Why it will be starting with a KIS for 2013 undergraduates

Fees of up to £9000 at English universities may have dominated the news headlines in recent times but it is not the only big change in UK higher education scheduled for autumn 2012.


24 September sees the launch of the new look unistats website as part of the Government’s drive to ensure that students have as much information as possible to inform their choice about what and where to study. The cornerstone of the new look website will be the Key Information Set or KIS.  As far as possible each course at every university will have a KIS, a series of statistics drawn from the National Student Survey (NSS) and the First Destinations Survey on student satisfaction, graduate salaries and employment rates. Also included will be local accommodation costs, fees, the availability of bursaries and scholarships , contact hours and the proportion of the course assessed through examinations and coursework. A mock-up of what a KIS might look like is on the HEFCE website.

This information revolution is set to gather further pace. The 2011 Higher Education White Paper Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System recommended that Higher Education Public Information Steering Group (HEPISG) consider the possibility of a survey of taught postgraduate students similar to the NSS. It is timely therefore that the annual LLAS workshop for Heads of Department on 13 September will have a strong focus on exploring the possible implications of this data revolution on departments of languages, linguistics and area studies.

The KIS will enable students, their parents, the Government, the media, our colleagues and our senior managers to make comparisons between courses on an unprecedented scale.  This is not just about comparing your institution with another institution but your French course with your German course, your Spanish course with your European Studies course. Up to now differences in the outcomes and students experiences on different courses in the same department have not been easy to spot, at least to those outside your institution.  From September these differences will be in full public view.

Winston Churchill opined: “True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information”. With more information than ever, easier to find than ever, we need true genius more than ever.


Thriving in an uncertain world: a workshop for heads of department and leaders in languages, linguistics and area studies will be held in London on 13 September. Book online at the LLAS website to reserve your place.

John Canning
Senior Academic Coordinator
LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Why ex-Harvard head Larry Summers is wrong to say students don't need foreign languages

Larry Summers Is Wrong About Languages

March 6, 2012 - 3:00am

Michael Geisler

Soon after 9/11, Mike Wallace, then still the most hard-hitting reporter for “60 Minutes,” sat down with several of the heads of the intelligence community to discuss how the worst terrorist attack in United States history could have happened. At the end of the interview, he asked each of the five or six section heads: “So, tell me, how’s your Arabic?”

Not surprisingly, not one of the section heads spoke Arabic although several had some Russian and one offered that he knew some Vietnamese. The story is worth remembering not because of the embarrassment it caused the interviewed section heads but because their helplessness was the result of a similarly misguided policy of linguistic ignorance as the one advocated by Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University and former secretary of the Treasury.

Read more: Inside Higher Education 

Discard the irrelevant: Statistics don’t bleed, but our students do.

John Canning, LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Some rise by sin and others by virtue fall. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Statistics are everywhere in education. We have the National Student Survey (NSS), the First Destinations Survey, newspaper league tables, and the Times World University rankings among others. Universities are now required to publish ‘Key Information Sets’ (KIS) from 2012. The KIS has data from the NSS (the higher the agreeing percentages the better), the cost of university accommodation (presumably the lower the better), fees (the lower the better), graduate employment rates (the higher the better), percentage of assessment which is written exams (depends on the student) and number of ‘contact’ hours (again, depends on the student). In short if it can be measured the data is out there. And if it can’t be measured, we’ll find a way to measure it anyway, (research impact anyone?). Add to all this the information that students get from visit days, Facebook, twitter, the online student forums, friends and the phrase ‘information overload’ comes to mind. In his report Dimensions of Quality Graham Gibbs warns us about that immeasurable factor, reputation, which can override any real measure of quality. I suspect that all this information only serves to make reputation all the more important.

As I warned in a recent article on the NSS chasing the ratings can be tempting. Bad practices can beget good statistics which are really evidence of a bad situation. Sometime in the early 1990s I watched a football game between Cheltenham Town and Worcester City in the Beazer Homes League. Disappointingly, for those who feel distressed at having missed this mouth-watering encounter, I’m not aware of it being available on DVD, but the Worcester goalkeeper had an amazing game making save after save. But why was he so good that night? He had to be - the rest of his team were dreadful. The Cheltenham Town attack kept him busy all evening. And despite the goalkeeper’s super performance his team still conceded five goals (fans of the statistically excited sport of American football may find the illustrations on the Freakonomics blog even more exciting than my example). A course with a high number of contact hours could be one where students are spoon-fed in endless lectures or who have timetabled ‘group work’ sessions which exist for the sole purpose of increasing contact hours. Low rents may make university cheaper, but they can be a reflection of poor economic conditions or poor quality accommodation.

If we are near the top of the employability league we proclaim it online, at our open days and to anyone who will listen for ten seconds. When they work against us, statistics can motivate us to make excuses. We say that our performance reflects the industries our graduates go into; they have all gone abroad or they like our town so much they don’t want to leave and area doing odd little jobs until they decide what they really want to do. We seek loopholes – are office hours contact hours? Can we ‘reset’ that programme that didn’t do so well, by changing its name or by merging it with a more successful programme? Then there’s outright ‘cheating within the rules’ as when American football wide receivers (the person who tries to catch the ball when the quarterback throws it) once put adhesive on their gloves to enable them to catch better (a loophole in the rules now since closed). I am not going to speculate what the higher education equivalent of gluey hands might be, but statistics can bring out the worst in us. Mark Twain said that we are apt to use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost – to support ourselves rather than to see the right way to go. As Escalus says in Measure for measure, “Some rise by sin and others by virtue fall” – statistics can facilitate our sins and our virtues. In this ‘New World’ of higher education more and more of us are looking back to our defacto ‘patron saint’ Cardinal Newman.

If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society... It is the education which gives a man (sic) a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him (sic) to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistically and to discard what is irrelevant. John Henry Newman, The idea of a University.

Higher Education statistics can lead us to pursue what is irrelevant. Let us seek the truth - the statistics will follow to vindicate us... possibly.

John Canning is Senior Academic Coordinator at the LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, but writes here in a personal capacity. He can be found blogging about matters higher education at his website www.johncanning.net

French Studies for the 21st century: new book

Many humanities programs -- and in particular many language programs -- have faced challenges in recent years of budget cuts and questions about their relevance. A new collection -- French Studies in and for the Twenty-First Century (Liverpool University Press) -- asserts that the field of French studies most certainly matters -- and should continue to be nurtured at top universities.

The book's editors are Philippe Lane, attaché for higher education at the French Embassy in London, and Michael Worton, vice provost and the Fielden Professor of French Language and Literature at University College London. Worton responded via e-mail to questions about the book and the state of French studies.

Philippe Lane and Michael Worton, French Studies in and for the Twenty-first Century (Liverpool University Press, 2011).

Interview with one of the editors, Professor Michael Worton In side HigherEd.com

Baroness Cousins raises languages in the Lords

My Lords, I will raise briefly two or three issues connected with modern languages in relation to some of the Bill's objectives. I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages.

Lihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnk to speech

Threat to languages and Caribbean Studies at London Met

London Metropolitan University's vice-chancellor, Professor Malcolm Gillies, plans to reduce the number of undergraduate degrees from 557 to 160 by the autumn of next year.

History and philosophy are among those earmarked for closure. The university also plans to shut down its degree programme in Caribbean studies – the only one in the UKOther courses to go include theatre studies, trade union studies, dance, parts of multimedia, , performing arts and modern languages.

The Guardian

UHI cuts six Gaelic posts

Dismayed funders question viability of institution's language-promotion mission. Hannah Fearn writes

A Scottish university with a mission to preserve and develop the Gaelic language has axed six posts in its Gaelic team, leaving non-speakers in charge of the strategy.

Among the positions cut by the University of the Highlands and Islands, which gained university status earlier this year, is that of its Gaelic manager.
Times Higher Education

Stay-at-home UK students still the 'worst in Europe' for study abroad

Lack of language skills and worry about academic inflexibility deter venturers, writes Hannah Fearn

Efforts to encourage more UK students to study abroad appear to be failing, with the country retaining the worst outbound-inbound student ratio in Europe.

According to data from the Academic Cooperation Association, the UK still sends just one student abroad for every 20 who come to the UK to study for a degree.

Times Higher Education

European languages applications to university decline, despite overall increase

Young people denied a place to study last autumn are fuelling a surge in university applications for the coming academic year, ahead of tuition fees rise in 2012, Ucas figures show

Applicants' subject choices indicate a decline in European languages, which dipped by 1.4%,

The Guardian

More students choose languages in broader curriculum

Aberdeen: The total number studying French, Gaelic, German and Spanish has risen to 1,726, with the overall number of first-year language course enrolments increasing to 2,115 when Latin, Arabic and Mandarin are taken into account.

The figures come during a period of general decline in the number of students studying language degrees in the UK. In 2009, Michael Kelly, director of the UK Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, estimated that just 2 to 2.5 per cent of students chose modern language degrees.

Times Higher Education

THE: report on Britain's linguistic skills gap

Modern languages should be a passport to life, so why are so few students queuing up to learn them? In a special report on Britain's linguistic skills gap, Matthew Reisz discovers that, globally speaking, we are missing out.

Includes quotes from Colin Riordan, Michael Worton and Pam Moores.

Times Higher Education

What to do with a degree in modern languages

Whether it's l'addition, la cuenta or il conto, it remains a sad fact that most Britons' grasp of foreign languages is limited to the subtleties of settling the bill on holiday. Amazingly, the study of modern languages in the UK continues to decline. French is no longer even in the top 10 GCSE subjects, which is a crying shame because a world of fascinating employment opportunities awaits talented linguists with an eye for adventure, both within these shores and beyond.

The Guardian

ISRAEL: First Arabic-Language College Hopes to Bridge Differences in Opportunity

After a decade-long struggle for official recognition, Israel's first comprehensive Arabic-language college of higher education will open its doors here in October.

Chronicle of Higher Education

"No texts please, we're British" Anthony Bushell on ML degrees

The decline of modern languages in the UK threatens our place in the European conversation, writes Anthony Bushell

Europe is disappearing fast from British universities. Many institutions are simply getting out of offering modern language degrees.

Times Higher Education

Modern languages could "die out in the next 20 years at university if we are not careful" warns Vice-Chancellor

An influential group of leading academics and cultural figures has issued a stark warning that they fear for the future of the arts and humanities in British universities.

A letter to the Observer, signed by the directors of major arts institutions and a number of university vice-chancellors, claims that funding cuts and a decision to focus on the sciences have left subjects such as philosophy, literature, history, languages and art facing "worrying times". Without urgent action the country's intellectual heritage is in danger of being diminished, they conclude.

The Observer

Universities accept students with inadequate English skills claims BBC investigation

A BBC investigation has found evidence that suggests some universities under financial pressure accept overseas students who lack adequate English.

Money from overseas students totals £1.6bn and makes up a third of university fees in England

BBC website

Review of Modern Foreign Languages provision in HE published (Worton Review)

Michael Worton's review of Modern Languages is now available from the HEFCE website.

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_41/

Follow response on the LLAS twitter http://twitter.com/hea_llas (hash tag #Worton_review)

Universities 'forced to stop teaching languages'

Universities are being forced to abandon the teaching of pure languages after the government dropped mandatory lessons in secondary schools, the head of Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, is warning as its annual conference starts today.

The Guardian

CILT: UK will be held back unless it boosts numbers of language graduates

The UK will be held back as it seeks to emerge from recession unless it boosts the number of language graduates, campaigners say.

CILT, The National Centre for Languages points to a worrying decline in the take-up of modern languages.

BBC website

British Academy raises new concerns over decline in language learning

A report launched on 3 June 2009 by the British Academy raises concerns that the future of the UK’s world class research base might be threatened by the decline in modern language learning and calls for a series of measures by Universities and Government bodies to address this danger.