If it affects students, it matters to the academy

Teaching and research are integral to higher education, which must refocus on the student, says Paul Ramsden

The opening of the Higher Education Academy building in York next Tuesday by Bill Rammell, Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, signals the start of an exciting period for UK higher education.

The academy was launched less than a year ago. Much of our time has been spent forging an agenda that responds to the sector's needs. Our intense consultation process has made it clear that not everyone knows how the academy differs from other organisations. It is neither a professional society nor an association for teachers. We do not issue "licences to practise". We do not tell academics or universities how they should teach. We seek no role as a regulatory body.

Crucially, we do not believe that enhancing the professional status of teaching in higher education is best served by disparaging other aspects of academic work. Research, in particular, shapes the teaching environment - it is what makes the student learning experience unique. Teaching and research benefit equally from rigorous peer review and self-determination.

My colleagues and I are committed to this inclusive view of higher education. Many staff associated with the academy are involved in the 2008 research assessment exercise as assessors and advisers. We support educational developers who pursue a scholarly approach to improving teaching. We are particularly proud of our subject centre network, the UK-wide initiative that has captured the academic imagination by focusing on the needs of different disciplines.

Our consultation led us to conclude that the academy should have a single primary focus: working to advance the interests of universities and colleges. We are owned by Universities UK and the Standing Conference of Principals. Universities and colleges are our customers. Our success or failure in the next five years will be judged by whether we deliver value for money.

The academy's task is clear. It is to help institutions and their staff to provide the best possible learning experience for students - postgraduate and undergraduate. Gone are the days when assessing the quality of the student experience focused almost exclusively on undergraduate teaching quality. Today's students expect a certain level of computer and information technology provision, and library and administrative support.

When people ask me what I mean by the student learning experience, I have a simple answer: if it matters to students, it matters to us. If students feel that departmental administration or even access to car parking has an impact on the quality of their experience, we are interested in helping universities improve it.

An essential aspect of the academy's support for institutions entails influencing national policy. We must speak with an independent and authoritative voice. Our programme springs in part from our consultation and in part from my own experience at a large overseas university. Changes that I and my former colleagues made at the University of Sydney led to major increases in student satisfaction and demand from prospective students. We discarded the older form of educational development that focused on workshops for individual academics. We re-engineered our support unit to address university priorities, transformed our teaching incentives and promotion systems, linked internal quality assurance to support for improving quality, and gave special attention to discipline-based advice.

We created a programme of teaching development for new academics that became so popular that it soon had a long waiting list. One of the reasons for its popularity was that it enabled new academics to become more efficient teachers, leaving them with more time for other aspects of their work. The academy will soon be working with its network of senior university managers to evaluate some UK programmes in teaching and learning. We will help them to identify good practice, real impact on teaching quality and cost-effective methods.

While the Higher Education Academy has a matter-of-fact programme, it stands by fundamental values. As long as I have responsibility for leading it, two principles will guide its work. We believe that we owe it to students to give them the best possible learning experience, in all aspects. And we assert that institutions have a sovereign right to determine their own destinies, free of government micro-management and spared from intrusive reporting and regulation regimes that sap the energy and commitment of staff.

Paul Ramsden is chief executive of the Higher Education Academy.