Letter from London: Students as customers

Letter from London Students as custom It is an unsettling thought that with the advent of top-up fees next September, universities are already being encouraged to view their new fee-paying students as customers. Sir Howard Newby, chief executive of Higher Education Funding Council for England, recently advised university managements that “students are consumers in other spheres of their life, which universities are going to have to match. The idea that students should jolly well be grateful for what we do no longer works. We need to be responsive to students and not say we know what they ought to want.” Now that students have joined the ranks of a customers like rail passengers and hospital patients who have gradually grown used to their new status, it is important that universities do know what students “ought to want”. Teaching staff experience indicates that students have no idea of what they want or expect. Having recently met the new intake of first year students, it’s quite obvious they welcome guidance and help of any type or description. This is why they have entered university” to find out. At a recent conference on higher education in London it was suggested that university managements will have to be on their toes to manage their customers if they are to cope with changes which are in the works, including course top-up fees from next year, major changes in admission procedures a process which is now almost entirely electronic despite teething troubles. On top of these changes there is a strong likelihood that within the next ten years or so the number of 18-year-olds in the British population will begin to drop dramatically, which means that universities could be struggling to fill installed capacities. Students top-up fees which will rise to a maximum of £3,000 (Rs.2.5 lakh) per year remains a hot topic, and the subject was recently raised again by the two contenders for Conservative party leadership, David Davis and David Cameron, who are divided over the introduction of the policy. Davis describes higher fees as “a straightforward tax on learning” and says he would never have had the opportunity to go to university in his day as it would have incurred “such huge debt”. On the other hand, Cameron (who has since won the Tory leadership race) believes tuition fees are essential to help fund Britain’s universities so they remain “world class”. “To make our economy competitive, we need to be prepared to remove burdens on the state, and that’s why I’ve made clear that in higher education some form of co-payment is almost certainly the correct way forward,” he says. Both viewpoints come down to money, and whichever way one looks at it, the plain truth is that higher education is extremely expensive. The interests of equity demand it should be a cost shared between the beneficiary, educational institutions, business and the taxpayer, since all these parties and individuals benefit in the long run as the country moves forward into the future. (Jacqueline Thomas is…