diferent legislation, charters vs articles of governance, pension schemes etc.  but are these real?  Is is just the league table quality judgements that seperate tiers of universities?  What do we think: is there something about 1992 that still rankles with the press?  Is there something about the polytechnic status (it can't be the word - Surrey isn't billed as the "former Battersea Polytechnic")? 

Soon we will have young people applying who were born after 1992, maybe the fact that a university has been a university for the whole of their life will be enough to consign this dividing line to history.

Mike Ratcliffe
Oxford Brookes University (formerly Oxford College of Technology)
17 August 2007

Leeds Met, Sport and the Community

Members of the Association of University Administrators Executive Committee and Standing Committees gathered at Leeds Metropolitan's Headingley Carnegie Stadium for our annual joint committees meeting.  The setting could hardly have been more different to the traditional public perception of a University.  Leeds Met's Campus shares world-class sporting facilities with England and Yorkshire for cricket, and Leeds' two professional rugby teams.  The University has excellent teaching accommodation there, doubling up as corporate hospitality facilities for professional sporting fixtures.  We had marvellous views out the windows of the Great Britain Lions preparing for their test match against France.

Sport is very important to Leeds Met.  The University has a 51% stake in the Leeds Carnegie rugby union club, which now plays in the Guinness Premiership.  It sponsors the Rugby League Carnegie Challenge Cup.  But also important are the arts.  Why?  Vice-Chancellor Professor Simon Lee told us that the University sees involvement in the highest levels of sport and the arts as a means of engaging with the local communities. An interest in sport/the arts can get a local kid interested in HE. This seemed a truly innovative way of getting at those parts of the community hardest for higher education to reach.

Bruce Nelson
Chair

Free university tuition in Scotland

I am filled with admiration for the SNP's decision to scrap the tuition fee for all EU students in Scotland... except for the English who will still have to pay.

It's not the free tuition that I admire - the debate about funding is largely over and most people now accept that pay as you go HE is the only sensible way forward.  (The fact that only the Lib Dems and the SNP seriously advocate anything else speaks volumes!)

What I really admire is the SNP's political strategy.  Clearly resigned to the fact that an overwhelming proportion of Scots would vote against independence in a referendum, they have decided to irritate the English into starting divorce proceedings.  Free university tuition and free prescriptions, paid for out of the grant from Westminster, are just the opening salvos in a long war of attrition.  The question is, who will blink first?

Free speech, Ruth Deech, and the academic boycott of Israel

I would be very interested to learn what AUA colleagues think of the UCU's gradual creep towards an(other) academic boycott of Israel.

There are undoubtedly great wrongs being inflicted on a daily basis around the globe, and the situtation between Israelis and the Palestinians is heartrending.  However, in the West our commitment is -- or should be -- to free speech.  The fundamental tenet of free speech is that we should seek to persuade by reason and debate.  A boycott is in fundamental opposition to free speech because it seeks to close down debate at precisely the time when it is needed most.

There are, however, limits to free speech.  Such a limit must surely exist where to speak out would compromise an individual's ability to exercise the responsibilities of public office.  In such circumstances, the individual concerned must decide whether free speech or public office is more important to them.

This thought occurred to me as I listened to Baroness Ruth Deech (on Radio 4's Today programme this morning) weighing in to the debate on the academic boycott of Israel.  I actually agreed with much of what she said (along the lines -- although at considerably more length -- of what I have said above) but I am not convinced that she, the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, should really be expressing her opinion so freely and publicly.  It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the boycott will go ahead.  And if it does, one can conceive of complaints to Deech's office which involve the boycott directly or indirectly.  In such circumstances, I am given to wonder whether her impartiality in those cases -- or at least the perception of her impartiality -- has been compromised.  And that surely undermines her ability to exercise her public office.

To blog or not to blog?

Two articles in today's Times Higher highlight "growing concerns" about academics' [and others'] online activities - such as chatrooms and blogs - being monitored by universities keen to protect their reputations. Internet activity is being "spied on" by managers, it is claimed, with managers using postings "to 'get' their targets on some violation of university policy". 

Through airing grievances online, are staff exercising their right to freedom of speech, or running the risk of falling foul of university conduct codes?