At the risk of making myself a hostage to fortune, I’m going to look into my crystal ball to see how the teaching excellence framework will change the landscape of higher education.
It’s 2027. On the 10th anniversary of the Tef, education reporters are busily preparing pieces looking back at the controversy that raged at its introduction. Research was what mattered, not teaching, said the critics at the time.
It is difficult to overestimate the effect that the Tef has had on the sector. A new educational hierarchy has emerged – one based upon excellence in student experience and teaching.
The most successful universities were those able to draw on their pre-Tef expertise in working with students from diverse backgrounds and supporting them to achieve.
For others, it was a steep learning curve. But instead of falling into the easy trap of separating teaching and research, they quickly realised that a culture shift was needed.
They stopped giving so many teaching duties to postgraduates. Gone were the days of employing a stellar researcher and hoping they showed a natural aptitude for teaching.
Time was spent ensuring emphasis on strong teaching as well as research. Universities encouraged academics to feed their research into the curriculum while lecturers with a wealth of experience and contacts in industry ensured students could learn and develop skills they need for rewarding careers.
This resulted in innovative ways of teaching, more workshops and closer relationships with industry and the communities in which they were based.
Weekly tutorials for all courses became one of the most popular introductions and increased contact hours spread quickly across the sector.
More universities decided to specialise in one subject or a small handful of subjects, a trend which began to appear after statistics from the first Tef showed that a higher proportion of specialist institutions were awarded gold.
Others offered students the chance to combine digital learning with the on-campus university experience – studying partly online using innovative virtual lecture theatres.
Yet more are making use of their bases abroad and links with partner institutions to improve the student experience. Universities are seeing the possibilities of international travel to support learning, employability and global citizenship. In a post-Brexit world, that has become more important than ever.
Even before the Tef was launched, the signs were that overseas students in particular would look to its gold, silver and bronze as a kitemark for quality in teaching and this has proved to be the case. Those universities with gold ratings have a higher proportion of international students.
Yes, of course there were questions asked, with the link of Tef to fees being quickly and quietly dropped. Fears that it would lead to an overdependence on economic metrics proved unfounded because the continued boom in the creative economy and the UK’s soft power showed that creativity and innovation were still important assets in higher education.
The academic values of inquiry, interrogation and speaking truth to power were fiercely guarded.
Instead of viewing Tef as teaching versus research, though, it addressed a long-perpetuated imbalance. Moreover we used this opportunity to debate and to question what the purpose of a university is.
By recognising the extraordinary impact that excellent teaching and student support can deliver, the Tef demonstrated that excellence exists in all parts of the higher education sector.
Further education institutions such as Leicester College, which is validated by De Montfort University and which, like us, was awarded gold in 2017, showed they were as capable of achieving excellent outcomes for their students as Oxford or Cambridge. That was a watershed moment.
Until the Tef, the quality of the student experience, teaching standards and the transformative power of universities in producing well-rounded graduates had been marginalised, thanks to a disproportionate focus on longevity, entry tariff and research excellence in some league tables.
Today, 10 years on, we talk about student outcomes, of universities as thriving centres of learning, teaching, social mobility, public good and scholarship which inspire students from whatever their background to achieve what might otherwise have seemed to them impossible.
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