Through a glass darkly Measuring the social value of universities

7.13 A similar message emerges from a recent report about value measurement in the cultural sector:“The cultural sector faces the conundrum of proving its value in a way that can be understood bydecision-makers …it will not be enough for arts and culture to resort to claiming to be a unique orspecial case compared with other government sectors, the cultural sector will need to use the toolsand concepts of economics to fully state their benefits in the prevailing language of policy appraisaland evaluation….” O’Brien 2010 377.14 There are also a range of benchmarking tools and moves to identify and codify outcomes. Forinstance the Museums Libraries and Archives Council drafted an ‘outcomes framework’ seeking howtheir work contributed to broader Policy Priorities such as ‘Healthier Communities and Older People,’ and‘Economic Development and Regeneration.’ 387.15 Many benchmarking and ‘outcome’ identification frameworks can be useful to the internalmanagement of an institution, assisting the organisation to reflect on its priorities and objectives.However these methods are also resource intensive and data hungry without the data being collected ina type or format that could be used convincingly for external funding justifications. When referring to theMLA outcomes indicator approach O’Brien (2010) pointed out:“Tellingly these methods fall foul of the same issues identified by Selwood in her 2001 critique ofthe gathering of cultural statistics, for example the overproduction of data which is not directlyused in policymaking and lacks robustness when compared to other forms of evidence gathered foruse in other areas of policy…”7.16 More information on the wide range of tools and methods can be obtained from the nef site – butthe most commonly discussed approaches include ‘Social Accounting and Audit SAA (from which thenotion of the ‘triple bottom line’ comes) and ‘Social Return on Investment’ (SROI). These are consideredin the sections immediately following.8. Social Accounting and Audit8.1 Social Accounting and Audit (SAA) is an evaluation framework for an organisation to describe andpresent how it is meeting its aims and objectives in terms of its social, environmental and financial oreconomic impact – the so-called ‘triple bottom line.’ 39 Organisations can then present regular ‘sets ofaccounts ‘showing their progress towards objectives. An example of an organisation producing seriesof social accounts is provided by the ‘All Saints Action Network’ – a community enterprise in the WestMidlands, which has published annual ‘social accounts’ for several years. http://www.asan.org.uk/page.php?identity=social_accounting_and_audit8.2 A useful summary of the ‘state of the art’ in SAA was compiled by John Pearce and Alan Key(Really Telling Accounts! 2008), 40 which took an overview of how SAA had been used by a range of UKorganisations over the last decade or so and also examined where SAA related to the SROI approach,including drafting some ‘common principles’ shared by SAA and SROI.8.3 Social Accounting appears to essentially be a planning and performance measurement tool, withthe potential for external validation by independent ‘social auditors’ rather than a way to estimate valuegenerated. Many organisations using this approach appear to have found it a valuable reflective andplanning tool. The Chairman of the ASAN network commented in the introduction to the 2009 accounts:“The Social Accounts are one way in which we at ASAN can understand how the organisation isdeveloping.”8.4 Much of the SAA involves a similar process to other self evaluation and benchmarking tools developedfor analysis of higher education planning and performance - for example benchmarking of regional andcommunity engagement (such as that utilised by the PASCAL Observatory). 41 Participation in PASCALassessments can also involve having an independent audit and ‘benchmarking’ undertaken by externalexperts.18