What are graduates?

Clarifying The Attributes Of 'Graduateness'

The Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC): Quality Enhancement Group (1995)

A PAPER TO STIMULATE DISCUSSION

• Background
• The 'graduateness' project and its purposes
• Some issues relating to 'graduateness
• What might 'graduateness' mean?
• What attributes might be denoted by the award of a degree? Some recent developments
• Should 'graduateness' be verified?
• Your comments
• Bibliography

SUMMARY

This paper sets out to:

• explain the origins of HEQC's work on 'graduateness';
• elaborate its purpose;
• consider why the topic has now become one of central importance to higher education;
• outline some of the most important issues that have to be confronted in a consideration of 'graduateness';
• sketch some of the attempts that have been made to define the expected attributes of a graduate;
• propose some questions for further consideration and comment.

BACKGROUND

[2] The findings of the first stage of the GSP (see the December 1995 Interim Report or its Executive Summary) suggest that a growing number of people consider that it would be valuable to explore further what attributes are denoted by the award of the UK first degree - i.e., the attributes that constitute what has come to be called 'graduateness'.

[3] It has sometimes been suggested during the GSP consultations, for instance, that the award of a degree is likely to signify at least three kinds of achievement. These could be characterised as:

• Field-specific
  the possession of a body of knowledge and other qualities particular to the field (or fields) studied;
  [NOTE: In this paper, the term 'subject' is used to denote a field of study conventionally regarded as an established academic discipline, which will usually be underpinned by the existence of subject-based associations, journals and so on; the term 'field', in contrast, is used to denote the primary focus of a student's study, which may consist of one, or more, 'subjects' or be defined in other terms including, for example, relevance to a particular occupation.]
• Shared
  the possession of certain more general attributes that might be common to graduates from families of degrees whether associated by cognate subject matter and/or approach (such as the life sciences or the performing arts) or by some other means (for example, according to such overlapping factors as overall purpose, institutional mission, intended destination of graduates and so on);
• Generic
  the possession of yet more general attributes, which might be common to all - or most - graduates.

(Needless to say, the boundaries between these categories may sometimes appear rather blurred. For a discussion of some of the distinguishing cultural differences between various subject fields see Becher, 1989.)

[4] The 'graduateness' project concentrates primarily on the latter two forms of achievement. It sets out to identify what attributes are expected of graduates across all degree programmes (or clusters of them) and how these attributes might be defined and their possession assessed.

[5] In addition to the kinds of achievement mentioned above, the award of a degree can also, in certain cases, carry with it a licence to practise in a particular profession or contribute towards a professional qualification. That characteristic, however, does not fall within the primary focus of HEQC's work on 'graduateness', the purpose of which is to capture what academics regard as the essential attributes of a graduate, what might be termed 'fitness for award'. The relationship of degrees to professional qualification - which might in contrast be termed 'fitness for practice' - is likely to be further illuminated by HEQC's distinct, though related, collaborative work with a group of professional and statutory bodies. (NB: For a discussion of the relationship of academic degrees to professional knowledge and competence see, for example, Eraut, 1994.)

THE 'GRADUATENESS' PROJECT AND ITS PURPOSE

• whether it is possible to identify shared attributes (that is to say, attributes that go beyond the knowledge, understanding, skill and other qualities that are specific to their field[s] of study) that graduates are expected to possess;
• the extent to which such attributes are common to all programmes of study or to particular clusters of programmes;
• whether any particular attributes may be identified that are specific to a given subject yet would appear to be applicable beyond that subject;
• whether generic attributes could be useful in helping to define and establish threshold standards for all degrees, clusters of degrees, or degrees in certain subjects, fields, or sub-fields;
• if it were judged possible to define generic attributes that might play a part in the definition of threshold standards for degrees, how the student's possession of these attributes might best be assessed.

[7] The 'graduateness' project will examine the extent to which agreement exists within the higher education sector on the generic or non-subject-specific qualities expected of graduates. The aim is to identify a set of attributes that could serve as the basis for a threshold standard for all degrees, regardless of field, and thus be used as a bench-mark for comparability of standards at the threshold level across the HE sector. There is another reason too why the project is exploring the generic dimension: one of the principal findings of the first stage of the programme was that when staff in universities and colleges were invited to articulate the standards of their degrees, they tended to cast them in terms of generic attributes (analytical skills, etc.) rather than in strictly subject-specific terms. This suggests that an agreed notion of graduateness (or notions - if there turn out to be more than one) may also be useful as a basis for the articulation of standards within specific subjects. Indeed, it seems likely that any general characteristics of 'graduateness' will need to be contextualised and interpreted when applied to different academic fields. It therefore appears important to undertake a project that will assist those who design, teach and assess students on degree programmes to specify explicitly the expectations that they have of a graduate. That is the purpose of HEQC's work on 'graduateness'.

[8] HEQC intends to explore the topic of 'graduateness' from several different directions:

• it will consult representative groups of academics drawn from across higher education and particularly from those active in research on learning and assessment in higher education;
• it will consider the issue in collaboration with a sample of subject-based groups;
• it will undertake discussions with particular HE institutions;
• it will undertake research on learning and assessment in a group of subjects across a sample of institutions;
• it will investigate the qualities that are sought in graduates both by employers and by those who recruit applicants to post-graduate courses.

[9] One of the first steps in this process is to stimulate further debate on the notion of 'graduateness' in order to gather two, related, kinds of information:

• firstly, the views of a cross-section of academics on the questions related to 'graduateness' set out in section 6 above;
• secondly, details of activities that have a bearing on these questions and which are already taking place, or planned to, within HE institutions or subject-based bodies.

The purpose of the present paper is to begin to stimulate that debate by considering issues related to: historical context, recent developmental work and the assessment of 'graduateness'. It also poses questions to help focus the discussion.

As the outcomes of this debate emerge, these will be complemented by the results of the other strands of work on 'graduateness' and be drawn together into a revised discussion paper that will be circulated for further comment.

SOME ISSUES RELATING TO 'GRADUATENESS'

Why examine graduateness now?

• UK higher education has vastly increased in size and heterogeneity over the last generation and especially during the 1990s (for details see Annex B of the Graduate Standards Programme Interim Report, HEQC 1995). The informal mechanisms that were believed to ensure comparability in a small, homogeneous system seem increasingly unlikely to be effective in the present, greatly diversified one. What is more, the rapid increase in the scale and cost of higher education continues to fuel demands for its activities to be more transparent and more publicly accountable;
• the large-scale introduction of modular programmes has necessitated greater explicitness of purpose and has focused attention on key issues relating to assessment, comparability and related matters that were less visible before;
• many new subjects have entered HE, or been developed within it, in which degree qualifications had not previously been awarded: these are now confronted with defining their own understandings of graduateness;
• the diversity of types of programme of study now available has increased. This enables students to attain a degree by many different kinds of learning experience but raises the issue of how to establish the comparability of outcomes;
• the growth of collaborative work of various kinds (including franchising [sometimes overseas], the validation of the awards of one institution by another or partnerships between higher education and further education institutions) reinforces the need for clarity about the concept of 'graduateness' that is being shared;
• growth in the number of students at a time of declining per capita resources makes it necessary to establish clearly and publicly what is represented by a degree;
• increasing diversity in the qualifications of those entering HE programmes, a greater variety of modes of study (including innovations such as work-based learning or the accreditation of prior learning) tend to make insufficient the conventional assumption that a degree represents the successful completion of three or four years of full-time study following the award of A-levels;
• the growing internationalisation of higher education has made it more important to clarify the standards of UK degrees in relation to those in other countries.

It is worth noting that one of the conclusions of the influential UDACE (Unit for the Development of Adult and Continuing Education) study on Learning Outcomes in Higher Education undertaken in 1990-91 was:

'Further work is required to seek clarification of what are the core qualities which characterise a "graduate". There is a wide consensus that there is such a set but, although a variety of models exist, there is no agreement about what these qualities are, nor how these are to be recognised. Both employers and academic staff felt that it was currently possible for people to graduate without some of the key qualities that they expect of a graduate.' (Otter, 1992, p.iv)

The relationship of level to 'graduateness'

• what are the distinguishing features of higher education that mark it out from, say, further education or secondary education? (Such questions are especially taxing where there is apparent overlap: as in the case of ab initio study in HE, in 'Foundation courses' or in some continuing higher education.) The tendency in the past to resolve such issues by relating level to students' temporal progression is undermined by the decreasing proportion of students who proceed directly from secondary to higher education and by the fact that those studying full-time on first degrees now constitute a minority (48.7% in 1992) of all students in UK higher education (Smithers and Robinson, 1995, p.3). (For a discussion of some of the distinctive characteristics of HE, see, for example, Barnett 1990);
• what distinguishes the level of a bachelor's degree from other levels of attainment in HE such as those represented by a master's degree or the increasing number of sub-degree awards such as Certificates and Diplomas of HE, or the long- established HNCs and HNDs?
• how is the notion of 'graduateness' (which must, by definition, denote the threshold expectations for the award of a degree of any kind) to be related to the notion of a degree with Honours? Does 'graduateness' with Honours represent something different from a general notion of 'graduateness'? (The question is further complicated because the classified Honours degree is now the dominant form of degree programme throughout the UK.) As the first stage of the GSP work made clear, the category of 'pass' on such programmes is - with a few exceptions - essentially negative and residual: it contains those whose performance is judged to be unsatisfactory but not to such an extent as to warrant failure. In some institutions, however, separate Honours and non-Honours degrees coexist in the same field. In these, a non-Honours degree is likely to be defined in positive terms and regarded as a worthwhile award in its own right, while an Honours award will signify study to a higher level, or of longer duration, than study for a degree without Honours.

The relationship between graduateness and 'core skills', 'personal transferable skills', etc.

[13] The generic qualities expected of graduates have sometimes been described as 'core skills', 'key skills', 'personal transferable skills' or, even, as 'employment-related skills'. Although it may be that such terms do, in fact, accurately describe some - or, even, all - of the components of what is expected of a graduate, the GSP project on 'graduateness' intentionally does not start out from them. There are three reasons for this:

• these terms have originated largely from outside HE as ways of expressing the needs of employers or of society more generally. Such attempts at the definition of needs are valuable; but their purpose is not the same as that of the work on 'graduateness'. The purpose of HEQC's project is to begin by clarifying and rendering explicit what the academic community expects of a graduate before then seeking to match this against other expectations. In other words it is necessary to know what are the expected attributes of someone who receives the academic award of a degree before one can determine how these relate to such things as 'core skills';
• the fact that they all employ the word 'skills' may lead to the premature closure of discussions of 'graduateness' in two ways: firstly, by appearing to make the presupposition that the qualities possessed by a graduate only consist of 'skills' (and do not include the possession of other general attributes such as knowledge, understanding, dispositions, attitudes and values); secondly, because the use of the plural form 'skills' rather than the singular 'skill' suggests a somewhat reductionist approach to the qualities expected of a graduate;
• finally, the term 'transferable skills' is avoided because it seems to beg an important question: it appears to take for granted that some, at least, generic 'skills' are, indeed, 'transferable'. This needs to be analysed and demonstrated - rather than simply assumed. (The research literature on the transferability of skills suggests that the issue is very complex; and that a distinction needs to be made between 'skills of transfer' and 'transferable skills'. It also indicates that there is little evidence that many of the skills regarded as transferable are, in fact, transferred [see, for example, Griffin, 1994].)

The elements of 'graduateness' and ancillary qualities

[14] Before discussing the attributes expected of a graduate it is important to distinguish those that one might expect to have been acquired primarily through the particular experience of higher educational study (with which this paper and the project on 'graduateness' are centrally concerned) from ancillary qualities that would be expected of a graduate, but which had not previously been regarded as the responsibility of higher education to teach. These ancillary qualities would be likely to include such things as the ability to write in grammatically-acceptable and correctly spelt English (or Welsh), a certain level of numeracy, a range of general knowledge, a basic familiarity with information technology, and so on.

[15] There seem to be irresistible arguments that no-one should graduate who lacks such ancillary skills; but there is anecdotal evidence that this can occur. If this is so, it is to be condemned - and should be remedied - not least because the absence of such ancillary attributes must impede the exercise of those higher-level qualities that are regarded as central to degree study. The means by which universities and colleges determine that their graduates possess the relevant ancillary qualities may vary: some may require them on admission, others will ensure that their students acquire them alongside higher educational study. Nonetheless, although it is vital that HE institutions can be sure that all their graduates can demonstrate the possession of relevant ancillary skills before graduation, that is not the main purpose of the project on 'graduateness', which is to identify the attributes that a graduate may be expected to have acquired primarily through the experience of degree-level study.

WHAT MIGHT 'GRADUATENESS' MEAN?

[17] Over a century later, the Robbins report defined the purposes of higher education as being, not simply the 'instruction of skills suitable to play a part in the general division of labour' and 'the advancement of learning' (HMSO, 1963, p.6), but also as, 'to promote the general powers of the mind . . . and transmit . . . a common culture and common standards of citizenship' (HMSO, 1963, pp. 6-7). By the former, the Report intended that, 'the aim should be to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women', which meant that even when HE is 'concerned with practical techniques, it imparts them on a plane of generality that makes possible their applications to many problems - to find the one in the many, the general characteristics in the collection of particulars' (HMSO, 1963, p.6).

[18] Since then, numerous lists of attributes have appeared from a variety of sources. These include scholars in the field of education such as philosophers and psychologists, those involved with the design and development of programmes of study, institutional policy- makers, awarding and accrediting bodies in various parts of the world, and those involved in resolving the practical difficulties of how to match educational innovations such as work- based learning (WBL) or credit accumulation and transfer (CAT) against more traditional forms of academic programme. Various graduate attributes have also been proposed by participants in the first stage of the Graduate Standards Programme and have emerged from some of its commissioned investigations.

WHAT ATTRIBUTES MIGHT BE DENOTED BY THE AWARD OF A DEGREE? SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS.

[20] Some academics suggest that a general definition of 'graduateness' has for many years been implicit within the practice of UK universities. For instance, one of the universities that participated in the fieldwork that formed part of the first stage of the Graduate Standards Programme (and was, in consequence, promised anonymity) stated that all its degree programmes were characterised by the following attributes:

• 'a grounding in the content and methods of a discipline(s)';
• 'an engagement with teaching and learning that is research-informed in order that the students may become research-aware';
• 'the development of self-motivating study habits and skills';
• 'the experience of an academically coherent programme of study';
• 'the development of a critical and analytical approach to the theories and concepts and the assumptions on which they are based';
• 'a grasp of the impermanence and open-ended character of a discipline's share of, and contribution to, knowledge and understanding';
• 'where appropriate - the skills necessary for professional practice';
• 'the development of transferable intellectual and practical skills'.

[21] A somewhat different - but not obviously conflicting - approach has been advanced, for example, by De Montfort University. This gives more emphasis to what are described as 'personal transferable skills'. The university is planning to ensure that all its programmes of study permit students to acquire what are described as twelve 'competencies', which it groups under four headings:

Managing tasks and solving problems
• focusing on achieving key objectives;
• using analytical and conceptual thinking;
• gathering information to assist problem solving;
• making decisions;

Working with others
• using logical and rational arguments to persuade others;
• understanding and building/reflecting on how others perceive him/her;
• identifying the needs of others and building positive relationships;

Communication
• oral communication;
• written communication;

Self-awareness
• taking responsibility for own learning and development;
• dealing with pressures and emotions;
• showing sense of purpose. (Walker, 1995, p.19)

[22] Much of the consideration being given in the UK to 'graduateness' has been influenced by earlier work in the USA, which seems to have been generated by the move to a mass higher education there over a generation ago. A fairly typical example of the kinds of graduate outcomes expected in the US is to be found in Bowen (1977) and further developed by M Allen (1988). Bowen, for instance, lists: cognitive learning (verbal skills, quantitative skills, substantive knowledge, rationality, intellectual tolerance, aesthetic sensibility, creativeness, wisdom and life-long learning); emotional and moral development (personal self-discovery, psychological well-being, human understanding, values and morals and religious interest [defined as, 'serious and thoughtful exploration of purpose, value and meaning']); practical competence (most of the goals already listed together with, future orientation, adaptability, leadership, citizenship, discovery and encouragement of talent, advancement of social welfare and the avoidance of negative outcomes for society).

[23] Another American example which has attracted considerable attention in the UK is that of Alverno College, a women's college in Milwaukee. The present Alverno approach is that each student must, over her four-year programme, develop eight 'abilities': communication, analysis, problem solving, valuing in a decision-making context, interaction, global perspectives, effective citizenship and aesthetic response. This is done by requiring that a student's programme, regarded as a whole (which is drawn from familiar disciplines and professional areas such as physics, English literature, business administration or nursing) enables her to acquire these abilities.

[24] Lists of the attributes expected of graduates in the UK often tend to give less weight to overall personal development and to social purpose. This might reflect differences of history and social function between higher education in the UK and USA, the fact that US HE has been a 'mass' system for at least a generation, or some combination of both. Such differences are symbolised by the tendency for higher education in the UK to concentrate on single-Honours programmes in contrast with the tendency towards broader major/minor combinations and 'liberal arts' curricula in the USA.

[25] A factor that has provided a further stimulant to discussions of 'graduateness' in several countries has been the development of new frameworks of vocational qualifications which reach up to higher levels. These have made it increasingly important to clarify the differences and similarities between these two kinds of award and, in turn, to their relationship to professional qualifications. In New Zealand, for instance, the 'Tertiary Action Group' has prepared a consultation document which has sought to set out the distinctive attributes of the degrees of bachelor and bachelor with Honours (NZQA, 1995). The qualities identified bear many resemblances to those on other lists but also include the requirement that a degree should, (prepare) ' . . . a candidate for advanced study as well as directed research [the definition of a degree with Honours omits the adjective "directed"] and scholarship in the major subjects(s) of the degree' (NZQA, 1995, pp.6-7). Similarly, in the UK, one of most far-ranging recent discussions of the distinctive features of a degree has been Assessment Issues In Higher Education (Atkins, Beattie and Dockerell, 1993), a report commissioned by the former Employment Department on the interface between higher education and National Vocational Qualifications. This report proposes, for instance, four broad categories of outcome for a degree, which it elaborates in some detail: the development of a 'trained mind', the acquisition of the knowledge needed to be 'an educated person', personal development for adult life and the development of a basis for life-long learning (Atkins, et al, 1993, pp.19-20).

[26] As mentioned in the Interim Report of the Graduate Standards Programme the greatest attention to the nature and components of 'graduateness' often takes place in fields of innovation that some academics might regard as peripheral to the main work of higher education: Credit Accumulation and Transfer (CAT), Work-Based Learning (WBL) and the Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL). The reason for this is almost certainly that these are spheres where it is necessary to match novel kinds of learning and its assessment to existing degree programmes and the often tacit assumptions about the level and volume of learning on which these depend.

[27] One example of an investigation of levels and learning outcomes is the collaborative work between the Higher Education Credit Initiative Wales (HECIW) and the South-East England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SEEC). These bodies have produced a list of the attributes that might be expected of students in higher education and have described these in terms of three levels within a degree together with that of master's level. (These have recently been the subject of a consultation with all Welsh HE institutions.) The immediate purpose of this work is to facilitate the process whereby modules of learning (wherever undertaken) are assimilated into a modular degree system, but it may well be of help in the exploration of more general notions of 'graduateness'. The tentative HECIW/SEEC dimensions are:

'Cognitive'
• knowledge and understanding;
• analysis;
• synthesis/creativity;
• evaluation.

'Other Transferable Skills'
• Psycho-motor;
• Self-appraisal - reflection on practice;
• planning and management;
• problem-solving;
• communication and presentation;
• interactive and group skills.

'Operational contexts'
• responsibility;
• ethical understanding.

The flavour of these level descriptors is best conveyed by examples. For instance the descriptor for 'Knowledge and Understanding' at HE level 3 (bachelor's degree) is defined as:

'Has a comprehensive/detailed knowledge of (a) major disc