How businesses are helping to shape the future of courses
Ministers are forcing universities to design courses for adults in the workplace. Their aim? To improve the notoriously poor skills of British employees. Is this the beginning of a cultural shift in industry and academia? Lucy Hodges reports
Published: 08 March 2007
David Archer isn't accustomed to being wooed by universities. As the learning manager at Caterpillar UK, which makes trucks and engines, he's used to talking to the Learning and Skills Council about improving the skills of his engineers. But last week he was in contact not only with Coventry University, with which he has begun a research project to upskill his workforce, but he was also being pursued by Keele University.
"Higher education institutions are looking at how they can engage with us," he says. "They want to see how they can make universities more relevant to people in employment who have spent years at work. Indeed, they have realised that they can't expect people to come knocking on their door; they have to go out to them."
Something of an upheaval is taking place in British universities. Ministers, including the Secretary of State for Education, Alan Johnson, and the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, are keen for higher education institutions to get stuck into upgrading the workers' skills.
In his annual letter to the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce) earlier this year, Mr Johnson said: "We need to develop radical approaches that can lead to much higher levels of access to higher education by older people already in the workplace. This means models of higher education that make available relevant, flexible and responsive provision that meets the high skill needs of employers and their staff."
Initially, the universities did not take kindly to being prodded. They argued that the strength of the British university curriculum is that it is generic and does not turn out graduates for particular jobs. In other words, it is not vocational training. Others protested that universities need to maintain their autonomy and should not be the handmaidens of business and industry.
Finally, they complained that employers were not keen to pay for training their workforces, so why should universities do the work for them cheaply, or for free?
As time has gone by, the vice-chancellors have become more amenable to the idea. They have been made aware of the skills gap that exists in Britain, particularly at level three, which is A-levels and NVQs. Many young people leave school with GCSEs, go into work and learn all kinds of skills and competences along the way, but have nothing to show for what they know.
John Munford, a former vice-president of BP, says: "There is a perception that the UK is falling behind other countries because we don't offer people accredited qualifications at different levels in vocational skills. In a lot of countries, such as France and Germany, people have to have accredited qualifications to get a job. This is particularly true of those in management positions, but it also applies to engineering."
The lack of such qualifications in the UK means that we come out badly in official statistics and league tables. But it is not clear whether the UK does have poor skills or whether the skills are there but are just not recognised, according to Munford.
Lord Leitch's report, published in December 2006, gave a big push to the idea of improving the skills of the UK workforce. It recommended that, by 2020, more than 40 per cent of the population should be qualified to level four (degree level) or above, if the UK was to be competitive internationally - up from 29 per cent at present in England.
Ministers believe that universities are critical to the success of the Leitch recommendations. They see two-year foundation degrees offering education and training in vocational areas, and two-year fast-track Honours degrees, as key factors.
Hefce invited universities to bid for cash to pilot new ways of engaging with employers. It is here that a lot of interesting work is about to be done. Coventry University won a £3.5m bid to create qualifications for middle managers and supervisors tailored to a particular firm. The university has signed up Perkins Engines (part of Caterpillar), Parcelforce, the AA and Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust.
The university - through its newly recruited learning and development consultants - will go into the offices of these employers to find out where their staff are lacking in skills and how it can help. The consultants will design courses for those employees and deliver the courses in their workplaces.
At the end, the staff will receive a qualification equal to an NVQ level 3 (A-level standard) and they will also receive 60 credits towards a degree, enabling them to continue with degree-level work. The organisations have agreed to pay half the cost of running the new qualifications. What is new about this is not the courses - universities have done this kind of thing before - but the fact that they are being run at the convenience of employers.
At the AA, the programmes are aimed at middle managers, the people who manage the advisers taking calls from stranded motorists, and the people who run the teams that send the patrols.
"We have a skills gap here," says Elaine Archer, the AA's training and development manager. "We are lacking communication, performance management and leadership skills. What has happened over time is that we have neglected our middle management and people have been recruited into posts and not really been given support or formal training."
Kevin Hogan, the AA's manager of call-handling and teleworking, believes the new courses will boost his company's reputation. "It's an opportunity not only to retrain people but to reduce attrition and attract new staff by enabling them to acquire recognised certificates," he says.
Parcelforce appreciates the programme because, as a 24-hour operation with a huge geographical spread, it is difficult to send staff on conventional courses. "What we're constantly struggling with is our ability to provide training, learning and development but not affect the operation by having people away from their day jobs," says Philippa Hunt, the head of human-resources programmes at the company.
Like the other organisations, Parcelforce will be putting 20 employees on the course for each of two years. It hopes they will learn financial management, communication skills and how to relate to customers.
The Coventry pilot scheme, which will run over three years, is being met with enthusiasm in academia and beyond. David Melville, the vice-chancellor of the University of Kent and the chairman of the University Vocational Awards Council, says it is pioneering internationally. Munford, who now works as a consultant, says it seems a very good model.
Coventry has experience of putting on customised courses for employers that combine higher education and skills learning, just as the new courses will. Its school of lifelong learning, created by Dr Darryl Bibby in 1999, started running bite-sized courses in subjects such as IT. Within three or four years, it had recruited 2,000 students. "We were overwhelmed by interest from companies," Dr Bibby says.
He hopes the new programme will have a profound effect on the organisations that the university is working with, persuading them to make learning part of what they do. It would thereby help the British economy and change the culture of business and industry.
"I expect this to take off nationally," he says. "The great thing is that it develops the capability of people beyond learning new skills."
Chester's fast-track approach
A number of universities have won bids to develop links with employers and put on courses to help people in work. One of these is the University of Chester, which has gone into partnership with a further education college and a private provider to lay on courses for employers in the areas of business, management and IT.
Like Coventry University, Chester will go out to the company or organisation to ask them what they need in the way of skills' updating for their employees. In Chester's case, it will send out employer engagement officers to do the reconnaissance. A separate team of curriculum officers will write the course content.
Also like Coventry, it is talking about courses that give the learner 60 higher education credits. The aim is to provide programmes that are flexible and that can be set up and delivered quickly.
"Universities have been so slow in the past at getting qualifications validated that employers have gone elsewhere," says Charlie Woodcock, Chester's director of business development. "We will try to be responsive and turn something round in six to eight weeks rather than six to eight months."
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