Tackle ‘signalling’ head on to ward off criticism – thinktank

Universities should “redouble” their efforts to measure “learning gain” to help ward off the growing perception that higher education merely provides a “signal” to employers about the prior abilities of students.

That is the view of one of the authors of a new report that estimates that between 20 and 40 per cent of the graduate premium is down to signalling.

The Social Market Foundation (SMF) paper, which bases the estimate on a review of previous research on the issue, says that the “near certainty of at least some signalling” means that “billions of pounds and years of students’ lives are at risk of being wasted in an individual arms race to demonstrate pre-existing talent that does little to improve productivity”.

It says that ignoring the issue or suggesting that some signalling is inevitable would be “counterproductive” for the education sector, particularly UK universities, which are coming under increasing scrutiny from a government potentially looking for savings in the upcoming spending review.

Chris Percy, a data scientist and visiting research fellow at the University of Derby who co-authored the report, published on 30 September, said universities should take the approach of agreeing that signalling was a “real phenomenon” that had a small impact but was “large enough that it’s worth looking at and trying to reduce”.

“That would feel like a much more bridge-building approach,” he said, adding that academics were ideally placed to lead more research into identifying ways to minimise the influence of signalling.

Otherwise the risk, according to the other co-author, SMF chief economist Aveek Bhattacharya, was that signalling would be used as “one of the sticks that potentially is used to beat higher education”.

He added that universities should also see the debate as an opportunity, as if they could help show how degrees delivered real educational benefits, then this would be welcomed by those within government who were trying to make the case for more investment in higher education.

“If you can do more to silence the scepticism or defuse the concern that this money is just being poured down the drain…there is a constituency of goodwill there and people that want to hear that message [about university being worthwhile],” he said.

The report makes a series of recommendations on tackling signalling including “investment in data collection and analysis to better map and measure signalling in our education system”.

One of the most specific ways to do this would be to accurately measure learning gain – the skills acquired at university – something that has been attempted by various projects at national and international level in recent years but without major success.

“If you care about students, if you care about their outcomes, you should be caring about the things that really matter and it seems that learning gain is as close to [something] we have…that really matters,” said Dr Bhattacharya.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com