QAA CEO gives AHEP annual lecture

On Tuesday 9 December, QAA's Chief Executive Vicki Stott presented the Association of Higher Education Professionals' annual lecture.

Vicki's lecture considered how we move collaboration as a policy priority into sectoral practice, as providers in England respond to the prompts to work together which have come out of the Post-16 Education & Skills white paper, and more broadly through the financial crisis. 

"I have long thought that competition is the wrong paradigm for higher education," she said. "Universities are a social good. Whether that shows up as scientific progress made for the benefit of humanity through research, or whether it shows up as improved health and welfare outcomes brought about through a better educated population making good choices for their lives, the work that we all do every day is a massive contributor of positive outcomes for individuals and society as a whole. And I strongly believe that those sorts of benefits are usually better achieved through collaboration." 

She said that collaboration necessitates agile and enhancement-focused systems to enable rather than block innovation.

The sector, she said, needs to drive the mechanisms of collaboration – and pointed out that these mechanisms will require clear definitions of providers' roles, as well as robust protocols for governance and agreed processes for the monitoring of delivery.

She emphasised that regional devolution should afford opportunities for providers to work with devolved administrations to support the development of skills which meet local economic needs, to address social challenges, and to promote participation in higher education and lifelong learning.

"These kinds of collaborative models tie beautifully into the lifelong learning entitlement," she said. "They offer more flexible movement for students, which incentivises adaptation for regional models.

"It seems to me that as the changes to the financial model mature, providers will find it harder to tie students into a three-year qualification as the norm. We’re already hearing that government wants to examine meaningful exit options at undergraduate level. If I’m right about this, we will by default have to get used to credit transfers and make our processes clearer and simpler for students to navigate.

"The LLE demonstrates that there is no perfect lever. We need to stop critiquing it and start building for it. It is the funding lever and change is coming. We have to be willing to embrace it and to find ways to make this funding model work, or we risk government building less rational levers."

Collaboration, she insisted, is not optional: "It is the route to inclusive, sustainable education."

We can't wait for the perfect conditions to emerge. We must, she said, "start building practical models now".