- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday October 31 2006 09.44 GMT
Undergraduates at different universities are being awarded degrees in the same subjects after spending wildly varying times in lectures, seminars and private study, a new report reveals today.
Students on medicine and dentistry courses might be working for anything between 29 and 45 hours a week, those studying biological sciences between 19 and 43 hours, while in history, the difference ranged from between 17 and 18 to more than 32 hours depending on the university.
Researchers at the Higher Education Policy Institute who studied responses from 15,000 students to a web-based survey last year say the extent of the '"remarkable" differences raises questions about what it means to have a degree from an English university "if a degree can apparently be obtained with such very different levels of effort".
The authors recognise that the amount of teaching alone is not a measure of quality but the results also show some institutions award many more first-class and upper-second degrees than others. "Explanations for this might be that the students concerned are more able, or else they work harder. On the basis of these data, neither of these explanations appears to provide a complete answer," the report said.
The researchers, whose study of first and second-year students was paid for by the government-funded Higher Education Academy, say it provides the most detailed account of the teaching that undergraduates receive at a particular university.
The figures suggest, for instance, that a student's workload of teaching and private study at the University of Central Lancashire might be only just over 19 hours a week compared to 43.7 hours at Cambridge and 35 hours at Oxford.
The two most famous universities retain the tutorial system and top the workload tables but this may be in part be explained by their shorter eight-week terms.
However, students at newer universities created since 1992 - many former polytechnics and colleges of higher education - are more likely to get a higher proportion of teaching by academics.
In the more research-led older universities, only about half the tutorials in some subjects such as computer science, social studies and business studies, are taught by academics. Much teaching is done by research students or postdoctoral researchers who need experience for future academic roles.
Only 11% of students say that university overall has been worse than expected, but another 40% say it is "better in some ways, worse in others", indicating that more than half find some aspect of their education disappointing. One in five students thinks their university's prospectus misleading is some ways.
There is a hint that students may become more critical as they pay more for their tuition. From this year most are having to borrow £3,000 a year to fund their courses.
Asked about value for money, 16% of all students think their courses are poor or very poor, but this rises to nearly 30% among overseas students from outside the European Union who already typically pay £8,000-£10,000.
"This should set the alarm bells ringing", say the researchers. "Value for money could be improved by reducing cost or improving the product. If it is not, in due course we will kill the golden goose that international students represent, and this finding needs to be taken very seriously indeed."
Drummond Bone, the president of Universities UK, the group representing vice-chancellors, said: "There is no national curriculum in higher education, and so we should not be surprised that different courses at different institutions involve different use of facilities, contact hours and so on."
But universities were committed to delivering smaller teaching groups and better libraries and academic facilities. Overseas students needed time to adapt to new cultures and learning methods. Wes Streeting, the vice-president of the National Union of Students with responsibility for education, said fees now charged by universities had no bearing on the amount of contact time with staff or the facilities they provided. The 16% of students who complained of poor value for money would "grow and grow and grow" if there were no improvements in these areas and charges were allowed to rise.
The report also "tramples over the concept of 'lazy' students, showing that a massive 93% of students attend their timetabled lectures," he said.
