What was the Perceived Need?

139

7.6.1

Competition amongst Education Providers

Teacher 2 felt that competition played a bigger part today than it did several years ago.

T2: I think we were maybe perhaps too complacent about numbers for

many years and now we have to be more competitive or ruthless yes specially now with private colleges setting up.

Principal 1 however felt that competition was vital for survival especially in the current climate where many of the courses developed within the further education sector and are being copied and delivered in other FE colleges and third level institutions. However this has nothing to do with the development of HE in FE.

P1: There’s no question that other institutions have taken our courses for

example Music Production as they call it, sure it wasn’t anywhere else until we ran it for quite some time.

Deputy Principal 1 felt it was a certain amount of cloning from the other colleges.

DP1: There wasn’t any competition then we went through the phase of I suppose cloning. In my view a lot of the colleges saw what we were doing and copied it.

So it appears competition wasn’t really a driver of the development of higher education in further education and only became an issue firstly when other colleges within the scheme copied leaders of new programme development and secondly when HEI’s also began to develop and copy programmes which originated in the FE sector.

7.6.2

Gap in the Market for New HE Courses

Management in the CDVEC believed in some instances the need came from industry but that in another circumstances it may have created industries.

VEC1: Industry wouldn’t have driven for instance radio programming or animation for instance because there wasn’t an industry. There wasn’t an animation industry.

Principal 7 talked about how they evolved to meet a market niche and Principal 6 believed that industry had a major contribution in terms of their development.

P7: I suppose they did evolve to fit a market and the niche that was there

140

P6: We had the likes of Cadburys and all of those factories around there.

They used to come up in those early days and sit with us on various committees and things like that and look at whatever.

7.6.3

New HE Courses Evolved to Meet Student Needs

This ubiquitous category became apparent during the analysis of the interviews. It became apparent the need to develop these programmes was somewhat universal. A number of teachers remarked about how the need evolved through their interaction with students.

T1: The students got involved in their own learning. I was learning from

them I would start something, they would see it and moved further and I would see that they had done with it and I would say God let’s go and do this.

T2: It came up in surveys. A lot of them expressed an interest in staying here. Is there nothing we can do here? Can we not stay in the college and continue our study? So really it came from surveys of students and it came from staff frustration at losing good quality students who weren’t getting a good option route out of here.

This sentiment was echoed by a number of principals.

P4: The certification was invented to match the need rather than the other

way around.

P6: Very often you start by having a group of students and you’d say

they’re really doing great and it would be fabulous if they could pursue, where are they going to find work now? They are not the finished article yet we need them to go further.

7.6.4

Need for Certification

There was also an apparent need to get certification for the courses being delivered. CDVEC management felt that certification was a central need.

VEC1: They gave certification to activity where there was no appropriate certification available because certification is what has currency in industry. We were a long time when we didn’t have any kind of certification and then people moved out to the BTEC certification and alternative higher education and that was very good and that also brought rigour to the sector.

P4: Certification was invented to match the need rather than the other way around.

141

Principal 5 said there was no certification only that which came through the CDU and that they were looking for equivalents in the UK.

P5: There was no certification. The VEC ran our own through the CDU so

we started looking around... The basic response was at HND. So we went on trips to England and we got advice.

Teacher 1 talked about how certification was very important for the students and how she was involved in working on that. She also remarks on how this had to be paid for. This was a new departure and the beginning of the relationship with BTEC Edexcel in the United Kingdom.

T1: You need certification. There is no point in doing something unless you

have a piece of paper, that’s where we come to show that you’ve done it.

7.7 Has He in FE been Successful?

The general perception is that higher education in further education has been quite successful. The main reasons for this success centres mainly on the value afforded the students and the uniqueness of the programmes being delivered. The map below shows the links between the central theme of ‘How Successful-HE in FE’ with the codes are depicted as spurs.