“and remember, they entice you into the first year to nick your money, then abandon you once they have what they want…”
Ok that’s a pretty negative quote to start on, but it is one student’s opinion of her university and it does raise some interesting questions. Nobody can argue that we have some of the best and most innovative universities in the world. Nevertheless, universities have been publically funded for a very long time and being publicly funded does not, traditionally, drive up standards. The universities I’ve worked at (post-92 and redbrick) have not always had the benefit of slick processes driven by profit margins and do in fact lean towards the local authority model. Not always as efficient as they could be but well meaning nevertheless. Unless of course you are a placed student and then, to all intents and purposes, you are cattle and you need to be herded.
Placed students are funny entities and are viewed, and treated, in a completely different way to applicants. For obvious commercial reasons. They are primarily the meat of the academic and whilst in their care, they know what is expected of them, where they have to go and what they have to do. But what if something goes wrong with the student’s relationship with the university itself? There are a lot of unsatisfied students out there (for one undisclosed reason or another) according to unistats. Is a 60% satisfaction rate good enough? 90% isn’t bad but it’s not 100% and anything less than 85% would raise serious concerns in a corporate environment. I don’t read in the newspapers that only 54% of DMU architecture students rated their course yet think about how much money is changing hands here. Sadly the numbers mask where the problems lie but I’ll put my money on the majority being due to badly organized universities. The sector is going into an anxiety of post-structuralist proportions over the idea that increased fees will put students in the driving seat. One can’t help wonder whether at least part of this is due to the fact that if unsatisfied students all got together, they’d cause anarchy.
You don’t have to search hard to find the stories of university administration not being worth the money we (now the students) pay for it. The ongoing student visa debacle, equivalent level qualification (ELQ) students popping up here there and everywhere, students studying at ‘at risk’ institutions - and these are the serious cases. The sector needs to engage with these types of stories, and not dismiss them as the whinging of spoilt children, if anything it would help them to understand where the problems lie and whether there are trends of dissatisfaction. Don’t shy away from the opportunity, embrace it as a challenge - and as a sector. Help each other to improve (or use it to find your competitor's weaknesses).
The student as a consumer is a tricky one anyway. At the age of 18 how savvy a consumer can anyone realistically be? I had very limited experience of service providers at that age. I didn’t know what standards I could demand or what I could challenge, what I could refuse to pay for and what I had no choice but to pay. Anybody who has argued til they were blue in the face with their bank or taken out a grievance against their employer will know how difficult it is to challenge an authority that you rely upon. It takes experience to know what is acceptable and what is not. What the authors of the white paper don't understand (at all) is that students are not, generally speaking, savvy consumers. Sadly, the knowing consumer aka the mature student, doesn't appear to be allowed to be sociallly mobile. If you're old, then you're not going to get any help getting into university. This is a shame, not least because older students know where the boundaries are.
For recruiting universities, it’s all about bums on seats. Take the example of the inner city university that carefully photographed its main entrance from behind a roundabout. The reason it did this? Because that roundabout was the only piece of greenery for miles around. Clever marketing has a lot to answer for. Sadly, when the student is actually placed, it is a very different story. For the vast majority university is a once in a life time opportunity. University is perceived as aspirational, it’s what you do if you’re smart, it’s meant to be life enriching. Once the student has invested in that first year, made friends and settled in, what is the likelihood of them dropping out unless they feel they have no choice? The effect of dropping out of university is huge – both psychologically and financially – and more qualitative research into retention is without doubt required and should be made publicly available. Once a university has got that bum on the seat they should pour investment down their students’ throats and not move, seamlessly, onto the next wave of applicants.
When tuition was free, universities treated their students as they saw fit and, providing the student towed the line and got the grades, no eyebrows were raised. What is interesting however is that whether the cost of tuition is free, 3.5k or 9k a year, if the repayment threshold is increased and monthly payments reduced, the risk of debt appears diminished (which, if you think about the amount the government will have to write off in 30 years, it probably is diminished but in real terms). As the payment is deferred, it can be perceived as free for the lifetime of the course and until they start paying it back. Some students will continue to see it this way. Granted they are more likely to come from rich backgrounds but that’s a different discussion altogether. This does not suggest to me that the student population will suddenly find its consumerist feet and force universities to drive up standards. It suggests, rather sadly perhaps, that it’s an interesting time to work in a university marketing department. That's where the universities will be investing their funds. If the course is attracting enough students, if the university is getting ok results on unistats then the complacency will continue. Some courses will go under and other courses will not, and I agree with that (providing it’s not because of ill conceived funding policies). For those students who are placed and studying, standards won’t change that much. Yet, if you think back to your degree, would you have paid 9k a year for it? I certainly would not. And this is the real shame of it all – that you can only see the value of your degree in hindsight. And I don’t just mean employability and life experience, although clearly all that type of stuff is crucial here, but the actual value for money of the degree. Were the staff suitably trained and knowledgeable? Did your timetable allow you to study modules that you found interesting or was everything piled into the same day and at the same time? Did your library have more than one copy of a book that 350 students all needed at the same time? That kind of thing.
In theory, if students become more savvy because they’re being stung with a monumental bill at the end of it, they will grow to be more sophisticated in how they feed back on university performance. And good for them, I hope they do (although I won't hold my breath). What I am not clear on is how universities will use this information to improve their products and services. Not all universities hold themselves accountable when it comes to what their students think of them. Not all universities will take forward student complaints unless you threaten OIA involvement. I'm not just talking about the new recruiting universities either. They are accountable however when it comes to how they spend their money and when they’ve got HEFCE and QAA breathing down their necks. But weirdly enough they’re not accountable to their customers. There can’t be that many industries that are in this position. Yet the complacency of some universities show when you speak to students about their experiences. Sadly there are so few means for students to get their experiences meaningfully across – there are just too many of them, damn it, it’s easier to send out quantitative surveys then ask qualitative response questions. Get the data, make some tables, make some assumptions and that will do. But will it? If students are to become consumers, they need to start being recognized and treated as such. And in turn, students need to realize that their institution doesn’t really give a damn about them – universities are businesses too (despite all the highfalutin debates on the ethics of fixing a cost to an education) and when it comes down to it, it always has been and always will be all about the money. It’s a very important lesson on life, after all.
I guess the most meaningful question that anyone can ask any student right now is this: is your course worth 9k a year? It’s a quantitative question too, which is handy.
