New College of the Humanities (NCH), legally Tertiary Education Services Ltd, is an independent, primarily undergraduate and master's degree college in London, England, UK, founded by the philosopher A. C. Grayling, who became its first Master.
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Awards & results
Awards
In 2016 two University of London academic awards were given to NCH London students, including the Sir Charles Harris award.
In 2015 New College of the Humanities won the Courses and Lecturers category at the What Uni Student Choice Awards (WUSCA) and came fourth in the category of University of the Year.
In 2015 NCH students won three of the University of London's academic awards, including the Sir Charles Harris award.
Results
In the 2017 National Student Survey, NCH achieved student satisfaction scores above Russell Group universities and London universities, beating London members of the elite Russell Group in 26 out of 27 categories.
In May 2014 it was reported that independent research that replicated the annual HEPI academic experience survey showed that the College's academic experience had exceeded the expectations of 63% of its students. This was more than twice the comparative statistic (28%) for Russell Group university students of humanities and social sciences in the HEPI 2014 annual student experience survey. The same research also showed that NCH students experienced 40% more contact time than their peers at Russell Group universities, that they completed twice as many assignments, and that they received feedback on their assignments in person more than twice as often.
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Degrees & teaching
Courses
The college offers tuition for 53 undergraduate programmes featuring major and minor options in Art History, Creative Writing, Economics, English, History, Law, Philosophy and Politics and International Relations, as well as a single honours Law LLB, and a Philosophy, Politics and Economics BA. In addition, its undergraduate students complete courses in applied ethics, critical reasoning, science literacy, and a professional development programme. The science literacy course includes as its teachers, Richard Dawkins teaching evolution, Lawrence Krauss teaching cosmology and particle physics, Steven Pinker lecturing about the brain, and Daniel C Dennett lecturing on consciousness.
Teaching
Students experience more than 13 contact hours per week, including regular one-to-one and small group tutorials. In the 2017 National Student Survey, NCH achieved student satisfaction scores above Russell Group universities and London universities, beating London members of the elite Russell Group in 26 out of 27 categories.
In May 2014 it was reported that independent research that replicated the annual HEPI academic experience survey showed that the College's academic experience had exceeded the expectations of 63% of its students. This was more than twice the comparative statistic (28%) for Russell Group university students of humanities and social sciences in the HEPI 2014 annual student experience survey. The same research also showed that NCH students experienced 40% more contact time than their peers at Russell Group universities, that they completed twice as many assignments, and that they received feedback on their assignments in person more than twice as often.
Background
History
The college models itself on liberal arts colleges in the United States, such as Amherst College. Initial reports said it aimed to offer an education to rival that of Oxford and Cambridge, but Grayling said this had been blown out of proportion by press hyperbole. He said he had the idea for the college years ago when he was admissions tutor for an Oxbridge college, and was turning down 12 good applicants for every successful one. Grayling himself completed his first degree in philosophy in the 1970s as a University of London external student. He argues that there is not enough elite university provision in the UK, leading thousands of British students to study in the United States instead. He told The Independent that the headmaster of Winchester College, an independent secondary school, had said many of his best students failed to get into Oxbridge because of government pressure to increase the number of students from state schools. Grayling has criticised English state examinations, arguing that A-levels do not measure ability adequately.
Grayling said David Willetts, the universities minister, was told of the project in 2010, and appeared enthusiastic. NCH Limited was first named Grayling Hall Limited (after AC Grayling and Peter Hall), incorporated in July 2010 and registered at an address in Peckham, south London. The name was changed to New College of the Humanities in February 2011. The warden of New College, Oxford, who asked Grayling to change the name again to prevent confusion with the Oxford college, said other names Grayling had previously considered were Bloomsbury College and Erasmus College.
From September 2012 to September 2015 it offered tuition in economics, English, history, law and philosophy and politics and international relations for undergraduate degrees with the University of London International Programme. It now runs its own degree programmes, modelled on American liberal arts college courses where students study a major and a minor subject, validated by Southampton Solent University. It continues to offer a law degree through the University of London. In addition, it requires all undergraduate students to work towards a "Diploma of New College of the Humanities" by completing courses drawn from applied ethics, critical reasoning, science literacy and LAUNCH, its professional development programme.
In 2016 NCH announced that it would be offering its first postgraduate qualification, the Historical Research and Public History MA starting in September 2016. This Masters programme has been designed by Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, Head of Faculty and Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History. It is validated by Swansea University. In 2017 the College launched three additional master's degrees, the MA Economic Policy & Communication, MSc Global Politics, and MA Philosophy.
The college uses its own building, The Registry, and some of the University of London's teaching and student facilities, including Senate House Library and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, all in the Bloomsbury district of London.
The College's foundation attracted a substantial response in the UK, and a significant amount of adverse publicity, where most higher education institutions are publicly funded. London's mayor, Boris Johnson, welcomed it as a bold experiment, while The Times argued that higher education has been a closed shop in the UK for too long. There was an angry reaction from sections of the academic community. Complaints included that NCH had copied the course descriptions of the University of London's international programmes on its website; was offering the same syllabus with a significantly higher price tag; and that the senior academics involved with the project would in fact do very little of the teaching.
Academics and Administrators within the British academic world have in recent years alluded to the College's for-profit agenda, highlight the College's high tuition fees, the corporate structure as a Limited company, and the membership of the College's board.
Funding and governance
Initial "seed capital" of £200,000 for the project was provided, according to British newspaper The Guardian, by the financier Peter Hall.
£10 million in private equity funding was subsequently raised to cover costs for two years, with the expectation that NCH would break even by the third. One third of the enterprise is owned by 14 senior academics, including Grayling, and the rest by private investors, including a couple from Switzerland and three British businessmen--Jeremy Gibbs, Matthew Batstone and Roy W. Brown. Cavendish Corporate Finance LLP were the corporate financiers hired by NCH Ltd and raised this £10 million from a range of private investors including a number of prominent individuals from the world of business and finance.
Gibbs, former chairman of Futuretalk plc, deputy chairman of Scientific Digital Imaging plc and director of Cambridge Venture Management (2000) Ltd, was registered as the CEO, while Charles Watson, chairman of the PR firm Financial Dynamics, was named as non-executive chairman.
Batstone and Brown are non-executive directors; Batstone is the former marketing chief of the Economist Group and a trustee of Bedales, an independent secondary school, and Brown is the founder of Metier Management Systems.
The 14 academic partners, also referred to as The Professoriate, were announced as:
- philosophers A. C. Grayling, Simon Blackburn and Peter Singer
- historians David Cannadine and Niall Ferguson
- economist Partha Dasgupta
- scientists Richard Dawkins (will be Professor of Evolutionary Biology), Steve Jones (was to have been Professor of Biological Sciences), Lawrence M. Krauss (will be Professor of Science), and Steven Pinker
- legal scholars Ronald Dworkin and Adrian Zuckerman
- literary critic Christopher Ricks.
Since the launch of the college, professors Vernon Bogdanor, Daniel C Dennett, Rebecca Goldstein, Roger Halson, Howard Jacobson, Simon May, Barbara McDonald, Stephen Neal, Sir Trevor Nunn and Christopher Peacocke have also lectured at the college.
A charitable trust was established, the New College of the Humanities Trust, consisting of Grayling, Gibbs, Batstone, Watson and Brown. This provides scholarships based on academic merit, and means-tested bursaries to students with sufficient academic calibre who would not be able to study at the college without further financial support.
First cohort
The first cohort of students consisted of around 60 students, primarily from independent schools; one in five of the college's offers have gone to state-school students. College staff made 130 visits to schools (21 to state schools) to attract applications. They graduated in 2015.
College structure
Facilities and fees
The college has a building called The Registry in Bedford Square where the one-to-one and small group tutorials take place. The Registry also contains rooms for most lectures. In addition, the college's students have access to the University's facilities, including Senate House Library and Student Central. It block-books rooms for its first-year students with student accommodation providers in Bloomsbury, Westminster, St Pancras and Tufnell Park. NCH has offered classes since October 2012, its annual fees are £9,250.
Reception
Grayling said he had received 900 expressions of interest from potential students and 80 job applications in the first week. Britain's former prime minister, Tony Blair, endorsed it; and London's mayor, Boris Johnson, called it the boldest experiment in higher education in the UK since the foundation in 1983 of the University of Buckingham, the UK's first private university; he wrote that it showed the way ahead for academics demoralized by government interference with admissions procedures and "scapegoated for the weaknesses of the schools." The Times argued that higher education has been a closed shop in the UK for too long, that all over the world there are excellent universities run independently of the state, and that in its conception NCH is teaching by example. The Economist wrote that there is a market for the idea because of the increasing number of qualified British students who fail to get into their university of choice, in part because of pressure on the top universities from the Office for Fair Access to increase the number of students from state schools; they added that "a 'toffs' college' of well-heeled Oxbridge near-misses is a provocative concept." The Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, one of the college's partners, said he had read the criticism of NCH with incredulity: "Anyone who cares about the humanities will be cheering Anthony Grayling."
The news triggered accusations of elitism. Literary critic Terry Eagleton called the college "odious," arguing that it was taking advantage of a crumbling university system to make money; Grayling responded that Eagleton himself teaches a few weeks a year at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, a private - though non-profit - university. Lawyer David Allen Green, writing in the New Statesman, described NCH as a "sham" and a "branding exercise with purchased celebrity endorsements and a PR-driven website." Several academics complained in a letter to The Guardian that its creation was a setback for the campaign against the current government's policy of commercializing education, and were joined by 34 of Grayling's former colleagues at Birkbeck, who questioned how much teaching the college's 14 academic partners would actually do. Terence Kealey, then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, suggested it was dangerous to have a university funded by private equity, citing the possible collapse in 2011 of Southern Cross private nursing homes.
Toby Young argued in The Daily Telegraph that the reaction was part of a left-wing campaign to retain state control over education, involving, he wrote, public sector unions, university lecturers, and the Socialist Workers Party. Simon Jenkins wrote that the country's professors, lecturers and student trade unionists were "united in arms against what they most hate and fear: academic celebrity, student fees, profit and loss, one-to-one tutorials and America."
Grayling responded to the criticism by arguing that NCH is trying to keep humanities teaching alive. He said he felt persecuted by the negative reaction: "My whole record, everything I have written, is turned on its head. Now I am a bastard capitalist. It is really upsetting. ... Education is a public good and we should be spending more on it and it shouldn't be necessary to do this, but standing on the sidelines moaning and wailing is not an option." In a 2012 interview, Grayling also responded to claims that the college was "elitist": "There is nothing wrong with being elite as long as you are not exclusive. You want your surgeon or airline pilot to have been trained at an elite institution."
A dozen protesters heckled Grayling at Foyles bookshop in London on 7 June 2011 during a debate about cuts to arts funding, one of them shouting that he had "no right to speak." A protester let off a smoke bomb, and 100 people were evacuated from the store. Later in the week police removed protesters from a British Humanist Association talk by Richard Dawkins at the Institute of Education.
In January 2012, the UK's Intellectual Property Office objected to the college name being registered as a trademark because of possible confusion with New College, Oxford.
See also
- BPP University College of Professional Studies
- Education in England
- Higher Education Act 2004
- Regent's University London
References
Further reading
- Official website
- King, Roger. "Presentation to the all-parliamentary group. Private higher education: private gain or public interest?", House of Lords, 16 June 2009.
- "The growth of private and for-profit higher education providers in the UK", Universities UK, 18 March 2010.
- "Securing a sustainable future for higher education in England" (the Browne report), Independent Review of Higher Education Funding And Student Finance, 12 October 2010.
- "Survey of private and for-profit providers of Higher Education in the UK 2009/10", Higher Education Statistics Agency, 14 April 2011.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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