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(i) b causes us problems; I am not sure that it is a fair question. There is a lot of scope for sub-degree programmes, but the right ones can only emerge if the College itself builds up its capacity to make a case for what it wants to do and feels it can do well; that the courses so proposed meet a real need, and that your department finds ways of validating the aims, even if it has to seek outside help when assessing the ability of Baptist to realise such aims as your Department could support. Of course, maybe we could help with both, but he who pays the piper has some right to call the tune.
This finally brings me to (ii). As I said in an earlier paragraph, this is a question we were not asked, but we can nevertheless go some way towards answering it. In a sense, the report does so; but again the question needs to be "unpacked" and one could answer it from a variety of directions such as:-
Student input calibre
Student output calibre
Educational experience through the course
Resource support comparisions
Faculty staff quality
Some of my Colleagues have felt able to attempt an answer "in the round" leaving their full reports to fill in a good deal of the background.
So far as we feel able to answer, the responses are:-
(i) Courses in Area of Business Studies
In the area of Business Studies, the present work of Baptist College could not be described as up to degree standard. This is primarily because of deficencies in staffing resources, but also other contributory factors; for example, inadequacies in the library and the computing facilities make it impossible to describe the courses as equivalent at present to degree courses in United Kingdom institutions.
There is evidence that, were the suggestions made in the conclusion to the Appendix C of our report to be implemented, Baptist College has the foundation in terms of staff to develop degree level work, but whether or not it does so is entirely dependent on Government decisions about the injection of appropriate funding. It also depends on whether or not the College takes the step of restructuring the general area of Business and Management Studies in the way indicated. The aims and objectives are comparable to those of some of the courses which we have validated in the United Kingdom, but the implementation means that at the present time they do not meet CNAA's normal criteria.
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