Quality after the cuts? Higher education practitioners’ accounts of systemic challenges to teaching quality in times of ‘austerity’

Abstract

What are the ramifications of current changes in the higher education landscape in the UK for the ways in which teaching staff perceive their teaching practices? What impact are funding cuts, increases in student fees and the concomitant increased workloads having on faculty morale? How might this influence ‘quality cultures’ in teaching in media, communications, cultural studies and related disciplines, and higher education more broadly? To investigate issues around teaching quality enhancement and teaching quality assurance in the changing higher education environment in the UK, we designed an innovative ‘Teaching Exchange’ (TE) workshop, which ran during 2010 and 2011 in Media and Communications departments at five diverse higher education institutions around England. Drawn from discussions with over 40 faculty members, this paper provides an account of how our TE workshop participants viewed the current structural constraints on teaching quality in regard to: (1) changing teaching loads, (2) the marketisation of degree programmes and (3) the internationalisation of student bodies without adequate support structures. In reporting on these challenges to quality in teaching, this paper contributes to the generation of alternatives to the existing top-down bureaucratisation of teaching quality control.

Keywords:

• quality assessment
• student experience
• faculty experience
• austerity measures
• HE policy

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding and collegial support from the Art Design Media Subject Centre, The Higher Education Academy for the research project on which this paper reports: Quality Enhancement and Prospective Quality Assurance through Teaching Exchange Workshops in Media and Communications (2010-11). We also thank the institutions and departments that hosted our workshops and the individual participants of each workshop, all of whom spoke with commitment, passion and care about their views on and experiences in teaching in media, communications and cultural studies.