That a problem with student writing skills exists few would doubt or question. More worryingly, an inability to express themselves raises the question of whether students have really understood the concepts, the theories, and the relevant knowledge and information which it is the purpose of the module or the course to provide. Yet in most institutions in the UK, the solution to this problem rarely goes much beyond hand-wringing, brief advice on essay-writing in programme handbooks, or hastily designed and not particularly helpful web pages.
In general, then, if we ask about the status of writing in the university, the answer can be summed up in a brief phrase: status, what status? Such an answer, of course, smacks of facetiousness, especially since there are many university staff who are trying to address the problem of weak writing skills, and there are institutions which are taking the problem seriously. Indeed, my own institution, Salford University, has embarked on a process which may, eventually, lead to improved writing skills for many of its students, while departments, schools, and even whole institutions are making efforts to tackle the problem: for instance, Anglia Polytechnic University has developed its Speak–Write programme (see the paper on page 4), while Wolverhampton University and Liverpool John Moores University both employ Lecturers in Writing. Even so, the reply “status, what status?” is still a valid response to the situation in general. In general, the scandal of weak writing skills does not play a major role in how UK universities conceive of their mission as providers of education: in general, the problem of weak writing skills does not inform those policy decisions which show that universities are fulfilling their educative responsibilities. In general, what, if any, resources targeted at solving this problem are minuscule in terms of overall budgetary commitments–and commitment of resources offers the best available indicator of status.
Our scenario, however, tells us that improving student writing skills should be an urgent university priority: the status of writing should be at the forefront of university thinking and university policy, not low down on the agenda or effectively invisible. The status of writing skills should be urgent for two reasons.
First, and as this conference demonstrates, the student entering a university programme today must in order to succeed assimilate concepts and theories virtually nonexistent as elements of an undergraduate course of study only 20 or 25 years ago. Indeed, the difficulty and complexity of the concepts and theories which an undergraduate must nowadays “master” marks a sharp boundary between university study 20 or 25 years ago and now. Theory, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, now informs teaching to such an extent that not only the syllabus but the methodology of study itself bears almost no resemblance at all to programmes of study two or three decades ago. Indeed, the advent of theory means that students must de facto be able to work in an interdisciplinary way. The design of modern programmes of study means that students immediately encounter theory and theory-issues; advancement through a programme implicitly requires that a student gain an ever wider and deeper understanding of theory, the aim of which is to develop and display evermore greater facility in the application of theory. In short, students learn to think about issues in terms of theory, and they learn to read their texts from theoretical perspectives. They become, so to speak, theorised.
Whatever reservations some may feel about the extent to which theory permeates modern university study (and many of the reservations deserve consideration because they ask important questions about what we do as teachers), theory in fact serves and supports the key ideals of university study. Clearly, theory encourages conceptual sophistication and terminological complexity (it makes the brain work) but it also demands the accumulation of appropriate knowledge applied with intellectual rigour. At its best, theory motivates questioning and investigation, and it thereby initiates discussion, debate, argument – the taking and defending of positions. Theory aids the construction of, to use a theory term, subject positions, and the importance of that construction for a student’s intellectual development and progress cannot be The Status of Writing in the University Carson Bergstrom of Salford University presents his case for the centrality of writing skills in the undergraduate degree. This paper is based on one presented at ‘The Condition of the Subject’ Conference held at the University of London in July 2003. 11 underestimated. In an obvious way, theory helps the student to discover what he or she wants to say. And student “saying” at university means writing.
Here, then, is the rub. Theory demands sophistication in writing for the student to “prove” that he or she has assimilated the theory and can apply it, high levels of written expression must be achieved. Thus, since there is no likelihood of going back, no possibility that we can abandon theory in favour of some older model of university study, we must address the issue of poor writing skills. Indeed, since we demand that students attain theoretical sophistication in order to obtain their degrees, we must help them to improve their writing skills. Arguably, a virtuous relationship can be seen to exist between improving writing skills – better expression – and the successful engagement with theory: the search for clarity and coherence in writing feeds into the thinking processes required to master theory. When the student can actually express ideas cogently and clearly, can apply theory in recognisably appropriate ways, then we can claim that they have fulfilled the course requirements. If this condition is not met, we have failed the student and that should be sufficient impetus to raise the status of writing skills as a matter of urgency.
The second reason why we need to make the status of writing an urgent matter for university policy involves a more complex set of issues – some related, some not. Taken together, the impact of these issues should bring the status of writing into the orbit of policy consideration. Indeed, they are already doing so.
As every academic knows all too well, important and far-reaching changes have been occurring in higher education as a consequence of a wide range of government priorities and policies (priorities and policies which do not appear to be distinguished by the labels of left or right). These priorities and policies directly altered the structures and ethos of university management, and of course those alterations have impacted on the nature and provision of programmes; in the longer-term they are forcing change to the identity of the university as an institution. I have no intention of rehearsing these developments here, nor will I lament the effects of these changes though lamentable I do find most of them. I will, therefore, only focus on issues which relate most specifically to the status of writing.
The most momentous change for UK universities began in the late 1980s when the government gave the green light for universities to increase student numbers, which universities did with speed because there was an initial promise of increased funding. The late 1980s, then, began the move towards a mass-education university system. The current government is pursuing a policy of widening participation, the stated aim of which is to increase the number of students graduating with ‘A’ Levels going to university to 50%. Implicit in such a change “whether for good or ill” is the fact that many universities no longer maintain their previously strict entrance requirements, and many institutions, of course, have lowered their requirements considerably. Schools and departments struggling to meet recruitment quotas will rely on the clearing process to make up numbers; faced with such pressure, a cavalier attitude toward the qualifications of potential students will rule decision-making. In fact, there simply are not enough students with three A grades or two As and a B to go around. Progression figures for 2000 tell a sobering story: only 36.9% of eighteen-year olds were in full-time education, and that is the pool from which the higher education sector traditionally draws its students.1 Thus, many students who in the past would not have been considered for a place on a university degree are now being offered a place indeed, in the current market conditions such students are wooed and courted.
Filling quotas may solve a temporary budget shortfall, but students entering their first year of study with poor qualifications and subject backgrounds will in all likelihood possess weak writing skills, too. Arguably, those with higher entrance grades might be expected to improve their writing skills more readily than those with lower qualifications, but the poorer students need support if they are to attain acceptable academic standards of expression. In short, we must recognise that the general unease about poor writing skills obstructing student progress and achievement has arisen concurrently with the expansion in student numbers. Moreover, the focus on weak writing skills has sharpened now because the move towards a masseducation system has been occurring at the same time that theory has become central to teaching: theory’s need for higher levels of expression is driving concerns about poor student writing skills.
Equally relevant to the issue of the status of writing skills are policies to encourage lifelong learning and increasing adult access to higher education. These policies are part of a response to the recognition that in the new knowledge economy people must constantly improve or upgrade their communication skills. Clearly, these policies grow out of the government’s determination to meet the need for people to possess applicable skills which can be exploited in the workplace – a policy emphasis which is going to get stronger, not weaker, in the future – and these policies help to cement a general government attitude that a university education must prepare students for employment. Recent comments by Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, and Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and Minister for Women and Equality, indicate that government expects a university education to lead directly to employment. As a spokesman from the Department for Education and Skills said, defending Clarke’s remarks about the ornamental status of Medieval History departments, “The secretary of state was basically getting at the fact that universities exist to enable the British economy and society to deal with the challenges posed by the increasingly rapid process of global change.”2 Faced with the competitive pressures which are implicit in all talk of “global change”, government can argue that it has no choice but to fund universities courses which carry a “clear usefulness” label. Thus, at the same time as government has been pushing for greater student numbers and wider access, universities are expected to be able to show that their programmes provide skills which make students more employable: in other words, we have to show that we provide key skills. Presumably, unless we can show that university students are graduating with practical skills of use to business and the economy, we fail the all-important, though vague, criterion of value-for-money. Since one of the persistent and key complaints of businesses about their employees relates to their poor writing skills, if we can show that we do indeed provide this key skill, it will allow us to claim that we do in fact provide value-for-money.
The development of a mass-education system thus has serious implications for the future of the university sector. The demand that university courses provide skills which make students more employable will inevitably alter the traditional identity of the university as an institution which teaches only those capable of achieving the highest intellectual goals; it is also going to alter the identity of academic staff who typically do not see themselves as “skills” teachers. Clearly, all disciplines are going to need to nurture vocationalism in some form or another. It would seem that such nurturing would be a matter of urgency for Medieval History departments.
Yet the move toward a mass-education system need not be seen as an obstacle to maintaining high standards of learning, nor need we conclude that mass education will bring about an insidious lowering of academic standards. Instead, the development of a mass-education system should be regarded as an historic opportunity for universities to tackle a basic educational objective and a key educational: ideal to give students the power to express themselves logically, cogently, and coherently. Initially, we might have to confess that these objectives and ideals received more lip service in the past than we would like to admit, that most undergraduate students (those large cohorts of 2.1 and 2.2 students) never achieved such powers of expression. Indeed, we might need to confess that poor writing skills were the norm before the move towards a mass-education system. However, in the past, when final examinations determined degree classification, poor writing skills did not receive the same attention which they do now because essay writing now forms a larger element in degree assessment. In fact, now that the essay forms a significant element in assessment, some markers are beginning to question the conventional value of the essay as a teaching instrument. If students persistently do abysmally in their essays, the argument goes, perhaps they should not be made to write essays. Solutions to this problem such as that put forward by Richard Winter in a recent Education Guardian opinion column register the anxiety and frustration of markers forced to read poor writing, though Winter’s solution does not in fact confront the key problem for student writers: making students write shorter, less formalised pieces of work, rather than long academic essays, will not actually address the problem of fundamentally weak writing skills.3 A better solution would give students the writing skills that would enable them to undertake the tasks that we set them.
Managed correctly and “sold” to government convincingly a policy of improving students’ writing skills could help to focus and make sense of a wide range of disparate policies and practices. Widening participation and retention issues, for example, feed into calls within the university to develop effective writing skills programmes for all. When students with widening participation profiles enter the university, support for them must go beyond a pamphlet of advice handed out during induction week. Students who find their initial months at university difficult and confusing because they suffer from insecurity about their ability to succeed often need practical solutions to help them build confidence: an exhortation from a tutor to keep trying may well not be sufficient to keep them at university. The money saved through retention could help to offset the costs of a writing programme, and the university would realise two other important benefits: students would appreciate a university’s investment in them; by giving students the skills for effective written communication, universities would win government and business over to the way that they design and teach their programmes. Other benefits would undoubtedly accrue.
Thus, the time is ripe for an improvement in the status of writing, but several obvious problems need to be admitted. First, the ever-present problem of resources. Few institutions in Britain can at present afford to develop extensive writing programmes: no amount of good will can ignore the fact that current funding regimes make it unlikely that many university management teams will give a green light to a large writing programme. True, money might be found in “initiative budgets” from widening participation and retention funds, for example, or other short-term funding might be found to make it seem as if something is being done when, in reality, a bandaid is being applied. Second, even if funding is found, there is little history of such programmes at British institutions. Accordingly, there are not many teachers available who could or would do such teaching. Unlike the university sector in North America, where freshman composition courses have long been the norm, British institutions would need to develop writing programmes from scratch; a daunting prospect, to be sure, and staff would need to be found who could accomplish this task. Moreover, simply adopting the North American model would not solve the problem of poor writing skills in British universities. Indeed, for all the resources pumped into writing programmes in North America, the results are less than one would expect. As always, aim and design need to be considered carefully. Those, however, can be considered after the most important task has been accomplished: bringing writing skills to the top of the agenda.
References
1 Claire Phipps, “Back to bac?” The Guardian 15 July 2003, Education sec. : 1.
2 Will Woodward and Rebecca Smithers, “Clarke Dismisses Medieval Historians,” The Guardian 9 May 2003: 7. 13
3 Richard Winter, “Opinion,” The Guardian 10 June 2003, Education sec.: 15.
