THOUSANDS of new students will start their university courses in the North-East in a few weeks’ time.

Most of them will be happy with the standard of teaching, but surveys suggest that a minority will be less than thrilled at what is on offer.

With tuition fees kicking in for the first time – costing most students about £9,000 a year – this will simply not do, according to education expert Sue Robson.

For the past few years Sue, who heads the School of Education at Newcastle University, has been banging the drum for better standards of teaching at our universities.

She argues that there are still too many academics who regard research as the be all and end all of university life and put teaching in a poor second place.

“This idea of raising the parity of esteem of teaching in universities has been my soap box subject for the last few years,” she says.

“It is a difficult time for students and fees have gone up. This means that the quality of the student experience is even more important.

“It is not enough any more to be just a really good researcher, you need to be able to communicate that passion for your subject and involve students and the wider community in your research.”

Sue admits that it will not be easy to change ingrained attitudes in some people.

She also acknowledges that one of the main sources of funding for universities is from research and this can loom large in the mind of academics.

“Being an excellent teacher is very important and our students deserve that, but there is still a perception that if you are a good teacher this might be at the expense of your research career.

People should not be put in the position where they feel they have to sacrifice something as important as teaching to be good at their job.”

Fortunately, the culture change Sue is anxious to see is well under way at Newcastle University.

“In an institution such as Newcastle University, which is one of the Russell Group of researchled universities, there has been a move in the last decade towards parity of esteem for teaching in higher education.”

Sue points to the words of the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Chris Brink, who, when he arrived in 2007, said it was important that the emphasis on research did not mean that teaching suffered.

“To a head of a school of education that was music to my ears,” says Sue.

Apart from giving students a better experience in the lecture theatre and seminar room, good teaching has a wider impact, she argues.

“If you are a good teacher you are a good communicator and one of the big agenda issues for us at this university is the idea of public engagement with research.”

Newcastle University has a lot of high-profile and well-funded research going on and in the past two or three years there has been a real push to try to improve public engagement with that research and make it more accessible – and understandable – to people outside of the university.

One of the subject areas which now has a higher profile in the community at large is the work done by staff in the university’s Institute for Ageing.

The institute has international reputation in the field of ageing – and there is now a greater awareness of this in the North- East.

“Each of our faculties has tried to promote its research under the banner of societal challenge. For our medical faculty the theme has been around ageing and improving the quality of life for older people.”

More recently the idea of sustainability is being promoted by the university, alongside the creation of an Institute for Sustainability.

“This is about making sure there is enough food, water, heating and so on for the planet,” she adds.

This year the university launched a third societal challenge initiative around the theme of social renewal.

“The whole idea is to address inequalities of income, education and health, regionally, nationally and internationally. How can societies thrive with the pace of change we are seeing at the moment?”

As part of this programme of social engagement, university staff have been involved in a series of public events, in schools and other venues in the region.

SUE believes that universities in the UK have gone quite a long way to creating structures so that staff progress in their careers on the basis of teaching excellence as well as their research.

But she says there is still work to be done to change the culture in different institutions to allow this to happen.

Sue and her colleagues are currently working on a research project which looks at the extent to which good teaching is recognised and rewarded by universities.

The team will study universities in Australia and the UK and hope to draw up guidelines which could help to ensure that good teaching is as well rewarded as good research.