Students aren

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(No Transcript)
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Students arent what they used to be - and never
were

• David Watson
• HEPI Conference 6 May 2009

Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES)
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Talking about the student experience four
pathologies

• Nostalgia and selective memory
• Condescension and disappointment
• Moral panics and pulling up the ladder
• Contradictory expectations

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Nearly half of a recent class could not name a
single country that bordered Israel. In an
introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students
could not name what country Kabul was in,
although we have been at war there for half a
decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could
name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list
of four countries China, Cuba, India and Japan
- not one of those same 21 students could
identify India and Japan as democracies. Their
grasp of history was little better. The question
of when the Civil War was fought invited an array
of responses half a dozen were off by a decade
or more. Some students thought that Islam was
the principal religion of South America, that Roe
vs. Wade was about slavery, that 50 judges sit on
the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the
picture, and it isnt pretty. (Gup, 2008).
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• The Brent students will likely find themselves in
  a rust-stained concrete former polytechnic not
  far from home in London, to save money. A
  seductive glimpse of Oxford might leave them
  feeling that they had failed, when to make it to
  university at all would be success against
  extreme odds (Polly Toynbee, Education Guardian,
  5.8.08)

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Outline

• Generational relationships
• Student co-creation
• The international campus
• Student satisfaction

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Generational fracture
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The University of Google

• We had to work it out for ourselves. It was an
  environment of fear a fear of failure. At the
  very time that capitalism was benevolent, the
  university system was preparing us for the
  ruthless inequalities we would confront upon
  leaving a leafy campus.
• Now that there are wars on terror, casualized
  workplaces, little union protection for workers
  and an economy based on credit card debt,
  universities are soft but cuddly institutions,
  shielding our students from the dire reality of
  life (Brabazon, 2007 125)

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The information age mind-set

• Computers arent technology
• Internet better than TV
• Reality no longer real
• Doing rather than knowing
• Nintendo over Logic
• Multitasking way of life
• Typing rather than handwriting
• Staying connected
• Zero tolerance for delays
• Consumer/Creator blurring (Frand, 2000).

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Payback

• I'm told that university students tell tales
  about their ballooning student loans with rueful
  grins rather than with floods of despairing
  tears. Everyone's in debt - so what? That's the
  way it is, and how else are they supposed to get
  through school? As for paying it all off,
  they'll think about that later (Atwood, 2008
  131).

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Younger employers

• The age of the recruiter came through as a key
  factor. Younger respondents were more prepared
  to employ school or college leavers and therefore
  had much less difficulty in filling job
  vacancies. Older recruiters found it much more
  difficult to buy into what school or college
  leavers had to offer (Lanning et al., 2008 1-2).

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The student estate
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Percentage change in enrolments by subject area,
1996/7 to 2005/06
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UK HE student numbers by mode and level, 1979 -
2005
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Percentage of young full-time first degree
entrants from Socio-Economic Classification
classes 4, 5, 6 and 7, 2005/06

• Enrolment of students from social groups 4,5, and
  6, by gangs
• 2006-7

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What should the new fee income be spent on
(Unite, 2005)?
2005)The views of students about what additional
funding from differential tuition fees should be
spent on.
UNITE, 2005
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The international campus
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The international campus

• UK Institutions by number of overseas countries
  supplying students,
• UK 2004-05
• gt150 3
• 100-149 75
• 50-99 45
• 20-49 32
• lt20 13

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Graduate Citizens

• In their speech, our respondents recognised four
  circuits (i) those of student peers (ii) the
  intergenerational (iii) that of imagined
  abstract others as recipients of state welfare
  (iv) and the formal constitutional dimension of
  their relationship to state and government.
  These circuits were governed by principles such
  as fairness, altruism, reciprocity and
  responsibility that we will sum up in the more
  general term, mutuality. . The moralising of
  extended relationships in this manner counters
  both the fears of those who believe that the
  absence of a language of formal citizenship
  indicates privatised withdrawal and those who
  would wish to celebrate the primacy of
  calculative individualism (Ahier et al., 2002
  141).

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Britishness

• The qualities of British life - the notion of
  civic duty binding people to one another and the
  sense of fair play which underpins the idea of a
  proper social order - come together in the ethic
  of public service leading to the great British
  public institutions admired throughout the world
  among them our universities, including the Open
  University (Brown, 2004).

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The citizenship test

• Things you need to know -
• data from the census and the history of
  immigration
• national and religious holidays (predominantly
  Christian)
• Quangos and NDPBs
• the political process
• the Constitution (e.g. the Act of Succession)
• international bodies (Commonwealth, EU, UN)
• how to behave (motorways, estate agents, Post
  Office, pubs)

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Ed Husain, The Islamist (Penguin, 2007)

• I loved my time at university. My understanding
  of my subject had hitherto been blinkered by the
  arguments of Mawdudi, Qutb and Nabhani that
  history was a conflict between Islam and the rest
  of the world. But I was determined to open up my
  worldview and slowly, independently, question
  some of the concepts and tenets I had once held
  dear (156-7).
• Another of my tutors was Professor John Tosh,
  author of The Pursuit of History. His lectures
  caused me to question my approach to history.
  One thing history was not was an idle
  intellectual pastime. Professor Tosh argued that
  the past created the present, and that the past
  was open to multiple interpretations. What
  seemed like blasphemy at first slowly began to
  make sense (159).

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Student satisfaction complaining and appealing
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Conclusion

• Which way for the Select Committee?