AlanPreece

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD GOES BACK TO BLIGHTY

Visiting England after more than a year away is like putting shoes on after a year in flip-flops. In fact it really did mean putting on proper, all encasing shoes after months of fearlessly baring my toes to the world. I guess it’s how a four-year old feels when they are fitted with their first pair of school shoes.

I’d expected to be a somewhat changed person on my return but as the wonderful Rupert Brooke wrote, ‘If I should die, think only this of me That there’s some corner of a foreign field, that is forever England’. However far you stray from your beginnings some things are too deeply embedded to change. And at this time of year his words carry an even greater poignancy.

Travelling near Remembrance Sunday, I found myself buying a poppy a day – they seem to break with startling regularity – and being sorry to miss being in England to commemorate the 100th year of the Armistice. The two World Wars are written large in the heart of every child who grew up with parents in the Forces and I have stood quietly and respectfully on many sombre early November Sunday mornings. With age I have stood with increasing thanks – it remains the greatest gift and good fortune to have grown up in a period of relative peace and economic stability.

I have always been able to survive the first verse and refrain of the Last Post but there is something that happens after that which is too heart-breaking to endure. And Bunyan’s magnificent verse is a memorial to everyone I have known and loved – ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them. Permission to lose control of stiff upper lip, sir.

The trip was six whirlwind days with three cities, five hotels and multiple modes of travel. My arrival at Heathrow was marked by a cool, overcast English day – it was absolutely perfect. Keats’ ‘seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness’ are missing from California but the English late autumn was a reminder that seasons are built into my blood.

Needless to say the trains were terrible. How it is possible to take longer and to have more changes to get from Liverpool Street to Norwich than to go via Cambridge is a warping of the time-space continuum. Hawkwind’s long neglected song ‘Quark, Strangeness and Charm’ gets close to the experience with the line ‘All that, doesn’t not anti-matter now, we’ve found ourselves a black hole out in space.’

My own theory is that the London to Norwich line is part of a black-arts operation by CERN where the stranger particles from the Large Hadron Collider are diverted for investigation. Passengers are used as substitutes for Schrodinger’s Cat and so whether they existence or are comfortable is unknown (and certainly not cared about). Scientists run the railways as a cosmic experiment and while Einstein wanted trains travelling at the speed of light he is losing out to Lord Kelvin’s views that they should terminate like the heat death of the universe.

To make matters worse Planck’s Constant has been replaced by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to build the timetable. Higg’s Bosun is a grumpy ex-naval man who was the lucky mascot of the Irish Rover, the Flying Dutchman and the Titanic before deciding that he preferred to drive a train. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg summed it up when he used quantum mechanics as a metaphor for the railway system in saying, “There is now, in my opinion, no entirely satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics.”

Enough about the trains though because it is the people that make the difference. Some very amusing evenings of drinking and snooker and late-night burgers and Indian meals. And most of all conversations that would only make half-sense to an outsider because they are framed in the context of shared experiences, disagreements and understanding of each other’s values and views. It was great fun and I was humbled that so many people made an effort to meet up during their busy lives.

I also caught up with my older sister for the first time in eight years. It’s a good reminder that when your parents are no longer around there is usually nobody but family who remembers your earliest years. In our case it was a peripatetic first ten years full of different schools, a father disappearing to trouble spots at short notice and a reliance on a very small family unit.

It was a delight to be able to talk about our family, about the misunderstandings we have had with each other and reflect upon all the ways in which life might have been different. But as importantly to share the good things that happened in the period when connections were lost. People say that you can never make up for lost time but we had a pretty good go at it.

I’ve noticed that throughout this blog I have talked about England and when asked that is where I say I am from. For me the United Kingdom has always been a ‘community’ where the squabbles of Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England have been largely suborned to a belief that there is strength in unity. Respecting and believing in each other’s right to a national identity within that house is as important as respecting and regarding a person’s individuality.

In that context the potential for a botched exit from the European Union to drive an irreversible wedge and create four countries is depressing. It would be a strange future if the territorial certainties, secure since the effective partition of the Republic of Ireland with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, were to change. But I guess that previous generations probably felt the same as the Empire disappeared in a flurry of declarations of independence.

It confirms that change is the only constant of the human condition and Remembrance Sunday was a timely reminder that there is much to be grateful for. After a week back in San Diego I particularly realise that I am fortunate to have roots and friends on both sides of the Atlantic. It is certainly something to think about as Thanksgiving approaches.

Open Doors and Outliers – Looking For Rubies in a Mountain of Rocks

Open Doors data, published by the Institute of International Education (IIE) on 13 November, confirms the much-anticipated decline in international student enrollments in the US. But delving into the detail demonstrates that there are also outliers with significant growth in international students year on year. It is always interesting to dig down to see who is bucking the trend – but more importantly how they are doing it.

At the headline level there is unmitigated gloom with the total number of enrolled international students in 2017/18 down by 11,797 (1.3%) on the prior year. There are also signs of a fractured pipeline for Fall 2018 with non-degree student starters down 9.7% year on year (4,868 students) and down 23.8% (14,135 students) from the 2014/15 peak. Since a 2015/16 high-point undergraduate and postgraduate new-enrollments are down by 9% (10,723) and 6.8% (8,556) respectively.

Table 1 – New International Student Enrollment in the US 2007-08 to 2016-17
Source: Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. Retrieved from http://www.iie.org/opendoors

Against that background the state of Kentucky was eye-catching for two reasons. It posted a 26.9% increase in international students – an exceptional performance for a state that was, in 2016/17, 31st in overall popularity in terms of volume of students enrolled. Within the state Campbellsville University was the only one of the top five (by volume enrollments) to grow and became the leading recruiter with a year on year increase of nearly 2800 students.

Table 2 – Year on Year Change in Foreign Students in Kentucky (Source: Open Doors Fact Sheets 2017 and 2018)
IPEDS data shows that across all domestic and international, full and part-time enrollments Campbellsville grew by 96% year on year to Fall 2017. A time series shows that growth at the institution accelerated very significantly in the past year. Graduate part-time has been the primary engine of growth with graduate full-time and undergraduate part-time also contributing.

Table 3 – Campbellsville University Total Graduate and Undergraduate Enrollments 2014-2017
NB: 2017 data is listed as Provisional Release data by IPEDS

International student enrollments (as per non-resident aliens in IPEDS reporting) have been the driving force for the significant growth over the past year. Full-time international graduates grew by more than 600 year on year and part-time international graduates by over 1700.

Table 4 – Campbellsville Full and Part Time Graduate Enrollments
The graduate growth appears to be almost entirely driven by students from India. In 2016 Open Doors reported the proportion of students from China and India in Kentucky as being equal at 18.9% of the total. By 2017 students from India leapt to 43.1% of the total as China fell to 13.1%.

This is supported by the Quartz news website which published, in May 2018, an article reviewing the courses offered by Campbellsville and another Kentucky-based institution, the University of the Cumberlands . The article quotes Shanon Garrison, the vice president for enrollment services at the University of Campbellsville, as saying that “99% of the students in the course are native to India but live in and work for companies based in the US.” Most students are enrolled in the Masters of Science in Information Technology and Management (MSITM). which, according to Quartz, is ‘designed to allow international students to work full-time jobs while enrolled.’.

The report suggests that students are required to attend the campus for three days of face-to-face classes at the beginning of each term and that the degree costs around $17,000. Flexibility, affordability and the opportunity to work appear to be key factors in the popularity of the course. It is a powerful combination which appears to have turbo-charged growth at Campbellsville.

International recruitment has always been a space where intelligent minds consider ways to develop creative programming that works productively within the legal, visa and competitive environment. Large institutions can often be relatively slow in adapting to new circumstances or may rely on their reputations to see them through the bad times. Innovation and boldness are usually the hallmarks of smaller, more nimble institutions and their successes are often worth considering.

The purpose of looking more closely at the University of Campbellsville is to illustrate possibilities and is not intended to advocate for or against the model. The Quartz article outlines some of the potential challenges and it is not unusual for innovation to appear in specific niches that are inaccessible or out of scope for other institutions. But at a difficult time for US international student recruitment it’s interesting to see opportunities that are still being discovered and exploited.

An Englishman Abroad In Cactus Alley

Tending your own patch of land is as much part of the English psyche as talking about the weather, queuing in an orderly fashion and having fifty ways of saying ‘sorry’. Ever since encountering the overgrown wilderness behind my first house I have been a keen gardener. Four distinct seasons provided the setting for a year of planning, tilling, planting and reaping.

The country’s love-affair with its gardens drove the song, English Country Garden, to number five the charts in 1962. It was based on an English-folk song, Country Gardens, which married the whimsy of Morris-dancing to the pagan, earth revering influence of the druids and spawned many parodies. It is from that background that I came to tend the semi-arid, almost season-less, badlands of San Diego.

Americans don’t really even have ‘gardens’ because they have yards. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon “geard” (pronounced YAY-ard) and is a good reminder why prisons have yards while country houses have gardens. One word is Proto-Germanic with overtones of efficiency and sparseness while the other comes from the Gallo-Romance language of Picardy and Flanders.

In the new environment everything has to be placed and considered in the context of hours of sun or shade, lack of moisture and relative danger to humans and animals. Rocks, dirt and pebbles are home to relatively slow growing plants that have evolved to be as tough as their setting. It’s a harsh, alien, unforgiving and strangers need to beware.

I’d never been allergic to a plant until I tangled with the toxic sap of the Euphorbia tiruccalli, which goes by the common name of Fire Sticks. Waking up with a face that looked like I had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson was an early sign that I’d always need to wear gloves in the garden. But that was only a precursor to my duel with the Cactaceae.

Euphorbia tiruccalli

It is no mistake that the family group name for the cactus has echoes of a Mediterranean-based crime family. They are tough, aggressive, impassive plants that never tell, never forgive and always take revenge. The biblical warning “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9.5 and Acts 26:14 of the King James Version of the Bible) could have been written to remind us of the challenge they bring.

Engaging with a cactus and not taking appropriate precautions is like inviting Hannibal Lecter to dinner in a private room. One of you enjoys the potential of sharp objects to inflict pain and misery while the other will end up on the receiving end of a miserable evening. Even the slightest brush against one of these beasts can bring several dozen tiny shards of agony.

But through the allergic reactions and hours of picking cactus spines from my arms the year has seen a pleasing sense of order emerge. The reshaping of the garden has allowed for Cactus Alley and Succulent Corner to become landmarks while individual plants have been able to thrive after being moved to better locations. And I have learnt lessons in caution after indiscriminate digging cut through carefully buried irrigation lines which led the arid earth to resemble the Somme for several days.

Cactus Alley – Jeffe, Bobby, The Succulent with No Name and Sneaky Pete

Because I am unfamiliar with the names of the plants many of them have emerged with personal nicknames. We have the barrel cactuses Billy, Bobby and Betsy as well as the handsome and rapidly growing Jeffe. Sneaky Pete is aptly named as the prickly pear has tiny, needle-sharp bristles that embed themselves with just a touch. Gomez is as sharp, squat and evil-looking as any bandit from a spaghetti western.

In the open ground Fellaini is the bargain bin asparagus fern with a habit to match the Manchester Uniter and Belgium footballer or his alter-ego from The Simpson’s, Sideshow Bob. Alongside him Spike, the yucca, has moved to luxuriant growth in full sun after being a weedy and ailing specimen in the shade. These are plants with individual characters that are forged by their resilience and robustness.

I’ve introduced some flowering plants but have learnt to paint pictures in the garden with the varying pinks, greys and subtle variegations which seem the natural palette of the desert. From similar climes we have Australian visitor ‘kangaroo paws’ (Anigozanthos), Asteriscus maritimus from the Mediterranean, and Didiereaceae from Madagascar. It is a global garden that is united by the challenging combination of glaring sun and water and soil poverty.

As a United Nations of plants it co-exists in a climate that is under increasing stress and facing enormous challenges from progressively worsening climate conditions. Disproportionate application of resources allows traditional Western plants to grow but plants used to living more frugally demand their rights and can thrive without pampering. It’s a little like the economic lessons of the real world.

After living with the land for a year I have begun to understand the raw materials. The variation of temperature, daylight and precipitation are more subtle than the English seasons. The growth patterns of the plants move to a rhythm which is less easy to understand but which can result in moments of extraordinary flowering and unexpected beauty.

While I have dabbled with herbs, tomatoes and peppers this year I am hankering after developing a vegetable patch. There is little more satisfying than pulling a broad bean or a new potato from the earth and eating it a few minutes later. But the planning involves thinking about ways of conserving even more water over the winter season to support this ambition.

It’s been a steep learning curve but whether semi-desert or temperate the garden offers similar lessons and insights. Patience and perseverance, the determination of living things to survive and the belief in planting today however uncertain the future might be. It is captured nicely by American author, journalist, activist Michael Pollan who writes, “The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” (The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)

SEEING GREATNESS, RADICAL CANDOR AND GETTING PERSONAL

It was a good time of year to be introduced to ‘How I Got Into College’, an edition of This American Life from September 2013. It tells the tale of a student – Emir Kamenica – and how a stolen library book got him into his dream school. Emir is a Bosnian refugee who is now the Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The narrator and interviewer is Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball (2003), The Big Short (2010) and The Undoing Project (2016). His introductory chapter in Liar’s Poker (1989) is among the most riveting piece of writing I have ever read. He is a marvellous teller of stories and this is no exception.

My interest was particularly taken by Emir’s memory of a single incident where a teacher took a personal interest in him. He tells how that moment changed his life and set him on the road to a doctorate from Harvard. The programme carries a surprise revelation that makes it a complex tale about belief, truth and memory.

When I read a quote attributed to Edmund Lee a few days later it seemed serendipitous. The end of the quote runs, ‘most of all surround yourself with those who see greatness within you even when you don’t see it yourself’. That does not mean people who show blind loyalty or supine agreement but those who care enough to challenge you and show you new ways of being.

The best leaders are able to see the ‘greatness’ within their colleagues. They recognise what people around them are capable of and have the personal courage and management skill to back their judgement. In doing this they usually give the individuals increased self-awareness and the confidence to more fully realise their potential.

Even in these self-revelatory days people are sometimes shy about telling the stories of how they were inspired, or which moments transformed their life. But these are tales worth recounting and sharing because they can help guide behaviour and are a good way of suggesting why looking for the potential in our friends and colleagues is a responsibility we should take seriously.

Without aspiring to compete with Emir’s extraordinary tale of struggle and achievement I recall my own pivotal moment at school with equal clarity (the irony of that statement will not be lost on those who have heard the programme). As a totally aimless and academically under-achieving 18-year-old I had decided to go to polytechnic to take a business studies course. In those pre-1992 days polytechnics in the UK were decidedly second-class to universities and my ‘choice’ was based upon having no better ideas for avoiding unemployment.

Shortly afterwards an unmistakeable New Zealand accent at full volume cut through the noise of several hundred children changing classes at my large comprehensive school in Essex. My English teacher had spotted me half-way down the stairs and had a point to make. ‘Alan Preece,’ she hollered. ‘You are not going to do business studies. You are going to be a journalist. See me later.’

Yvonne Cull, the English teacher, felt that young people needed to be treated like adults but required intervention, direction and unflinching honesty. Her classes were bracing sessions where the themes of power, manipulation, lust and love in Shakespeare were reinforced by making us interrogate our own teenage desires and passions. Lessons were often provocative and seldom comfortable, but she never stopped trying to help us understand that the stories were about the human condition and people just like us.

When she confronted me with the possibility of becoming a journalist she did not spare my blushes. She was candid about the need to overcome my lack of application, my mistaken belief that native wit was a substitute for research, and my tendency to continue defending positions long after they had been overrun by better arguments. But she filled me with a belief, based on her personal opinions, that I had the skills to do a job which involved enquiry, balancing opinions, and writing.

Mrs Cull went even further. She had researched the options and found a suitable course run by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). She made me sit in her home one evening to complete the application, she posted it, wrote a letter of recommendation and prepared me for the interview. Having secured a place, I failed my A-levels, but she pushed me to re-take them so I could join the course a year later.

Nowadays, I might consider this moment in my history as an example of radical candor – ‘the ability to challenge directly and show you care personally at the same time’. Kim Scott’s 2017 book on the subject is a good read and captures the subject well. As well as developing the theory it recounts a terrific example involving Sheryl Sandberg who was her boss at Google.

I didn’t go on to be the investigative journalist that Mrs Cull thought I could become. Armed with my NCTJ course award I secured a place in the press office of Tesco which became the stepping stone to public relations, marketing and eventually board level roles as COO and CEO. Throughout those years I was armed with the knowledge that, despite their own busy life, someone had thought well enough of me to share their belief in my potential.

There have, of course, been other ‘sliding door’ moments in my career when senior colleagues have made a firm intervention to show me a different way of being. Most of these occasions have been intensely personal, very direct and driven by their belief that I could do better and be more. For those leaders there was a role for training courses, theories and structure but there were also times when vivid, focused, personal engagement was their way of making a difference.

FRESH HOPE OR ZOMBIE DAWN AS CLEARING FOG LIFTS?

Day 28 sounds like a bid for the latest in the zombie movie franchise but its the UCAS yearly data-release marking four weeks from A-level results day. For some UK universities the former might feel appropriate because the clearing season is nearly over and visa deadlines are coming. It’s not long before all that is left is the counting of enrolments.

This year Day 28 was 13 September with the data published a week later. These numbers give the best indication of how far the UK has come in enrolling new undergraduates for the 2018/19 academic year. It’s a mixed bag.

The good news that the number of ‘placed’ international students (non-EU) is up 4% to 38,330 – that’s 1,500 more than last year. It’s a solid gain although slightly disappointing after double-digit applicant growth in the early part of the cycle. It looks anaemic against the growth in Canada and Australia but is likely to be better than the US.

At a subject level the biggest winners are Business and Administrative Studies (+350), Computer Sciences (+310) and Biological Sciences (+240). However, the number of Engineering students is down by 230 and at its lowest level since 2012. The five-year growth in Technologies has also been reversed with a loss of 130 students taking it to its lowest ever total.

With 6,040 students international students still holding offers the eventual enrolment outcome remains uncertain. In 2015 the number holding offers on Day 28 was 6,380 but in the past two years had fallen to 1,760 (2016) and 1,610 (2017). It is difficult to understand what is driving this fluctuation and there may still be time for a late windfall. But the majority may just be phantoms preying on the minds of hard-pressed recruitment teams.

More good news is that EU-students ‘placed’ are also up by 2% to 30,350. This is still slightly below the number for 2016 but is some cause for encouragement. A number of universities, including De Montfort who opened an office in Portugal earlier in the year, are enhancing their physical presence in Europe. It will be interesting to see how these developments plays out with Brexit looming.

The bad news is that the total number of placed students after 28 days – counting all domiciles – is down by 10,000. At a standard UK home student fee rate that’s £277m of fee revenue over a three-year degree. Universities know that the home-student demographic dip will continue for a few years, which is one reason those that can have been building their student base. It seems to be one factor behind the growth in unconditional offers from well-ranked universities.

Table 1 – Total of All Placed Undergraduate Students 28 days After A-Level Results
Of course, undergraduate enrolments are not the only source of student income for universities and postgraduates make up the bulk of international enrolments. But it is also difficult to see why the postgraduate enrolment picture would be much of an improvement on that for undergraduates. And an enrolled undergraduate gives a near guarantee of three years income compared to the yearly challenge of recruiting more one year taught Masters students.

Against this background it was interesting to read Being set up to fail? The battle to save the UK’s Universities from speculative finance. The article, from May 2018, notes that ‘some £3bn has been borrowed by UK universities since 2016, over half of this in the form of private placements.’ Some of that borrowing may be based on predictions of student enrolments that look increasingly unsustainable.

This echoes WonkHE’s November 2016 report, Getting worse: HEFCE’s bleak prognosis for university finances. One recruitment related line from HEFCE was “Our financial modelling shows that removal of projected growth in overseas fee income over the next three years (2016-17 to 2018-19) would all but wipe out sector surpluses by 2018-19, with projected surpluses falling from £1,081 million (3.4 per cent of total income) to £56 million (just 0.2 per cent of total income).”

It is to be hoped that the early warning signs from HEFCE were heeded and that the long-term financial health of individual universities has been considered more carefully over ensuing years. My blog Getting To Grips With Pathways – A Thorny Subject? showed the decline in some university incomes that has already become evident as international enrolments fall. The UK demographics will not improve for several years and the battle for international students will not get any easier.

GLOBAL LEAGUE TABLES OFFER MIXED NEWS FOR THE US AND PATHWAY PROVIDERS

Credible and well publicised global comparative university rankings are one factor changing the face of international recruitment. Students and their advisers can compare and contrast between Beijing, Berlin, Boston and Birmingham at the touch of a button. The rapid growth of online courses from universities around the world has also helped to popularise the notion of ‘shopping’ for courses through the internet.

It is clear that league tables matter and that universities see them as an important part of student recruitment. Some less welcome consequences include misleading claims and recent incidents suggest that data submitted is not always accurate. Perhaps these incidents reflect the recognition that league tables can help build reputations that support both country and institutional desirability.

In that respect evidence suggests the US is losing its way as a global rankings leader with strength in depth. For pathway providers it’s a double-whammy when the quality of their US partnerships, as defined by global comparisons, looks to be lagging behind their partners in other parts of the world. At a difficult moment for US recruitment of international students it may be another indicator of harder times ahead.

US DECLINE IN GLOBAL RANKINGS
The US has traditionally been dominant at the top of global rankings and remains powerful. But The Economist (May 19th 2018) highlighted how its broader grip on the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) table has slipped over time. Chinese and Australian universities have seen the most significant growth in the table over that period.

Table 1 - Representation of Countries in ARWU TOP 500 - 2003 to 2017

The Times Higher Education (THE) World Rankings also noted that in 2018 ‘two-fifths of the US institutions in the top 200 (29 out of 62) have dropped places.’ In contrast, two Chinese universities had risen into the top 30 for the first time. This shift in global power reflects the growing power of China as a first choice for international students.

US PATHWAY PARTNERSHIPS BELOW TOP LEVEL
While many US universities are slipping in global rankings, pathway providers also seem to be struggling to secure partnerships with the very best universities in the country. Since April 2016 none of the partnerships announced by Study Group, Navitas, INTO or Shorelight has been in the top 200 in the QS Ranking or THE World rankings. Only two make it into the US News and World Report (USNWR) Global top 200.

Table 2 – Comparative Ranking of New US Pathway Partnerships Announced Since April 2016*National rank unless noted

Looking over the total portfolio of pathway partners of the ‘big 4’ providers in the US shows that more than half are not globally ranked by the QS, THE or, even in the US News and World Report Global Top 1000.

Table 3 – Global League Table Rankings of Pathway Provider Institutions in the US

UK PATHWAY PARTNERSHIPS LOOK STRONGER IN GLOBAL RANKINGS
Three of these providers are active in the UK where their portfolios look significantly stronger in terms of global rankings. With the addition of the fourth big player in the UK – Kaplan – the overall number of partners is similar. At an aggregate level the worst performance is in the USNWR ranking but even by that measure less than a third of partners are unranked.

The UK is a more mature market for pathways but the recent emphasis of the major players seems to be on enhancing quality. Kaplan partnered with the University of Nottingham in July 2016 and Study Group announced a deal with Durham University in February 2017. Kaplan and Navitas have established new-style arrangements, including investment in infrastructure, with long-term partners Liverpool and Swansea respectively. INTO’s last UK deal was with the University of Stirling in April 2014.

Table 4 - Comparative Global League Table Rankings of Pathway Provider Institutions in the UK

A GLOBAL LEAGUE TABLE FOR THE ERA OF THE CLICK
Some pathway groups also have strong representation in Australia (and to a lesser extent in Canada). A composite league tables to reflect this and show the ‘top 11’ pathway partner universities, according to three major global league tables, shows considerable consistency. Six universities (shaded) are in all the tables and five are in two. It is, however, worth noting that all but one have slipped lower in their placing between THE 2018 and THE 2019.

Table 5 - Top Pathway Partner Universities In Selected Global League Tables

NB: The University referred to in the table as Alabama is the University of Alabama – Birmingham.

CONCLUSION
Most people who work in the sector have seen the growth of league tables as an imposition with occasionally perverse consequences for investment and resource allocation in the institution. It is entirely possible to argue that that the rankings are arbitrary and spurious with no particular relevant to student outcomes. But they are increasingly offering new layers of insight to capture attention – the QS Graduate Employability Rankings is an example.

Students, parents, agents and employers look at league tables and most student recruitment marketing focuses on favourable rankings while ignoring less flattering indicators. They are far from the only factor involved in decision making but they set a tone that influences potential students and staff. It is rare to find an institutional leader who is not keenly aware of their relative performance.

In terms of international recruitment league tables are part of an institution’s ‘sales kit’ and the growth of global comparisons exposes their relative strengths and weaknesses. It is noticeable that as international student growth has stalled in the UK over the past five years the bigger and better ranked university ‘brands’ have taken a larger share of those coming to the country. It seems inevitable that this will be the story for the future and that universities without ranking ‘power’ will need to work harder to avoid being marginalised.

NOTE:

The exact nature of pathway provider and university partnerships is not always clear but extensive efforts have been made to focus on pathway partnerships where students are taught on-campus. The author is happy to hear from any authoritative source who has information that might improve the accuracy of the article. Any corrections will be noted below.

Correction and Update – 1 October 2018
The tables and commentary have been updated to reflect the publication of the THE Global Rankings 2019 during week commencing 24 September 2018 (comparative positions for individual universities are shown). Broadly speaking the new table showed declining rankings for both US and UK universities In addition, the tables have been corrected to show the rankings for Shorelight partner the University of Mississippi (Table 2) and INTO partner the University of Exeter (Table 5).

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD SPEAKS IN TONGUES

When the Spanish Armada sailed in May 1588 the intention was to clear the way for an invasion of England and allow direct rule by King Philip II* of Spain. Had that happened I probably would not be investing in Spanish language lessons at the Culture and Language Centre in San Diego**. Sir Francis Drake, the Dutch and the capricious winds off the English coast defeated the Armada and have a lot to answer for.

Learning a language later in life is a powerful reminder of the painful step from blissful ignorance to conscious incompetence. Whether I will ever graduate to conscious competency is difficult to say but the experience has been both humbling and energising. It is also a stark reminder of the extraordinary intelligence, desire and courage of international students.

Every year thousands of young people travel around the world to study at degree level. They endure homesickness, different foods, strange customs and, sometimes, outright hostility while trying to communicate and study in a language where they have limited ability. My weekly evisceration of the Spanish language in a safe and supportive classroom just ten minutes from home pales by comparison.

Maybe every university should ensure that anybody engaging with international students has to do a course where they learn an unfamiliar language. This would give due regard to those academics and administrators who are genuine polyglots and should build empathy for students. I can even see marketing advantages in publicising that the institution recognises the interplay between language acquisition and academic achievement.

My rationale for learning Spanish at this point in my life is that I live ten miles from the Mexican border and wanting to start coaching football in a region with many bilingual youngsters. But the greater reality is that after years of posturing I ran out of excuses not to learn a second language. Time, funds and opportunity are the ultimate cure for fear, indolence and procrastination.

The fear is real because I was terrible at languages at school. Three years of compulsory German did little more than enable me to name two of Santa’s reindeers, seek attention or demand that people move quickly***. Forced to choose a language to study at O-level (for younger readers these were the pre-antiquity form of GCSEs) I plumped for French.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even proficient enough for that level of study and ended up in the CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) class led by the dynamic and ever-kind Mrs Bell. Her hug of affection and delight when I secured a level 2 at CSE remains one of the most perplexing of school moments. I had merely turned up and guessed at the answer to every question compared to those who had not bothered to do either.

One class-mate was so disinterested in his exams that he even refused to write his name at the top of the answer paper. He had heard that you were automatically given two marks for this form of self-identification and was anxious to secure a big fat zero. Having sat for the obligatory twenty minutes at the start of the exam he gave a cheery wave as he was escorted out by a rather grumpy invigilator.

The real downside of learning languages at my secondary school was that language laboratory sessions were always straight after swimming. Sopping wet hair and water-filled ears in an English winter do not go well with headphones in a dank, claustrophobic, sound-proofed booth. The danger of your teacher perforating your eardrum by screeching down the headset was only exceeded by not being able to hear the class bully sneaking up to smack you round the head.

These painful memories explain my surprise that several decades later I keep inserting French words into Spanish sentences. Their relentless pursuit of space in my brain reminds me of both the posse in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Schwarzenegger’s definitive Terminator. I say “Who are those guys?” and they say “I’ll be back” – but where have they been hiding all these years?

More interesting than that game of ‘cherchez la femme’ is my growing understanding of adult language learning and an interesting parallel to management development. Research into adult learners of second languages suggests that the two languages show little separation in triggering activity in Wernicke’s area (the part of the brain largely responsible for language comprehension). This may also explain why my mind finds a French word when it is seeking the Spanish one.

But in Broca’s area, which manages the motor activity of the mouth when speaking a language, the triggers for activity are more substantially separated. This means that speaking the second language, particularly if some sounds do not cross from one to the other, is more challenging. Those who have grown up bilingual do not show the same separation.

It seems reasonable to think that management theory learnt later in life and demanding new behaviours may also be more difficult to implement because understanding and action are not wholly aligned in the brain. The good news with languages is that focused exercise in speaking can go a long way to overcoming the deficit between comprehension and fluency of speaking. I would venture that the same is true of understanding the benefits of new ways of behaving and working on operationalising that learning.

As a relatively inexperienced but desperately keen manager I read that taking time to regularly interact informally and supportively with colleagues was important. I was very poor at remembering to do this, so for several years I wrote time into my working week to engage ‘informally’ with individuals in my team. Looking back this mechanistic approach seems forced and artificial but it was a way of turning theory into reality for someone finding their way as a leader.

Making progress in developing my second-language capability remains a struggle but has brought a new perspective on the links between knowledge, understanding and action. It demonstrates that learning is a journey with plenty of stopping off points to admire the view and smell the flowers.
Muchas gracias por leer mis amigos!

Notes

* El Rey Felipe II
** https://www.cultureandlanguagecenter.com/
*** Donner und Blitzen, achtung, schnell

Unconditional Manipulation

The latest shouting match about UK universities giving students unconditional offers is drowning out the reality that the system is broken. It also ignores the likely reality that demographics will solve the problem in due course. But for now, and probably in the future, the playground bullies of government and UniversitiesUK will ignore the real victims – the students.

Here are some of the main reasons.

The evidence suggests that A-level predictions have always been a poor way to select students for university. A report, Predicted Grades: accuracy and impact based on the A-level results of 1.3 million young people over three years showed that only one in six A-level grade predictions were accurate. Three-quarters of actual grades turned out to be lower than teachers had estimated, while just one in 10 were higher.

Universities know this but have been happy to play along for many years. Indeed, it was a very useful thing to know when they faced a cap, with financial penalties for exceeding the limit, on the number of students enrolled. Universities could make more offers than they had places for, knowing that a significant proportion of students would miss their grades and could be rejected.

Then the game changed.

The cap was lifted and each individual student was worth more because of the introduction of fees. Universities had been on a major spending spree to build accommodation and so the need to enrol sufficient volume was no longer just an academic matter. And the growth in international students slowed significantly making UK students increasingly valuable.

The remorseless weight of demographics also played its part as the Office for National Statistics graph below shows. The number of UK students of university age has been declining for several years so institutions wanted to ‘fill their boots’ with as many as possible. The need was particularly acute because the decline in university age students will continue to fall for another couple of years.

For universities the ambition was to recruit as many students as necessary to fill the gap while finding ways to ensure that they got the best students possible. One way to manage that was to give unconditional offers to students that are in the A to B range for their A-levels while knowing that a proportion will slip to C or even lower. Students keen to get to the best quality university forsake their insurance offer and may mentally switch off on doing their best at A-level.

Worth remembering here that the first big name to go to ‘unconditional offers’ was the University of Birmingham who would be in search of top-quality students. Also worth remembering that University planning offices are filled with terrifyingly bright people who eat statistics for breakfast. They can predict with reasonable certainty how many students can afford to slip an A-level grade but are still likely to achieve a good degree (because the institution doesn’t want its league table position to slip).

A cynic would add that one of the points about emerging grade inflation in university awards is that the institution has the absolute power to manipulate the grades its students get. So even if the slippage in A-level points for the intake is damaging on one league table measure it can easily be made up for by an increase in the number of students getting a 2:1 or better. When organisations are autonomous and self-governing there is very little to prevent them making the rules up as they go along.

It’s a perfect storm of financial commitments, student scarcity, and a broken application system with poor data that the sector has consistently failed to fix. When you add to that mix the reality that universities can fix the outcomes it is no surprise they choose to game the system. Even if it’s not in the interests of the students.

But time will change these dynamics.

Even if nothing else changes the demographics of the UK will change behaviours. As the ONS data (above) shows the university may not have enough places by 2030 to take all the candidates that want to go. Faced with more students than they need universities will tighten their offer policies and the unconditional offer will become as rare as rocking horse droppings. It’s a situation where the basics of supply and demand provide a market solution.

But that seems to me to be cold comfort to students who have little insight and no voice at all in the way the system runs. Their plight is made worse by the constant changes in Government policy and the responses of self-interested universities. About time somebody set about mending the underlying system and holding people to account.

Understandable Caution About Students (UCAS) As Deadline Passes

The UCAS release of June deadline undergraduate applications is a snapshot giving insights into potential international (non-European Union) enrolments in the UK for September 2018. The scenario is a bit like England reaching the World Cup semi-final stage – enough to excite and build expectation. But we all know what happened next in that story.

News to cheer is that the number of applicants is up 4,550 from last year’s figure and 75,380 applicants looks like strong growth against last year’s 70,830. But underneath the headlines there are some interesting trends and nuances. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the UK’s compound annual growth rate for applicants is only 2.24% a year over the three years since 2014/15.

The other interesting factor may be the need of UK universities to fill the gap left by declining numbers of home student applicants – over 18,000 down year on year for 2018 entry. This seems certain to drive vigorous competition for existing international applicants. And the race to convert students in the last chance saloon of clearing will equal the stress levels of any penalty shootout.

MOMENTUM HAS SLOWED
A bird in the hand may be worth two in the bush as far as applications are concerned but early momentum in the recruitment cycle has fallen away. Year-on-year percentage growth of applicants has declined with each of the four UCAS deadlines. From a high in October of 11.7% it has fallen to a solid but less exciting 6.4% at the end of June.
Source: UCAS

This follows a broad trend in the growth in volume of international applicants applying between the January deadline and the June deadline slowing. In 2014/15 there were 18,510 additional applicants while in 2017/18 it has been 16,930. That’s growth of 35.6% and 29% respectively on the January total in each year.

It seems likely that students and agents are getting better organised earlier in the year. That would be a reasonable response to some of the changes in visa requirements and language testing in recent year. But it places an emphasis on speed of response to applications and the strengthening of conversion campaigns early in the cycle.
Source: UCAS

EARLY APPLICATIONS STRONG BUT MEDICINE LAGGING
Nearly 30% (1,350) of the total growth in international applicants came by the October deadline for students applying for Oxbridge or courses in medicine. However, the number applying for medical courses (3,310) remains below the 2014 figure of 3,490 despite the number of new medical places in recent years. It seems possible that competition is significantly undermining the attraction of UK medical courses and we know, for example, that as long ago as 2015 eighty per cent of Indian students in China were following undergraduate clinical medical courses (Source: The Economic Times, May 25, 2015).

The rise in non-medicine applicants is a strong step forward but the drivers are unclear. HESA figures suggest that between 2013/14 and 2016/17 both Oxford and Cambridge increase their total undergraduate population by 20% or more. It is possible that they are pushing on more aggressively and stimulating interest.

Alongside this is the growing flexibility of Russell Group universities, as evidenced by the number now making unconditional offers, and their hunger for international students. International students and their advisers may believe that their chances of successfully enrolling in a well-known, highly ranked UK university have never been better. At a macro-level the rise in early applications suggests that strong, well-ranked brands will do best out of any increase in applicants this year.

Source: UCAS

RELIANCE ON CHINA CONTINUES
Overall and as expected China and India have posted the largest uplift in terms of students applying – up by 1,850 and 1,100 year on year respectively. It seems possible that the UK is partly a beneficiary of what could become a very difficult enrolment period for universities in the US. In that respect the next biggest growth in international applicants is 300 from the USA.

Despite the good omens experienced international recruitment teams will not be counting their students before they arrive. The UK government’s failure to ease the visa situation for students from India by making the country ‘low risk’ could still play badly. But there must be reasonably strong expectations of a solid year for enrolments at this point.
Source: UCAS

CLEARING LIKELY TO REMAIN IMPORTANT
Another factor is clearing which includes all students applying after the June deadline. Over the past five years the peak number of international students ‘placed’ in universities in the 28 days after A-level day was 7,260 in 2014. This fell year on year before increasing slightly to 6,500 in 2017.

There are a lot of students available and most universities have strengthened their ability to operate efficiently at home and internationally under the pressure of clearing. Making on the spot offers, converting interest and having strong teams in place, including academics, are commonplace. Again, the well-known names would expect to dominate but as they fill there is opportunity for others to compete.

Source: UCAS

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL – BUT REASONS TO BE CAUTIOUS
My previous blog showed that growth in international enrolments over the past five years has been dominated by metropolitan, Russell Group names. It is reasonable to assume that large, globally-ranked and well-known universities will now dive even more deeply into the pool of international students than ever before. The economic pressure and the likely shortfall in UK students over coming years will make this a priority.

And the wise will realise that the increase in their own applicant pool may be undermined by multiple applications. My analysis of the UCAS numbers suggests that while there are 4,550 additional applicants there are an additional 21,010 applications in the system. Over 3,600 of the additional applicants made the maximum of five applications and the majority of the rest made at least three.
Source: UCAS

Accidents Will Happen

In response to Jillian Braverman’s recent post about learning more from mistakes than successes I committed to select some examples from my own career. The whole process was a good reminder about the benefits of reflective practice. Getting better at accepting personal fallibility is a reasonable defence against being careless, neglectful or just plain stupid.

It also helps to avoid the trap of ‘unconscious competency’ where a level of mastery and familiarity encourages repeating actions without conscious evaluation. I’m grateful to Andy Green for introducing me to the notion of ‘super-competency’ where someone who is highly accomplished in a discipline continually challenges and refreshes their skill. The best people never stop learning.

Some of the greatest creative forces in history have also pointed to the danger of believing excellence in a skill or a way of thinking is an end in itself. Picasso observed that, ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ Leonardo da Vinci said that, “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” Throughout their lives they were involved in a relentless search for improvement.

While few can match the creativity and inventiveness of these titans my small contribution here is three occasions when errors have held valuable lessons and changed my way of thinking.

CLARIFY THE BRIEF AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
Late in the process of producing an Annual Report, I was asked by an HR Director to arrange a short version to be sent to all 70,000+ staff. Under time pressure and wanting to impress I re-drafted the text as a summary, re-purposed the existing visuals and got the design agency to do layout for free. I felt pretty good about having got the job done in budget and on-time.

But at final proof stage the HR Director said he had wanted something original and entirely focused on the employee audience. My annoyance at time and effort wasted was only exceeded by my embarrassment at failing to clarify the brief. Always understand the purpose and intended outcomes of a job before starting it and make sure that you have clarified the time and cost implications of any course of action.

Kipling is instructive:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

(“I keep six honest serving-men.” Rudyard Kipling. First published in the Ladies’ Home Journal, April 1900)

It is also usually worth reminding budget-holders making late requests that the iron triangle comprising cost, speed and quality can usually only have two side fulfilled at the same time.

BEWARE HUBRIS AND LACK OF PREPARATION
One of my employer’s open-plan office culture led to the wearing of ‘red caps’ to indicate you were not to be disturbed. Local interest had me appearing on regional TV where, on the spur of the moment, I stated that we thought it was a great gift for the upcoming Father’s Day. Slightly carried away by my own cleverness I said that we’d be selling them in one of our local stores that Saturday.

The scramble to source red caps, at anything like a reasonable cost, involved the whole team for the next two days. Particularly when I decided that they needed to have a big D, for Dad, emblazoned on them. But I took delivery of the caps late one night and found myself in a nearby store early the next morning.

Given a prime spot near the entrance and alongside the clothing section I was confident that I would be sold out and back home by noon. 12 hours later I had not sold one, despite the asking price plummeting from a fiver (which was at cost) to 50p. I could not bring myself to just give them away but had learnt many lessons.

Making a claim without thinking it through is not a good place to start. Compounding the situation by adding specifications, something akin to ‘mission drift’, is equally unwise. But most importantly I learnt at first hand and on my own time how hard it is to make money by selling things. It was an early step on a long road from being in public relations to leading a £100m turnover commercial organisation.

MUTUAL APPRECIATION AND ENTHUSIASM ARE RARELY ENOUGH
After several years in one job I was slightly restless and applying for anything that looked interesting. When the call came it was welcome, the process rapid and it felt like love at first sight. The lure of global opportunity and building a team from a low base seemed too good to miss.

Sadly, I had missed that what attracted the company to me were things I had done earlier in my career but were not my intended direction of development. An early visit to the parent company disabused me of my belief that I would be able to spread my wings internationally. And the ‘low base’ was destined to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

In relationships it is in the interests of both parties to temper good rapport with critical thinking. I was flattered by the attention and I did not ask enough questions to understand their situation. As importantly, I was not wholly transparent about my expectations.

Whether it’s a new job, a business partner or a personal friend there is not enough goodwill or money in the world to make it work long term unless aspirations, values and practicalities are honestly shared. And you have to be prepared to walk away however much you like people and want things to work out.

*****

Mistakes are part of learning and it is reasonable to expect that if you are pushing hard and on the edges of your ability or experience you will make more of them. As long as you have not staked what you or your company cannot afford to lose, every error brings insight and few are terminal. It’s always good advice to believe that what matters is what you do next.