I was recently asked to speak at an event in Manchester on the Future of Higher Education. This gave me an opportunity to put down some thoughts about where Higher Education is going which I thought I'd share with you before I move on.

There is no doubt that Higher Education has reached a turning point. New Labour’s Higher Education Act will fundamentally change the nature of Higher Education, not just in terms of student funding but in the way students and institutions interact with one another and the way HE is perceived by our society. The ‘student experience’ is the big buzz phrase with both the Quality Assurance Agency and the Higher Education Academy focussing on enhancing the student experience. Is this a direct result of increasing fees? Of the introduction of a market into higher education? And what does is all mean to the modern student?

It is impossible to define a typical student yet society still has a traditional view of the 18-21 year old moving away from home to study a three year undergraduate degree, living in run down accommodation, stealing traffic cones and drinking too much. Ok so some of us still steal traffic cones, some students, like their peers in the real world drink too much and the run down accommodation is an unfortunate reality that has to be tackled. But the 18-21 year old studying a three year full time undergrad degree is becoming the exception rather than the norm. An increasing number of students, in fact 55% of all undergrads, are choosing to study part-time, one third of these through the Open University. Since fees were introduced in 1998, four times as many Open University students are under 24. Some HEIs are actively investing and developing their part-time provision and we are seeing further development of e-learning and distance courses, not just from the OU. And why should this surprise us?

The cost of going into Higher Education is increasing well above the rate of inflation year on year. This year’s Barclays survey shows the average debt on graduation to be £13500, up 12% on last year. This is only set to increase under the 2006 regime, little wonder then that students are choosing to study part-time and hold down full-time jobs in order to avoid this burden of debt. Of those who do make it into full-time Higher Ed 90% of students work part-time, 58% of them during term time, undoubtedly affecting their ability to achieve in their academic study. We should not really be surprised that unscrupulous individuals are taking advantage of the increasing stress students find themselves under, selling them essays over the internet. I’m not going to make excuses for students who plagiarise. But we do have to look at the reasons behind it. Some will resort to these kinds of measures through sheer laziness but for others this shows desperation. A system of individual academic advisors is all but obsolete in UK Higher Education Institutions; often students don’t develop relationships with their teachers or lecturers due to large classes and infrequent seminars. So when they begin to struggle, when other pressures impact on their academic study, where do they go for support? And this is what worries me most about distance learning. I know that students have been doing correspondence courses for years, particularly through the OU but I worry that distance learning courses are seen as easy money for institutions and a cheap and easy option for students. An article in yesterday’s Ed Guardian, reassured me somewhat that this provision is being taken seriously but I am yet to be convinced that it is the right choice for a school leaver wishing to continue their education.

I’m afraid I can’t talk about higher education without getting deeper into the funding debate. I started university in 1998 and so I was one of the first students to pay fees. Despite receiving a small amount of support from my parents, working part-time in my second and third years and working 60 hours a week in the vacations, I still managed to graduate with nearly £14 000 debt. That is over double the debt of my older sister who went to university just one year before me. And it’s not just fees that cause this debt, it’s the ever increasing cost of living. The cost of accommodation in both the private sector and in halls of residence rises well above the rate of inflation each year. Students no longer receive housing benefit, we have to pay for TV licenses and most of us don’t get free health care. In fact ironically enough, those students who receive the highest student loans are less likely to receive free health care, as the student loan is counted as income for the means test. Where’s the sense in that?

We estimate the average cost of living to be £7000 outside London and £8000 in London. Student loans come nowhere near to meeting this cost. In fact those people on Job Seekers Allowance are actually better off than the average student. How is that fair? Surely Job Seekers are on a level of support that the Government feel it is reasonable for someone to live off. Why are students not afforded the same dignity? The difference is Job Seekers are considered independent of their parents. At 18 they are adults in their own right and assessed only on their personal circumstances. Students on the other hand are not allowed to grow up, their parents are not given a break. All funding, the level of fee paid and the loan received is means tested. One of the things that got through the in the HE Act that went unnoticed was the fact that step-parents are now eligible for the means test. If the parent on which a student is dependent co-habits with their partner while their off spring is at university, that partner’s income will be means tested even if the student has had no meaningful relationship with that person, even f they’ve never met them. We have several examples of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual students who have had to drop out of higher education having come out to their parents and been cut off from financial support. It is so difficult to prove that your parents are not supporting you that students find it easier to drop out than to cope alone. This is a fundamental flaw in the means testing system that we have pointed out to Government several times. Alan Johnson, when he was HE Minister seemed genuinely interested in the issue, much more so than his successor, but even he didn’t come up with a solution. That’s because the solution is not one that Government wants to contemplate. Treating students as independent at 18 would mean offering much greater financial support to all those in HE.

So even when education funding was the number one issue on the doorstep and with a new labour manifesto pledge, ‘We will not introduce top-up fees and have legislated to prevent them’, what did the Government do next? Well we all know the story, it wasn’t discussed within Parliament, within the Labour party, there was no consultation with the public. We were presented with one solution only, the brain child of one Mr Andrew Adonis, the solution that became the contents of the HE Bill, now Act.

So what’s the spin? The fees will be paid after completion of the HE course, so it will be the graduate paying and not the student or the parent. The poorest students, those who need it most will have access to more financial support than ever before and there will be an extra £3billion going into our higher education institutions.

What’s the reality? The reality is that students will still not have enough money to live off. Fees are not deferred, we are told that each student will have to take out a loan for each year of their course which will start to accrue interest from the day they take it out so on the day of graduation a graduate from a three year course will owe much more than £9000. And unlike the current system no student will be exempt from fees. The grant has been reintroduced, by the same Government who took it from us in the first place. It is means tested, which is a flawed system as I have already explained. Students whose parental income is less than £30 000 will receive some level of grant. But what happens to those who fall above the threshold? Some institutions will provide additional support for these students, many will not and student loans will not be enough.

The new legislation has introduced a market into higher education. We all feared that the market would be in fees and to some extent it is. How Leeds Met will fare against Manchester Met with one charging £2000 a year and the other £3000 remains to be seen. It is predominantly those institutions that excel in widening participation, those that provide learning to the local community, HE courses provided in FE colleges which will charge lower fees. But with the vast majority of HEIs charging £3000 a year the market has instead appeared in the provision of bursaries.

To not centralise the bursary system was sheer madness. One of the many badly thought through aspects of the legislation. Let’s not even begin to talk about how on earth the Government is going to recuperate the hundreds of thousands of pounds that EU students will owe in fees under the new scheme. And if I was to talk about how confusing things are going to be for students crossing borders within the UK come 2006, I’d be here all day.

But back to bursaries. When we talk about bursaries let us not forget that this is money coming out of the pockets of students, it is not new money being generously provided to students by institutions as UUK would have us believe.

The de-centralised system means we are now in a ludicrous situation where prospective students will be shopping around for the best financial support package rather than focussing on whether the course and the institution are right for them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that a student with no interest in law, for example, will choose to study it at a certain institution just because of the support package. But when it comes to short-listing money will have to play a part. It already does to some extent. When I was picking my HEI I ruled out London straight away without even looking at the courses available simply because of the cost of living.

Looking at the figures, a tiny number of students, for example the lucky few from the poorest backgrounds who study in Manchester or Oxford, may in theory be able to get through their higher education without taking out loans or working part-time. But they will not be able to escape the fee debt. No student, unless supported by particularly wealthy and generous parents will be able to escape without any debt at all. When you look at the diversity of offers being made by institutions, the system is neither fair nor transparent. How could it be fair that a student studying in Manchester from a poor background could end up with £5000 in bursaries while someone from the same family background studying at Northumbria for example will receive a lot less? Two institutions may well put the same amount of their fee income into bursaries but where one is Oxford which has a handful of students from the poorest background and one is Wolverhampton which has the greatest number of students from low-income backgrounds, that money at Wolverhampton will be stretched a lot further. That is not a fair system. And it’s not Manchester’s fault. The university should be commended for recognising the need for substantial financial support for students, but that still doesn’t make it fair. There are some students who because of geography, course choices, competition for courses will not make it to those institutions giving out the most money. And what about bursaries based on merit? NUS believes and I believe that every student deserves a living grant, that education should be free and funded by the state through taxing the society and the businesses that benefit from having educated citizens and workers. But, if there is only a limited amount of money to go round, for goodness sake give it to the students who need it the most rather than those deemed to be the brightest?

The fact that at least one institution in the north-west has set up an additional bursary fund to support local students come 2006 through private donations, illustrates that lack of money available.

Even our beloved ex-President Charles Clark when he was education secretary admitted that student debt would probably increase to over £30000 under the 2006 regime. If students and graduates are already struggling with debt, how are the students of the future going to cope? What impact is this going to have on a students ability to get on the property ladder, start a family, contribute to a pension scheme? A big worry for a generation for which there will be no state pension.

Now all this paints a rather bleak picture of Higher Education from the student perspective, and things aren’t much better from the institutional point of view. Capital building projects are long overdue; teachers, academics and support staff are under paid; research funding, or a lack of it, affects a departments ability to deliver on teaching; competition for ‘the best’ students is fierce; top-up fees will not fill the funding gap.

So what’s this higher education thing all about? Why do we bother? Why do thousands of students each year take on 5 figure debts?

Well, if you listen to some commentators and even some ministers you would think it was all about making money. Students put themselves through years of debt and hardship safe in the knowledge that over their life time they will have this mythical £400 000 more than their non-graduate peers. Well that’s barely enough to buy a decent family home down south these days and actually, more recent figures show that the figure is more like £100 000 if you compare graduates to their school mates who didn’t go to university. And that is the average. What about the people who go into, teaching, nursing and other public sector jobs. They are unlikely to ever feel the financial benefit of higher education.

So what else motivates us? Well, just as there is no typical student, there is not one common motivating factor. Some have a real passion for their subject and what to explore it in more detail; some want to work in a specific profession and need Higher Education to get them there; for some I’m sure they don’t really know why they’re there but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I’ll be honest, I wanted to move away from home. Not that I don’t love my parents dearly but I was a difficult teenager, as all teenagers should be in my opinion, and I think it was about time I gave them and me a break. I would have preferred to work rather than study. I didn’t even want to go to sixth form college let alone uni. But I had the choice between staying at home and working my way up through the Whitbread career structure, eventually running my own pub or going to uni, moving away and finding something else. I’m probably earning half what I could have earned by now with Whitbread but I’ve had the time to discover that that is not where my future lies. At university I had the opportunity to meet new people, to learn more about the world we live in, to challenge my own opinions and those of others, I had experiences, good and bad, I would not have otherwise had. My principles, my aspirations, the direction of my life has completely changed as a result of accessing higher education.

This is what higher education should be about. Changing lives and changing the world we live in. Idealistic I know, but in an increasingly market driven sector it’s a belief I cling on to.

I am so grateful to have been one of those people who grew up knowing that I would go to university. The battle I had trying to persuade friends and family, unsuccessfully of course, that university was not for me is nothing compared to the difficulty many young people go through who have grown up thinking just the opposite, who have grown up without considering higher education as an option. These are the students that we need to focus on. These are the students who face enough barriers without the added burden of debt. These are the students who need you to invest just as much in student support and retention as you do in outreach work and bursaries. Something I believe the Office of Fair Access needs to take more seriously.

It is not often I defend Government policy but I do want to defend the 50% access target. Many, even some of our own members, and perhaps some of you, believe that the 50% is lowering standards in higher education and that just about anyone can get a degree these days. It’s saturating the graduate market meaning more and more people are having to do a masters to get ahead of the game. I disagree. The 50% target is an arbitrary figure that means very little but at least it gives us all something to aim for. It’s not about bums on seats but about raising the aspirations of those who weren’t born with higher education already part of their life plan. And if this means Swansea University providing a surf studies degree course because this is something that motivates young people, something that captures their imagination, something they are passionate about, then so be it. There are mechanisms in place to ensure that these courses are of degree standard, they no doubt contain transferable skills that a graduate can use in any number of industries, so why knock it? Why not be pleased that doors are being opened and lives are being changed.

Now just because I don’t believe higher education is about making money at the end of it, I still recognise the importance of the employability agenda. Students need opportunities to develop key skills which will help them going onto employment, further study or simply to become active citizens. Many institutions are taking employability seriously, particularly as it features so prominently in the league tables. Many have developed key skills programmes and work-based learning modules, all adding value to the student learning experience. However, what many fail to recognise is the role students’ unions have in student development. Course representatives, sports officials, community volunteers, executive officers – all develop organisational, communication and interpersonal skills. They learn to work as part of a team or on their own initiative. They get the opportunity to learn essential lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom.

Of course the HE funding system is also affecting students’ ability to participate in volunteering activities. Part-time work and study dominate a student’s agenda, leaving little time for student union involvement, particularly if there’s no tangible reward at the end of it. One union has started paying their course reps in order to ensure they fulfil their roles. While I oppose this from a principled point of view I can see where they’re coming from. But there are alternatives. The Essex Skills Award and a similar scheme at Kingston for example now incorporate student union activity into the skills programme. Others have taken it a step further, counting volunteering activity as credit towards a qualification. Whether done formally or not, support must be there to allow students to see the benefit of non-formal learning, those who get involved need to be able to articulate what they have learnt and should have something to show for it even if it’s only a certificate and a thank you at the end of the year.

Institutions can do their part too by supporting their unions reward and accreditation schemes, developing one together if no scheme exists. By prioritising non-formal learning and putting time aside from academic study on Wednesday afternoons institutions can send a clear message out about the importance of extra-curricular activity. And with increasing student numbers I know this is hard but you can’t tell me there isn’t just a little bit of room for manoeuvre on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons. Of course some students use their Wednesday afternoons as an opportunity to earn money or to catch up on study not done at weekends because of part-time work. This is yet another symptom of the inequality that pervades the HE sector with the poorest students losing out on development opportunities because of the debt that has been forced upon them.

Institutions need to take their unions seriously. Cutting funding, taking over commercial services, and in some cases interfering in the democracy of the students’ union is under valuing and undermining a core part of the student learning experience. So the union might be a bit critical of the institution, perhaps they might even go on strike and occupy the vice-chancellors office once in a while and perhaps their commercial services are failing to make money. This is no reason to turn against them, to threaten them and to get rid of them. Students have a right to a voice, have a right to criticise, have a right to hold you accountable. They also have the ability to work together with their institution, to form partnerships and develop joint initiatives. Students’ Unions should not be feared. They should be respected, supported and listened to.

We are increasingly hearing about students as consumers. Students apparently now have the right to a decent quality education now that they are paying fees. What about those students who don’t pay fees? What happens next year when students in Wales are paying the current fee, many of them paying no fee at all and students in England are paying £3000? Do the students in England deserve a better quality experience simply because they are paying more? Of course not, that’s ridiculous. Students deserve a quality student experience regardless of what they are paying. On the other hand, I can’t deny that this discussion has given students unions and NUS more weight when raising questions about how institutions spend their money, after all some of that money has come straight out of our pockets. But as core members of the university community shouldn’t students have a say in where investment is made, in where the money is spent anyway? Most institutions are good at consulting with their unions but I can’t help feeling that this is sometimes a formality rather than genuine consultation. I found it frustrating and disheartening when some institutions excluded their SU reps from discussions about fees and bursaries and where fee income should be spent. Just because a union opposes the policy, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a say in its implementation.

So what does this do to the relationship with the students union? The relationship between the learner and the educators? Do we really mean consumer and service provider? Students’ Unions have traditionally been the channel through which students have had their voices heard. To move towards a consumer model where the onus is on the individual to voice concerns would ultimately damage both the union and the institution. Structured, effective and funded student representation structures are the best way to ensure that students are able to speak up.

Students within their HEI are partners, not simply consumers who can phone a hotline and complain because they haven’t got value for money. As vital members of the community they should be involved at every level of decision making. They should be listened to and their concerns given due attention. There have been moves among some to remove students from Boards of Governors and time and time again we at NUS hear of students being asked to leave for closed business, treating them as second class members of the community.

But while all this is going on, students unions have had formal national recognition for their role as representative bodies by being given a key part to play in the Quality Assurance Agency’s Institutional Audit. As you will no doubt be aware students unions can now submit a student written submission to the QAA giving the student perspective on the quality of the academic experience, a big win for NUS. And the National Student Survey, while it has it’s critics and is by no means perfect, is the first opportunity students have had to feed back comparable information to future generations of students.

This consumer debate is one that will go raging on as we enter the marketised system of higher education. What is apparent however is the willingness of institutions to invest the fee income into resources for students. There is still not enough money coming into the sector and whoever makes up our next Government needs to go back to the drawing board and find a new solution which will fund higher education without pushing the burden of debt onto students. But what money there is available needs to be spent wisely.

I wouldn’t like to be a vice-chancellor right now. In fact, I would never like to be a vice-chancellor, although I wouldn’t mind a VCs salary. But right now in particular every department in every institution must have their eye on that pot of money hoping that they will get there hands on it. Spending will of course vary from institution to institution and rightly so. The needs of students must come first when it comes to allocating funds.

I wish I could tell you what students want, but this of course varies wildly. Some want money invested in sports facilities, a new gym or swimming pool. Some want more investment in books in the library. Some want the money to go into a new night club in the students union. And the truth is some don’t know what they want because they don’t know what is missing.

I can however give you some things to consider, much of which is no doubt already available here in Manchester.

I believe more should be invested in learning support. I was very lucky at college. My history teacher told me that I was rubbish at writing essays. He didn’t put it quite as bluntly as that but that’s what he was saying. Being someone who hates being rubbish at anything I sent myself off to learning support and had help in essay planning, making the best use of time in exams and different methods of revision. I’m convinced that without this help I would have struggled to achieve in higher education.

How many students go through their entire educational experience without this kind of support? Especially those coming from schools and colleges without a tradition of sending students into HE? In many institutions these resources are available but how many students know about them? How many institutions stop advertising these services early on because they cannot cope with demand as it is?

And what about student support? Money management advice and debt counselling are needed now and will be even more so in the future.

And there are basic yet essential facilities that still aren’t available to many. For example prayer rooms, close enough to learning centres that students don’t have to travel too far to fulfil their religious commitments and halal and kosher foods readily available. Students deserve safe, secure, affordable accommodation, we must stop the rise of privately provided halls were profit comes first, student welfare second. Institutions need to become more accessible, both physically and from a teaching and learning point of view. Lecturers can no longer pace the front of a lecture theatre speaking towards the floor, audio-visual support must be available and lecture notes should be clear and accessible. Better feedback on assessment should be given and within a reasonable time frame, teachers and lecturers should be available for one to one contact with students. When it comes to funding, there are little things that can be done that can make a big difference. Negotiations for discounts on local travel, the removal of hidden course costs, registration fees, printing, photocopying, laundry costs, network connections. Special consideration should be given to students with significant practical elements, arts students who need to buy materials, scientists who need to go on field trips.

And when it comes to teaching and learning students want to be engaged in their learning, to have their contribution valued and to feel involved in the development of the course. It is no fun to be a passive receiver of information. I studied for a year in Spain where HE is quite different. We went to lecturers, listened took notes and were then asked to regurgitate what we had heard in assessment and exams. It was only in the second semester that I realised that the Spanish students were practically writing down what the lecturers said word for word and were then learning it like a script for the exams. UK higher education is much more engaging but financial constraints threaten to cut back on contact time so much that even the students living on campus are pretty much on an e-learning course.

Teaching and assessment should change and evolve. We should be thinking outside the traditional models of education. The Higher Education Academy and Centres of Excellence are welcome developments in the world of HE and the student voice should be central to these initiatives, working in partnership with teachers.

I said at the beginning that Higher Education had reached a critical turning point and what happens next is uncertain. The truth is we done’ know what effect 2006 will have on students, their choices and their aspirations. We don’t know if mature students will be prevented from returning to education because of the massive increase in debt, if, as in Australia, poorer students will shy away from longer courses like medicine and if part-time numbers will fall because of the up-front top-up fees, another consequence of badly thought through legislation.

What we do know is alongside these potentially devastating financial changes come opportunities for positive change. Opportunities for institutions to re-engage with the students’ union, for the student voice to be heard in quality assurance and the strategic development of the institution, for investment in core resources and for engagement with students in their teaching and learning experience.

When I was asked to speak here I was asked to make you think. I hope that I have achieved my goal, that I have raised issues that you can discuss amongst yourselves and questions that we can come back to on the panel later on.

I hope that I am preaching to the converted when I say that students have as much to offer to their university community as they get out of it. That there will always be those who will drift through higher education with their eyes half closed oblivious to the wonderful opportunities and experiences available to them. Your challenge is to open those eyes, to engage the disengaged, to open doors and to change lives. After all, that’s what higher education is about.

Thank you very much.

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