Another Modest Proposal

'being a suggestion for shortening the Bachelor’s degree, improving its efficiency, and rendering it somewhat more useful to students, universities and the publick'

TL;DR The UK’s three-year Bachelor’s degree is largely a historical artefact and merits serious reconsideration. A 2+2 model, two years to a first degree followed by an optional two-year integrated Master’s, could deliver the same learning more efficiently whilst improving access, flexibility and international alignment. It would require system-level change, but it would address many current concerns in higher education.

In 1729 the great Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift wrote a satirical essay, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. In it he argued, hardly ‘modestly’, that impoverished families should sell their babies as food for the wealthy. You probably cannot, for even one moment, imagine why I believe this has resonances with current debates on Higher Education. Do not worry, no culinary suggestions will follow. What follows instead is my ‘modest proposal’ for the structure of the undergraduate degree.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the current challenges in Higher Education. Much of that discussion focuses on access, participation, graduate outcomes, funding and the broader shape of the sector. And, as you know, I have views on all of these things, and much else besides. Surprisingly, however, relatively little of this debate concerns the more basic matter of what we actually teach and how that teaching is organised. In particular we have, I argue, paid minimal attention to our basic ‘product’, the three-year undergraduate ‘Bachelor’s’ degree. I believe it is a product that merits serious rethinking.

My modest proposal is simply this. The UK should move to a ‘2+2’ system of integrated undergraduate and postgraduate education. In this system we would have a two-year first degree (if you insist on an alternative title ‘Associate Degree’, ‘Diploma’, or perhaps even the pleasingly historical ‘Licentiate’) followed by an integrated two-year Master’s degree for those who continue.

I envisage that, through more compressed and more deliberate teaching structures, at least in Years 1 and 2, we could effectively cover the Level 6 learning outcomes (education-sector jargon for degree-level attainment) currently associated with a Bachelor’s degree. Most UK undergraduate degrees are nominally 30 weeks per year. In reality, with a lighter exam-focused Summer term, they are more like 27 + 27 + 25 weeks, a total of roughly 79 teaching weeks. A two-year programme of 40 + 40 weeks, a total of 80 weeks, could cover essentially the same ground, albeit in a more continuous and intentional manner. There is scope, particularly with ed-tech, to use the teaching-day more efficiently.

After the two-year programme, graduates could exit with a recognised Level 6 qualification and enter the workforce, perhaps by way of additional professional or work-based training. Alternatively, and assuming suitable attainment, they could progress to a professionally accredited two-year integrated Master’s programme. If we assume an extended academic year there would be scope for structured work placements, international mobility, and a substantial experiential project or advanced dissertation. Entry could be directly to the four-year 2+2 pathway, with an option to exit after two years, or to a two-year first-degree programme in the first instance.

While we are at it, we could also simplify and regularise the current rather baroque systems of assessment and programme structure that prevail in many UK institutions and where much cost and operational complexity resides. Most comparable international systems manage perfectly well without them.

The UK model is already something of an international outlier. In the United States the standard first degree is four years (with a shorter and less specialised secondary education). Across much of continental Europe the Bologna structure is typically three years for a Bachelor’s degree followed by two years for a Master’s. Scotland already operates a four-year undergraduate degree (three-year degrees for students entering with Advanced Highers). Against this backdrop a two-year first degree followed by a two-year Master’s would not be particularly radical. It would simply be another way of organising the same volume of higher learning. It is worth noting that the UK has already flirted with a related idea. In recent years governments have fitfully encouraged ‘accelerated degrees’, essentially compressing the traditional three-year programme into two more intensive years. A small number of institutions have experimented with this model. The difficulty is that these initiatives largely attempt to squeeze the existing structure into a shorter timeframe without wider structural and systemic adaptation. What I am suggesting is something rather different, a reorganisation of the degree itself.

The existing UK one-year intensive Master’s could remain as a supplementary or complementary qualification, particularly for career conversion or specialist postgraduate study.

The advantages of this approach are obvious:

• Students graduating at Level 6 are out of the workforce for a shorter period, and accumulate less debt in the process.

• It supports access and participation, lowering both the time and financial barriers associated with a first degree.

• There is scope for mobility between universities (and perhaps between programmes), increasing choice and creating greater differentiation within the university system. This drives system change.

• It is more closely aligned with international models that already deliver ‘undergraduate Master’s’ pathways.

• It could appeal to global students, particularly those seeking more flexible progression routes and a more cost-effective option.

• It supports the extended learning required for professional courses.

• Workplace learning and placements fit more naturally within this structure.

• Increasingly, Master’s degrees have become a paid-for access route to ‘graduate’ jobs, inhibiting access for those without recourse to family resources.

• It uses university facilities and resources more efficiently across the year.

• It gives us an opportunity to rethink pedagogy and delivery, and to re-orient teaching around more authentic, applied and experiential approaches to learning.

The disadvantages are equally obvious:

• It is unlikely to happen! The system is highly conservative, and structural change in universities occurs only slowly, and usually reluctantly.

• It requires system-level change. No single institution can drive it alone.

• Even if the bulk of institutions, and students, wanted it, the narrow stratum of so-called ‘prestigious universities’, who have little motivation to see the system change, will likely deploy their reputational capital to stand apart from the reform and, by doing so, block it.

• It might be difficult to persuade people that shorter and more intensive programmes can secure learning outcomes comparable to the traditional model.

• There is also a reasonable argument that intellectual maturation and the absorption of complex ideas require time as well as intensity. University is also about an extended social and intellectual experience.

• Such a change would place real demands on the academic workforce, and would require adjustments in patterns of work and the organisation of university services. In particular, careful attention would be required to protect the connected time necessary for research and scholarship.

So why make such a proposal at all? Because the present model is not the product of timeless academic wisdom. It is largely an historical artefact, a structure that emerged under very different economic, social and institutional conditions. If the pressures currently bearing down on Higher Education teach us anything, it is that we should occasionally revisit our most basic assumptions. Swift’s proposal was never intended to be adopted. Mine, perhaps improbably, might actually solve a few problems.