Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Higher Education: Seizing Opportunities Amidst Challenges

1. Our Education and Student Experience Professor Mark Taylor Dean, Warwick Business School Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick

2. External Context • The challenges ……………….. • Higher student fees • Student satisfaction • Higher education seen as career progression • Decrease in government HE funding alongside increased regulation • Widening access, widening participation • New providers entering the sector • Global competition • “The squeezed middle” • UK Border Agency controls • International collaboration • MOOCs & SPOCs • REF and Rankings • …………… how to seize opportunities?

3. Spending Cuts Source: IFS / UUK

4. Changes in income of UK HEI’s Cumulative real-terms actual and forecast changes in income of UK HEIs since 2010-11 (source: HEFCE 2014)

5. The New Public Management • First Thatcher administration – ‘neoliberal managerialist’ • Blair administration – ‘technocratic managerialist’ • 1985 Jarratt Report • 1997 Dearing Report • 2010 Browne Report • 2011 BIS white paper: Students at the Heart of the System

6. ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ • Discussed: • Student financial reforms • A “renewed focus on high-quality teaching” • A new focus on student charters, student feedback and graduate outcomes • New regulatory framework with HEFCE taking on “a major new role as a consumer champion”

7. ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ • Aims of Government Policy: • Universities would be under competitive pressure to provide better quality at lower cost • There would be a greater diversity of provision • Greater variety in terms of modes of delivery and learning • More innovative teaching • Increased social mobility

8. The ‘student experience’ • Increasingly, ‘institutional reputation’ has become synonymous with rankings and league table performance • Newspaper rankings, Guardian, Times etc • Reliant on data supplied via multiple sources including the National Student Survey (NSS) – focussed on the ‘student experience’ • PTES – Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey • Policy environment has led to the rise of the ‘student as client/customer’

9. What do students say they want? Source: National Union of Students (2008) NUS Student Experience Report

10. What do students say they want? • Attainment of qualifications • A high degree of employability and high earning potential upon completion of their degree

11. (Current) Students at the Heart of the System • Consumer model makes the student experience into something determined by what the university offers rather than by what students can bring • “…they [tutors] should tell us in the feedback, this is what you're missing, this is what you should do differently next time to get a first” (Warwick student survey) • Feedback framed as an issue of assessment rather than of supporting and facilitating student learning • Students’ see higher learning in terms of the successful navigation of assessment hurdles placed in their way by the university and a transfer of shared responsibility

12. (Current) Students at the Heart of the System • Universities are increasingly incentivised to provide what students want, not what they need • Some students may want an Easy A, but need a good education • Potential to impact standards negatively • Ignores needs of other stakeholders, e.g.: • Employers • Current students later in life • Society at large

13. (Current) Students at the Heart of the System • Student experience = joint responsibility of student and HEI • HEI responsibility to provide • Intellectual climate • Facilities • Teaching standards • Student responsibility to • Actively engage in learning development (e.g. through active engagement with feedback)

14. The Challenge • Government policy puts student at the heart of the system • May be to the detriment of other stakeholders • May be to the detriment of other elements of the university offer

15. Unbundling of the university offer • Knowledge production • Knowledge dissemination • Student experience • Signalling and accreditation

16. The essential dialectic of the university • Origin of the university in late mediaeval Europe • Deriving from monastic tradition of scholarship • The need to develop professional class of clergy, public administrators, lawyers, physicians and business stewards as Europe emerged from the Dark Ages • But also more purely intellectual in the elevation of learning as a means of human improvement as an essential part of the European Renaissance

17. Raphael’s “School of Athens”

18. Tomorrow’s University: Possible Futures

19. The Industrial University • Large-scale enrolment • National and global recruitment • Large online and blended eLearning agenda using and adapting globally developed content • Largely a teaching institution • Offering: • knowledge dissemination • signalling • student experience (of a kind)

20. The Virtual University • Large-scale enrolment • National and global recruitment • 100% online eLearning agenda using and adapting globally developed content • Largely a teaching institution • Offering: • Knowledge dissemination • Signalling • Virtual student experience • A variant of the Industrial University

21. The Elite University • Large but highly selective enrolment • Combination of on-campus and blended teaching and learning • Global partnerships and reach • Online content setting the international standard and licenced for use by other universities • World-class research base, both basic and applied • Offering: • knowledge production • knowledge dissemination • signalling • student experience

22. The Regional University • Enrolment largely regional, with high number of students living at home • Largely on-campus teaching with some blended learning • Strong benefits to the local economy • Solid research base with emphasis on applications to the regional economy and collaborative research with regional industry • Offering: • knowledge production • knowledge dissemination • signalling • reduced student experience

23. The Boutique University • Small and selective enrolment • Teaching may be highly specialised and vocational (e.g. law, business) or liberal arts • Largely on-campus teaching with some blended learning licenced from Elite University providers • Predominantly a teaching institution • Offering: • knowledge dissemination • signalling • student experience

24. The Non-University University • Students construct their own course of online study from a range of sources, particularly for postgraduate courses • MOOCs – certificates of completion • Online accredited courses bought from Elite, Industrial and Virtual Universities • Non-university providers offering degree-level courses – e.g. Financial Times non-executive director programme • Offering: • knowledge dissemination • (some) virtual student experience • (some) signalling

25. Aristotle again…

26. …he is not actually pointing down…

27. ….. he is gesturing in three dimensions….

28. Thank you

29. Our Education and Student Experience Professor Mark Taylor Dean, Warwick Business School Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick