“A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the inevitable impact of a consumer culture in Higher Education on teaching, and specifically about how this is likely to affect the number of people using service to help them with their increased workloads. The recommendations reported in the HE White paper, published today by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, does nothing to make me change my mind about this prediction.
The central tenet of the HE White Paper is choice. Choice for students is what the government is championing, and the freeing up of an extra 85,000 places of the top performers will facilitate a shift of power from the institution to the student. Furthermore, the new relaxed regulatory framework allowing more players to become a university and a simplification of the regime for obtaining and renewing of degree awarding powers is very likely to amplify this new culture of choice.
For us at Recourse, the big question is what difference this will make on staff wellbeing.
Just as most businesses, public sector bodies and charities up and down the country are trying to do more with less, so are universities. Yes, the changes to the cap on student numbers for institutions attracting students with AAB or better may relieve some of the pinch felt by the massive reduction in the HEFCE teaching grant, but on the whole, there still won’t be lots of spare cash floating around the HE sector.
This has implications on expectations for staff and their role within their institution.
The increased expectation on a university to provide a top-notch quality experience for its students is at an all time high. Redundancies, changes to pay and pensions and a new emphasis on providing a better quality teaching experience for students will increase workloads and undoubtedly stress levels too.
We will be stepping up our promotional activities over the coming months to ensure that any member of staff in the HE sector (as well as in FE) knows that they can speak to a trained professional if they are feeling worn down, stressed or anxious about meeting another seemingly impossible deadline.
The impact on students of the changes in HE is well documented. We feel it’s about time the impact on staff is too.
If you need to give us a call, or know of someone who might, please ring the Recourse Support Line on: 0808 802 03 04. Our services are free, confidential and available 24 hours a day, every day of the year.”
by Alex Smith
