Student perspectives of partnership in English higher education: evaluating marketisation from the street level

Claire GrayAcademic Partnerships

Plymouth University

Student perspectives of partnership in English

higher education: evaluating marketisation

from the street level

F/HE partnership – context

Franchising of university awards The Dearing Report (1997) identified a ‘special mission’ for colleges within the HE sector. Foundation degree – growthWidening ParticipationLiterature – contextual macro and micro – margins of HE sector and perspectives of practitioners. Theoretical – power, policy implementation.

The street level - policy implementation…

F/HE Partnerships from the bottom up

Policy/actionPolicy Network Analysis

Policy filters down…..but is also created through interpretation and implementation.

The Meso level is conceptualised as the work across both partners to implement HE

HE and Marketisation

• HE as a public good?• A quasi-market• Quality and mutuality• Consumer decision making

The Research

• Comparative case studies – 3 partnerships - all well established in partnership work

• Partnership managers - interviews• College staff – focus groups• HE partnership students – e-survey and follow

up focus group• Partnership documentation and publications –

documentary review

Partnership managers

…but I think it’s trying to think about a more business to business relationship as well as a quality assurance relationship with partners. So that’s, kind of, a change now about how we understand stuff.

Partnership managersSo if we’re doing, if we’ve got a very large partner where we’re doing millions of pounds worth of business with that partner, you know, we will say to a dean or head of school, “You know, we are going to ask you to suck this up because it’s in the benefit of the wider interests of the university because this partner delivers massive amounts of WP (Widening Participation) work for the university. So you’ve been difficult over this particular award, you have to think more like a university citizen as opposed to just your school.” However, also there are times when, you know, we’re not seeking to destabilise faculties or schools by encouraging partners to put on awards that will cause competition to the university. So again, we would, you know, the university reserves the right to say, “No, you’re not having that.”

Partnership managers

… FE, I suspect, will go for anything that’s cheaper and I’m afraid they won’t necessarily look at the quality and other benefits that they get. And they will argue with me, “Can’t afford it.” It’s as simple as that. And, because it’s not just about students, it’s about their staff …

College staff

…partnership’s changed so significantly hasn’t it? When you go back and compare it to what it is now, it’s more of a corporation, I don’t see it as an actual partnership working collaboratively in the same way as I think it used to be. - It’s less personal now.- Yeah, so impersonal but more probably business efficient.

College staff

I was saying earlier that a lot of the management meetings that I go to at the university with the partner colleges, they’ve all started to dissolve slowly because a lot of the agenda items won’t be freely discussed now between colleges because we’re all cut throat and we’re not telling you what we’re doing and we’re not to discuss that. So that support network has actually started to break down.

College staff

I’ve got a Masters, got a degree, I’ve been teaching here for six years, sent students down, so it seems odd that it’s so difficult for me to actually just speak to people who in theory are my colleagues.

Student Survey (n=316)• 73% (n= 230) were first generation to study HE• 33% (n=105) stated that they did not consider study at a

university • 67% (n=211) did consider this option. • 79% (n=249) of the survey who did not consider study at

another college• 21% (n=67) respondents positively considering other college HE

study. • 58% (n=182) cited factors related to location and inability to

move or travel in their final decision or stated that the college was the only location for the programme.

• 13% (n=40) indicated that they were unable to attend university due to insufficient grades.

Student Survey (continued)

• 92% (n=290) of students that it was important to them that their qualification was awarded by a university.

• 67% (n=212) could not name who the awarding body would be on their final certificate at graduation.

• 91% (n=287) said that they did have access to materials/resources provided by the partnership university (high awareness of the link to the partner university).

• So…from the students (n=212) who didn’t know who the awarding body would be, 92% (n=194) of them knew they had access to university resources.

Students

I think because we’re so separated from uni even though we’re so close, you don’t have a great deal to do with uni unless you’re using the resources to do with it. So it’s, kind of like, we’re still part of the college but we move in between that actually being at uni or actually being at college.

Students

And they said just do it that way, but I didn’t know at the time that it was going to be based here. And that’s why I got confused, well, was it actually a university course? Because to me, like in my mind back then, the college was, college was nothing to do with higher education, but obviously now I know that.

I was going to say that for me, as far as I was concerned, my understanding of it was a course organised and regulated by the university, just held within the college.

Students

Survey respondents were asked if they ‘felt like university students’ when at college. 63.6% (n=201) answered ‘no’ 36.4% (n=115) responded positively.

Responses from the follow-up question were coded at: Environment, Staff, Learning, Other.

Students

From being in the environment of being in a sixth form college context. Staff in the HE department do however treat you like a university student.

The teaching is more personal at college - there are no vast lecture theatres holding 100+ students.

Students

If someone asks me what I’m doing and they go, “Oh, have you got uni today?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to uni tomorrow.” “What are you doing?” “Foundation degree, that’s where I’m doing it, in college.” And he goes, “So you’re a college student?” And I’m, “No. I’m a university student I’m just doing it at, on a different campus.”

F/HE partnership – themes

• Marketised environment – this has affected the structure of the partnerships.

• Challenges to WP and assumptions of student choice.

• Competition and collaboration – organisational challenges

• Identity and the college environment

F/HE partnership – analysis

• Policy implementation – bottom-up perspective – Street Level Bureaucrats (Lipsky). Dealing with the contradictions on the ground with students – squaring organisational circles – translating HE into FE.

• Student experience and potentially identity – shaped on the ground by staff.

• Power – not one way – college decision-making is the most important determinant of what HE partnership feels like…

• Choice of the student – not the reality for most WP groups.• Quality implications of transactional partnership.

The work of the street-level practitioners in developing and maintaining a sense of HE identity and academic collaboration is a pivotal and undervalued facet of policy implementation within collaborative partnerships.

References

Bevir, M. & Richards, D. (2009) 'Decentring Policy Networks: Lessons and Prospects', Public Administration, 87 (1), pp. 132–141.

Brown, R. & Carasso, H. (2013) Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education. eds. McAlpine, L. and Huisman, J., Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE) series. Abingdon: Routledge.

Browne, J. (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance. London:

Gray, C. (2014) 'Implementing marketised Higher Education: The view from the street level'. SRHE Annual Research Conference 2014: Inspiring Future Generations. Newport, South Wales 10-12 December 2014.

Lipsky, M. (2010) Street Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition edn. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Palfreyman, D. & Tapper, T. (2014) 'Towards the Marketization of English Higher Education?'. Inspiring Future Generations: Embracing plurality and difference in higher education. Newport, South Wales: 10-12 December 2014.

Scott, P. (2009) 'On the Margins or Moving into the Mainstream? Higher Education in Further Education in England', Higher Education Quarterly, 63 (4), pp. 402–418.