International News

Letter from London Engagement limits “The main business of higher education is to teach students and to create new knowledge through research. However, if this knowledge and learning is to be useful it has to be applied to the areas of life where it can make a difference. This is knowledge transfer.” This quotation from a university website sums up why university education is valuable, and how graduates bring a special type of experience to the workplace. The government has recently been encouraging universities to involve employers in the design and funding of degree programmes. Alan Johnson, the education secretary, is particularly keen to encourage a dialogue between universities and employers. “We need to break down the barriers which discourage employers from helping to fund and design higher education courses. This may mean looking at governance systems, cultural barriers and geographic issues,” he said recently. An example of such an alliance is the Ernst & Young degree programme (B.Sc (Hons)) in accounting, auditing and finance, a collaborative initiative between the well-known international accountancy and management consultancy firm Ernst & Young, Lancaster University Management School and The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. The programme offers students who complete a four-year sandwich degree, a fast track opportunity to qualify as chartered accountants 18 months earlier than graduates of traditional courses. The company pays for the extra teaching required, so that the university does not have to bear an additional financial burden. The downside of this development is that students may be deprived of the valuable university experience which provides a broad education, rather than training for a specific type of job. There is a difference between engaging with industry and business and training young people to fit exactly into a predetermined slot. Prof. Michael Worton, the vice-provost of University College London, warns that it is important to provide broad-based education to students rather than just training, and that business enterprises who work with universities need to respect the academic autonomy of universities. “Even in fields such as engineering, we’re not necessarily creating engineers for a particular job. It’s an issue of our engaging with industry, but not in any way being a handmaiden,” says Worton. However on the other side of the coin, most employers are against taking on relatively expensive graduates for jobs which don’t require university level qualifications because school leavers can be trained for specific jobs as and when needed. Therefore in general, employers are not enthusiastic about putting money into education. But incentivised plans of government could well prompt them to change their minds.  (Jacqueline Thomas is a London-based academic) United States Falling behind fears America’s global competitiveness is being threatened by a failure of its universities to educate those needed to replace baby-boomers in high-level jobs who have reached retirement age, says an independent report. The latest ‘national report card’, issued every two years by the National Centre for Public Policy and Higher Education, says the US has fallen behind other nations in the race to educate its workforce, and…