Welcome to Recourse, formerly CUSN (College & University Support Network). Here you’ll find the same free, confidential 24/7 support services for education professionals. Our services are available for you when and where you need it, either by phone or online support.

Our Support Line offers information, practical and emotional support to those working in adult, further and higher education (both serving and retired) and their families. Our online support team is ready to help you whether its a simple question in need of a quick answer or a more complicated issue that you need to talk to someone about.

We have over 700 factsheets available for you to download on issues that have been raised by staff working in further and higher education. The factsheets cover a wide range of topics from managing your workload to resolving disputes with colleagues, dealing with stress or preparing for your retirement.

Previously, lecturers were able to access the free and confidential services of the Teacher Support Network. Following consultation with the University and College Union (UCU), college and university staff and our professional coaches and counsellors, Teacher Support Network felt that a more bespoke support service was required.

The College and University Support Network (CUSN) was established by the Teacher Support Network, an independent charity with more than 100 years experience of helping teachers and lecturers improve their health and wellbeing. Teacher Support Network, (formerly the Teachers’ Benevolent Fund), established in 1877 to assist teachers in financial difficulty, began expanding its range of support services in 1999 to include grants and loans, information, counselling, coaching and much more.

Now Recourse is launched to move the charity’s work forward as the go-to source for all staff working in adult, further and higher education.

Recourse provides free support services specifically for all staff working in adult, further and higher education. Supported by UCU, Recourse complements the work of the union offering information and advice, telephone counselling, online coaching and financial assistance. Please be assured that all our counsellors and coaches are fully qualified to ensure you get the quality of support you are entitled to.

The Government released its long-awaited Higher Education White Paper this week, entitled ‘Students at the Heart of the System’. Our summary is provided below or you can see the full White Paper on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website.

The Government has said that the White Paper is a plan to put undergraduate experience at the heart of the system. A separate strategy for research and innovation will be released later this year. The White Paper has the following three themes:

1) Putting HE on a sustainable footing

• Higher fees, including the ‘pay as you earn’ loan pay-back system which has already been introduced, will continue to be implemented.
• There will be an estimated cash increase in funding for HE of around 10 per cent by 2014-15, but increasing amounts of expenditure will eventually be recouped from graduates’ contributions.
• HE providers will be consulted on whether it is possible to remove some of the VAT barriers which can currently deter institutions from sharing costs. Other similar measures may also be consulted on in light of the current review of efficiency in the HE sector, led by Professor Ian Diamond of the University of Aberdeen.

2) Delivering a better student experience: improving teaching, assessment, feedback and preparation for the world of work

• The Government believes that the measures above will drive a more responsive system; putting financial power into the hands of learners, making student choice more meaningful, and pressuring institutions to make themselves more appealing to students and employers. Several measures may be taken in light of the current Diamond review of efficiency in the HE sector.
• Approximately 98,500 student places will become contestable between institutions in 2012/13, with unconstrained recruitment of the estimated 65,000 students who will score the equivalent of AAB or above at A-Level. Universities whose average tuition charge after waivers is at or below £7,500 who ‘combine good quality with value for money’ will have access to a flexible margin of about 20,000 places.
• Arrangements for employers and charities to sponsor individual places outside student number controls will become more flexible.
• Regulatory barriers that ‘are preventing a level playing field’ for all providers will be removed, and the White Paper will also simplify the regime for obtaining and renewing degree-awarding powers, making a more diverse sector. The White Paper proposes to decouple degree-awarding powers from teaching in order to facilitate externally-assessed degrees by trusted awarding bodies, for example.
• The Government will work with UCAS and other possible partners such as Which? and bestcourse4me to expand information available to prospective students – e.g. employment and earnings outcomes of graduates of each course. Universities will also be expected to publish online summary reports of student surveys of lecture courses. As part of these measures, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) will be preserved.
• An innovation and research strategy will be published which will explore the roles of knowledge creation, business investment, skills and training, and the public sector in innovation and growth performance. This is likely to be intertwined with the rolling out of a programme of Technology Innovation Centres later this year.
• A new regulatory system will be introduced with HEFCE adhering to a risk-based approach to quality assurance.
• Professor Sir Tim Wilson will undertake a review into how the UK can be the best place in the world for university-industry collaboration.

3) Increasing social mobility

• Maintenance grants and loans for nearly all students are being increased, and a National Scholarship Programme is being introduced.
• Through the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) and Director of Fair Access, institutions will continue to be required to fulfil their outreach, retention and academic freedom obligations. OFFA will remain independent and be strengthened with an increase in resource over time.
• Depending on the outcomes of the UCAS review of admissions procedures, there may be a move to a Post-Qualification Applications (PQA) system, where students apply for university after they receive their exam results, not before.

“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