VAL0051
Written Evidence submitted by the Nottingham Trent University
About Nottingham Trent University (NTU)
1) Recently awarded ‘Modern University of the Year’ in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide (September 2017), NTU was formally created in 1992 but has a continuous history of educating adults that dates back to 1843. NTU is one of the largest Universities in the country with approximately 30,000 students. It has one of the best employment records in the nation, with 94% of our graduates and 95% of our postgraduates either being employed or engaged in further study six months after graduation. NTU has also recently been awarded a Gold rating in the recent TEF. NTU provides high quality at large scale.
2) Effectively facilitating social mobility is a key tenet of the ethos of NTU and is manifested through the University’s innovative and extensive outreach work in local communities. Our Schools, Colleges and Community Outreach (SCCO) Team develops character, builds social and cultural capital, and raises achievement amongst pupils in Nottingham’s least advantaged communities. Through its long-term support structure over the whole student lifecycle, participants who attend NTU advance on to graduate level employment or post-graduate study, key signifiers of social mobility, at a much higher rate than graduates from similar backgrounds who have not participated in our school-based activities.
Introduction
3) Nottingham Trent University welcomes this select committee’s inquiry into the value for money in higher education, a metric which the university has long held as a key marker for its success.
4) As consumers of Higher Education, value for money should rightly be at the forefront of prospective students’ minds when deciding which university to attend or indeed whether to attend at all. But value for money must also mean value for taxpayers and for society as a whole. Universities have an inherent duty to serve all of these interests in the best way possible.
5) Currently there is an intense level of debate around multiple aspects of the UK’s Higher Education system. This debate is also to be welcomed in the pursuit of ensuring that our universities are not only fit for purpose but also remain highly competitive in the global market. The following submission outlines NTU’s views on the five key questions posed by the committee in its announcement of this inquiry. Some of the practical evidence detailed below has long been a feature of NTU and other parts of it are being enacted in response to recent discourse. We do not shy away from change and evolution as an institution and believe that adaptability is at the core of being able to serve future generations of students and citizens.
Executive Summary
1) Value for money in Higher Education - NTU believe that value for money in its educational – as opposed to its research and knowledge transfer - activities should be broadly determined by three factors:
2) Graduate outcomes and the use of destination data – If NTU was to be best judged on its VFM to students, taxpayers – including businesses – and society on one metric then it would be the number of its graduates in graduate-entry employment or training in a number of annual data points that reflect the time since leaving the University. The replacement of DLHE by LEO is a positive step, albeit that data would have to be contextualised by characteristics of university intake, disciplines of study, and location of employment in order to give a fair measure.
6) Social justice in higher education and support for disadvantaged students – Both should be seen as key facets of all universities’ duties to society. Institutions that fail to do their utmost to facilitate both of these are fundamentally failing in these duties. NTU has a proud track record in both of these areas (detailed below) as we are among the top five recruiters of undergraduate students from low participation neighbourhoods in the country.
3) Quality of effectiveness of teaching – As a teaching-intensive university NTU focuses its offer to students firmly on teaching excellence. We believe this focus ensures far greater value for money in contrast to a large number of other institutions - often styling themselves ‘elite’ - that are research-intensive but do not articulate how world-leading research benefits their students. Indeed, such research is often far removed from the average student’s experience of university and has little demonstrable impact on individual learning.
4) The role of the Office for Students - We believe the newly created Office for Students should be equipped with the requisite powers to hold universities to account should they not meet minimum standards in these criteria, including sanctions on fees.
5) Senior management pay in universities - NTU is taking steps to ensure that the pay of senior executives is as transparent as possible and scrutinised to the highest possible level. This includes the creation of an entirely separate Remuneration Committee to oversee the pay of the University’s Executive Team (including the Vice Chancellor) with independent external and student representative members.
Graduate outcomes and the use of destination data
6) NTU’s ambition is to enable all students to transform their lives by creating opportunity for all. We have a strategic commitment and systematic approach to improving student outcomes, enhancing the student experience and engaging students. We take a holistic approach to this which sees 94% of our graduates and 95% of our postgraduates either being employed or engaged in further study six months after graduation
7) Evidence suggests that students taking part in meaningful work-like experience is an important factor in them achieving their full potential through development of the knowledge, skills and understanding that are most highly valued by employers. To this end, a key component of the NTU offer for many years has been working with students and regional, national and international businesses to secure high quality placements as part of the curriculum.
8) We have grown the volume of high quality placements available and improved support for students to secure these placements, supported by an Employability team of almost 100 staff.
9) Following our investment in resource to support our employability offer, an HEA audit (June 2016) commissioned to review our placement provision identified: ‘The NTU model is an exemplar to other HEIs as regards supporting employability, engaging employers, providing access to relevant and quality work based opportunities and ensuring effective support prior to, during and after the placement’.
10) Our evidence shows that engagement in extra and co-curricular activities is a major factor in reducing the attainment gap as well as enhancing employability. NTU offers a comprehensive range of activities, including internships, business incubation services, mentoring programmes, entrepreneurship workshops, and much more. These are captured in a University validated Higher Education Achievement Record that our graduates can share with potential employers.
11) We suggest that the Government and/or the OfS link any new measures of success or failure for universities to the outcomes of graduates, specifically to the use of destination data. However, this data must be contextualised in order to serve as a robust measure of success. For many of our students, becoming quantity surveyors or fashion designers is as important to their own success – and that of the national economy - as other universities seeking to turn out bankers and judges (although we do that as well).
Social justice in higher education and support for disadvantaged students
12) NTU is among the top five recruiters of undergraduate students from low participation neighbourhoods. In 2014, NTU admitted 13% of students from disadvantaged, low participation neighbourhoods; with 785 of first degree entrants from these areas. Our own research shows that the inclusion of a sandwich year within a degree removes completely the difference in rates of graduate level employment between our richest and our poorest students. Of our 2014 sandwich year graduates, 90% had acquired graduate-level jobs, regardless of their social background. It is why from 2018 onwards every one of the 10,000 young (and not so young) people in NTU’s new intake will undertake an assessed work experience as part of their degree. More generally, 79% of all 2015-16 graduates entered graduate-level jobs or training within six months of graduating, higher than the sector average.
13) Our target audiences for outreach are disadvantaged pupils, schools, communities and NTU students. There is no single ideal indicator of disadvantage and therefore we use a combination of factors[1]. We work with pupils, families, schools and not-for-profits in an area roughly one hour’s driving distance from NTU and with all academic schools across the University. Our schools liaison service (SCCO) focuses on regional feeder schools. Each year we:
14) While there are multiple markers for social mobility, NTU has identified entry to a graduate level job or further training as a key signifier of success. Though the main driver of this is access and progression through higher education, NTU understand that interventions are needed far before this point to be successful. This is why our SCCO programmes start with primary school age children at age eight.
15) In their summer 2014 GCSE exams, 61% of SCCO pupil participants achieved five or more A*-Cs compared with 45% of all pupils from across Nottingham. Moreover, 36% of participants on SCCO’s pre-16 outreach programme from these neighbourhoods went to university by 19.
16) NTU suggests that facilitating social mobility and providing support for disadvantaged students become central factors by which higher education institutions are judged.
Senior management pay in universities
17) NTU - including the Vice Chancellor, Executive Team and Governors - recognise and agree that there is public interest in the manner in which the pay of the senior staff of our University is determined.
18) Currently, the remuneration of senior staff at NTU is determined by our Remuneration and Employment Policy Committee. The Terms of Reference for this Committee include discussion on a much broader range of issues connected to HR policies and practices in addition to senior staff salaries. The Vice-Chancellor is currently a member of this Committee. This membership reflects his responsibilities to ensure the clear organisation, direction, and management of the University, as well as his central role in determining pay and conditions of service for its staff. With regard to remuneration, the Committee’s Terms of Reference specifically state the Vice-Chancellor should withdraw from discussions on his own salary and, indeed, he has always done so.
19) Despite the Board of Governors expressing no dissatisfaction with the way this committee carries out its functions, NTU has begun the process of instigating a series of changes to ensure that the setting of senior management pay is as transparent and accountable as possible. These include:
20) We are also aware that the issue of university’s application of proportionate pay in line with guidance from the Charity Commission has been raised in the course of an ongoing debate on this issue. At the moment the University does not have a specific policy on proportionate pay. It takes as its starting position the adoption of the national framework uplift award negotiated by the Universities and Colleges Employers association (UCEA) when setting salary levels for its staff. The Remuneration and Employment Policy Committee pays close attention to the data issued annually to the sector from UCEA about Vice-Chancellors’ terms and conditions across UK universities.
21) This is, however, an issue which we are aware is currently being considered within the higher education sector. We will ensure that our future policy on this matter is cognisant of any guidance that is issued by UCEA and/or by the Committee of University Chairs (CUC); we anticipate such guidance being available during this calendar year.
Quality and effectiveness of teaching
22) Nottingham Trent is a teaching-intensive and research-active University, committed to enabling our students to transform their life chances and to enhancing the social, cultural and economic environment within which they live, study, volunteer and work. We are proud that our experience and expertise in learning and teaching can be traced back to the Nottingham Government School of Design, established in 1843 to provide innovation and skills to ensure the prosperity of the textiles industry in the East Midlands.
23) The structure of the University has been revised to reflect our focus on the student experience. The Deputy Vice-Chancellor is responsible for the leadership of teaching excellence within the University. Each school has a Deputy Dean explicitly concerned with the quality of Teaching and Learning. Three academic pathways of equal status and standing are available to academic colleagues: teaching and research; teaching and scholarship; and teaching and practice. As their titles suggest, all of these pathways require an active engagement with teaching.
24) An example of this focus on teaching and learning is that when students join us we create a student profile in our award-winning learning analytics Student Dashboard system; this is fundamental in helping us to manage and improve student learning. Analytics track student interaction with their course and specified resources in a single, intuitive interface. Dashboard models show how and if students engage with their courses, focuses personalised tutorial discussion, and alerts tutors to low engagement that may require intervention.
25) The quality of NTU course design and assessment is consistently confirmed by external panel members and examiners, who indicate that our courses are designed to ensure that students are stretched in developing their knowledge, skills and attributes. Illustrations of this include:
26) The result of this work is that NTU is sector-leading in satisfaction with assessment and feedback on students’ work. Our NSS scores for assessment and feedback are above sector averages and have maintained a year on year increase since 2012.
27) Overall, therefore, our mission and priorities are strongly aligned to high quality teaching and to the aspirations of the TEF, pursuing innovation that delivers ever-improving student experience and, in particular, supporting the successful studies of students from less advantaged backgrounds.
28) NTU suggests that the ability to charge higher fees continues to be directly linked to performance in the TEF.
The role of the Office for Students
Beyond the broad observation in the Executive Summary, NTU would want to reserve detailed comment on the OfS until it has scrutinised the consultation documents issued last week. However, we are of the view that it should have access to the requisite data and powers to identify and act where universities are experiencing failures of governance and management, teaching quality, and access of disadvantaged students against agreed targets. We do not believe that its powers should be used to pursue short-term media or political issues - e.g. making registration of universities dependent on satisfactory accounts of senior pay - as these will lead to significant push-back from, and loss of credibility within, the sector.
Conclusion - What can the Government do to ensure value for money in higher education?
1) Link fees to the TEF, graduate outcomes and social mobility criteria
2) Ensure that the OfS has necessary power to hold HE institutions to account when they fail to meet these criteria
3) Place social mobility and improving access at the heart of markers for success for any universities
[1] including geodemographic classifications, Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and household income