Susan Bassnett: Let's consign 2:1s and 2:2s to history

There is always a buzz of excitement at the start of a new academic year. Last year, the buzz was heightened by the knowledge that the results of the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) were imminent, as academics waited to learn whether they would be rewarded (or not, for the most part) after several years of anticipation.

This year, though, there is not an expectant hum but a curious sense of uncertainty. We simply don't know what to expect in higher education any more, though judging by the record so far, we shouldn't expect much. During the past 12 months, we've had the débâcle of the RAE; the revamping of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA); endless over-hyped new initiatives that make universities bid for money that was taken away from them in the first place; promises; threats; and more examples of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing than could be dreamed of by any satirist.

This summer we've been treated to the annual ritual debate about whether A-levels have been dumbed down, and we've seen ominous signs that despite the frenzy of clearing, some academic disciplines are seriously threatened.

On one level, Peter Williams of the QAA is absolutely right when he says that British higher education is in pretty good shape. Not all of us would agree that it's the QAA that knocked us into that shape, and some would argue that our relative fitness is miraculous, given the low levels of funding and confused policy. Still, at least with the new QAA we have avoided the much-rumoured university inspectorate, the academic Ofsted that was apparently seen as a good idea in some quarters. But on another level, all is not well in higher education, and things aren't going to get better until some tough decisions are taken that will bring about real changes.

We could knock the debate about dumbed-down A-levels on the head for a start by doing away with them as a means of testing aptitude for higher education.With aptitude tests, we could let schools return to teaching rather than being exam factories, and free our teenagers from the burden of being the most over-examined (and consequently under-educated) group in Europe.

The problem of monitoring academic quality could be sorted by going all the way down the free-market path that we have already set out on but which no government so far has dared to follow to the inevitable end: differential top-up fees and differentiated salaries. Chronic underfunding is causing massive problems in many institutions, and extra fee income could help a lot. It is becoming almost impossible to recruit good people in some subject areas because they won't work in a university for a paltry salary. As things stand, we are in danger of seeing the academic profession go the way of the teaching profession – underpaid, endlessly blamed for everything, and expected to work ever harder with less and less job satisfaction. No wonder that anyone who can, either goes to a university in the United States or finds another job.

We could help students' employment prospects, too, by abolishing the archaic system of degree classification. The time and energy British academics spend on determining whether a degree is a 2:1 or a 2:2 is absurd. A transcript system that lays out the ups and downs of a student's university career would not only be fairer and more transparent, it would also eliminate the need for secretive exam boards. What we have now is wasteful and divisive: employers need to be able to see full transcripts, not second guess what a lower second means. The system might have been useful when only a tiny percentage of the population went to university, but now it's an anomaly.

Could any of these changes happen this year? I doubt it, though the top-up fees issue keeps surfacing and differentiated salaries are already being paid across the system. Changing A-levels as a criterion for entry can't come soon enough, and would mean the end of the embarrassing attempts to "widen access" through juggling postcodes and other daft schemes. But the change that universities could bring about themselves most quickly is the abolition of degree classes and all the paraphernalia that go with that antiquated system. Instead of whingeing and waiting for the latest Government initiative which we won't like anyway, why don't we do something as a community for once and do students, employers and ourselves a favour?

The writer is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick

education@independent.co.uk