Students are much more than metrics

The tragedy in Nottingham last week, when two students died in a series of apparently random attacks in the city streets, was first and foremost a personal tragedy for the families involved.

What was apparent in the hours and days after the deaths was that it was also a tragedy that deeply affected the whole university community.

The grieving parents of Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar embraced – and were embraced by – fellow students who gathered on the University of Nottingham campus the following day. They spoke movingly about how much the pair, with whom the assembled undergraduates had shared lecture halls, sports fields and nights out, had loved being at university.

It was a reminder that while higher education is often discussed in terms of metrics – arguments about whether the graduate salary premium is declining, rows over contact hours – it is, of course, far more than that.

Students enliven university cities, and those years spent alongside peers in an environment of shared purpose and opportunity are a foundation on which to build a life.

Perhaps that is why it rings hollow when degrees are written off by commentators, or when entirely different online, skills-focused offerings are presented as a replacement for university education.

None of which is to say that an undergraduate degree is right for everyone, that it is an unassailable format, or that universities should not be held to account on questions of quality, value or relevance.

Indeed, the opposite is true. It is quite fair to probe the value of the huge sums of money that young people now must invest in a university education. But the commentariat should keep in mind that they are also investing something even more significant than their money: their time and their aspirations, as they use their university years to frame their start in adult life.

Where data points can be crucial is to help understand the expectations and experiences of students, and in that the UK is fortunate to have the Higher Education Policy Institute/Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey, which tracks how attitudes and practices in the UK are changing year-on-year.

The results of the 2023 survey are reported in our news pages, and cover attitudes in a year in which universities emerged from the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic and all the related restrictions.

In this context, one might expect a significant bounceback to pre-pandemic levels of satisfaction, but while there have been improvements in several key areas covered by the survey, they are modest at best – something that the authors of the study put down to the new pressures falling on students’ shoulders, most notably the cost-of-living crisis.

This is not just supposition – for the first time, the survey asked the 10,000 respondents whether they felt their studies had been affected by the economic situation, and three-quarters felt that it had, a sentiment that was disproportionately high among disadvantaged groups.

Financial concerns were also a key factor in the low value-for-money perceptions, the study says, while, for the first time, more than half of students are doing paid work alongside their studies.

Couple this with the finding that students are studying harder than ever, with increases in timetabled classes, fieldwork and placements, and a picture emerges of a cohort who are keeping multiple plates spinning, with the impact on some groups clearly greater than on others.

This is reflected in one of the recommendations of the report: that, with a general election on the horizon and thoughts turning to policy, those in power should not forget about the diversity of the student population, as experiences can be hugely varied.

Another recommendation is that the government should prepare the next Student Income and Expenditure Survey as a matter of urgency and review the mechanism used to increase student maintenance loans to ensure that they increase in a timely fashion, in line with inflation.

The survey is packed with insights – but in this week of all weeks, it is worth reading with the individuals behind the data front of mind. Of course, academics are abundantly aware that higher education is not an abstract concept, but a reality lived by hundreds of thousands of individual students, all with their own dreams and challenges. But even academics, as well as politicians and commentators, can benefit from a reminder of how precious every one of them is.

Yes, they invest a slice of their future earnings in their university education and deserve to get value from that; but they are also investing their hopes and aspirations for that future. That is quite a commitment, and quite a responsibility for universities and their political overlords.

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com