Higher education providers are currently experiencing unprecedented degrees of pressure, not only in terms of the constraints imposed by the current financial climate but in the increased expectations placed upon them by students, policymakers and the public. At the same time, they’re having to address the challenges posed by new technologies and workplace practices, environmental concerns and economic conditions, as well as by a growing focus on fair access to higher education.
Such issues are at the fore of the sector’s own debates. Recent HEPI blogs have, for example, focused on the importance of reasonable adjustments, the value of widening participation, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and institutional AI initiatives. Colleagues from GuildHE have written here and elsewhere about how specialist providers are essential to the delivery of the government’s industrial strategy – just as Universities UK has argued that graduates will play a vital role in that strategy, presenting an analysis which demonstrates that ‘growth sectors identified by the government in its industrial strategy require high levels of graduate skills across all regions and nations of the UK’.
These priorities reflect those of the UK government. When the Education Secretary for England wrote to providers in November, she said she expected them to ‘play a stronger role in expanding access and improving outcomes for disadvantaged students’, ‘make a stronger contribution to economic growth’, ‘play a greater civic role in their communities’ and ‘raise the bar further on teaching standards’.
Sector bodies and think tanks have produced valuable reports on these issues. But one lower-profile resource used by educators to anchor provision to such commitments is the Subject Benchmark Statement. This instrument plays a key role in demonstrating and underpinning how HEIs deliver the industry-aligned graduate skills essential for economic growth – those skills highlighted by GuildHE and Universities UK, and required by government strategies.
Subject Benchmark Statements are curated by QAA as the sector-led descriptors of taught disciplines. They describe the nature of study and the academic standards expected of graduates in specific subject areas – showing what graduates should know and be able to do at the end of their studies. Academic staff use them to inform the design, delivery and enhancement of programmes. They are included as key reference points in guidance on cyclical review in Scotland and Wales, and in institutions’ validation and assurance of provision across the UK.
They are created by panels of academic experts and representatives of employers and Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies. At a time when providers are expected to demonstrate their contribution to the UK’s industrial strategy, they use industry expertise to determine the skillsets needed for professional success and economic growth. They inform prospective students of the career paths advanced by their subjects, tell prospective employers what they can expect from a graduate of those subjects and assure policymakers of the value of those subjects.
Today, we are publishing this year’s set of Subject Benchmark Statements: revised editions of the Statements for, Accounting, Education Studies, Finance, Music, and Philosophy, as well as for Librarianship, Information, Knowledge, Records & Archives Management, and Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics; and a new Statement for Public Policy & Public Administration.
Key to the formulation of these Statements has been the development, through consultation with sector and industry stakeholders, of a set of themes which underpin their focus. These themes align with concerns shared by policymakers across the political spectrum. They include sustainability, access and success in higher education, graduate employability and artificial intelligence.
These emphases reflect not only the key expectations set by the Education Secretary last autumn, but also government priorities in such areas as green prosperity and AI. Subject Benchmark Statements also chart strategies for the enhancement of educational quality the Secretary of State has called for. They function alongside other key sector reference points – such as the Qualifications Frameworks and the Quality Code – to underpin the standards and enhance the quality of higher education. They are a mechanism by which programmes assure and articulate their educational, economic and social value and demonstrate the continuing relevance of their subjects to governments and the public.
To see how this works, it’s worth taking a moment to look at an example from our new set of Statements. This is the first time that there’s been a separate Subject Benchmark Statement dedicated to Public Policy & Public Administration (a subject well suited to this forum), so let’s take a look at that.
Its subject panel included three representatives of the Local Government Association, alongside practitioners and educators from 13 universities. An emphasis on industry impact shines through its 25 pages. It includes articulations of core skills at varying levels of study and attainment, and explains the purposes of a degree in its discipline, as well as strategies to promote accessibility and sustainable development. It also details the approaches to be taken by the discipline in relation to professional employability, both in terms of broad expectations and in relation to its specific engagement with artificial intelligence.
In this context, it expects that ‘while degrees will have the capacity to develop career-ready students, they must also equip sector-experienced students with the knowledge, behaviours and skills that will enable them to develop and progress within the workplace’ and that ‘courses may provide and/or require opportunities for students to work individually or collaboratively with employers and/or relevant public sector stakeholders’.
It adds that its degrees should ‘promote employability in a labour market that is becoming increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence’ and ‘prepare and equip students for work environments that require professionals to work alongside smart machines’ – and that therefore ‘to ensure students can complete their studies responsibly and with integrity, and be equipped to enter a world increasingly impacted by generative AI, Public Policy and/or Public Administration degrees must recognise and respond to employer and workplace needs’.
Each Subject Benchmark Statement underpins the continuing relevance and value of its discipline to industry and students alike. As the University of Birmingham’s Dr Karin Bottom (who chaired the Public Policy & Public Administration panel) has emphasized, one of the key impacts of a Subject Benchmark Statement is that it ‘gives programmes credibility with organisations that may fund people who take these degrees and that may employ people who’ve taken these degrees’ – and ‘gives employers and practitioner groups a reference point as to what practitioners need to know’.
At a time when many academic subject areas have come under increasing pressure (whether in terms of their commercial viability, their contribution to economic growth, or the careers they support), it remains crucial for the sector, students, taxpayers and policymakers to ensure that their value is not only expressed but also underpinned by benchmarking at the level of specific disciplines.
And, as policymakers have recently stressed the need to prevent the emergence of regional ‘cold spots’ in specific subject areas, these sector-led, industry-informed, expert-written documents can also help, in the formulation of such policies, to hone a closer understanding of the impacts and contributions of their disciplines.
