Missing values: engaging the value of higher education and implications for future measurements
Missing values: engaging the value of higher education and implications for future measurements
Finding a conceptually informed and substantive means of understanding the value of higher education (HE) remains a challenging but crucial issue in the context of continued market-orientated policies. This article offers a way forward and posits that formal approaches to measuring the value of HE can only have currency if engaging in longer-term and sustainable notions of value given that many of the benefits of HE are manifest in less tangible, non-immediate and non-monetary outcomes. Capability perspectives are drawn upon better to capture the more developmental and longer-term value potentiality of a university education. We explicitly refer to three key spheres of value pertaining to personal, social and economic milieus that may be derived from HE. This approach moves beyond the utilitarian gain approach to value popularised in recent HE policy, in particular the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework. Instead, it brings into play the significance of agency and selfhood as key value dimensions, and a broader conception of working life. The implications for engaging with future measurements of the value of HE are also discussed.
Higher education, capability, marketisation, teaching excellence framework, value
46 - 62
Tomlinson, Michael
9dd1cbf0-d3b0-421e-8ded-b3949ebcee18
2 January 2022
Tomlinson, Michael
9dd1cbf0-d3b0-421e-8ded-b3949ebcee18
Tomlinson, Michael
(2022)
Missing values: engaging the value of higher education and implications for future measurements.
Oxford Review of Education, 48 (1), .
(doi:10.1080/03054985.2021.1908247).
Abstract
Finding a conceptually informed and substantive means of understanding the value of higher education (HE) remains a challenging but crucial issue in the context of continued market-orientated policies. This article offers a way forward and posits that formal approaches to measuring the value of HE can only have currency if engaging in longer-term and sustainable notions of value given that many of the benefits of HE are manifest in less tangible, non-immediate and non-monetary outcomes. Capability perspectives are drawn upon better to capture the more developmental and longer-term value potentiality of a university education. We explicitly refer to three key spheres of value pertaining to personal, social and economic milieus that may be derived from HE. This approach moves beyond the utilitarian gain approach to value popularised in recent HE policy, in particular the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework. Instead, it brings into play the significance of agency and selfhood as key value dimensions, and a broader conception of working life. The implications for engaging with future measurements of the value of HE are also discussed.
Text
R1_Missing Values_engaging the value of HE_ 12.02.21
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 16 March 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 12 April 2021
Published date: 2 January 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
The author would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful and constructive suggestions for improving this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords:
Higher education, capability, marketisation, teaching excellence framework, value
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 448042
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/448042
ISSN: 0305-4985
PURE UUID: f31a1839-1c73-4647-ae85-e7899ce8210d
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Date deposited: 30 Mar 2021 16:38
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 06:26
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