Review of The Decline and Fall of British University

Review of The Decline and Fall of British University

Introduction

University were available for a very small group of people who had the money and intelligence to attend at past especially in old days. While, the British government expended higher-education by making it free after the WWII. Obviously, this made it possible for thousands of ordinary people to attend university. However, with the expansion of universities, will the quality of universities decline?

Dr. Mark Tarver, who was once a tenured lecturer, in his article “The Decline and Fall of British Universit y”, expresses that he equality of British universities has declined and explained why. But his evaluation of the college students and professors are not comprehensive and his estimation of the future of British university is too negative to agree with.

Summary

Dr. Mark tells his own story of being a lecturer at the very beginning of the article. He thinks his own story is related to the decline and fall of British university. Then he gives us four reasons for it: the expansion of university system; the adoption of buffet-style form of degree; the Teaching Quality Assessment; the unattractive job. The result is that the contemporary students receive less than their parents did and the future of universities is getting worse.

Arguments and Evaluation

Dr. Mark Tarver shows clearly why the British universities’quality had declined. Firstly, he expresses the “ostensible aims”and the actual result of expending the university system. He thinks the average level of the whole educational system is watered down to a lower standard because of the egalitarianism. At this point, the writer obviously ignores the advantage of the expansion of university system. It really gives more chance to more people who can want to be educated and it did bring up a lot of excellent graduates. If universities remain as scarce and expensive as in ancient times, we would never have so many brilliant and well-educated people to develop our society. So it’s unfair to define the expansion of university system as the cause of the decline and fall of British university.

Secondly, the author introduces the buffet-style of degree. He pointed out some sever problems it has brought. But, we can’t deny that it’s a good thing for students to choose courses by their own interest and desire. Since a student can do much better in a course which he/she is interested in

Thirdly, Dr. Mark explains the misery of lecturers caused by Teaching Quality Assessment. According to him, this teaching audit has brought too much pressure to the lecturers by forcing them to write as many papers as possible. The amount of papers becomes criterion of measuring a lecturer’s ability and a way of self promotion. So lecturers are busy producing papers instead of focusing their attention on teaching.

I agree with the author on this issue. Lectures are supposed to make more efforts on teaching than researching or writing papers as their ability of teaching is greatly related to the whole equality of the university and their students.

Finally, concerning the future of the university system, Dr. Mark doesn’t have a positive attitude. The satiation now is that more and more young people refused to be lecturers and the universities had to employ some immigrants to “fill the gap”. While, as the language skill of foreign lecturers is weaker than native speakers, “the quality of teaching can only be bad”. It is hard to agree with. Those foreign lectures can bring new blood to the British universities because they have different concepts and different way of teaching from native professors. And their language skills can be promoted after training. So it’s inappropriate to blame the foreign lecturers for declining the quality of teaching.

Conclusion

In this article, Dr. Mark Tarver points out the fact of the decline and fall of British university and gives us his own four reasons. His opinions are really clear and his ideas are well supported by powerful proof and vivid examples. However, he failed to consider the advantages of the expansion of university and buffet-style form of degree. And the reasons given by him is a little superficial, so we should go deeper to get the root of the decline and fall of British university.