Report of Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals on Adult Education

Report of Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals on Adult Education

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Elective Interest Group Discussions

(1) The Report of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals on Adult Education in the Universities

Group Convenor: G W Roderick , University of Sheffield

Recorder: Muriel Crane, University of Hull

The question was raised at the beginning as to whether the whole document was germane to SCUTREA’s specific concerns. It was generally agreed that we had all to consider the implications of the document in the light of what it entailed in the training and research possibilities it would raise for us. Could the report be interpreted as involving a radical change in the role of adult education departments?

At the chairman’s suggestion we selected two aspects of this complex and important document:

1. Post-experience courses under the subheadings of organisation (was it the function of existing adult education/extra-mural departments to undertake this work?), staffing and funding. 2. Mature students' access and needs.

1 Post-experience courses

If existing university adult education departments were to be used by their universities as administrative/organisational bodies in the provision of post-experience courses they might merely be filling no more than the role of 'honest brokers'. The staffing problem could be serious since it would involve the use of existing, and in most cases over-burdened, departmental staff and/or internal specialists who were not themselves adult educators. On the other hand, since this was seen by the Report as a vital growth area, we should be in a position to ask for a massive input of person power and resources. This possible trump card would, however, be virtually unplayable in the next four or five years in the light of immediate economic stringencies. For the same reasons it was clear that such post experience courses would remain self-funding.

This led to concern over the possible attrition of work now done in the traditional extra-mural studies field. The group became for a time polarised. There were those who, while agreeing that we must accept ‘openness to change’, felt strongly the threat to liberal adult education provision and saw the possible erosion of extra-mural studies as an irreparable loss. This provoked the antithesis that ‘extra-mural departments then could and should be abolished’. Was it not possible that resources within the university were ‘locked up’ and being used in too narrow a way? The latter suggestion was denied. But it led to a spirited polemic. The polarisation of attitudes gradually resolved itself into a sensed general acceptance that there be a reconciliation between the needs of the adult education programme and that of extra-mural studies even if the ‘heresy’ that extra-mural departments be abolished was not actually retracted by its proposer. The discussion had raised vital matters of staffing, funding and our role as university providers of post experience courses. (This issue was taken up again in the general discussion when the other elective interest groups debated matters arising out of our group report.)

Footnote: In the course of this phase of our discussion reference was made to a tentative recommendation from the Scottish Fowler Report that it was possible for some other form of organisation than the universities’ existing adult education departments to be the providers of post-experience courses. At Nottingham there had been a more definite proposal, namely that it was possible for a Faculty or School of Continuing Studies to be established, consisting of a extra-mural officer in each Faculty (department?)

We further considered the service that a university adult education department as it now existed could give to post-experience students. Taking medical post experience courses as an example, while we could not offer, say, a full time Clinical Obstetrics course, there was certainly scope for help in education for the changing role of the GP.

2. Mature students

Professor Roderick hoped that each university represented at the conference might enquire as to what was being done to facilitate mature student access and counselling. He felt this exploratory probe could provide valuable information. He gave the example of Sheffield itself where there are 5,000 students. Of these 300 are over 21, of these only 38 had come in by way of the Mature Matriculation system. None of them were in spare capacity departments such as the sciences. No counselling was provided for these mature students.

It was felt in the group that the matter of access was not perhaps the central problem. The hidden problems were those facing an adult with domestic, work and financial pressures, the issue of role conflicts familiar to the teachers of adults, but which the internal staff (and the Vice-Chancellors and Principals in their report) have left out of account. Full-time recruitment of the mature students should consider these problems carefully.

In the discussion that followed the presentation of this report there was regret that the financial implications of the report had not been given fuller consideration. There was a need for a broader ranging survey of the question of how departments are funded and what is a reasonable staff ratio in the light of the Vice-Chancellors’ and Principals’ proposals for a more central role for university adult education. It was pointed out that the UCAE is looking at this matter and has produced a memorandum on the role of the full time lecturer in a department of Adult Education and Extra-mural Studies for general consideration (UCAE 1975-6/206A).

Some members of the open meeting criticised the Vice-Chancellors’ and Principals’ report as an ambiguous document.

Reproduced from 1976 Conference Proceedings, pp. 17-18  SCUTREA 1997