ABSTRACT
No university teacher in the UK can fail to notice the dramatic increase in student numbers, coupled with reduction in resources, in recent years. This trend to a mass higher education system brings the UK ever closer to many European countries, America and Australia. So why should the UK be different? Why are British academics beefing about ‘large’ classes which many US teachers might regard as small-group teaching? Well, it is what you are used to. University teachers in the UK are not used to the high drop-out and failure rates common in many other countries with mass higher education systems. UK students are used to relatively easy access to their teachers and frequent opportunities to supplement formal lecture classes with small-group tutorials and one-to-one consultation (not that many avail themselves of the opportunity). No doubt, given time, UK academics and students could get used to the higher student-staff ratios towards which we are currently hurtling, even though few of us believe this is either good for the system or the country. The real problem is that we are not given time. Instead, we are burdened with additional administration associated with accountability, demands for higher research output, and the problems arising from wider access. We are expected to change rapidly to a lower quality system, with an accountability structure which penalizes lower quality. In fact the pressures for increased efficiency are no less severe in countries already into mass higher education – and they have already used up most options for accommodating cuts in resources.
