Category: Communications

Margaret Hodge’s 2003 speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research on “achieving excellence and equality in post-16 education” tells us that even under New Labour policy announcements on higher education were “long-awaited.”

The speech illustrates how then, as now, the government was grappling with questions of growing and massifying participation while retaining the sector’s global competitiveness; promoting specialisation and collaboration; boosting quality and civic engagement.

Hodge had taken to the stage to explain the government’s plans for driving up HE participation to at least 50 per cent of young people and signal the themes of its forthcoming higher education strategy – but warned that doing so via “stacking up numbers on Mickey Mouse courses” was “not acceptable.”

Hodge’s usage shows that she – or her speechwriter – assumed that the meaning of the term “Mickey Mouse course” was widely understood. But as DK has explored elsewhere on the site, Mickey Mouse’s meanings when applied to higher education have shifted and evolved according to cultural context.

What has remained consistent, however, is the assumption that there is a chunk of HE provision that all right-thinking people can see obviously shouldn’t “count” as HE – because it’s unserious, or too popular, or on a topic that’s not traditionally been seen as academic or, in the recent analysis from the Taxpayer’s Alliance, ideologically suspect.

Let’s imagine you’re a university press officer looking at a message on your phone or a note in your email inbox requesting that you explain succinctly by 3pm today why it’s entirely sane and reasonable to offer courses in e-gaming, fashion, filmmaking, tourism, mental health, gender identity, outdoor learning, climate change, sports or any one of a long tail of stuff the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus wouldn’t see the point of. What’s your strategy?

Make it go away

Back in 2003, the BBC reports that Margaret Hodge swiftly felt the sharp end of university leaders’ tongues, who apparently said her remarks were “offensive” and “ill-informed.” It’s hard to imagine a government minister getting such short shrift from the sector today – while some of the issues might look similar, the political landscape has changed enormously.

Even so, Option One, the dismissive approach, is seductive. There are several flavours of dismissive available: you could point out that higher education institutions hold their own degree awarding powers, are responsible for their own quality and academic standards, and curriculum, and that ergo, any course provided by a legitimate HE provider is de facto itself legitimate. Or you could question the motives of the questioner and suggest that the framing is a political act designed to discredit universities and higher education by those who wish the sector ill. The moral high ground feels pretty good, and has the advantage of refusing to concede the principle of the question, but it doesn’t necessarily contribute to public understanding of contemporary higher education.

A whole bunch of institutions approached for comment simply did not respond – possibly because they were asked to do so during the Christmas break but it may also have been because they refused to dignify the question with a response, an approach that might be characterised as Option One (b).

De-escalate

The institutions who chose to respond to the Telegraph when confronted with the evidence amassed by the Taxpayers’ Alliance seem to have in the main gone for Option Two: explain and clarify – and try to wedge in a plug for the institution.

Thus the University of Cumbria’s spokesperson explains that its MA in outdoor experiential learning is “designed for those passionate about transforming education, inspiring sustainability, and reshaping how we engage with experience in learning” – and notes that the university is in the top ten for graduate destinations. The University of Nottingham’s spokesperson points out that its workplace health and wellbeing course is postgraduate level, and therefore not taxpayer funded – and says the course encourages “a rigorous scientific approach that fulfils and exceeds legal requirements to support organisational performance and effectiveness and enhance worker productivity.”

There are absolutely merits to this approach – essentially it smothers the reputational fire with approved corporate narratives. When the Telegraph comes to call during the Christmas break you probably don’t lob your scanty communications resources at anything other than de-escalation. This, arguably, is not the moment to start a media scrap and find yourself inadvertently the “face” of the Mickey Mouse debate. Experience shows that that sort of thing can haunt your institution for ages and goodness knows everyone’s got enough to worry about without that.

Engage in the debate

But we should give at least a decent bit of consideration to Option 3: full-throated defence offered in language that people recognise as meaningful. That means more or less grudgingly accepting the premise that it’s hard for everyone to see why some lucky, lucky students get to study something as fun and creative and glamorous as fashion or “the outdoors” or identity or filmmaking. It involves painting a succinct picture of what these subjects achieve for students, and industries, not in big picture stats but in human terms, in stories.

I have two children, one in a state primary which, like many, have invested in a forest school. When my son was in reception he got to learn outdoors once a week; since then it’s been once a term at most. I can’t believe I’m the only parent of an active kid that is troubled by how little time the system affords kids to learn in and about nature.

Or, not to make this all about my kids, but being a parent computer games are a pretty big feature of my life. I can see how gaming can offer opportunities for my kids to problem solve and develop tactical and situational awareness, but I want to be sure they are safe when they do that – thanks, e-games courses.

Or, I’m a middle aged woman who sometimes struggles to find clothes that feel right for my professional and personal identity. Or I’m someone who wants to understand why the gender identity “debate” has become so toxic and what my orientation to it should be. Or I’m worried that my efforts to put my rubbish in the right bins isn’t going to deliver on that net zero target and is that even a useful target anyway?

OK, my preoccupations are very obviously filtered through the lens of middle-class London liberal. I’m not suggesting I’m a typical Telegraph reader – but I’m using my own sense of what the existence of these courses might mean for me to illustrate the point that lots of them touch people’s everyday concerns in ways that could be surfaced more powerfully.

The “Mickey Mouse” accusation runs deeper than notions of social irrelevance, however – inherent in the proposition that something is “Mickey Mouse” is calling into question whether these are subjects and courses that deserve to be part of the thing we call higher education. And that’s a much harder challenge to defend because doing so may feel like to do so requires a referral back to expertise, or knowledge that is inaccessible to the common reader and therefore will struggle to “cut through” in any media response.

Outside the realm of quality and standards regulation the question of why something is a legitimate source of higher education study speaks to the range of conceptions of higher education value. Is it worthwhile because there is labour market demand for it, because it is sufficiently complex to constitute a structured body of knowledge that merits deep intellectual engagement, because the resourcing required to study it is only accessible in higher education contexts, because of its wider social relevance or some thrilling combination of all these? And how on earth do you capture all that in a media quote?

I’ve been puzzling over this all week, and have come to the conclusion that there can’t be a silver bullet on how to defend the HE-ness of any given course, especially when the framing of the scepticism is so multi-faceted. One person’s useful market labour skills is another person’s intellectual lack of rigour. There’s no easy “win” available for this argument – but there might be a position to take that feels authentic and worthwhile that is rooted in the course’s own conception of itself and its meaning and value set within the wider institutional framework of mission and purpose.

Latent to salient

It’s not, I think, that institutions and their staff have no sense of why their courses are meaningful as higher education, but that this knowledge is so deeply embedded in the structures and cultures of the institution as to be almost entirely latent and unarticulated. Yet to be able to capture any of this pithily and in the teeth of a sceptical line of questioning that knowledge needs to be explicit and intentionally surfaced.

Any institution will have a stock of anecdotes, insight and ideas about why their courses matter, in human terms. This knowledge isn’t always held in comms teams, who are not always linked closely with the nuts and bolts of the academic endeavour . It’s not an easy ask, but I’d argue that it’s worth comms teams spending some real time in some of the university’s less “mainstream” course offerings, putting forward the sorts of the challenges around value that a hostile media outlet or think tank might present and understanding the nuances of the answers before working them into something media-friendly. Don’t just talk to the programme leaders, ask to audit the classes. Direct experience trumps course marketing brochure every time.

Because when it comes to that unexpected phone call or email asking for the justification for these woke, un-rigorous, pointless degrees, and deciding how best to respond, it’s great to at least have the option to explain why these courses are not merely legitimate higher education provision, they are essential for the furtherance of human flourishing.