Vicki Stott in conversation with Paul Greatrix

In the latest edition of the QAA podcast, our Chief Executive Vicki Stott talks with Paul Greatrix – who last month retired from his position as Registrar at the University of Nottingham at the end of a 36-year career in higher education.

Together, Vicki and Paul consider the changes that the sector has gone through over the last few decades and the challenges it faces today, as they anticipate the developments ahead in 2025.

Topics include the challenges and opportunities raised by the lifelong learning agenda – and the importance of robust credit transfer mechanisms – the proliferation of artificial intelligence, and the financial pressures currently affecting the sector.

Don’t forget, if you’re a QAA Member you can book your place now at our online Quality Insights Conference on 26 and 27 February and access a range of practice presentations from across the sector and thought-provoking discussions just like this one. Click the link to find out more: https://events.qaa.ac.uk/event/df00c374-fa07-40d1-a833-37686a2bda31/summary

Transcript

Kerr Castle Co-host

00:05

Welcome to the QAA podcast. I'm Dr Kerr Castle and I'm delighted to introduce this conversation with our Chief Executive, Vicki Stott, and Paul Grietrix, who recently retired from his position as Registrar at the University of Nottingham, at the end of a 36-year career in higher education. Together, Vicki and Paul consider the changes that the sector has gone through over the last few decades and the challenges it faces today, as they anticipate the developments ahead in 2025. Topics include the challenges and opportunities raised by the lifelong learning agenda and the importance of robust credit transfer mechanisms, the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the financial pressures currently affecting the sector. So, without further ado. 

00:48

Let's join Vicki and Paul and get the conversation started. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

00:53

I'm really, really delighted to see you. It's always a joy to talk to you. Thank you for coming on the podcast today. I guess I kind of wanted to start by saying how are things, how are you adjusting to not retirement and what are you doing now? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

01:06

I left the University of Nottingham just before Christmas, so about four weeks prior to this recording, and I've been there for for 18 years, which was, you know, probably longer than than anyone, including me, expected my time at the university to last. 

01:24

But it was a, you know, it was a fantastic period. 

01:27

But when universities go through significant changes in leadership, as they do periodically, and we were in the process of recruiting a new vice chancellor, I was thinking well, you know, it's a big commitment when you are in the position of a kind of registrar or CEO or equivalent, and you know that you've got a new leader, potentially someone you don't know they might be, someone you do know coming in, who will be your boss for a number of years, and recognizing that you need to, you know, engage with them and support them and induct them and then, you know, adjust all of your ways of working to suit their priorities. 

02:07

And I'd done that a number of times before, been through other changes in leadership and I must admit I, you know I came to the conclusion in the middle of last year that actually that the, you know, I probably didn't really want to do it again. I probably didn't really want to do it again, and it was probably time to let someone else have a go. So, yeah, I thought I would hang up my boots, at least temporarily, and then have a break and then see what else happens in the great fun world of higher education. 

02:41

So I'm in that break period now, now, which is delightful. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

02:45

I wondered whether you know you've talked about the sort of energy that it requires to change leadership in a single institution, and that's quite considerable. But I've got a note here that says you started working in HE 36 years ago. There's a lot of change in that time and a lot of energy expended. What, what for you, are the standout changes since you were kind of fresh and young behind the years well, there's been an extraordinary um amount of change over that time.

Paul Greatrix Guest

03:14

So when I started uh working what was then uh, north Staffordshire Polytechnic is now University of Staffordshire um, it was, yeah, a very different world. Most of it was handwritten, most of the communication was by phone and it was a much smaller sector. But I then moved to another university, uea, where I was involved in setting up validation activity with colleges, between colleges in East Anglia and the university, and that brought me into contact with the FE sector, which was really, really interesting but also taught me a lot about the challenges of managing and supporting remote delivery of institutional provision. And it was a really kind of interesting uh area to to be involved in and and, of course, around that time people were, were were dealing with, with challenges emerging from uh various regulatory things. And then there was the, the, the deering review which was published during that time, which had a. At the time it felt massive, it was literally massive and it was huge yes, printed publication, of course, and and that felt like it was a really significant landmark which did lead to, you know, a lot of changes. 

04:33

And then you had all the, the kind of quality wars of the mid 90s as well, where the quality assurance agency, um in its original form, uh, was being was being established and was a very different kind of organization then, I think, it's fair to say, Vicki, not one that was loved or liked in quite the way the QA is now. 

04:55

So, I mean, and there were many other changes over the time, but the fees regime, which obviously initially it was it was a nominal fee, but felt significant then grew over time to 3 000 and then then 9 000 and the changing government in in 2010, all of that felt like you know, real sea changes in the sector and the move towards much more, uh, marketization, much more competition, um between institutions and the, the advent of league tables from 1993 onwards, all of these things, you know, um, they didn't seem massive at the time, but overall, you look back now, from 2025, and it does look like a completely different world and the scale of everything is bigger. The regulation is massive compared with what it was. So, yeah, it's, it's really different, but I did survive, so that's got to be something. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

05:50

I mean, you not only survived, you flourished. 

05:53

Um, it's fair to say, I want to take you back to you said that, um, when you were at UEA you were, you were looking at partnerships and validations between colleges and universities and, of course, I first met you at Warwick, which must be nearly 25 years ago, indeed, yeah, and one of the things that we were looking at then was the validation, articulation arrangements between colleges and universities. So I guess what I'm getting to is you've seen this in various iterations over time, in different places, and, of course, everywhere handles it a little bit differently, and it feels to me as though this kind of partnership arrangement, the relationships that colleges have with universities this is not a new thing, right? This is something that's happened for a long time and I guess, like everything else, in the way that you've just described, has changed over time. So is it a surprise to you then to see that suddenly thrust into the forefront of political and quality concerns now, when it to some extent, we're doing what we've always done? So what's changed? Why is that suddenly a political hot potato? It's a. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

06:59

It's a really good question, um, and I suppose the big picture response to that is of course these things do move in cycles and one month or one year it could be that there is a focus on international activity. The next year it could be that people are looking for something else, or it could be that there's a spark which arises from, say, an Office of the independent adjudicator decision on um. You know, compensation to people who were on a validated or franchise course who felt they were short-changed, and then you know that sparks further interest in these areas. You know, from my perspective, the uh, the issue has always been ensuring the right level of focus on these kind of activities, because as soon as you introduce any, both physical or conceptual distance between the awarding body and the delivery agent, right, you are having to make up an awful lot in terms of oversight, which does need active attention, right, you can't just do these things at the margins and think, great, what a money spinner. Right, we can really coin it in here and we don't need to make any effort. And I think that in the CNAA days because it was going, you know, colleges and universities and polytechnics under CNAA were validating franchising activity, but it was done in the same way as their own internal approval and also the approval operated by CNA. So it followed the same template, the same rules, the same model, and what I think has happened over time is that that has dissipated quite a lot. Time is that that has dissipated, uh, quite a lot and therefore, um, actually it's become a weaker bond with the kind of core institutional view of quality and standards and the responsibility for the maintaining uh standard of awards and the quality experience. So I think that that has, you know, stretched to the point where, you know, things have got a lot harder to maintain that oversight. The other thing I would say is that, as the financial imperative has grown, the desire to find new ways to make money easily has grown as well. 

09:26

Following the 2017 Higher Education Research Act in England meant that there were lots more new institutions looking for institutions to validate their provision to enable them to offer degrees. So it was a very different market in 2017 onwards. I think that fostered that kind of cut and thrust maverick approach maverick probably is too strong a word in certain margin, but that then led to a greater focus on it. Sorry, the final thing I should say, Vicki, is that it was only I think it was maybe, I don't know, 15 or so years ago, maybe slightly longer, when there was a real focus on um. 

10:00

A number of international validation issues that uh were investigated by the QAA at that time and really found wanting. There were some operations in Cyprus and in Greece, I think, where there were real questionable activities by some UK institutions and that of course ran the risk of bringing the whole of UK higher education into dispute, because if our awards were looking dodgy overseas then that would throw into question everything that we did in the UK. So so it has happened over time but this confluence of the liberation, the higher education research act and that gradual extension over time of the bonds between oversight and delivery that have caused these issues, yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right about that extension, the weakening of the bond and the lack of similarity in practice for quality assurance between the delivery partner and the validating partner. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

11:04

I think is true in some places, but of course there are still pockets of excellence where that bond is still remarkably strong. And I wanted to kind of I'm glad you took it to the international example because I wanted to test this idea a little bit more, thinking about you said again in your original answer that remote delivery and the assurance and oversight required for remote delivery just adds an extra layer of complexity to all of this. And of course you know, at Nottingham you were one of the very first with the Ningbo campus to have a comprehensive international offering. I wanted to know if you know, kind of looking back over your shoulder, is there any oversight that you could offer to universities, thinking about international partnership arrangements? You know what are the things that you learned from the Ningbo experience? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

11:57

So the first of the campuses was actually Malaysia, which opened in 2000,. And then the Ningbo campus opened three years later. But I think that the model there was a different one, in that it was University of Nottingham had always set its face against validation and franchising right and had taken a principled decision at Senate this was before I arrived that it wasn't interested in going down that route and at the same time it was looking to establish this international presence. But it was always on the basis of it would be the university's courses, delivered by people who one way or another would be part of the university, even if technically they were employed by a different organisation overseas. But it would all happen directly under the University of Nottingham's name and it would follow the same broad curriculum but achieve the same learning outcomes and directly comparable standards. And the quality of experience would be as close to the UK experience as it could conceivably be. The examination boards for each of the overseas enterprises would be the same, so it'd be a single exam board, single set of external examiners for anything, and there would be, you know, anything that was delivered would be a program that was already on the books in the UK. So you wouldn't certainly initially and this has been sustained for most of the past 24 years you wouldn't be developing new programs in Malaysia or in China, and that meant there was pretty rigorous and rigid control. And it was control because it was real anxiety about the potential for, for weakening the brand and the implications that, if it didn't go well, what might happen over time. Of course, that has been relaxed somewhat on the basis of you know the demonstrable achievements of of staff in both of those locations, the outcomes achieved by by students. 

14:03

So you know, which are in many cases you know, as good as, if not better, in some areas than in the UK, and that, I think you know, is testament to the commitment to the university. But it's a really expensive model to sustain and the level of intervention from the UK remains very high if you're going to adopt that model. So my, you know, my, my observation to those thinking about this is that a you know you've got to go into your eyes open. B don't underestimate the level of cost uh required to do this in that way. Right, which is obviously obvious, some of the problems with with validation and franchising, because you retain control, but the other thing is you've got to be in it for the long term, right? You can't do these things thinking that, oh, we'll pull out after a couple of years if it doesn't work right. You've got to commit and you've got to say you're going to commit for the very long term because the cost of not doing it would be really, really challenging. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

15:04

And then you said earlier something about. You know. There can be an example of an OIA finding for a particular case that raises questions, and then suddenly the quality issues around these things become a matter of intense interest and scrutiny scrutiny and it feels as though quality has become like a pernicious problem for the sector to solve, rather than a core principle of what we do or a thing that we might celebrate the outcomes of. And it seems as though almost every actor in the system from you know the politicians. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that over the course of my career, education has become a far more political animal than it used to be. You know, everybody now worries about quality without really being sure what it is. Is that? Is that just me? Is it because of you know my position in the QAA and that's the only thing I think about, or do you think there's something in that? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

15:59

No, I think there absolutely is, and I mean the two different aspects, how I I would focus. One is, of course, it remains absolutely central to what uh universities and colleges do, right, the, you know, it is absolutely fundamental because it is about the quality of the experience, the educational experience and the wider um student experience that is provided in institutions, but also the standard of the awards which are, you know, issued by those institutions in name, and they are absolutely fundamental and always have been, you know, going back 800 or so years. Right, I mean, it's absolutely critical to what makes a university or or a college what that, what they are. So. So I think that's the first thing, so that it's elemental. The second thing is, of course, the change in society has meant that two things. One is that there are, of course, lots more people who've either had experience of uh studying as an undergraduate themselves, or have a family member or, um, you know, offspring or relatives who've got experience as well. So it touches almost everyone's lives in one way or another, in a way that it didn't under the elite system that we were talking about earlier. When you know, um, when I was at university, it was only, you know, kind of 14, I think, of the population, and and now it's, you know, in the high 40s. So it touches a lot more people and there's so much more going on. The nature of the media is such as well, that they are looking for stories and one way or another. 

17:34

Higher education, you know, be it about freedom of speech, be it about student behavior, be it about issues around, around, you know, uh, drugs or drink or whatever it might be, or student welfare, it's fertile territory and, of course, if a regulatory body produces a challenging report or a critical report, they're going to go for it and they're going to go for a big start, and that may spin it. 

17:58

I think universities and colleges just have to, you know, recognize that this is part of the landscape that we're operating in. It's challenging, it's difficult, these things will pass, right. Um, we've got to hold a nerve and hold true to our principles, because if we, if we just sway with the wind and, you know, try and appease those who are criticizing us all the time, then then we're going to put ourselves in a very difficult position and then the final thing I'd say is that, given the scale of our sector in the UK, right, what we're talking about is marginal activity, right, it's problems at the margins, right, and it's really easy to blow these things up into being huge, catastrophic sector-wide issues. They aren't. They are issues which need to be addressed, but we do need to keep them in perspective. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

18:47

Yeah, I mean I was just going to say something very like that. It's a real frustration to me that these issues are taken from whatever report they're gathered from and then assumed to be universal. And also, I mean, you talked about, you know, that sort of massification, for want of a better word. I think one of the things that I found most frustrating over the past few years is people's lack of awareness of the extent, scale and tempo of change and self-reflection and examination in universities. So I was, um, I was sitting in Downing Street, as one does, waiting for a meeting with a civil servant. Um, that's a whole different story, but anyway, uh, I happened to be sitting on a bench with a woman who was, uh, going to meet some other politician. 

19:37

Um, and uh, and, and we struck up casual conversation and she, as it turns out, was a Conservative MP for somewhere in Lincolnshire but a member of the Standing Education Committee, and she said to me she asked what I did, and I told her and said, oh, it's all your fault, ok, usually, yes, and was talking about how experimental universities were and how they had no standards and how the students were just allowed to kind of make it up and do what they liked. And I said, oh, that's really interesting. You know, this is absolutely not my experience at all, that you know, universities do experiment, but they do so within very tight boundaries and with very, very thorough rationales and governance and safeguards. And what have you? I said, well, when my brother was studying medicine at Manchester in 1982, and I was like, well, there's been a little bit of time since then. You know, it's very frustrating that people rely on old experiences. Is that just human nature, do you think? How do we get around that? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

20:41

It's a classic example of how these things happen the you know the extrapolation from a personal experience, or indeed a relative's personal experience from a long time ago. 

20:52

I mean, I think the other thing I would say is that, and that you know I'm not this is not aimed at the QAA but when you are in a senior position in a regulatory agency right, or indeed a senior civil servant, or indeed particularly a minister, the gap between where you sit and the experience of the student in the classroom, the lived experience of that student, is enormous, right. 

21:20

So we were talking earlier about the distance, um between you know, a university as a validating agency and, um their partner college or wherever it might be. That is as nothing compared with the distance between the minister and the student right, or the secretary of state and student, and I think that's a really, really important thing to bear in mind. And it's one of the challenges I think that the Office for Students has had and indeed David Behan, in his review of the Office for Students, has challenged them to which is to find more and better ways for actually genuinely bringing the voice of the student into their deliberations, because I know QAA does that and has sought to do that over a long period of time. But it is so important because otherwise you are just guessing. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

22:05

You are absolutely, or relating back to your own very old experience, indeed, and I think I mean I'm going to move away from kind of obvious quality topics for a moment. That's true when you reach any position of seniority in any organization, and obviously you've been a very senior person in many organizations for quite a long time now, and so I want to. I want to ask you two kind of personal questions, if I may. The first is what are you most proud of? And the second is if you were mentoring somebody at an early stage of their professional career in our sector, what would you encourage them to do? And if it's something different than what you encouraged me to do, I might remind you what you encouraged me to do. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

22:50

Right, I will not remember what I encouraged you to do, but I hope it will be consistent with what I'd suggest anyway, but with, with regard to the, the pride thing I mean, I, um, I mean there were, there were a couple of things that I was involved with, um at the University of Nottingham in particular, which, um, you know, I, I, I felt I contributed to. 

23:12

I mean, one of them was, um, the establishment of a graduate trainee scheme at the university, which you know is still going there, which I, you know, ensured that the university was able to recruit its own graduates and, you know, set them onto a career in university administration and management, which you know was a good thing for them and a good thing for the university, a good thing for them and a good thing for the university, and it was something that I pursued nationally through AHUA as well. 

23:43

And the establishment of ambitious futures, which sadly, was lost during the pandemic. But and it's something I think that the sector desperately needs actually, is that kind of scheme to ensure that we get tomorrow's leaders trained and on the journey towards taking up positions like the one that I've just departed from, because the sector needs it and you know so and I was involved in many other things as well, but the. So that was one I was particularly pleased with, but also with a number of colleagues establishing what was called the nottingham advantage award, which was essentially providing access to uh accredited extracurricular activity for students to bolster, you know, their skills, um, but also to enable them to to learn outside the the formal curriculum but nevertheless accumulate credit in addition to their core requirements. So it appeared on the transcript but wasn't part of their formal assessment, and that proved very, very popular at Nottingham and still is. Of course it's quite expensive to do, but is a valuable add-on, I think. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

24:58

But enabling that kind of thing. I'm going to interrupt for a moment, if I might, because I'm interested in that, and I am going to go back to being a sort of quality person, even though I said I wasn't. How on earth do you quality assure something like that? How do you write that into your programme design and make sure that it's consistent with your kind of learning outcomes and academic strategy and so on and so forth? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

25:30

So it is extra, so it is external to core programmes. Right Now there is the option of overlap right so modules can be delivered within programmes as well. But the Advantage Award was very much about being extracurricular, so it is essentially all those modules are quality assured by one particular school right which oversees them. So they go through all the reviews and monitoring that any other module will do. But they don't formally. The vast majority of them don't formally fit within an academic program of study and they're almost all level one as well. So they you know they are most of them are pass fail as well. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

26:26

So but so that you know, but those were the debates, you know, 15 years ago, when this was getting off the ground was well, how's it actually going to work and how's it going to fit properly within the institution's QA regime and with a name to giving students practical skills or soft skills? So I mean, these are all things that have been kind of of varying importance over the last five or 10 years. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

26:37

All of that, but also drawing in employers into delivery as well. So quite a lot of those modules were actually sponsored and supported by local and indeed national employers who were involved in the delivery. So it gives a different additional skills opportunity hugely popular with international students, right? So the other question you asked me was about the advice that you'd give to to someone, um, you know, starting their their career, and obviously my first advice is try and find a graduate trainee program in your university or another university, because actually that will give you a structured introduction and hopefully a number of different angles on university management and administration that you wouldn't otherwise otherwise get. 

27:24

But the I mean the kind of you know advice I always is just, you know, essentially, try and get into everything. Um find ways to uh get involved in as many different things as you can, meet as many different people as you can, read everything, uh stay abreast of everything going on um in the sector and, yeah, find some mentors who are willing to to give you the time to uh come up with some uh hopefully better advice than this um about what you should do with you with All very good advice, but it basically sounds like be superhuman. 

28:04

Yeah, but I mean the thing is, I don't think you need to be superhuman and I don't think, frankly, you know the reasonably fresh-faced graduates of today. 

28:16

I think they've got a different perspective to you know, to the generation that you and I are a part of, and it is just different, right, and we may struggle to understand it, but actually I think they've got a better developed sense of their own self-worth, but also their own limitations, and they aren't prepared to settle for things that you and I might have been prepared to settle with at the beginning of our careers. And you know, they feel that they've got more options and more opportunities and that the world is a more flexible and maybe a more challenging place. But actually they don't have to put up with stuff if they don't like it, and you know their tolerances for nonsense are much lower than mine might have been, or indeed is. So I think that they are much more disciplined actually about their own self-management and you know, so don't feel obliged to behave in a superhuman fashion. I'm generalising, obviously, but that's my view of the current generation. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

29:18

I think you're broadly right. I I mean, the advice you gave me was um, get involved as much as you can, read as much as you can, for sure, but just keep making decisions. You said, don't, don't ever not make a decision. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

29:32

It's better to make a wrong decision than to make no decision like no, yeah, and I I would say that that's generally my, my, my approach to uh, to to life, um, as well, I mean, it was good advice and I and I remember it often. So well, I'm. I'm astounded that you do? 

Vicki Stott Co-host

29:54

um, let's go back to, um, let's go back to sort of students, recent graduates, young people and their kind of expectations. 

30:04

I agree with you, I think they're incredibly that this generation is, um, incredibly self-aware, incredibly curious but but beautifully boundaried in a way that I wish I had been able to be. 

30:16

And I think about the things that we're presenting them with as challenges and the things that we're presenting them with as opportunities that may or may not allow them to engage with those challenges. 

30:26

And front of mind I've got things like artificial intelligence and then the lifelong learning entitlement, and it seems to me that those two things are interesting kind of counterweights on a continuum where, obviously, artificial intelligence is a thing that you and I, at our age, struggle to understand the potential and seriousness and wide-reaching nature of, without kind of stretching for a hackneyed old Terminator metaphor perhaps, and that it is, of itself, a thing that will require people to carry on learning and acquiring new skills and adapting what they can do. And I'm really interested in your take on both of those things, I suppose separately. But also, how much have you thought about artificial intelligence as a way of developing curricula, as a way of supporting students, as a way of doing some of the underpinning things that we've always done in a suit and tie and a pen and coil I mean I, I it is both fascinating and hugely scary. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

31:37

Um, uh, as an area, I think and I feel woefully underskilled in terms of engaging with the AI discussion. 

31:45

I mean, a lot of the focus over the past couple of years has been obviously the implications of it for academic integrity and anxieties about students submitting lots of work that isn't their own, and I think that is genuinely hard to deal with, because you know normally what happens with those kind of you know big changes has happened with the advent of the essay mills, et cetera is that actually you get quite a long run up and you know, although the sector is always slow to change and slow to respond to these things, you've kind of got enough time to work out what to do and navigate a course and then come up with a number of answers and eventually you know, you kind of find a way through it. 

32:32

With AI, though, things are evolving, you know, at such, you know, a spectacular pace it's impossible to kind of keep a handle on it, and I suppose I think, I really think, that the opportunities that it does present for benign use, as it were, for the positive things that might make life better in inside a university or college are, are. Uh, you know, we're only, we're only scratching the surface and we haven't got the people or the the time or the energy or the focus to work out how best to take advantage of this technology to make you know, make things easier in terms of, as you say, curricular design or or process improvement, or you know, lots of other things that are mundane and difficult or time-consuming within universities, so we haven't got time to do that right, but that's a big benefit. 

33:28

But then there's the whole issue of the way in which, actually, what it seems to be able to do, because of just this ludicrous pace of change, is is do all the things that everyone was hoping it wouldn't do, right. So rather than doing all that mundane, difficult stuff that would save us time, actually it's looking pretty pretty well adapted to to dealing with the all the stuff that is productive and um creative and all the things that you know humans want to keep doing because they're the fun things. 

34:02

And you know, you think, well, where the hell is this going? And then we still have this academic integrity problem, right, you know? Because if, if it turns out that almost every student is dealing with that, then we're in trouble. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

34:13

I'm going to be provocative and push against that and and you, you said that we haven't got time to get our heads around the kind of benign uses we can put it to, and I'm going to suggest that you're right as an academic integrity issue we can't deal with it. The mechanisms for dealing with it are imperfect at the moment. You know, the sort of turn it in solution doesn't seem to be able to cope with this, and every time that turn itin gets close to a solution that works, the sort of learning machine moves on and I wonder whether we need to completely change our frame about it. Interestingly, artificial intelligence. There are too many AIs. I'm not a fan of that acronym. 

34:53

Artificial intelligence is going to be a membership focus for the next academic year, so this is something that we can perhaps tease out and solve the problem for the rest of the sector before we get to it. 

35:05

But I wonder whether it's now so embedded in absolutely every technology that we're encouraging students to engage with that they have to engage with unless we want to send them back to pen and paper to engage with, unless we want to send them back to pen and paper. 

35:23

Should we stop looking upon AI generated work as a problem and start thinking about how we acknowledge that that is now a productive avenue and the way that students will engage and indeed a skill they need to have for the world that they're going to be operating in. Do we stop treating it as a problem and start this? We talk a lot about how students are experts in their own experience. We talk a lot about how learning is a two-way street and you know, I've certainly spoken to admissions tutors at Oxford who say that they admit the students that they're excited to learn from, and I've spoken to many academics who say, yes, you know, it's when students become so stimulated and so passionate about what you're trying to teach them that they actually teach you just as much, right? Do we treat AI as something like this? Is this a position where those amongst us who are coming towards the maturity of our career are learning from the students? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

36:17

I think that's a really good point, but I think your principal one, which is about actually changing the perspective on this altogether and saying that, right, this is, you know, it's pervasive and it's going to remain pervasive. 

36:30

And actually we have to accept it is now, you know, suddenly a core part of the landscape in which we're operating in. We've got to deal with that and embrace it positively. I think you're absolutely right and what it comes down is is that that, you know we've got to focus on um. You know the way that students are assessed as being something that is a matter of, you know, personal integrity for everyone, um, rather than trying to find people out, right. So, actually, regarding the actually regarding the ethics of student behaviour as something that is more fundamental to university and college life than anything else, I think is one way of doing it. 

37:10

But the other thing is to say it's part of life, right? So everyone's going to use it in every piece of work that you're going to do, right? The challenge is to use it in a way which is creative and achieves the outcomes that we're looking for. So we've got to reflect on those outcomes as well and work out how to do that. But if we want to test something else, then you know, if we're good, you know there may be still a place for the three hour unseen exam if we are testing certain things, if we are testing certain things. But you know, they were just the default ways of assessing in the past because that's the way it had been done for 100 years. 

37:45

So I think that I mean, I've always been concerned that in, you know, a higher education environment, actually there's been far too little time spent by colleagues in the institution thinking about assessment and what it's intended to achieve, um, and, and how it needs to be, you know, developed and uh re reconfigured every single year, indeed every semester, every term, in order to achieve or enable the achievement of uh, the assessment of the achievement of outcomes. It, it's so fundamental and yet, you know, it's always the thing that's at the back of the queue, right, you know, even curricular redesign is more sexy than redesigning your assessment programme. So I think this prompts a much greater focus on it. But I think you're absolutely right in terms of co-creation. It is a golden opportunity for academic staff to engage with, with their students, to say, well, look, here's a, here's a new, novel challenge which is requiring us to rethink everything. Right, we need your help to do this, because otherwise we ain't going to be able to do it properly no, I completely agree. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

38:54

I think it's a very interesting point you make about assessment as well, and I think there is a there's a kind of beautiful nexus of um artificial intelligence requiring us to rethink assessment, and we're beginning to see this in some examples that members have been sharing with us over the last sort of 18 months, two years, um of of rethinking the way they've rethought assessments so that they're um they're getting people to demonstrate their ability to apply the things they've learned during their course to problems so that in the three-hour unseen paper that we all love so dearly, simply tested our ability to regurgitate facts right. 

39:34

This is what I've remembered from what you've told me in the last year. Now I think we're seeing people being far more creative about. Well, show me how you take that learning and here's a real-world problem and use whatever tools you can, but demonstrate to me that you have applied the things you've learned and the tools available to you to a real solution which allows, I think, us to educate people in a way that embraces technology that is future-proof, forward-thinking, allows them to demonstrate their skills and again satisfy that local economic agenda and the kind of policy articulation that we're hearing from government at the moment. That's really, really exciting. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

40:16

You asked a question earlier about lifelong learning entitlement as well, before we got onto artificial intelligence, I mean, I think that for me, I mean it's one of those things again that goes right back to those early days that we were talking about, because CNA, you know, was pioneering in terms of establishment of a credit framework and that has been ultimately sustained by QAA, right. And I think that the thing about credit frameworks is that, you know, there are two kinds of people in the world the kind of people who understands what you're talking about when you start talking about credit and the credit program, and then the kind of people who think they understand what they're talking about, right. So, and that's really really, really mean and childish, I know, but there is an awful lot of nonsense talked about credit accumulation and transfer in higher education by people who really, you know, should look into it a bit more before they start talking about it. And I do think that you know, the rigor and the rules of a credit framework have been worked on by people who really really do know about this stuff over many years and they're well established and they're clear and actually I think they're really, really good. But lots of the things that are talked about or designed or explored or discussed in relation to, to credit and transfer in particular, are it seemed to ignore that, that framework and that ethos? 

41:50

Um, completely, and, and you know, my worry is that the, the LLE, is one of those things that emerges a, you know, this is a good idea because it will enable lots of other stuff, and the starting point is usually about preventing, or, you know, preventing universities from holding on to students, or encouraging student mobility, or enabling it, right, but the reality is that that's always been a marginal activity. It really is a minority sport. The more important thing is about how you organize your curricula, how you enable students to progress over time, and that can be over a much more extended period, but also within a framework within an institution or potentially within more than one institution, but also have stopping off points which allow certification as well, and that's, you know, a much, much more important part of it than than than all the transfer stuff, which is, as I say, completely marginal. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

42:45

But using it as a funding mechanism is massively complex, which I don't think has really properly been assessed yet no, I don't think it has, and and and I think that's evident in the amount of time it's taking to come together with a sort of a fully articulated proposal. I had some interesting conversations recently. I mean, obviously, one of the really knotty problems about this is that it extends UK wide and it's and it's being thought about by only one of the governments, which is which is already a problem them. But I also had a conversation recently with the Association of Colleges who were suggesting that, look, the places that really need this at the moment are the FE colleges. There's clear demand in FE colleges to be able to string together bits of learning, to articulate and transfer credit and all of that sort of thing over time between pieces of learning before you get to HE. So why not use the colleges as a pilot? Why not roll this out for FE before it gets to HE, so that by the time it's going global, you've got some sort of sense of which bits of it you need to pay attention to and which you don't. 

43:51

And then I saw another thing in Japan actually. So I was in Tokyo with an agency there called NIAID, who have based their standard system on work they commissioned from us as QAA and it's one of the sort of ways that we have an impact globally. And they have a credit framework that looks very similar to our credit framework and a set of standards, you know, kind of based on ours, very similar to our credit framework, and a set of standards, you know, kind of based on ours, and they're facing kind of the opposite problem than we've had over the last couple of decades, which is that their population is declining, I mean it's massively ageing. So they have the problem of a dwindling number of young people having to support a burgeoning number of old people and therefore people will need to do a different number of jobs, a different variety of jobs over time as economic needs, um kind of shift, and there aren't enough new people to meet them. Do you see what I mean? 

44:53

I'm not sure I'm expressing yeah, but they've been allowing people to pick up and port their credit over time for a long time. And I said to them OK, that's interesting because in the UK we're kind of obsessed with the transferability and the longevity of credit. And you know, if you've studied particulate physics in 1985, who's to say that your 30 credits in particulate physics are still relevant in 2020? And the woman I was talking to looked at me as though I'd completely lost my marbles which is usually fair and she says why would you want to know the content of 30 credits in particulate physics from that long ago? I'm not interested in whether you remember how particulate physics works. I'm interested in the fact that you have demonstrate your ability to assimilate and understand and apply 30 credits of knowledge at a higher level. And it seemed to me that's so much more intelligent a way to do it and gets out of this whole kind of curriculum argument and so on and so forth. Do you think that's a model that we could lift and shift? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

46:02

No, I do, I do agree with that, and I think that the only case in which that, that currency of you know, whatever aspect of physics actually is, is relevant is if you're going off to work in a nuclear power station. Right, and you know, actually none of those people will be right, so you're right it's irrelevant. 

46:23

So you should you know, 99, 999 times out of 1000, actually retain its currency in relation to any subsequent study as well. I think the more challenging problem, which is the one that's always been the case in the sector, is the prerogative of the receiving institution to make a judgment about the standard of the credit awarded by the other institution, and usually it's a negative inference that is made because it wasn't done here, gov, and therefore you know it's inherently dubious. Right, um, sector, right, yeah, yeah, um, and you know all sorts of things may come into play around. You know snobbery and prejudice and everything else, right, but but that's a fundamental thing. So I think people get a lot more relaxed about that, um, and really they should be when we're talking about, you know, undergraduate credit, and it's not. You know most universities will write, quite rightly, people get a lot more relaxed about that and really they should be when we're talking about, you know, undergraduate credit and it's not. 

47:25

You know most universities will, quite rightly, have rules about the proportion of inbound credit you can bring in order to qualify for one of our awards. 

47:33

So you've got to do, you know, probably at least a third of your award here in order to get one of our awards, which I think is perfectly reasonable. 

47:43

But institutions should be far less sniffy about you know what that 240 is, of that, 360, if it's been, you know, on the face of it, legitimately acquired from university x down the road. I mean it is just ridiculous. And bearing in mind again that the numbers involved in this kind of movement are small, and it will usually only be because of necessity, right, rather than because of some desire to escape some ridiculous situation elsewhere, change is because you know we are entering an era in which we expect some, some real issues, potentially about uh universities contracting majorly, um and potentially shutting some disciplines or, you know, possibly even uh folding all together, although I have to say I think that's massively overstated and really quite unlikely, but nevertheless, there may be more requirements for students to move between modern institutions because of circumstances, not of their own desire or making, and so I think getting that credit issue sorted in a way which is helpful to everyone is a really, really important part of the package. 

49:03

Thinking about the you know the issues around financial challenges and you know rescue packages and all the rest of it for universities and colleges in the years ahead. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

49:13

And obviously I would say this, but to think about the quality, and I don't mean in terms of credit transfer, but the students' experience and their ability to continue to study the thing that they signed up to study in a new environment with you know staff who are probably already fully loaded and at full complement. 

49:32

These, I think, are really pressing concerns that we need to find to Absolutely Okay. Let's go back to the crib sheet, from where you're sitting now, with a little bit of time to kind of reflect over the last 36 years of your career and the situation the sector finds itself in, which is, you know, I would characterise as broadly positive, with a government that seems at least to be interested and to want to establish a vision and to kind of intervene in more benign ways. Potentially, where would you like to see the sector in a year's time? So? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

50:10

I share your optimism, Vicki, right, but a large number of people within the sector don't. There is, you know, there is a lot of anxiety and concern. There are a lot of universities which have been posting deficits, which, you know, is in itself not wholly unusual, right, and the universities have done that. But the collective sense of a big problem and a big financial problem is absolutely there. You know, stems in part from the way in which, you know, sector funding is involved. The dependence on international student recruitment to, you know, to subsidise other activities is enormous and the decline in international has obviously, you know, had a big impact on lots of places and also the, you know, the decline in the relative value of the domestic fee. So you know, it's a bit of a perfect storm at the moment and there is deep anxiety. We've got clearly plenty of examples of universities embarking on, you know, voluntary redundancy programmes of one kind or another. Right, and there's a lot of that. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

51:16

Hasn't that always happened as part of universities' ordinary financial planning? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

51:21

It has, and I think that it is because it is happening, appears to be happening on a broad scale at the moment that people are anxious, right, and because, you know, one particularly industrious trade union branch has compiled a list of all those who've announced voluntary redundancy programmes, which is quite a big list, right, so it feels bigger, bigger, it feels worse. So people inevitably catastrophize from that situation, right, whereas, you know, in order to get out of the position we're in, it does require, you know, determination and you know, realism, but also optimism and confidence. Then we can get through this. And one of the things I've been, I have been thinking about, you know, not reflecting on myself but, um, reflecting on, you know, going back to that time when we were talking about earlier, when I first came into the sector, working at north sass poly. There were people there, and there were people I subsequently worked with at uea who had been through what felt like the most catastrophic, disastrous situation of university cuts in 1981, when the relative new Thatcher government imposed a really big cut on higher education and the university grants committees at them had to distribute those cuts across the sector and no one really saw it coming. No one was prepared and, um, everyone thought it was a disaster, right. 

52:47

But, and some, some universities like salford, who had a 44 percent cut to the grant and that was most of their funding, right, yeah, so there weren't loads of international students that they could, uh, they could recruit to to pay offset this right, um, and you know others, you know, you know aston had a big cut, aberdeen had a big cut. So lots of places you know were really badly affected, others much less so York and Bath did, you know relatively well, but it still felt really bad. But all those universities survived. Right Now you could say that Salford has had it harder over the past 40 years than lots of other places because of that historical cut, um, but nevertheless they've survived and in many ways, have continued to thrive, right, I mean, you know, and they've got lots of strengths, and you know Aston, likewise Aberdeen, likewise Bath, has done extraordinarily well. St Andrew's had a huge cut and it's done amazingly well. So actually, you step back and look at the big picture. 

53:47

No matter what the challenge is, universities are incredibly resilient and resourceful places. They're full of the brightest people on the planet and are able to respond and change and adapt and flex. And it may not feel like it now, but I think you are right. There are real grounds for optimism. We've got a government that is positive about the sector, rather than one which is looking to kick it at every opportunity. Yes, there are many challenges. Some of them are out with our control. Some of them are out with our national control their geopolitics in the US and China but nevertheless, we've got an awful lot which is within our grasp to actually change, and all of those things we've talked about, you know, from AI to our ability to regulate our own affairs are really important factors in that. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

54:33

I'm going to take from that some crumbs of comfort about QAA's own situation, because, of course, we too had a fairly significant cut in our back in 2017 and have nonetheless survived and flourished, so maybe we're just simply echoing the experiences of those august institutions that you mentioned. Okay, so in a year's time, the sector's feeling calmer, it's recovering from this kind of at least perception, but let's be realistic there is a financial problem, but in a year's time it's recovering. What are the issues that you think I should pay attention to over that year? What do you think? You know we've talked about, as you say, ai, which we're going to be focusing on in membership. We've talked about lifelong learning, where there's a whole raft of policy work we're doing. We've talked about credit transfer, which you know Helena is going to do a deep dive on this year so that we can elaborate how that works amongst our members. What do you think are the really big issues that I need to worry about? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

55:42

I mean, I do think all of those issues are the right ones to be focusing on. 

55:48

I would go back to a couple of things that we have talked about earlier. One was the international dimension, because I think that is really important, because I do think that it will continue to be and this will be partly driven by the media again a focus both on the recruitment of international students to the UK and the use of agents and anxiety about unscrupulous behaviour there, which, again, is not well founded, but there are clearly one or two examples of it are clearly one or two examples of it, right. But the other thing is those international partnerships, because I think that, going back to the reports we mentioned, from whenever it was 20 years ago, you know they really sounded huge alarm bells for the sector in terms of getting its act together in relation to international validated and franchise provision, to international validated and franchise provision. So I do think that ensuring that the sector is in a position to take that kind of thing really, really seriously is really important. Now, I'm not saying that QA should immediately organise missions to validate activity overseas, although I'm sure you'd like that. 

57:02

But, I do think that somehow ensuring that there is a proper focus on that, because I know that others will want it to be done right and you know, I've heard, you know well, I think the office for students have been asked to have a look at this right and I don't think at the moment they, from what I understand, that they they are probably in a position to do that, although they're trying to work out how to, but of course they've got lots of other challenges that they've got to manage. Arguably, before they start going into that space, try and find a way to articulate the means by which international provision uh, the quality and standard of that is is assured by by the sector. So I, I, you know I'm struggling to articulate this precisely, but I think there is something to be done there. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

57:55

Yeah, to help everyone I think we're well on the way to that through the qet and e scheme, which we're we're kind of, you know that's as you know, it's a membership scheme. Yeah, more than 70% of students studying for a UK qualification outside the UK, and we work incredibly closely with DBT and with governments all over the world to kind of underpin, to provide that underpinning quality and reassurance. I think the difficulty that we have is that obviously, as you say, there are financial imperatives for working internationally. There's also, I think, a massive sense held through the whole sector that education is one of those goods that the UK can do in the world. It's one of the things that we can take out. That is a good thing where we all feel a little bit kind of reduced, perhaps in that opportunity post-Brexit. This is a massive opportunity for us. 

58:49

So, yes, I think there is a real desire for UK universities to establish partnerships overseas, internationally, and the difficulty that they have sometimes in some places is on the due diligence front that the government or the regulator where they're trying to set up their presence If it's a Scottish or a Welsh university, they can look on a website, they can see the QAA report, they can check the quality. They can satisfy themselves. In England that's harder because there are no current reports for the vast majority of providers, and OFS, I think, are making great strides in being helpful in these kinds of situations, but nonetheless there are parts of the world where a reassurance that a provider is on the register is not seen as paying enough attention to quality. So we're working closely with DBT to interleave the T&NE offering with the international education strategy so that those two things will play together in ways that make sense. You know, kind of around the world and we will redouble our efforts to work with governments internationally. 

59:53

And so I mean, you know I do spend an inordinate amount of time traveling and meeting ministers of education, which is, you know, a fabulous way to spend your life but also really essential, I think, to throwing a sort of shining a light on the way that regulation and enhancement of quality play with each other in the English space. And so, to throw that back to you, do you think there is more scope for that enhancement piece to sit outside? I mean, you know, ofs in their new strategy proposal have signalled an intention to oversee a continual improvement in quality of English provision, which is obviously a very good thing, but I think capacity constraints would tend to indicate that that probably won't be a full-blown enhancement offering in the way that we've always done. So do you see scope for enhancement and co-creation and collaboration in the way the sector's always done it, to sit comfortably with the regulatory environment that we now find ourselves in? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

01:00:56

Yes, but I think the timing is not good at the moment, right because of this focus on, you know kind of financial distress. So I think, thinking ahead a year or two, absolutely, because what I also hope will happen is that there will be, you know, a kind of as Sir David Behan implements his recommendations, there will be fallout from that which will lead to a greater rationalisation of the regulatory regime, particularly in England, and ultimately that will lead to a kind of comprehensive look at the UK higher education regulatory landscape which will bring things back to a sensible footing. So I do agree at that point I think that there will be a greater focus on the enhancement dimension, because everyone will have a bit more bandwidth to enable that to happen. Because at the moment we're focused on, you know, financial distress and over regulation and until we get over those two hurdles, I think it's hard, genuinely a bit hard, to see the enhancement opportunities. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

01:02:09

So you said you see that, coming around to a sort of comprehensive look at the UK, you mean all four nations there. I do. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

01:02:18

I mean you know I've got to be optimistic about it, right. I mean, I do think there's been far too you know far too much, you know divergence, right. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

01:02:27

And. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

01:02:27

I think that that creates a sectoral problem, right, and I can understand why it's happened. And I can understand, you know, that there are deep-rooted historical reasons why you want an element of divergence, and there's always going to be some of it. But actually the sector and the country is not well served by having a diversity and a plurality of regulatory regimes. It just doesn't help anyone and it also militates against effective collaboration, uh, by universities which are fundamentally international in their outlook, right, and if you can't collaborate, you know, within the UK, then we're just making life really, really hard for ourselves. So you know, I'm optimistic that good sense will prevail. I just think that in the short term there are probably other, more pressing priorities which will mean that, you know that will take a bit of time before it gets to the top of ministers intros yeah, interesting, um, I've just been nudged to say that we are a bit of time before it gets to the top of ministers' intros. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

01:03:23

Yeah, interesting. I've just been nudged to say that we are almost out of time, paul, so it's been really, really great to catch up with you. Thank you. 

Paul Greatrix Guest

01:03:31

It's been lovely. Thank you very much indeed, Vicki. 

Vicki Stott Co-host

01:03:33

Have you got one more thing that you'd like to land with us? 

Paul Greatrix Guest

01:03:38

Anything you feel that I haven't given you an opportunity to say. Well, I would just like to reiterate the last point which I made, which is, although things are really, really difficult and challenging in the sector at the moment, you know we are an endlessly creative and inventive set of people with some of the, you know, the sharpest and the cleverest people on the planet involved in UK higher education and therefore, where there are problems, I think collectively acting together institutions, agencies we can overcome them and create a brighter future for ourselves. Now I do see the QAA as part of that landscape of you know, creative drivers for the future. 

Kerr Castle Co-host

01:04:24

Thanks very much to Paul and Vicki for the future. Thanks very much to Paul and Vicki for joining us. Don't forget if you're a QAA member, you can book your place now at our online quality insights conference on the 26th and 27th of February and access a range of practice presentations from across the sector and thought-provoking discussions just like this one. Simply visit the QAA website to find out more. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed the conversation and look forward to sharing more content like this with you soon. 

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