The numbers' game

I got copied in yesterday to an interesting puzzle that Shakeel - our Information Manager at UKCLE - had uncovered for Gary Slapper at the Open University. Recent UCAS statistics apparently indicate that just under 90% of those applying for law are getting in. So what, Gary asked, has happened, and what about that still widely held belief that law is a massively oversubscribed subject?

I don't actually know the answer, but I have no particular reason to doubt the data. The following I think is a reasonable supposition based on what I do know about the admissions system over the last 10-15 years (the older stats quoted below pretty much all come from UCAS, courtesy of the study on "Access to and Participation in Undergraduate Legal Education" (Faculty of Law Working Paper No. 2, UWE Bristol, 1996) that Vera Bermingham and I undertook for the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee in 1995.

1) The extent to which law was oversubscribed was probably always a bit mythical, reflecting the way students applied to the old UCCA/PCAS system pre-1993-4. Under that system students could apply through UCCA to six universities (I think) and then separately to about the same number of polytechnics (now post-92 universities) via PCAS. There were a lot of insurance applications across the two schemes as students tried to protect their position - especially in case they did worse than they expected. This would have inflated the admissions figures. In the last year of the old scheme UCCA and PCAS together handled 31,760 applications. In the first year of the combined UCAS scheme (for 1994 entry) UCAS handled 20,988 - that doesn't mean almost 11,000 less students applied to read law, it just means that the number of applications became a truer reflection of the real number of applicants across the system as a whole.

2) Since then we know that institutions have recruited significantly more students to LLB coursess, and that the number and range of courses has also expanded. In 1994 about 8,000 students were admitted to qualifying law degrees. It appears that, subsequently, that number has more than doubled.

3) In 1994 the overall ratio of UCAS applicants to admitted students was about 2.5:1 - itself way below the old UCAS/PCAS average which I believe was nearer to 12 or even 15:1. Interestingly, the number of applicants in 1994 and in the latest figures are strikingly similar. I suspect the figure may be relatively constant in the intervening period. If that is correct, then, logically, if the number of applicants remains constant, and the number of places continues to grow, we would reach the position we seem to have now: near parity between applicants and places.

That of course represents an interesting challenge, particularly as yet more law degrees are due to come on stream in the next year or so, eg, at York and Winchester, and British universities seem to be doing less well in the highly competitive market for international students. While the elite law schools may be protected by their status and popularity from the worst effects of these trends, and will, I am sure, continue to be oversubscribed, the lives of admissions tutors in some law schools may be about to become even more interesting. How long can you keep fishing at a nearly empty pool?

Disabling education?

Earlier today I was reading through a paper by Jenkins, Healey and Zetter on the HEA website entitled “Linking teaching and research in disciplines and departments” (published in April 2007). I was struck and somewhat depressed by the fact that none of the examples they cited were of developments in UK law schools. Of course I can’t say for sure why that was (I haven’t asked them for one thing), but when I also tried to track down examples of research-based teaching on the UKCLE website, I found remarkably little there either. Of course, the good news might be that everyone in law schools has sussed out the teaching-research nexus, and its so second nature now that nobody bothers to talk about it. But somehow I don’t think so.

Before going any further with this potential rant, I ought to clarify an earlier distinction that Alan Jenkins and Mick Healey made between research-led and research-based teaching, because I think it is fairly crucial. Research-led teaching, putting it crudely, reflects the student-as-audience paradigm of teaching, where they sit back and admire our erudition as we introduce them to our latest piece of cutting-edge research. Research-based teaching, on the other hand is a form of inquiry-based learning which treats the student as a (joint) participant in the research (and hence the learning) process. My betting is that, beyond the still fairly ubiquitous and highly variable experience of writing a final year dissertation, most law undergraduates experience at least some research-led teaching but very little genuinely research-based learning.

If that’s so, then I suggest we are missing a real opportunity and perpetuating a form of what (adapting Ivan Illych’s notion of disabling professions) I am inclined to call disabling education – an education that actively disempowers our students. It manifests itself in the attitude that we can’t or shouldn’t expect too much originality or creativity of poor little undergraduates. A variation of the same attitude seems to emerge with monotonous regularity in discussions about clinical legal education, when non-participants express doubts/shock/total horror at the idea of undergraduates actually being allowed to give legal advice to real people.

For us as academics to keep students at arms length from the experience of research seems to involve

(a) an impressive example of discrepant reasoning – speaking personally it was precisely the experience of doing a research project and being encouraged to write as an undergraduate that led me to start thinking about academia as a career, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that, or
(b) pure humbug – do we really think that the skills we have developed as researchers are so advanced and so specialised that they are wholly beyond the ken of our students?

and, from the point of view of the future of the academic profession, it is surely about as smart a survival strategy as being in the front row of the charge of the Light Brigade.

I do know that there are some examples of research-based learning happening in our law schools, and I’d love to hear from other colleagues who are doing this sort of work. I know that the people leading these courses find them engaging, motivating and exciting for themselves and their students, and that developing the research-teaching nexus has direct benefits for their own research, as well as for their students’ learning. In a recent e-mail exchange, Ben Pontin, who has been doing some very interesting research-based work with his Environmental Law module at UWE Bristol, observed “Students are brilliant at gathering 'raw material' - trawling historical archives (newpapers, official records, family histories) for snippets of information; detective work. Also, there was a geography dimension to the research, and students enjoyed designing field trips to the sites of leading nuisance actions, to identify whether any trace of what claimants were seeking to protect remains today. However, where students needed input from an academic was in interpreting the significance of empirical findings. Great at treating law as a material object (a field or stately home protected against a polluting factory or sewage works), students struggled with law's ideas!” I think that last observation makes for a particularly interesting insight and suggests a useful point around which we could reconstruct the role of the teacher in a more research-based legal education process.

All tomorrow's parties?

It's been results day for our finalists in Warwick Law School today. Lots of smiley happy people... and some rather less so. The bustle of term is coming to an end and a bit of a holiday atmosphere is starting to pervade, well amongst the students at least. We laid on celebratory drinks in the reception area, another School was doing much the same on the grass below my office window, and there was live music outside the Students Union. All in all it seems a pretty good place to be - which got me thinking about what all those happy smiley faces might be doing in three, four, five years from now; whether they'd still be doing law, and still be happy smiley faces. (I'm really not a miserable git, honest!)

Yesterday I was fielding questions in an e-mail from Zara - an A level student wondering about her degree and career options. I don't get a huge number of such e-mails (probably just as well), but I always feel a bit wary of doling out advice and opinions - not least because I think its getting increasingly hard to generalise about legal education and legal careers - and I'm never sure I've pitched it right. The big firms and chambers are great at putting out the glossy recruitment brochures (definitely happy smiley faces there) and doing the milk round to cream off the brightest and the best, and a lot of potential students are clearly happy to be seduced by the status and money. I'm not sure they get to see enough of the other side though - the long hours culture, and the pressure in those organisations, nor the changes we're seeing to high street and legal aid practice, and its potential impact on access to justice. I'm not saying it's all bad, but I do think, as jobs go, there is quite a lot about legal practice that borders on the dysfunctional - indeed sometimes seems institutionally designed to be dysfunctional (but then that's probably why I'm an academic...). When I've taught undergraduates about the legal profession and legal ethics, I've always tried to draw on research that gives the whole picture, to present the problems and challenges involved in pursuing a legal career, as well as acknowledging the plusses. I have no doubt this is sometimes seen by students as an unwelcome intrusion on their perception of reality!

Anyhow, this is what I wrote to Zara. I'd be interested to hear what anyone thinks about my advice:

Dear Zara

Thank you for your e-mail; sorry it has taken a while to respond, but as you will appreciate this is a busy time of year for us.

There isn't an easy answer to your question. The first thing is, whatever your degree, if you are thinking of entering the legal profession (particularly in a competitive, high status/high income, area of work, like corporate and commercial practice) you need a good class of degree - a minimum 2:i, plus relevant work experience and anything else you can find interesting and distinctive to put on your cv (a gap year herding lamas in Peru or whatever it may be!) that will make you stand out from the dozens of other bright and enthusiastic candidates for legal jobs. Consequently I think it is important to go with the degree subject that will interest and motivate you - simply because most people do better at studying things they like than things they don't. That said, where you go to study can make a difference, and you would also be foolish to ignore that: Oxbridge, and a few other institutions probably do give you an edge in most situations. It is debatable how far down the "league table" that edge continues, however. Moreover, the legal profession is becoming more aware of equality and diversity issues in its recruitment practices and that is starting to reduce the power of the 'old boy' (and girl) network.

As for the Graduate Diploma (GDL) [the conversion course for non-law graduates who wish to qualify as lawyers], it's swings and roundabouts. Most firms and chambers, so far as we can tell, don't in any way discriminate against the GDL. Some people say it can give you an edge on the basics - eg you will have finished studying contract only a year before you start training, for most law graduates, that knowledge will be three years old, plus you will have the breadth that studying another discipline gives you. On the other hand you don't get the same depth and range of legal knowledge from the GDL. It is more intensive and narrower than a law degree, and you may have to work harder under training to close that gap. Obviously be aware also that the GDL adds an extra year to qualifying and so adds significantly to the costs (unless you are lucky enough to get sponsorship). With university fees as well plenty of students today are entering training with debts of £25K-£30K+.

From what you say you are unsure at this stage whether to go for the Bar or the solicitors' profession, and that's not something you have to decide yet. What I would say is, don't even consider a career in the law unless you are really motivated to do it. It is a demanding career, though one that many do find fulfilling. At the top end, as everyone knows, the financial rewards are substantial, but you will be expected to earn every penny. On the other hand the future for traditional 'high street' areas of work (crime, family, etc) is rather more uncertain and the rewards much more variable. There are a lot of regulatory and market changes in the offing, some of which will potentially increase competition faced by traditional legal practices. The Bar in particular is a high risk career path these days, with about three BVC graduands currently chasing each pupillage (training place). I'm not trying to put you off, but I think you should know the risks.

I hope this is helpful. Good luck!

Higher, wider, further, deeper, oops....

So, Higher Education minister Bill Rammell is prepared to admit that, six years on, the success of government widening participation strategy has been less than spectacular. OK, I admit he didn't go that far, preferring to blame the "scatter gun" approach of Aimhigher instead, (he would wouldn't he?) but come on, a little reading between the lines is surely permissible. The news from the Higher Education Careers Service Unit that a young person is twice as likely to attend university if they have graduate parents is also less than surprising (both items reported in The Guardian Education section 12.06.07) . I draw attention to this not because I'm against widening participation (on the contrary it was one of the reasons I hung on in the polytechnic/new university sector for 20-odd years), but I do think it is a particularly intractable problem for HE institutions to deal with. The middle class 'parentocracy' still win the game for all the obvious reasons - a history of family expectation that normalises a university education, the economic and cultural capital to exploit school and university admissions systems, better access to information, etc, etc, and, if all else fails, the inclination to shout loudly to the Daily Mail whenever they become aware of any university admission policies that could possibly be conceived of as positive action, let alone discrimination.

The problem, of course, is that the solutions are (as we all - including Government - know) much harder and more expensive to achieve than slapping a target of 50% age participation on HE. Effective outreach programmes, summer schools, strategies to target talented and gifted kids, and embedding really effective advice and guidance in secondary schools and communities are massively time and resource intensive activities. Particularly in a context where resources are already scarce, and teachers are often struggling to deal with an overloaded and frequently changing curriculum. To be sure the government has targeted money on WP initiatives, but the data suggest we are still swimming against a tide of relative ignorance and indifference in many communities.

Perhaps even more critically, if widening participation strategies are going to make a material difference beyond university, schools, universities and employers also need to think very seriously about the steps they should be taking to prepare non-traditional students for the graduate workplace. One of the problems we continue to see in the legal profession is the tendency for employers to recruit, on the basis of their social and cultural capital, 'people like us'. Given the relational nature of much legal work, these shared cultural values and assumptions often 'oil the wheels' in what is an increasingly competitive marketplace, but they also act as a powerful exclusionary tool in recruitment processes. The situation is improving, slowly. But my sense is that widening participation strategies need to focus more on what can be done both to develop some of that cultural capital, and to co-opt employers into delivering a much stronger pull effect, to support the push that the education sector is already working hard to provide.