It's TEF time in universities and colleges. This is when there are either whoops 'n' hollas of joy (relief more like) or the traditional wailings 'n' gnashings when an institution had been utterly misjudged and hence had its reputation traduced.
Southampton is one such, and its VC was given the run of the THE to express outrage 'n' disgust at the outcome (a bronze medal). He described the TEF as “fundamentally flawed” with “no value or credibility”, adding “There is no logic in our result at all [and] the benchmarking is fundamentally flawed”. He added that the “concept of gold, silver and bronze was absolutely meaningless” for students seeking educational excellence, while the TEF’s name was misleading as its metrics were not a robust measures of teaching quality. Others who did badly complained as well, as did the National Union of Students which called the TEF
“another meaningless university ranking system…[which] fail[s] to capture anything about teaching quality”.
Well, whilst, all this outrage invites something of a Mandy Rice Davies response, there is clearly a contrived quality to the TEF, and nobody (as far as I'm aware) was ever observed actually teaching. Understandably, there are appeals in process. Happily, I am TEF-free, being neither required to contribute to it, nor to take much notice of it – actually, any notice of it al all, which renders this post rather gratuitous and voyeuristic. I'll just add, for what little it's worth, that I rather agree with the NUS.
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