What are the University Colleges and Institutes?
It is a fair question for a student, parent, or sponsor to ask.
The University Colleges and Institutes are part of the university
sector in the United Kingdom and, like any University, they offer
mainly degree-level courses - bachelors’ degrees, masters’,
and doctorates.
The next question could then be: why aren’t they just called
"University"? Again, this is a perfectly understandable
question. The simple answer is that, with a few exceptions, the
University Colleges and Institutes do not usually award all their
own degrees. Rather like the Colleges and Institutes which make
up the University of London in this respect - or even Oxford and
Cambridge - some, at least, of the degrees, especially at postgraduate
level, are likely to be awarded by a large University with which
the College or Institute is associated.
University Colleges and Institutes tend to be much smaller than
typical British Universities: student numbers are generally in the
2,000 - 4,000 range, though a few have bigger numbers. Not many
Universities have fewer than 10,000 students; the majority have
much higher numbers. But it is not only a matter of how many students
the Colleges or Universities have. It is also the origins of the
University Colleges and Institutes that makes them somewhat different
from British Universities, old or new. Typically, the present University
Colleges and Institutes have developed and grown from Teachers’
Colleges. Until about twenty years ago in most cases, they would
have been exclusively concerned with the professional training of
teachers. Then they started to offer other courses and degrees provided
by University Colleges and Institutes is broadly comparable to any
University, the only difference being that these institutions do
not normally provide degrees in such subjects as Law, Engineering,
and Medicine, which require large Departments or Faculties that
are beyond the scale of the smaller University-level institutes.
The particular strengths of the University Colleges and Institutes,
the ways in which they are positively different, have a great deal
to do with their origins. In terms of the subjects and courses offered,
there is likely to be an emphasis on those subjects that are closely
associated with the School curriculum - Arts or Humanities subjects
like English Language and Literature, History and Geography, Art
and Design, and Music, as well as Sciences such as Biology, Environmental
Science, and Mathematics. Nowadays, of course, there are likely
to be many other courses available, ranging from Psychology, Sociology
and Economics - which might also owe their beginnings to the former
teacher education curriculum - to Business Studies, Computer Science,
Horticulture, Health and Nursing, for example, as well as other
subjects which have gradually been added to the original teacher
education-based curriculum.
Teacher education itself, of course, almost certainly remains as
a strong component of the whole array of courses taught by a University
College or Institute. Whether initial teacher education or in-service
teacher education, professional training for the classroom is something
which these institutions have specialised in since their foundation,
and no University is likely to do it better. Also associated with
the smaller institutions’ origins is their strong continuing
pastoral tradition and care for the individual student.
Perhaps, as E.F. Schumacher* argued over twenty years ago, there
is virtue and merit in what is small: sheer size, especially if
it means a loss of what is most human and personal, is not something
to be sought for its own sake. The relatively small University Colleges
and Institutes have all the facilities and equipment of the bigger
Universities, including libraries, laboratories, computer centres,
performing arts and art and design studios and so on, as well as,
most importantly, highly qualified academic staff. Lecturers and
tutors have to be well-qualified because they teach degree courses
that are in every way equal in standard to those taught at the United
Kingdom’s one hundred or more Universities. They are, in most
cases, those same Universities’ internationally-recognised
degrees which are awarded to students, whether they are degrees
of Coventry, Leeds, Southampton, Surrey or another University. So,
students, parents, and sponsors need have no doubts about the quality
or standing of the degrees that the Colleges award.
But the University Colleges and Institutes offer more. Many of
them have particularly attractive campuses that are more green than
grey! Some of the major University Colleges and Institutes are a
little outside city and town centres in attractive, safe settings
with ample residential accommodation on leafy campuses that are
very different from the city centre clusters of tall buildings that
are more typical of the big Universities of Britain’s industrial
cities. For the student - and for the reassurance of parents - University
Colleges and Institutes offer a University-level education of two,
three or more years at moderate cost in an environment that is on
a human scale and one in which the newcomer quickly comes to know
his or her way around.
Students, parents, and sponsors should be absolutely clear, and
confident that whether the University College is Bath or Worcester,
King Alfred’s or St. Martin, Chichester or Ripon and York St.
John, or one of the others, quality assurance is guaranteed by the
same national Quality Audit agency which carries out quality audits
of all institutions in the University sector on the same basis.
International recognition and comparability with all other British
degrees are not in question, therefore, while the graduate of a
University College or Institute will also have had the benefit of
a distinctive, somewhat different higher education experience, though
nevertheless one with traditional British standards.
* E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, London 1973
Contributed by: Eric H. Jones (Dr.) Director of International
Affairs, University College Worcester, UK
This article first appeared in Educational Courses in Britain
