The proposal to divide examining and teaching in higher education will be presented the next week by Vince Cable. He considers that such a money-saving plan would give new universities the possibility to teach students and give them degrees that would be awarded by prestige universities. This proposal will support David Willetts’ proposals that are considered to be the way of preventing lifting of caps on university tuition fees in autumn. All educational institutions will get a possibility to teach universally recognized exams and this will result in the appearance of lots of new private universities.
It is known that until English and Welsh universities founded between 1849 and 1949 received charters to award their own degrees they had to offer University of London external degrees. David Willetts, the higher education secretary, wrote in his essay previously “institutions that chose to offer external exams could deliver robust standards – in which employers already have confidence. They could expand straight away, without having to establish from scratch a reputation for their own degrees.”
Among the issues that Cable is to address are the following: reducing costs and raising standards for non-traditional higher education institutions (HEIs) in other countries. David Willets considers that this will be a real challenge to universities in terms of competition. He also said, “It could be easier to guarantee this if new HEIs also had access to the security, quality-assurance and reputation that comes with externally examined degrees.”
Although the business secretary and the higher education secretary have a divergence of opinions concerning the issue of separating teaching and examining, they both think that this will extend opportunities for those students who do not have a possibility to move away from home. Cable and Willets consider that Labour’s plan for half the population to go to university should be discarded.