enterprise in higher education: issues of evaluation

@ Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1995, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA Higher Education Quarterly 0951-5224 Volume 49 No. 2, April 1995

Enterprise in Higher Education: Issues of Evaluation Lewis Elton, Employment Department, Moorfoot, Sheftield

Abstract

The article describes the many ways in which the Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative (EHE) has been evaluated and the extent to which dgferent stakeholders are likely to be satisfud with the Initiative. I t also comments on some of the negative criticisms made of the Initiative and suggests that these are largely due to misunderstandings of what the Ini&ative had initially set out to achieve. In particular it concludes that EHE cannot be convicted of having tried to pervert academic values to those of the market place.

Introduction

The Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative (EHE) (Wright 1992) was set up as a curriculum development programme, intended to make a significant contribution to the academic life of institutions. Evaluation was an important aspect from the start; to such an extent that it has been dubbed by some of its long suffering participants the most evaluated programme ever. However, evaluation was essential: as a means of improvement (formative) as well as to provide accountability (summative). It is well known that these two different purposes of evaluation rarely live happily together and one of the aims of this article is to explore the extent to which both purposes could be and were achieved, and the processes used to achieve them.

The number of stakeholders in EHE has from the start been unusually large and unusually varied. They include:

0 Government departments: Employment, Treasury, Education and

0 Higher Education Institutions: their academic staff, careers services,

0 Employers: those who participated in EHE, those who did not and

possibly others;

staff development units and students, as well as corporately;

employers' organisations.

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There are others, for example society, that could arguably be included and none has wholly the same interests.

In line with the diversity of stakeholders, there is a diversity of evaluation aims and objectives. There were short, medium and long term outcomes to be evaluated; expected outcomes against pre-specified objectives or more general aims, and unexpected outcomes without the guidelines that objectives could provide.

The present article will assess how far the evaluations that have taken place have or should have satisfied different stake holders, but it wili also argue that the most important of the outcomes are both long term and unexpected, and that this poses problems to the whole evaluation process. The results of the evaluations are given in the main in the sections on ‘Institutional change’ and ‘Evidence for the success of EHE’.

Some of the issues that result from the above considerations have been addressed in articles in issue 48(3) (1994) of Higher Education Quarterly and in issue 18(3) (1993) of Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, and this article will refer to them. In the former journal, Coldstream, Prickett, and Tasker and Packham consider the ethics of the relationship between academia and industry quite generally, but also with specific reference to EHE, and this article will concentrate on this second aspect. In the latter journal, Harris is concerned with fundamental issues, both Sommerlad and Fazey with formative evaluation and Whittaker with the special problems of institutional consortia; McDowell studies a case where outcomes legitimately differed from what might have been expected, and Somervell with outcomes that legitimately went well beyond those initially expected. The Editorial draws attention to an earlier contribution to the subject, a number of articles in the British Journal of Education and Work 4(1) (1990). There Caird gave a most useful analysis of the different meanings attached to the word ‘Enterprise’ in EHE and similar initiatives, while Coffield made a number of predictions concerning EHE - which at that time was of course only just starting. Curran and Blackburn, also referred to in the Editorial, are at most marginally relevant, as they deal with school students and equate enterprise with entrepreneurship.

origins

Although the ideas of the Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative (EHE) can be traced as far back as the Robbins Report, the origins of the Initiative itself go back to 1984, when a joint report by the National Advisory Board and the University Grants Committee (1984) - the two bodies that at that time were responsible for financing higher education on

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148 Higher Education Quarterly

the two sides of the binary line - said the following concerning the aims of higher education:

The abilities most valued in industrial, commercial and professional life, as well as in public and social administration, are the transferable intellectual and personal skills. These include the ability to analyse complex issues, to identdy the core of a problem, and the means of solving it, to synthesise and integrate disparate elements, to clarify values, to make effective use of numerical and other information, and above all to communicate effectively and clearly, both orally and in writing. A higher education system which provides its students with these things is serving society well.

‘These things’ amounted to what y e now called personal or life skills, which is preferable to calling them ‘transferable’ skills, since transfer is something that often is a hope rather than an achievement.

The statement was taken up by the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) through the farsightedness of Sir Geoffrey Holland, who headed MSC at the time, and this in due course led to the EHE Initiative. However, the concept which led to the initiative came from the academic community, and it is still necessary at times to remind some of the more critical academics of this. The word ‘Enterprise’ was a particularly difficult one to use with such critics, however often it was stressed that for the Employment Department (ED)’ ‘enterprising’ was different from ‘entrepreneurial’:

The enterprising person is resourceful, adaptable, creative, innovative and dynamic. He or she may also be entrepreneurial. However, the qualities of enterprise are as useful in the employee as in the employer, and equally important in the public, private and voluntary sectors.

(Training Agency 1990, p. 4)

Within this broad defmition, Higher Education Institutions have defined and redefined ‘Enterprise’, but at no time have they equated it to narrow entrepreneurism [ 13.

In view of the misunderstandings that have arisen about the objectives of EHE, it is worth reprinting them in full, as set out in the guidelines to applicants for EHE funds (MSC 1987):

1. The main objectives institutions and organisations are asked to set for their individual enterprise programmes are straightforward, but critically important and challenging. They are that:

‘Because of the frequent changes of the title of the body responsible for EHE, we shall refer throughout to the parent body, the Employment Department.

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a) every person seeking a higher education qualification should be able to develop competencies and aptitudes relevant to enterprise.

b) these competencies and aptitudes should be acquired at least in part through project based work designed to be undertaken in a real economic setting and they should be jointly assessed by employers and the higher education institutions.

2. It is envisaged that enterprise programmes that met these objectives will involve more than simply offering optional modules of business studies to students across the faculties of an institution. There should be an attempt to integrate the proposed new programme with the education provision already offered to the students concerned, and accordingly institutions will have wide discretion in working out:

a) The changeshpplements to the learning experiences which will be necessary for students of differing disciplines and modes;

b) the means to be adopted in enriching and expanding the learning experience, and the combination of activities which might best produce the desired results;

c) the pace, pattern and management of the changes (subject to what is said below).

3. Institutions will also need to develop staff competencies to deal with the major challenges that these objectives inevitably pose.

These guidelines led to the three major features of the EHE Initiative,

a The facilitation of the NABAJGC aims must be addressed explicitly in the curriculum. This should, as far as possible, be done within the teaching of the discipline studied, and not in some way separately from it.

a The student curriculum must relate to the world of work and must involve employers and employment.

0 An institution must ensure that all its students on undergraduate and postgraduate courses are affected by the Initiative.

Institutions of Higher Educations (HEIs) that wished to take part in the EHE Initiative had in the first place to submit a proposal as to how they envisaged that they would achieve the objectives within the guidelines laid down. If they were successful, they were awarded on average one million pounds over five years, with an annual review at the end of each year. In the event, more than sixty HEIs were successful over the following four years. They included the majority of the old universities, nearly all the

which have remained unchanged over the years:

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new universities (formerly polytechnics) and a number of Colleges of Higher Education.

While academics in EHE HEIs broadly speaking took these objectives and their interpretation on board, this was far less so for employers who in particular were extremely reluctant to get involved in student assessment. Also, the invitation for ‘proposals from employers acting in conjunction with one or more higher education institutions’ (MSC 1987, paragraph 9) was never taken up.

Evaluations

There have been three full scale evaluations of EHE so far, by the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations (1991) after one year, by the National Foundation for Educational Research (1991) after two years and by Segal Quince Wicksteed (1994), referred to in what follows as SQW, after five years, when the first round institutions had completed their contract. The first of these was largely formative and qualitative, the second largely summative and quantitative, and the third largely summative, but both quantitative and qualitative. The Tavistock Institute was also responsible for introducing a so-called ‘local evaluation’ programme, in which each institution took on the responsibility for the formative evaluation of its own programme (Sommerlad 1993). Lastly, there was a mid-term evaluation by Coopers and Lybrand (1993) of the independent but very similar programme in Northern Ireland, which was essentially formative and both quantitative and qualitative.

But that was not all. The whole Initiative had been set up in a way that for a Government funded programme was most unusual. Contracts between ED and an HEI, once signed, where regularly monitored by a team consisting of one civil servant, known originally as a contract manager but later very significantly as a development manager (DM), and a consultant from the higher education sector who acted as an adviser (HEA). While overall contracts were for five years, each was reviewed, as has already been stated, annually and its objectives renegotiated.

These annual reviews, which included performance indicators and hence quantitative data, constituted a further means of evaluation and they provided the link between formative and summative forms of evaluation mentioned earlier. Although they were formally summative, the continual dialogue both at and between annual reviews in general led to a mutual understanding that in practice made them largely formative. The ultimate sanction of non-renewal of contract was always there and prevented inappropriate cosiness, but it had to be invoked in only the rarest of

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circumstances. In all its features, this form of evaluation is close to what commonly occurs in the teaching and learning process between teachers and students, and this very constructive model of evaluation has in practice proved far more effective in ensuring quality maintenance and enhancement than the more rigid and commercially derived models employed more commonly in connection with governmental funding. Short of a meta-evaluation, this statement may have to some extent to be taken on trust, but the continuing good relationship between ED and HEIs and the success of EHE, as perceived now by ED, academia, employers and - significantly - students, the evidence for which will be discussed below, supports the statement made here.

The three major evaluations were primarily concerned with the extent to which the declared objectives of the Initiative as a whole were being achieved. Here the short termism inevitably associated with treasury concerns dictated that even as little as two years into the Initiative the NFER evaluation was expected to investigate tangible interim outcomes. By then it had become clear, largely through the interaction between HEIs on the one hand and DMs and HEAs on the other, that HEIs followed a very clear development path, from staff development via curriculum development to student learning and graduation, a process that could hardly take less than five years for the majority of students, although some effect on, say, employability might be observable after three. In the mean time, evaluation strategies concentrated on interim outcomes, largely staff development, curriculum development, employer participation and student participation.

It soon became apparent that the effect of staff development extended far beyond helping staff to cope with the demands of changed curricula; staff development became itself an agent of change, first at the level of the individual academic and then at institutional and even national level. Since a substantial part of such change concerns attitudes - and those who wish to change attitudes do not normally reveal this in advance - one would hardly expect attitudinal change to have been one of the declared objectives of the Initiative. However, it can be said with considerable certainty that such change was not even implicit in the original EHE objectives (MSC 1987) and that even within the walls of the headquarters at Moorfoot in Sheffeld it was not in fact considered to be part of what EHE was trying to achieve. It came as much of a surprise to people there as to those in HEIs; when it happened, it was a wholly unexpected outcome, aided undoubtedly by pressures for quality assurance, which added to the timeliness of the EHE programme. It also proved a particularly difficult outcome to evaluate, unlike some other unexpected

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outcomes, such as for instance the effect of EHE on part-time students (McDowell 1993) or on student assessment (Somervell 1993).

The most common reason why attitudinal change is difficult to evaluate, namely that it is difficult to detect it unequivocally, was not in fact too serious a problem, because attitudinal changes soon led to changes of practice. However, the way and extent that attitudinal change affected practice varied enormously and it was much easier to detect an on-going process than a resulting product. No doubt, given enough time, products - changed curricula, assessment schemes, an increased importance given to teaching - will become generally visible, but it is certainly not possible to see this in a general way at present, although there are enough instances to make one believe that these changes will become general. There is therefore a real difficulty here in the time scale of the evaluation. Even more seriously, those unexpected changes that are potentially deleterious, such as for instance the effect of methodologically unsound quality assessment on EHE practice, could establish themselves irreversibly long before they reach the stage where they could be unequivocally evaluated.

All this indicates strongly that a naive form of evaluation, by which outcomes are evaluated in terms of declared objectives, could be worse than useless; it could cause serious harm. And yet, it is that kind of evaluation that is likely to be expected by those who hold the purse strings. There is nevertheless a way forward,

Institutional change

Unfortunately, most worthwhile educational objectives, and particularly those dependent on institutional change, take so long to achieve that in practice evaluations tend to be of intermediate objectives which rarely capture the complete effects of the change. However, as has already been indicated in terms of the progression from staff development to student graduation, these intermediate objectives must be such that they make the achievement of later objectives probable, ie it must be possible to extrapolate from the immediate to the intended final objectives. Most people do this regularly, using common sense, and the extrapolation from staff development to student graduation may be considered little more than that, were it not for the fact that it had not been built into the EHE Initiative from the start. The realisation resulted very rapidly, once HEAs were involved, ie it came out of expert knowledge, which is another way to predict the future. But best of all is when present and future can be linked through a theory that has proved its worth.

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At the beginning of the EHE Initiative, there was no shortage of people who predicted its failure in one way or another, largely on the basis of apparently expert knowledge. A good example is that of Coffield (1990) whose predictions date from near the beginning of EHE. In a mixture of prophecy and innuendo, he wrote:

The si&icance of EHE is that the Training Agency has been able to buy its way into the curriculum and pedagogy of higher education by using the same technique that the MSC employed with TVEI, namely, dangling large sums of money in front of schools which had been starved of resources. As Ian Jamieson (1989, p. 73) writes, institutions of higher education have been falling over each other to ensnare themselves upon the golden hook. It remains to be seen whether the participating institutions seize the opportunity to develop creative local programmes and abandon the deadening jargon of the Training Agency. It may, however, transpire that the institutions simply use the money provided by the Training Agency for developments which were already planned but shelved for lack of funds.

Taking the prophecy at its face value, we can compare it with the conclusions reached by SQW (ch. 7) which can be summarised as follows:

1. The least surprising thing is that we encountered no examples of full additionality where the HE1 would not have gone ahead with any of the funded enterprise activities in the absence of Ed funding. EHE objectives coincided with many HEI’s general strategies and most acknowledged that EHE activities would have been undertaken in the absence of funding. However, the Initiative did generate activity in bringing enterprise activities forward in time, led to a substantially greater scale of activity and enhanced quality as a result of a number of features of the Initiative: dedicated staff developed considerable expertise; external members brought a valued perspective; ED through its DMs and HEAs kept close and continuing contact which was felt by some HEIs to have materially enhanced their programmes. 2. Large numbers of students have participated in enterprise activities and many of these are considered to contribute to generating graduate skills directly in line with EHE objectives. EHE has also extended exposure to enterprise into subject areas with little or no traditions in this area. 3. However the more important impacts of EHE relate to the ways in which it has contributed to underlying change in HE. It has raised the profie and legitimised the concept and practice of enterprise education; it has created a pool of expertise; employer links with HEIs have been strengthened; it has raised the profde of staff development; and it has

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promoted the establishment of channels for student influence over the teaching and learning agenda. 4. Finally, steering groups with employer representation, the establishment of channels for student influence and the close contacts between HEIs and ED all have stimulated a new dialogue between academics, students, employers and ED, which has grown to include also the Funding and Quality Councils, as well as the Department for Education.

Comparing these findings with Coffield’s prediction, it is clear that he was not wholly wrong in predicting (l), although the word ‘simply’ in his prediction indicates that he was far from right, and that he wholly failed to predict any of the successes in (2), (3) or (4).

Turning to what I have labelled as ‘innuendo’, phrases like ‘dangling large sums of money’, ‘falling over each other to ensnare themselves upon the golden hook’ (quoted from Jamieson) and ‘deadening jargon of the Training Agency’ may indicate that Coffield was not wholly unprejudiced when making his prediction. Furthermore, each of these quotes can be related to subsequent findings, so that they in fact constitute further predictions:

‘dangling large sums of money’: Large is a relative term and in comparison with the total spend of an HE1 or even with the total free money that was at its disposal, the sums of &200,000 p.a. for five years were small. They were, however, large and quite deliberately so for the area of curriculum development, which in many HEIs had never had free money allocated to it before. This resulted not only in the allocation of funds to a new and good purpose, but in giving that purpose greatly increased standing.

‘falling over each other to msnare themselves upon the golden hook’: This is factually incorrect. Although ED was never short of applications for EHE money, those that could be labelled grade A rarely exceeded the resources available. As for ‘ensnaring themselves’, I know of no recorded instances where HEIs complained that the EHE programme interfered with an institution’s legitimate academic freedom. (This may be contrasted to HEIS’ reactions to the way that Funding Councils operate in allocating resources.)

‘deadening jargon of the Training Agency’: Each academic discipline has its technical language, without which the discipline cannot be discussed

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and developed, and it is now generally accepted that EHE led to academics learning that language and using it appropriately, so that they were ready to use it both in support and in criticism of the demands of quality, which hit them later.

The analysis of Coffield’s predictions calls into question the earlier suggestion that they may have been based on expert knowledge. The expertise that academics traditionally possess relates to their discipline, but it does not extend to aspects surrounding that discipline, such as the pedagogy of teaching or the understanding of processes of change in a rapidly changing situation. Coffield’s absence of relevant pedagogical knowledge is shown in his dismissive ‘deadening jargon’ phrase; his lack of understanding of change processes in the ‘dangling large sums of money’ phrase. He cannot be accepted as an expert in the areas in which he is making predictions and it is not therefore surprising that, with one minor exception, he got them wrong, as did many others who at the beginning of EHE made similar predictions.

The number of people who were expert in either of the relevant fields of expertise was small, but it was not zero. People in ED knew enough about change theory, although some of it perhaps only intuitively, to know that placing small sums strategically can have an effect out of all proportion to the size of the sums, and they also knew that it is better to go with the grain than against it when trying to create potentially unpopular change.

This finally takes us to the question of underlying theory, for the prescription of going with the grain comes out of the best established of all the current theories of change, that of Lewin (1952). To go with rather than against the grain at one level is bhdingly obvious common sense, but to apply it in circumstances where nearly all the grain goes in the opposite direction requires a firm conviction that a very small carrot is usually much more effective than the biggest of sticks. This is neither blindingly obvious nor is it commonly practised, but it does follow from Lewin’s theory.

A prediction, based on Lewin’s theory, concerning an EHE like programme (Elton 1981) was in fact made and is worth quoting, even more because it was made several years before EHE was thought of:

In most universities there are groups of academics who do not wish to be confined within traditional boundaries, who want to develop broader curricula and appropriate teaching methods. Such academics do not need to be ‘unfrozen’; what they need is for the forces which oppose them to be reduced. To achieve this, let government and industry provide the meagre resources needed by such groups and protect them by guaranteeing their continued

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existence for some period, even if at first they do not greatly succeed, which is likely. Put at its lowest, this will enable the traditionalist majority to isolate the troublesome innovators where they can do least harm. At the institutional level, there may even be some gain in kudos . . . This will make the universities feel good. Let there also be a clear statement that none of the resources provided for innovations will be at the expense of those for the more traditional functions. This will make the universities feel safe. Overall, the proposed scheme should therefore reduce the forces opposing change.

Once the universities are reassured, staff within them who wish to innovate will also feel safer. To make them feel better, two things are required. The first is a change in the traditional reward structure, which has been frequently advocated and is indeed, I believe, slowly coming about. The second is a recognition of their communality of purpose, for instance through the establishment of academically respected learned societies. Both these proposals will provide small supporting forces, when the initial motivational forces begin to slacken off.

Introduced like this, innovations can prove their value. They may then take root, become more familiar and eventually appear less threatening. Who knows, but that traditionalists may see some good in them then and in due course take them over. At that point the innovators become traditionalists and the cycle starts again.

This is mentioned not so much for the uncanny accuracy of the prophecy, but for the fact that it followed strictly from Lewin’s two part theory, his theory of change and his force field a n a l y k At that time the two parts were considered as quite separate, although complementary; it was only later that they were brought together on the basis of Catastrophe Theory (Cryer and Elton 1990).

Evidence for the success of EHE

If we now turn to the evidence for the success of EHE, we have to distinguish between whether objectives were pre-specified or not. We also have to consider the question of possibly tacit objectives.

The evaluation by SQW is particularly valuable in connection with the achievement of pre-specified objectives, as has already been outlined. It demonstrates clearly that EHE was achieving its curricular objectives, but was somewhat less successful, when it came to the involvement of employers. This came as no surprise to those who understood Lewin’s theory, for of all the players in the EHE game they were the only ones for whom there was a complete absence of stick. In fact, there was not much carrot either, since after the fmt year the decline in the economy stopped the one carrot, graduate employment. The strategy used was one of persuasion, the so called ‘hearts and minds’ approach, which is notoriously

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ineffective. In fact, it is only quite recently that the Confederation of British Industry (1994, paragraph 44) has expressed its reaction to EHE:

The EHE Initiative has promoted many of the outcomes sought by employers and is strongly supported by the CBI. EHE has contributed to the integration of core skills in an increasing number of courses and should become embedded in the provision offered by all institutions.

SQW also picked up some of the outcomes that had at best been tacit in the original objectives, such as the active influence of students on the curriculum, and many evaluative insights of this kind can be obtained also from EHE publications by insiders, who tried to be honest and dispassionate, eg the collection by Hale and Pope (1994) and the account of the work of the ‘First Eleven’ (Sinclair 1994). Both SQW and the ‘First Eleven’ also refer to the impact of EHE on institutional change, but not surprisingly that is an outcome that they fmd difficult to pin down. The most reliable evidence for it is probably in the reports by the Division of Quality Audit (HEQC, 1994, ch 5, Section 26) on their visitations to HEIs. Supporting evidence comes from statements by some of the most senior decision makers in higher education. The Vice-chancellor of the Open University referred to EHE in an SRHE seminar last year as ‘the great unsung success of higher education’, a remark repeated by the Chief Executive of Higher Education Funding Council for England (Davies 1993), and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Nottingham said at a recent conference of the Higher Education Quality Council (Campbell 1994) that

EHE has been a wonderful success; it is marvellous for the whole institution; it provides beneficial experience for both staff and students; it has swung round higher education to an understanding that knowledge acquisition without skills development is not enough.

Critics of EHE Critics of EHE have been of two kinds. Some have criticised the Initiative for falling short of its objectives and most of those committed to EHE would readily accept that. One can always do better. But others have criticised EHE for achieving objectives, which the critics considered highly undesirable, that it never intended to achieve and indeed did not achieve. The central issue here is that of the perversion of academia through values appropriate to the world of commerce. In spite of the very clear analysis of the two different interpretations of ‘enterprise’, competency and entrepreneurism, by Caird (1990) and all the evidence that EHE

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had gone for the ‘competency’ defintion, Prickett (1994) recently again claimed that ‘two forms of justification can be found for Enterprise in Higher Education: the ideology of the market place and individual self- development’.

It is not easy to follow Prickett’s argument, but it would appear that he claims, on the one hand that as regards self-development, this arose through universities hijacking EHE to a good but never intended purpose, and that on the other, as regards the market place ideology, they have succumbed to EHE. It may indeed be true that in the recent past universities have been excessively influenced by the ideology of the market place, but there is not a shred of evidence that this has anything to do with EHE. It cannot be repeated too often that from the start, EHE has refused to include any programmes that could be characterised purely as ‘entrepreneurism’ within the Initiative, and that this was so in spite of a number of universities putting forward such proposals. Furthermore, it has at all times been even handed between employers, whether from the private, public or voluntary sectors. The aim has been to make graduates more employable whatever they do and for that reason EHE has been concerned with the development of students’ life and work skills. Only those academics who consider that a university has no responsibility to its students in relation to their life as graduates could object to that. Had EHE really pursued narrow entrepreneurism or tried to convert universities to a market ideology, one might expect that to be reflected in approving comments from employers in general and the CBI in particular. There have been none.

Another fierce and similar criticism comes from Tasker and Packham (1994), who again suggest that universities managed to pervert the EHE intentions, while ‘accepting the Training Agency’s shilling’. They also state - and few would disagree with them there - that industrial and academic values are incommensurable. While this is implicitly accepted by Coldstream (1994), he nevertheless succeeds in arguing convincingly for the establishment of a partnership of universities and employers. After all, they exist in the same world and students, if not staff, have to make the transiuon from academia to the world of work. As a very traditional academic, 1 wholly subscribe to the primacy of intellectual values to the work of academia, but do we not perhaps sometimes undervalue the needs of students who sojourn in the hallowed groves but briefly? What Tasker and Packham fail to appreciate is that one of the purposes of higher education is to develop in students the ability to make their own ethical judgments, ready to face the world of work, not to indoctrinate them in the ethic of academia. And that is what EHE helps them to do, perhaps

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only a little, with its stress on self-assessment and on learning to learn. As Hamlin (1994) has recently put it,

the emphasis on making undergraduates immediately useful to employers, and hence justifying a particular form of teaching and curriculum, ignores the central purpose of higher education, which must be the development of one’s ability to learn.

Tasker and Packham base their case against EHE on what they claim were its intentions. Unfortunately an important part of their argument (p. 187) is based on a number of quotes from the Training Agency (1989, 1990), which are taken out of context and even selectively quoted to such an extent that they convey a wholly misleading impression.

How satisfied can the stakeholders be with the outcomes of EHE?

And so fmally, how satisfied can the various stakeholders be with the outcomes of EHE? The Treasury never speaks, but it has supported - on a small scale - some activities that have grown out of EHE. The Employment Department is proud of its achievement, the Education Department has been supportive and endorsement from other departments has recently been added (Cm 2563,1994). The Royal Society (1993, p. 25) has given it a very positive endorsement and EHE is broadly popular with the university constituency, although it would be a sad day when this became universal. However there is no likelihood of that as long as there is free speech and free thought in academia. Employers have expressed themselves very favourably concerning the main feature of EHE, the facilitation of students’ life and work skills, and they do not seem to have been perturbed by EHE not doing what it never intended to do, ie to push entrepreneurism. Their costed contributions to EHE now exceed those of ED. Nevertheless, the building up of university-employer partnerships remains problematic (Donnelly 1994).

EHE has been a success. Which is not to say that it could not have done better and may yet do so.

Note 1. The recent analysis by G. Darkes and M. Silvester (CapabiZify, 1, pp. 24-32) fully

confiis this claim.

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