How to drop accreditation

It seems likely to me that some Universities are going to start dropping RSC accreditation of their Chemistry degrees soon. Whatever you think about whether this is good or bad, I’ve been wondering how a University might navigate this situation successfully. What actions could you take to make dropping accreditation successful in the short- mid- and long-terms?

Loosely, I have focused on student recruitment in this blog (particularly in the short-term arguments). It seems likely that a different suite of ideas would be needed to interact positively with employers, though I’m confident there would be resonances between the two.

Short-Term: telling positive stories

The timescales of teaching changes are long enough that the short term situation is likely to be a degree which is nearly accreditation-compliant but didn’t quite satisfy the criteria. Substantial changes to the degree are difficult to accomplish rapidly, so the central pragmatic action is to present the programme as positively as possible.

What story do you tell? Or do you tell a story at all? One approach would just be to not bring it up. Some people (parents) will ask at open days, sure, but for many applicants the question might simply never arise. Constructing an alternative story seems pretty easy, though. I think there are probably a few key elements to successful stories.

Principle: Failure vs Divergence

Any story needs to avoid describing a lack of accreditation as a failure, which I think is pretty easy to do in good faith if the situation is presented as a divergence.

You could fail to meet the lab hour requirement, for example, and legitimately describe this as relating to the University’s approach to acknowledging students doing paid work. You could offer students a lot of non-Chemistry opportunities out of a sincere ambition to provide a broad education and get hammered by the RSC’s expectations on coverage. Assessment might be carefully designed to reduce reliance on unseen exams, yet be viewed dimly by reference to exam-endorsing criteria.

Any accreditation visit will provide a Department with a bucketful of ideas for divergence arguments. My sense is that visitors are more disciplined than they used to be, but even stereotypical lunchtime conversations like “why isn’t [my specialism] a bigger part of the curriculum?” can be readily adapted into honest counter-narratives. “The RSC accreditors really wanted more silicon chemistry, but ultimately we felt that our focus on industrially-relevant topics was more appropriate.”

Tradition vs Progression

A specific subset of divergence arguments is that the RSC criteria represent the old way of doing things while the local degree has its eyes on the horizon. “The RSC demand very traditional features in a degree, and we don’t think that serves our students well. We’ve talked a lot with the companies who employ our graduates, and they really value the modern analytical skills we emphasise here.”

One of the ugly dimensions here is that it is narratively useful for a story to have a villain. The obvious villain for this particular story is the RSC.

Accreditation as low-value

Lurking at the back of all of this is the objectively low value of accreditation and chartership in professional circles. Unlike some other professions, being chartered is not a requirement to be a professional chemist (how many professors have CChem?). Doing an accredited degree isn’t even sufficient for the CChem requirements. Indeed it is completely possible to gain CChem without doing an accredited degree, or even a Chemistry degree.

It seems probable that this argument about the value of accreditation would need to be tailored to the institutional context quite carefully. A Russell Group University saying accreditation has low value is probably something they could state without elaboration. A less prestigious institution would likely have to explain the detail of accreditation, which exposes them to more risk of sounding defensive.

Mid-Term: competitive advantage

Longer-term, breaking out of accreditation opens up some interesting options which are simply not possible under an accredited regime. There is substantial scope for Departments to gain competitive advantage if they are prepared to commit to pursuing these opportunities, and there are likely to be first-mover advantages for Departments which do this early.

Non-Chemistry modules

The simplest edit is likely to just offer more modules from non-Chemistry subjects. Economically, offering these in place of (some) lab work might be attractive. Pedagogically, offering late-stage modules (e.g. in third year) allows for minimal disruption of subsequent learning as well as maximum scope for students to follow their matured scientific interests. Collegially, building stronger links with other subjects – perhaps in the institutional context of a faculty or school – opens up new avenues of conversation (“Do you think a third year chemist could take a second year genetics module?” “Oh, maybe. How much statistics have they done?”).

Student lifestyles

Doing an accredited degree while holding down a job is incredibly difficult, yet it is also something demanded of a lot of students by the economics of modern Britain. A University which proudly offers lower contact hours in a considered way will likely be distinctive in the market, particularly if they are recruiting student demographics who need to work.

Chemistry “With”

Titles of programmes are controlled quite tightly under accreditation, with “Chemistry with X” degrees having strict caps on the amount of the minor subject represented in the curriculum. Abandoning these strictures allows for more degrees of freedom when designing high-quality degrees. At the same time, “with” degrees are increasingly being discontinued by Universities looking to timetable more efficiently.

Agility/administration

I am suspicious of agility being held up as an unqualified good in organisational change, but it is certainly true that abandoning accreditation would also remove the need to consult/convince one stakeholder in developing/changing teaching. It would also remove the massive workload associated with applying for accreditation/renewal. This is administratively attractive.

Long-term: what is a Chemistry degree?

It seems likely to me that if accreditation had been absent in the last few decades then Chemistry degrees would have diversified much more substantially. The extraordinary range of Biology degrees in the current system is something not mirrored in Chemistry, for example, which is consistent with much weaker PSRB pressures in Biology. This monoculture can probably be seen as a success of RSC accreditation: most degrees conform to a fairly consistent model, as intended.

But something valuable is lost when degrees are so similar. The ossification of the discipline is encouraged by conformity; we are being robbed of both radical and routine reimaginings of our subject. This probably doesn’t matter on short timescales, but by the time you’ve had half a century of arrested curricular innovation there is a substantial risk that the world changes in ways which leave us behind. Yes, of course there is a place in the curriculum for the great accomplishments of traditional chemists. But gosh there is every chance to do degrees differently, too.

Conclusion

Which is probably the beating heart of the problems many Universities are experiencing with Chemistry degrees in the first place: if the RSC’s rules don’t bend, accreditation will simply break. No-one feels glee at this happening, but those Universities which need to bend beyond the RSC’s tolerance can chart a sincerely exciting course if they’re prepared to lean into it. They will have a chance to build their students’ understanding of Chemistry in ways which have been completely foreclosed to accredited degrees for decades. It would be extremely plausible to make a real success of this.