This morning we had the final examiners meeting in my department for the award of this year's undergraduate degrees.  As I had convened and taught a module in the first semester I was required to attend (as a result of the rules on attendance that I had written in my PVC role!).  The exam board was also an area where my actions as PVC and my departmental exam board intersected. I am thinking of the role of external examiners.

Our external examiners this year have been two excellent senior colleagues from research-intensive universities, and the advice they have given the department has been outstanding.  They both complimented us on the rigour of our marking procedures, on the tightness of our moderation and second marking systems, and on the consistency of our evaluations of student performance. But then they went on to give us some very broad brush views of our overall work as university educators.  One of our externals provided an extended analysis of the degree class outcomes of our deliberations, contrasting the Sheffield position with that of all other geography departments around the UK, and of those in Russell Group universities in particular.  His analysis brought in other variables such as entry standards, and left us with some very thought-provoking material for future reflection.

The second external reflected on our overall course structure, on the way the curriculum is constructed, on the role of field teaching within it, on aspects of disciplinary progression - particularly between the second and third years, and on the reduction in the presence of what used at one time to be one of the core areas of the discipline.  In doing so he provided a big picture view of our degree and created an agenda for future discussion.  Certain observations he made last year on our level 2 credit and assessment structures provided the catalyst to almost immediate revision on our part.

So our external examiners have commented usefully on our curricula, the intellectual progression within our programmes, and on our standards.

Casting my mind back a few years, I remember the time when all external examiners did was to spend their time adjudicating marginal marks on scripts and interviewing frightened students in the attempt to discern whether individuals had enough of that undefined quality that could tip them over the line from a third to a lower second, or from an upper second to a first (very rare at the time, since we had never specified what we were looking for in a first and very few students ever helped us to crystallise our thinking as exemplars and thus obtain the highest grade).  And I always noticed in those viva voce  examinations that it was the more orally articulate students that did well rather than those who had ability (and for one external of years back it also helped if they were pretty women).

Over the last two decades we have seen a shift in the work of external examiners - from adjudicators on individual cases, to critical friends for departments.  It is a shift that I hugely welcome - and one which I feel does a great deal to maintain the quality and standards of our degrees.  At the same time we have come up with much clearer definitions for students of what it is we are looking for from them. We have introduced robust marking procedures alongside these well-stated criteria.  We have moved to fully anonymous marking and degree awarding.  And we have moved to a more mechanistic system for the decision on degree classes - which can still allow for discretion in unusual cases (we had two such today, where the final agreed award was not the prima facie one suggested by the marks, but was affected by an unusual trajectory or by special circumstances).

But I recognise that people will expect me to defend our new degree classification system and the mechanistic approach it brings, since I was the principal author of it, and even after all the adjustments as we brought it in it still bears a strong resemblance to the jottings I put down on a few scraps of paper as I waited for a delayed plane out of Catania airport in September 2004.  I know there are parts of the university where they would still prefer external examiners' primary roles to be the making of ex cathedra statements of adjudication on individual students, rather than the taking of a broad overview.  I look forward to the comments to be added to this blog.

I spent much of the day today at HEFCE in Centrepoint in London.  There was a meeting of the 'Teaching Quality and the Student Experience' Strategic Advisory Committee, and the turnout was complete - which meant there were around 23 of us around the table.  Rather like the conference I attended yesterday, this was a tremendous reminder of the diversity of our sector. I am one of only two representatives from the Russell Group on the committee (the other is my opposite number at Newcastle), although there is also a PVC from York bringing another perspective from a research-intensive university.  There are a number of Vice-Chancellors on the committee (including its very effective chair) but they are all from post-1992 institutions.  I think it would be an excellent sign of commitment to the student experience in universities like our own if there were to be a Russell Group VC there as well.  Other groups represented include the specialist colleges, and the further education sector.  But then we also have several HEFCE officials present, one of the permanent officers of the NUS is a valued member, and the Chief Executive of the Quality Assurance Agency is also there as an observer but one who plays a full role in discussions.   Overall, however, the committee is dominated by membership from institutions that do not have the same blend of research and teaching interests that we do.  Universities with a strong STEM interest are also limited, and only four of us (Brighton, Newcastle, Sheffield and York) have medical schools.

A statistic that would be quite easy to work out, although I have never done it, would be to show the proportion of total higher education providers against the proportions of students in the system.  I would guess that around 40% of the biggest universities teach around 70% of the total students in the system.  Among those big universities would be most of the Russell Group, and the best established of the post-1992 sector (places like Sheffield Hallam, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Leeds and Manchester Metropolitans). In the difficult time ahead, that I alluded to yesterday, there is a danger that debate will be governed by questions of the numbers of institutions in particular categories of risk, rather than the proportions of students thus involved.

One other observation about the HEFCE interest in us all.  They are the public sector funders for us.  But they have little interest in other aspects of our funding - for example from the fees paid by international students.  HEFCE may suggest particular actions to us that will ultimately please their own paymasters in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but it is not their responsibility to consider how such actions may play out with groups for whom they have no formal interest.

The landscape of funding and governance in Higher Education is becoming very much more complex year by year, and that process could speed up as institutions seek alternative sources of funding.

Today I have been at a conference in London considering the future of Higher Education under the new coalition government.  It has been a meeting sponsored by UniversitiesUK, the National Union of Students, and all the various mission groups (Russell Group,1994 Group, University Alliance, million+ and so on) with lead speakers from all these organisations.  I was a speaker on a panel with Aaron Porter (the new President of the NUS) and a representative from AMOSSHE - the organisation that brings together all the Student Services departments in the UK.  (If I mention that the panel I was on had been scheduled to take place at 1500, and went ahead at that time - in conflict with a certain football match - readers will guess that attendance was somewhat lower than at some of the other sessions at the conference).

A further coincidence in timing was that the conference had been planned on the day after what became emergency budget day.  Inevitably there was considerable reflection on how the likely 25% cut in government funding for higher education through BIS might pan out over the four years for which it is scheduled.  Much more detail will become apparent in the autumn when the Comprehensive Spending Review is published - a date of 20 October was mentioned - and this could well also coincide with the publication of the Browne Review on student fees and funding.  We need to remember that a very significant amount of government funding for higher education does not go to HEFCE or to the Research Councils, but goes to finance a student support system that is now generally acknowledged to be one of the most expensive and inefficient in the OECD countries.  The outcome of the Browne Review could be to cut that cost to government and thus provide some protection to government support for core teaching and research activities.

But because of the presence of all the different mission groups at today's meeting, the reflection I want to make here is on the need for the sector as a whole to stand together whilst also identifying the particular strengths of individual parts of it.  I will mention no names, but I felt that some speakers were involved in special pleading for their particular types of universities - trying to show that they constitute a 'special case' and should be protected from the cuts that would then have to fall more heavily elsewhere.  I think this is divisive.  The value to the country and to individuals of higher education is under scrutiny - alongside the value of other expenditure on health, overseas aid (both now protected although many, including me, would argue that they shouldn't be), defence, environmental protection and so on.  We need to defend higher education as a whole,  But then we also need to declare strongly how individual universities contribute to that in their own ways.  This is an argument that our VC, Keith Burnett, recently made in an article in the Times Higher, and I agree with it.  Some at the conference felt the same - but there were some who didn't and who, I fear, will continue to push the special pleading arguments to support their own causes.

But where a university gets into difficulty in these new circumstances, I would not want to see it being propped up using public money.  If we should ignore special pleading from particular parts of the sector, we should not listen to it for particular institutions either.

Today at the meeting of he University Executive Board we agreed a new structure for our OFFA busaries for the entry cohort in 2011.  We had earlier attempted to make changes for 2010 entry, but we were turned down in our attempt to do so by the Office for Fair Access on the grounds that we could not change the conditions part-way through the admissions cycle because some candidates may have made decisions to apply on the basis of the information available to them about bursaries at an earlier stage in the process.  One of the peculiarities of the university world is how slowly we can introduce change.  We are locked in to a cycle of nearly two years for the admission of students to the university, and then into a cycle of 3 or 4 years (longer in the case of Medicine, Architecture and some other subjects) as a cohort makes its way through a programme.  In total from the conception of a new undergraduate programme through to the graduation of the first students from it, the sum generally comes to around 6 years.  Fortunately it is very much quicker for postgraduate programmes.  In what are likely to be troubled financial times in the next few years it is also worth remembering that it would generally take at least 3 years from the decision to close a programme to the point where the last cohort of students graduates from it (if it is at undergraduate level).

Because of these long lead times universities are not as fleet of foot as they might be in relation to changing circumstances around them.  The OFFA bursaries issue is a case in point. Ever since the deferred fees system was introduced in 2006 we have offered three types of bursray:
1. A bursary contingent on the household income from which the student comes.
2. A bursary for students from widening participation backgrounds who has been engaged with us on a significant outreach programme.
3. A bursary for students with high level 3 qualifications (A levels etc) entering to read certain subjects - particularly in the faculties of Engineering and Science.
Over the last year or so the world around us has changed rapidly.  There has been a surge in demand for places to read for degrees in Engineering and Science, such that we no longer ned to offer financial inducements to bring students in.  And the recession has hit household incomes.  Because we have put money into the subject-specific bursaries we have always made lower offers of income-contingent bursareis than many other bursaries around us.

Today we have agreed to change that for 2011 entry - to take out the subject-specific awards and to increase our maximum bursaries for students from low-income households.  We have retained the bursaries for students from outreach programmes.  From 2011 we will have a bursary structure is more attuned to the times.  Yet the slowness of change point I made earlier shows up in the fact that it won'e be until 2014 that all undergraduates are in the new system.

And by then we will have had the results of the Browne Review of fees and funding and we will be in another new world.

Today I attended an event with the heads of the local FE colleges in Sheffield and surrounding areas to celebrate the signing of a number of progression agreements to create links between their curricula and entry into a number of programmes in the University - particularly in the Faculties of Engineering and Medicine, Dentistry and Health.  The connections between the University and the FE sector have been fostered in recent years by the HEFCE funding for our Lifelong Learning Network (Higher Futures) which has also included Sheffield Hallam as a partner.  I see this as an important development, reconnecting this University with its roots in the interests of our local region.

Sheffield has grown into an international institution drawing students from over 130 countries in most years, and with around 1 in 6 of our students being from abroad. We recruit from the whole of the UK.  Yet our origins lie in the desire to train the workforce of the city of Sheffield.  Until after the Second World War the majority of those studying in the University were doing so on a part-time basis whilst retaining thei local employment, and many were not studying for degree-level qualifications.

I do not want to turn the clock back to those days. There are many more educational providers and opportunities around now.  But our links with local schools and colleges remain an essential part of the vision of what the University of Sheffield is and can do for the city and region of which we are part.  Today's event marked that connectivity in an important way.

We recently asked all staff in the University to volunteer to be added to a new register of school and college governorships.  Nearly 50 individuals, from all areas of the unviersity and from all types of staff, have come forward to do so.  In a couple of weeks time we are holding a celebration of this contribution of University staff to the wider civic community of our region - and I am delighted that both the Vice-Chancellor and the Director of Children and Young Person's Services in the city will be there as well. (I may actually be absent - it is taking place on my birthday, after all!).  I for one hugley value the fact that we are a university that is so strongly embedded in our city, and I know from the way that the 'Sense of Belonging' tag line of our last corporate plan was grreted by many colleagues that I am not alone in that sentiment.

I've always found mid-June a slightly sad time in the academic calendar, with the end of the academic year for undergraduates and the goodbyes to be said.  Before I became PVC I taught on modules in each year of my department's programmes, from 1st year undergraduate to Masters.  But teaching on third year modules, in particular, I  got to know so many students quite well only towards the end of their time at university - and then just as one was getting to know them enough to be able to advise them more on their future careers and take a broader view of their strengths (and weaknesses) mid-June came along and the end of the year.  The June examination boards and the departure of another batch of graduands clocks up the annual cycle for academics in a relentless way.

This year I have not actually been teaching in the second semester, but this week I will be attending my department's final degree-awarding exam board and will take great interest in seeing how those I taught in the first semester fare.

But the week will also see the start of the handover between the 2009-10 and the 2010-11 Union of Students officers.  Since I became PVC my contact with this group has in some ways become as important as the contact with my own students - and is often more intense as we work through common issues affecting the university.   The difference between the June departures of new graduates and the departure of the Union officers lies in the fact that it is not until September that the new cohort of stduents arrives to start their courses - but the new Student Officers take up the reins almost immediately.

Hence one of my first engagements tomorrow will be, with the VC, to meet the whole of the outgoing and incoming Student Officer teams as part of the handover.  And I will certainly be sorry to see this year's team go - just as I have always been sorry to see my own third year students leave.  But then the cycle will begin again.