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5 - Cross-border Flows of Students within the UK
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- By Susan Whittaker, PhD student at Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, David Raffe, CES at the University of Edinburgh, Linda Croxford, University of Edinburgh
- Edited by Sheila Riddell, Elisabet Weedon, Sarah Minty
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- Book:
- Higher Education in Scotland and the UK
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 12 November 2015, pp 71-89
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Summary
INTRODUCTION: WHY DO CROSS-BORDERFLOWS MATTER?
Around one in fourteen UK residents who enter full-time undergraduate courses move to a different home country of the UK to do so. In this chapter we examine the types of students who move, their reasons for doing so, and the trends and patterns of what we shall call ‘cross-border flows’. We also reflect on the ways in which devolution and related changes have influenced these flows. We start by considering why cross-border flows matter.
First, they matter for students and institutions. They allow students to access a wider range of higher education courses than may be available within the home country. They may provide educational benefits, broadening the horizons of the students who move. They may also benefit the institutions which these students enter, and the other students who attend them, by increasing the diversity of the student body. However, they thereby raise questions of fairness and equality of access. Many students may lack the resources, knowledge and confidence to consider and take up opportunities in a part of the UK in which they are not normally resident. Conversely some students, especially from Northern Ireland, may have to be mobile in order to access higher education (HE) at all. And if institutions only attract a socially unrepresentative group of students from the rest of the UK (rUK students), the benefits in terms of student diversity will be lost. Even when rUK students do enhance the diversity of institutions’ intakes, the benefits are not spread equally across institutions, some of which attract much higher proportions of rUK students than others.
Cross-border flows also matter to governments, and especially the devolved administrations, where they account for a much larger proportion of total student numbers than for England. They have implications for the supply of skilled manpower: students who leave the home country to study may not return when they have qualified. They have implications for the resourcing of universities and for the sustainability of the devolved administrations’ diverging funding arrangements. The devolved administrations have not increased fees for their own students to the same extent as in England, but they have charged English-level fees for rUK students and the fee income from these students has helped to alleviate funding pressures.
2 - Higher Education Governance and Institutional Autonomy in the Post-devolution UK
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- By David Raffe, University of Edinburgh
- Edited by Sheila Riddell, Elisabet Weedon, Sarah Minty
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- Book:
- Higher Education in Scotland and the UK
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 12 November 2015, pp 19-32
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Devolution was expected to redistribute power within each ‘home country’ of the UK as well as between each country and the UK centre. It was to herald a more open, participatory and inclusive form of democracy. It would bring government closer to public institutions such as universities, and help these institutions to contribute to the economic, social and cultural development of their host societies.
Devolution thus presented both opportunities and threats for universities. It brought higher education closer to government, and closer to the centre of national life. It made higher education more visible as an area of public policy, and strengthened its claim on the public purse as a core institution and contributor to society. It gave universities more influence over policy debates, especially in a country such as Scotland where trust in professionals and providers of public services remained relatively high. It enabled the leaders of higher education – both institutional leaders and representatives of the sector as a whole – not only to have the ear of government but also to play a more active role in shaping policy than would have been conceivable beforehand. But devolution also presented threats. It brought higher education closer to government, but by the same token it brought government closer to higher education. It exposed universities to greater legislative and executive scrutiny than had been possible under the Westminster regime. It encouraged and enabled devolved governments to take a closer interest in the day-to-day activities of universities, in the interests both of democratic accountability and of maximising their economic, social and cultural contributions. And it tempted governments to tighten their controls over universities – in the eyes of some, threatening institutional autonomy.
In this chapter I review these tensions as they have played out in the years since devolution, with a primary focus on Scotland. The chapter starts with a narrative of the governance of Scottish higher education following administrative devolution in 1992 and especially parliamentary devolution in 1999. The narrative focuses on the relations between universities and government. The internal governance of institutions is of interest primarily as a test of this relationship: if the government takes an interest in how universities are run, is this a legitimate expression of its democratic mandate or an unwanted interference in the internal affairs of autonomous institutions (Murray et al., 2013)?
Childhood growth patterns following congenital heart disease
- David C. Aguilar, Gary W. Raff, Daniel J. Tancredi, Ian J. Griffin
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- Journal:
- Cardiology in the Young / Volume 25 / Issue 6 / August 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 September 2014, pp. 1044-1053
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Introduction: Prenatal and early postnatal growth are known to be abnormal in patients with CHD. Although adult metabolic risk is associated with growth later in childhood, little is known of childhood growth in CHD. Patients and Methods: Retrospective data were collected on 551 patients with coarctation of the aorta, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, single ventricle physiology, tetralogy of Fallot, transposition of the great arteries, or ventricular septal defects. Weight, height, and body mass index data were converted to Z-scores. Body size at 2 years and growth between 2 and 20 years, 2 and 7 years, and 8 and 15 years were compared with Normative data using a sequential series of mixed-effects linear models. Results: A total of 4660 weight, 2989 height, and 2988 body mass index measurements were analysed. Body size at 2 years of age was affected by cardiac diagnosis and gender. Abnormal growth was frequent and varied depending on cardiac diagnosis, gender, and the time period considered. The most abnormal patterns were seen in patients with tetralogy of Fallot, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or single ventricle physiology. Potentially high-risk growth, a combination of small body size at 2 years and rapid subsequent growth, was seen in several groups. Conclusions: Childhood and adolescent growth patterns were gender- and lesion-specific. Several lesions were associated with abnormal patterns of childhood growth known to be associated with an increased risk of adult adiposity or metabolic risk in other populations. Further information is needed on the long-term metabolic risks of survivors of CHD.
two - Unifying academic and vocational learning in England, Wales and Scotland
- Edited by Frank Coffield
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- Book:
- Differing visions of a Learning Society Vol 1
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 July 2022
- Print publication:
- 26 July 2000, pp 71-104
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Summary
Introduction
Many different concepts of the learning society are employed in current debates (see chapters by Coffield, and Bartlett and Rees in this volume), but none is readily compatible with the continued division between academic and vocational learning. Notions of the learning society as a basis for economic competitiveness anticipate a need for new kinds of skills and knowledge which transcend this division. Visions of the learning society as a means to social equality or personal fulfilment reject the inequalities arising from divisions between tracks and the limits placed on the goals of learning by categorising it as academic or vocational. The view of lifelong learning and the learning society expressed in government rhetoric emphasises the need to break down barriers, including the barriers to access and progression arising from divisions between academic and vocational learning. To achieve a learning society, therefore, it is necessary to ‘unify’ academic and vocational learning: that is, to bring them together into a closer and more coherent relationship or to combine them within a unified system.
Most European countries are pursuing policies to unify postcompulsory education and training. In Britain, unification has been advocated by independent policy bodies such as the National and Scottish Commissions on Education (NCE, 1993; SCE, 1996), by industrialists (CBI, 1998), by educational providers (AfC et al, 1994), by teachers (David and Jenkins, 1996; Jenkins et al, 1997) and by some of us and our co-authors in A British ‘Baccalauréat’ (Finegold et al, 1990). However, there are different concepts and models of unification, and different unifying strategies within Europe and within Britain (Lasonen, 1996; Lasonen and Young, 1998). The government's policy in England has developed through the Dearing (1996) Review of Qualifications for 16-19 Year Olds, the Qualifying for Success consultation (DfEE, 1997) and the White Paper Learning to Succeed (DfEE, 1999). It reflects what we shall call a linkages strategy, which maintains the three post-16 tracks but tries to encourage links among them and emphasises their formal equivalence. Government policy in Wales goes beyond the English strategy by giving more emphasis to the role of a single credit-based qualifications framework for promoting lifelong learning (Welsh Office, 1998; ETAG, 1999). In Scotland government policy stands in contrast to that in England and Wales by adopting a unified system: instead of linking the tracks the Higher Still reform is replacing them with a unified system of post-16 education (Scottish Office, 1994).