Abstract
Since 2014, the government in England has undertaken a programme of work to explore the measurement of learning gain in undergraduate education. This is part of a wider neoliberal agenda to create a market in higher education, with student outcomes featuring as a key construct of value for money. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (subsequently dismantled) invested £4 million in funding 13 pilot projects to develop and test instruments and methods for measuring learning gain, with approaches largely borrowed from the US. Whilst measures with validity in specific disciplinary or institutional contexts were developed, a robust single instrument or measure has failed to emerge. The attempt to quantify learning represented by this initiative should spark debate about the rationale for quantification—whether it is for accountability, measuring performance, assuring quality or for the enhancement of teaching, learning and the student experience. It also raises profound questions about who defines the purpose of higher education; and whether it is those inside or outside of the academy who have the authority to decide the key learning outcomes of higher education. This article argues that in focusing on the largely technical aspects of the quantification of learning, government-funded attempts in England to measure learning gain have overlooked fundamental questions about the aims and values of higher education. Moreover, this search for a measure of learning gain represents the attempt to use quantification to legitimize the authority to define quality and appropriate outcomes in higher education.
Highlights
Since 2014, the government in England has undertaken a programme of work to explore the measurement of learning gain in undergraduate higher education, defined for the purposes of the programme as “a change in knowledge, skills, work-readiness and personal development, as well as enhancement of specific practices and outcomes in defined disciplinary and institutional contexts” (Kandiko Howson, 2019, p. 5)
In this article we explore the issues raised by the process of quantification represented by the learning gain initiative, around who decides what students should learn, what higher education is for and how its value is measured
Most of the pilot projects developed their own working definition of learning gain, referenced in project webpages (Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2018), such as The Open University-led project adopting “a growth or change in knowledge, skills, and abilities over time that can be linked to the desired learning outcomes or learning goals of the course” the University of Lincoln-led project using “the extent to which undergraduate students have gained a key set of transferable skills and competencies that prepare them for the stages of their career upon graduation, be it employment or further study” and “the extent to which participating in work-based learning, or work preparation activities, contributes to the readiness of the graduate to participate in a professional context” by the Ravensbourneled project
Summary
Since 2014, the government in England has undertaken a programme of work to explore the measurement of learning gain in undergraduate higher education, defined for the purposes of the programme as “a change in knowledge, skills, work-readiness and personal development, as well as enhancement of specific practices and outcomes in defined disciplinary and institutional contexts” (Kandiko Howson, 2019, p. 5). A market for students— with associated neoliberal ideology of a subsequent increase in quality—was designed, linking teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2016). This was implemented through new managerialism within higher education with a focus on outputs such as rankings to drive competition within a neoliberal market (Lynch, 2015). This provides rankings and frameworks with their credibility as resources of information and as arbiters of value for higher education This neoliberal agenda understands ‘value’ primarily in terms of “corporate culture” and individual monetary gain We suggest that the recent search for measures of learning gain in the UK is an example of a shift from quantification as a mechanism for representing value, to quantification becoming the value itself
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