Through a glass darkly Measuring the social value of universities

ConclusionsAs we have seen, the current evidence base for university impact and value remains fragmented andpiecemeal. There is a substantial body of material, but material which is disparate, looks at differentaspects of higher education from different perspectives and for different purposes. There is also aconsiderable quantity of data collected about universities, by many different agencies, by HESA,SCONUL 71 , UCISA 72 and others; there are numerous process driven and quality evaluations (QAA, theenhancement led institutional review, the research assessment exercise and now the research excellenceframework, the national student satisfaction survey, etc.), and there have been many repeated reviews,invention and reinvention of strategies for higher education. Yet despite the considerable resourcesbeing devoted to all of these we remain unable to take a holistic view of the work of higher educationinstitutions or assess their overall value to society in a robust and methodologically sound way.One cannot help but reflect that higher education also suffers from a similar difficulty as the culturalsector relating to:“...the overproduction of data which is not directly used in policymaking and lacks robustnesswhen compared to other forms of evidence gathered for use in other areas of policy…”O’Brien, 2010This is not a situation that bodes well for the higher education sector. With a rapidly changing policycontext across the UK, Universities will find themselves increasingly called on to show how they generatevalue, directly or indirectly, for the people who pay for them. This will include students and their families,charities and philanthropic donors and sponsors as well as the general tax-payer.It is also a matter of importance for society at large – as if we do not have any real sense of how andwhere universities generate value for society there is a danger that society under-appreciates and underinvestsin higher education, to all our detriment.The shift in teaching funding policy in England following the Browne Review and the UK GovernmentWhite Paper has sent shockwaves around the system and is perhaps a wake-up call to institutions thatthere needs to be a much more concerted effort to explore and discuss the value of higher education tosociety.One of the conclusions from the original breakfast round table discussion was that a convincing bridgeneeds to be built between a ‘narrative of value’ and a hard quantitative valuation framework. Narrativealone will not do (and has clearly not worked in the past, there are countless glossy brochures full of‘good news stories’ about higher education) but neither do numbers alone ‘catch the imagination’ or giveinsight into the richness and diversity of higher education.We would propose that taking forward a SMEV approach within the context and language of ‘public valuegeneration’ would be a major step forward for the higher education sector. Framing issues of value withinrobust and rigorous frameworks that are used by government and recognised internationally will providehigher education with the language, evidence and tools to help position itself for the future.The process of identification and quantification of HEI outputs (developing an index of universityoutput) would in itself be a significant advance in the current state of knowledge about higher educationinstitutions.The main questions surrounding the feasibility of a SMEV approach are likely to be in relation to theavailability of data required and the efforts involved in its collection. We would argue that Universitiesalready collect most of the data required to enable such an analysis, although not all of it is currently inthe format required.The SMEV needs to be piloted and tested further. The next three most helpful steps would be to:1. Undertake a study of current data availability and how far SMEV could proceed with extant data2. Develop a master list of outputs, and3. Undertake some preliminary work on developing a set of economic prices.These three steps are explained in more detail in Appendix 6.Further work also needs to be conducted to frame the public value narrative and to debate the ways inwhich public value and ‘social preference choices’ are determined. This is where good case studies couldprovide depth and interest. It is worth noting that the cultural sector is already moving in this direction of35