The effects of the increasing participation rate on university teaching

Abstract

While ICT is rapidly changing the media used in teaching, there are more gradual and less obvious but more fundamental changes in teaching caused by the rising student participation rate. Given the same normal distribution of academic ability, increasing the percentage of the age cohort studying at university inevitably results in the corresponding decrease in the ability of the average student. We argue this decrease in average ability is the single most critical driver of change in university teaching. As increased participation changes who the average student is, in turn this changes the why, what and how of teaching. The purpose of teaching is shifted towards employment after graduation and degrees become more focused on specific rather than general abilities. What we teach has changed. Maintaining pass rates with falling average ability leads to grade inflation. With lower average ability, the pace of learning falls and the content of courses is reduced in both quantity of material and level of difficulty. Content tends to be more applied and concrete, and less theoretical and abstract. How we teach has changed. As the average ability falls, the need for teaching support increases. Learning objectives are made more explicit, and topics are broken into smaller pieces with more frequent formative assessment. These changes are difficult to quantify. We need to compare past with current teaching. But lectures and tutorials are ephemeral and most past teaching activity disappears as notes and exercises are rewritten. Even when such evidence is kept (often unintentionally) it needs to be interpreted. We present some evidence of changes in the what and how of teaching in an introductory economics as a starting point.