Expansion, Efficiency and Teaching Quality: The Experience of British Geography Departments 1986-91

British higher education is being transformed from an elite towards a mass higher education system. This expansion is being achieved through increased class sizes and higher student staff ratios. A questionnaire survey sought to determine the change in student/staff ratios (SSRs) in British geography departments in the period 1986-91 and the perceived impact of these changes on the quality of undergraduate teaching. The returns showed an overall change in SSRs from 12.1:1 in 1986 to 17.4:1 in 1991. By 1991, SSRs in university geography departments approximated those in the former polytechnics in 1986. The evidence as to the perceived impact on teaching was contradictory. Both the quantitative and qualitative results of the survey showed that many senior geographers saw increased class size and higher SSRs adversely affecting many aspects of undergraduate teaching. Yet few saw that these changes had adversely affected the overall degree results obtained in their department. Indeed, many emphasized that the overall degree classification had improved. Tentative suggestions are made to explain this apparent contradiction and to suggest how geographers should respond to the expected further increase of SSRs and class sizes in the 1990s.