Are students really partners? And who are they in partnership with?

Jim Dickinson CEO UEASU

What I’ve been thinking aboutThe HEFCE watch list quandry• Students should be told if their institution is

financially failing as the state and its apparatus should act to warn about failure and poor delivery given the financial and opportunity cost of HE

• Students should not be told if their institution is financially failing as the state and its apparatus should act to protect the interests of the staff and students at the HEI and maximise the chance of its survival and recovery

What I’ve been thinking aboutThe Academic Appeal• The process of judgment, validation, marking is

sacred and should never be able to be challenged (lest floodgates of illegitimate chancery)

• The thing that matters most to students is judgment, validation, marks. They are paying for a service and if they think this has been done badly (it probably has) they should be able to appeal.

The Diversity QuandryDiversity• Efforts to diversity the HE intake have always

focussed on expansion• The assumption is that HE will expand to allow the

working classes to get to the same participation rate as the middle/upper

• Wouldn’t it be faster/better to find ways to choke off participation by that group?

• Telegraph headlines around poor kids “cheating” their way in aside…

Change Trends • Revolution in information and communication technology• Internationalisation and globalisation of higher education• Wider social and economic trends• Market based reforms and the drift to consumerism and

copayment• Citizens as consumers v Citizens as coproducers

Everything is changing• Science and technology• Values• Demography• Environment• Geography • Social structures

Everything is getting worse• Environment degrading• Morals in disarray• Family collapsing• Culture dumbing down• Politics by media sound bite• Democracy corrupted• War always on the horizon• Globalisation = a gale of disorder

Everything is getting better• People living much longer lives• Democratic cultures spread by media, Internet• World more interconnected• Education spreading• Position of women improving, somewhat• Technological innovation critical to environment• Asia: tens of millions lifted from poverty every year

Change• Private optimism, about our lives, families • Public pessimism about the state of the world

• The two come together in organisations

• Organisations provide people with a sense of private identity• But critical to how we cope with the world together

Anti GlobalisationStudents, ethnic minoritiesLeft populism

New ageDownshifting

Rural protestsRight national populism: Europe

MelancholyNostalgia

Confrontation Retreat

Radical

Reactionary

Adapt entrepreneuriallyCreate new delivery modelsAbandon thingsVery riskyAsk lots of questions

As long as what I do doesn’t change I don’t mind what is going on around meComfortable (y numb)Support and praise

Get back to basics but with a vengeance, cut costs, streamlineVery toughTake charge, slash and burn

Do you remember the old days when things were so much better? MiserableMoan and comfort

Confrontation Retreat

Radical

Reactionary

HEIs as organisations of change• Adaptive, nimble, agile organisations able to learn fast about

environment around them, sense opportunities and mobilise resources to exploit them

• But organisations that just do that would be in perpetual turmoil, constantly reinventing themselves

• So as well as being adaptive, nimble and agile organisations need to have a sense of stability, continuity and purpose

• But a sense of stability that does not inhibit ability to adapt • What does that optimum mix of stability and flux come from?• It comes from challenging conventional wisdom and asking

tough questions

Conventional HE Sector Wisdom• Don’t share the HEFCE watch list• Don’t challenge academic judgment• Don’t restrict middle class HE participation

• Students aren’t customers.• Everyone says it. • Even my old employer!

Consumerism“Student consumerism has become common in educational systems. Students are increasingly vocalizing their needs and demanding that institutions deliver on them. As customers of education service providers, students expect to be able to voice their opinions about the quality of service they’re receiving”

• Rachel Wenstone, vice-president for higher education at the NUS, said she disapproved of an “unhealthy attitude of consumerism” within universities. But she lamented that the lack of higher education legislation since tuition fees in England were tripled in England meant that the Office of the Independent Adjudicator lacked the powers it needed, leaving consumer legislation as the only other means of redress, provided students could afford a lawyer. She said universities should fund students’ unions to provide free independent advice to students.

Exit and Voice• Exit and voice themselves represent a union between

economical and political action. • Exit- Adam Smith's invisible hand, in which buyers

and sellers are free to move silently through the market, constantly forming and destroying relationships.

• Voice- on the other hand, is by nature political and at times confrontational.

• Isn’t all this just “servants and masters” re-run?

Is this new?• “Students are paying customers now and, as

predicted, they are becoming more exacting. In this they are being egged on by the National Union of Students and, more indirectly, by the government and the Quality Assurance Agency”

• “The NUS must hope that this issue will help re-establish its credibility when campus scepticism is growing as to whether the union represents value for money. Students bringing complaints may want to check what support NUS will offer”

1999: THE• Students are paying customers now and, as

predicted, they are becoming more exacting. In this they are being egged on by the National Union of Students and, more indirectly, by the government and the Quality Assurance Agency.

• The NUS must hope that this issue will help re-establish its credibility when campus scepticism is growing as to whether the union represents value for money. Students bringing complaints may want to check what support NUS will offer.

Voice and Exit• Students are partly a member of the academic

community• Students are partly a paying customer• The first implies “Voice Power”• The second implies “Exit power”• There is a problem with exit (or complaint) in HE

Why is consumer power faulty?• Consumerism aligns the following roles into a single

actor

• Chooser• User• Payer

• Higher Education fatally splits these roles over time• That disrupts the power, not the role

Students as consumers• Nottingham Registrar Paul Greatrix recent comments

to a Westminster Higher Education Forum:• “Dr Greatrix said he was “confused” by the approach

of the National Union of Students to student empowerment. “On the one hand, they rightly ask for students to be partners in and co-creators of education. But [their] enthusiasm for consumerist legislation – the idea that buying a degree is like buying something at Argos – seems to be quite at odds with that,” he said.

Picking Paul Apart• Powerful, Influential University Administrator• In charge of complaints and relationship with SU• “Buying a degree” (Buying a running machine)• “Buying a degree” (Catalogues, Stock, Finance)

Competition & Markets Authority• students being given poor or misleading information

about courses • some problematic practices such as dropping parts of

courses and/or hikes to fees after enrolment• slow and inaccessible complaints procedures• lack of arrangements should a university or course

close

Power• Paul is powerful• The “Institution” is huge and powerful• It sits in judgement over the student and their future• It will always defend itself (even if benign in

character)• This type of regulation/legislation tips the scales (a la

trade unions)

The Quote• “My suspicion is we will end up with this bizarre

duality where, on the one hand, we are expected to treat students as if they are equal partners in the academic enterprise during their studies but, around them, they have a panoply of protective measures which they will deploy on a highly selective basis if they don’t get what they want.”

Is it a partnership?• The relationship with the institution is transactional- it

provides things as advertised to a certain quality• It facilitates a partnership between academic and

student • The union and university can work in partnership • But the student-institution relationship is not one of

partnership

How bizarre• “My hope is that we will end up with this perfect

duality where, on the one hand, we facilitate treating our students and our academic as equal partners in the academic enterprise during their studies and, around them, they have protective measures which they can deploy if we fail to live to our promised expectations.”

The hunt for the right analogy• Students as co-producers of educational outcomes• A partnership generates

– Student in partnership with Academic– Students (+Union) in partnership with Institution

(+Academics)• This represents a challenge to the usual analogy:

– Students + Academics= Labour– Institution= Capital

Some more• Students as patients• Students as clients• Students as infants• Students as consumers

The Voice Bandwagon• Type of market actor intervention- Blair• Data made available to users• Choice• Complaints• JUMP ON

– Defence– Opportunity

Failures• Accepting that individual rights and across the board

standards = consumerism• They don’t know what to argue for for students, so go

for reactions and responses• Not providing the tools to analyse and challenge the

strategic/policy • Governance is terrible, everyone drifts, follies are

easy, NUS not close enough

Failures• Accepting that academics are magical• Many hate teaching, many are bad at it• Allowing the genuine challenge instinct to be

parcelled off into the wilderness• They’re mad trots who are all posh and don’t care

about ordinary students and never wash and love the SWP

Challenge• Where is the money being spent, and why?• Staffing and resources of courses• Franchising• Facilities • Hidden Course Costs• ICT

Thank you!

@jim_dickinsonjim.dickinson@uea.ac.uk