{"id":2716,"date":"2019-08-06T08:09:36","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T08:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2716"},"modified":"2019-08-06T08:09:37","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T08:09:37","slug":"postgraduate-national-tests-are-the-only-solution-to-university-degree-hyper-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2716","title":{"rendered":"Postgraduate national tests are the only solution to university degree hyper-inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"cb-itemprop\" itemprop=\"reviewBody\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A relatively new addition to the British summer calendar, joining\nRoyal Ascot and Wimbledon, is the public revelation of another year of\nhyper-inflation in university degree marking. It is a day of hand wringing. But\nhow might the inflation be controlled eventually, or its consequences\nmitigated?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is only long-term policy\nthat might be viable \u2013 but it is widely ignored. This is for the government to\ninitiate various national tests, each linked to different kinds of careers for\nwhich a degree is required. In some respects they would be similar to a variety\nof tests in the US (GRA, LSAT and so on) designed for entry into post-graduate\neducation or professional training. In the British case they would have to be\nfocussed more on analytic skills, rather than knowledge of specific subjects.\nThey would also have to avoid one limitation of American models where intensive\ntutoring can ensure exceptionally high scores. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well-conceived tests could be of\nvalue to employers. They could also restrict, though not eliminate, the role increasingly\nplayed by someone\u2019s previous educational institution in the race for the best jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The origins of hyperinflation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Until the 1990s about one quarter of all degrees were\nclassed as 2.1 with about six per cent being firsts. Following university\nexpansion in 1992, and freed from the earlier constraint of a rigorous external\nexaminer system, some universities started to mark more \u2018generously\u2019. They\nbelieved this would assist their students in entry to graduate jobs. To protect\ntheir own students, others followed suit. Once universities were allowed to\nrecruit as many students as they wished, grade inflation became hyper-inflation.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">University finances now partly depended on maximizing enrolments.\nAt least some applicants were sufficiently canny to realise that they might be\nadvantaged in the labour market by attending a university that marked\ngenerously. This further fuelled inflationary pressures, especially in the\npresent decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About one third of all degrees today\nare first class, with some universities awarding fewer than 10 per cent of their\ndegrees below the 2.1 level. For anyone worried about social justice this\nraises at least two concerns. First, those who graduated years earlier can find\nthemselves competing for jobs against more recent graduates possessing\nseemingly better qualifications, but who met a lower standard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another concern is that\nultimately this inflation increases elitism in recruitment to graduate jobs. Class\nof degree now informs employers so little about the relative analytical and\nintellectual skills of many individuals, that shortlisting for a job or a\ntraineeship is less reliable. Firms need another indicator, even a crude one,\nto improve their chances of recruiting only those with seemingly greater\npotential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is where institutional\nelitism comes in. On average, the more difficult it is for an applicant to\nenter any particular university, the greater the probability its graduates possess\nskills at the level required. Generally entry is most competitive for Oxbridge\nand other universities ranked in the top half of the Russell Group. Consequently,\ntheir institutional prestige and reputation give their recent graduates a great\nadvantage, given the paucity of information about the <em>relative <\/em>attainment\nof individual graduates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet, alongside the media chorus\nabout hyper-inflation, there is another public riff: that, for the best jobs, proportionately\ntoo many recruits come from elite universities \u2013 especially Oxbridge. Yet a\nconsequence of the hyper-inflation is that, to prevent poor recruitment, firms\nhave to rely still more on the Russell Group\u2019s \u201ctop 10\u201d. Can inflation be reversed?\nProbably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Certainly there can be no return\nto the older practice that ensured rough parity of academic standards between\nall British universities. Their priority then, to preserve their own university\u2019s\nreputation among its peers, hinged on the role of external examiners for all their\ncourses. These examiners were not God, but they were obeyed. The system\u2019s\ncollapse followed both the vast increase in student numbers and also university\nhierarchies becoming less worried about their reputation among other\nuniversities and more about their own finances. That past cannot be\nre-established. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some academics argue that\nBritain\u2019s system of classifying degrees should be abolished, with a graduate\nreceiving merely the marks awarded for each completed course unit within their\ndegree. This would parallel the American system, in which such marks permit a\nGrade Point Average to be calculated for each student. Yet, in the longer term,\nthis does not eliminate inflation. There will remain an incentive to award marks\nof 80 when earlier 75s would have been appropriate, and in subsequent years the\n80s will become 90s, and so on. Moreover, as research has demonstrated,\ncomparability between grades awarded in different American universities is difficult.\nConsequently, many elite employers there tend to design their recruitment\nprocedures so that applicants from elite universities have an easier track to the\nshortlisting stage for a job than other graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The likely policy battle of the\nfuture in Britain will be between those who have no objection to the dominance of\nelite universities and those who seek means of limiting it. For the latter,\npost-graduation national tests are probably the only available option.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A relatively new addition to the British summer calendar, joining Royal Ascot and Wimbledon, is the public revelation of another year of hyper-inflation in university degree marking. It is a day of hand wringing. But how might the inflation be controlled eventually, or its consequences mitigated? There is only long-term policy that might be viable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":2719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1395,1401,1396],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1511],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-comment","category-education","category-uk"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/cropped-good-free-photos-YZsvNs2GCPU-unsplash.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}