The introduction of student contracts by higher education institutions seems on face value to be quite reasonable. But rather than improving anything, might they potentially harm UK Education plc?
Students now pay to go to university and rather than being a captive audience they are in fact consumers in a market. While it is reasonable to assume that if they don’t attend lectures and tutorials then they will most likely fail, will contracts overcome this? Wouldn’t a better solution be to have a better screening process that tries to select students who actually want to learn rather than just admitting them based on their A-Level results? Oh dear, that would mean selection and the government’s legion of equity czars and advisors couldn’t allow such an awful prospect.
Coming back to the point of attendance, why, if lectures are available as MP3 files and video broadcasts, should students have to attend anyway? Surely the use of technology has changed the way education can be delivered? Indeed it may be cheaper and educationally better to deliver some if not all courses this way, rather than expecting students to attend overcrowded lectures delivered as they were fifty years ago?
Technology has the potential to revolutionise learning at all levels and the idea that a contract will force students to attend learning, which often does not suit their lifestyle or emerging patterns of work, is a nonsense and masks far more fundamental problems in the structure and organisations of the UK’s HE sector.
How many students do you think bunk off lectures at Harvard where they might be paying fees of US$50k per year? Not too many and yet Harvard is one of the world’s leading users of IT in education, and has established Digital Harvard, a huge online access project for the whole university community.
If UK universities want to compete for students and staff on the international stage they need innovation and excellence, not student contracts. If a student doesn’t want to learn, universities should have the right not to choose them or to get rid of them fairly but expeditiously, and without having to bugger about dealing with toothless quangos like the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education.
This might be a first, but for once we find ourselves agreeing with the National Union of Students. The proposed contracts are one-sided and institutions would be better served by focusing on how to deliver high quality education to all students, not just those kowtowed into signing attendance contracts.
Will the introduction of student contracts by higher education institutions potentially harm UK Education plc?
