Profiling Built Environment Departments

1
Profiling Built Environment Departments

• Professor Allan Ashworth
• Centre for Education in the Built Environment
• University of Salford

2
What makes a good university department?

• Nobel prize winners?
• Only in good universities?
• Must be research led?

3
League tables

• For soccer!
• 100 richest people in the UK
• Sunday Times 100 best companies to work for
• World university rankings
• Built Environment departments

4
UK League Tables

• The Times Good University Guide
• Guardian newspapers

5
Components

• Student GCE A Level entry qualifications
• Teaching Quality Assessments (TQA)
• Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
• Student employability
• The above are added together in a formulae to
  provide rankings.
• RICS also uses same raw data for thresholds.

6
Why profile?

• Anecdotal evidence
• Government are interested in providing better
  information
• Someone else will do it to us
• Know your competitors (benchmarking)
• Quality enhancement
• Universities need to know their own rankings

7
National measures

• Teaching quality (TQA)
• Research Assessment (RAE)
• Student satisfaction (TQI)

8
Stakeholders

• Government
• Industry and employers
• Students
• Professional bodies
• Universities

9
Profiles

• Current, relevant and reliable information
• Non-aggregation of data
• No rankings
• Age of information or data
• What is a built environment department?

10
Key characteristics

• Range of subject provision
• Size measured by staff and students
• Modes and models of attendance
• Staff-student ratios

11
Key characteristics (2)

• Staff are the single most important attribute
• Number of full-time staff
• Number of professors
• Percentage with doctorate qualifications
• Percentage with teaching qualifications
• Percentage with professional qualifications

12
Key characteristics (3)

• Teaching quality score but dated
• Research score
• Students satisfaction survey
• Professional accreditation

13
Key characteristics (4)

• Unique national measures
• Designated centres
• Research
• Teaching (e.g. CETLS)

14
Benefits

• Not a league table but a profile
• Improve characteristics (benchmarking)
• Web sites
• Accessibility
• Quality
• Current information
• Quality enhancement
• International comparisons