The Role of Student Services in Higher Education

Annie Grant

The Role of Student Services in Higher

EducationUniversity and the Student Experience

ISBN 978-3-030-81438-0 ISBN 978-3-030-81439-7 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81439-7

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Annie GrantFreelance researcher and writer; AssociateNewnham College CambridgeCambridge, UK

This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Gerald Bermbaum, a former Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Registrar at the University of Leicester,

who encouraged me to shift my attention from the long dead who were focus of my research and teaching as an archaeologist, to the lives and experiences

of students, the life blood of all universities.

I shall be forever grateful for Gerry’s faith in me as I embarked on this new, totally absorbing and very rewarding career, and for his enduring friendship

and support over all the years that followed, right up until his untimely death in 2017.

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Why have I felt the need, indeed the personal necessity, to write this book? There is already an extensive and ever-growing literature on learning and teaching and the politics of UK higher education (HE), not to mention seemingly endless and ever-changing government strategy documents, survey reports and daily blogs on a wide range of aspects of the UK student experience. However, many if not most of these are writ-ten from a top down perspective by those whose direct contact with today’s very diverse student body may be limited. As far as I know, there is not as yet a book that attempts to take a broad view of UK students’ lives and experiences and what is important to them from the ground up, that is from a student advisory perspective.

Those who make the greatest contributions to the achievement of the academic and personal goals of higher education students are with-out any doubt the teachers and researchers who are the lifeblood of all institutions, supported in their endeavours by a wide range of special-ist managers and administrators who range from librarians and finance directors to those who are responsible for their university’s estate. Without their contribution and that of the many other non-academic colleagues who provide vital leadership, administration and structural underpinning, many of the wide-ranging activities of universities could not function effectively.

Preface

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There is another rather less well understood and commented on group of staff whose main focus is student achievement and wellbeing. These are the professional advisory staff who work face-to-face with students in what are generally known in the UK as ‘student advisory/support ser-vices’, or ‘student affairs’ in the USA. It is their work and their under-standing of students’ aspirations and goals, their university experiences and the challenges that they face that are the primary focus of this book. Their role is to stand alongside their academic and other colleagues and primarily through one-to one interactions, offer information, advice, guidance and counselling to help students find their ways of overcoming any difficulties that may trip them up as they progress through their courses, achieve their best and take maximum advantage of their stu-dent years.

I hope that what I write will be of interest to a range of readers, includ-ing those responsible for HE funding, policy development and manage-ment, academic teachers and administrators and many others outside HE, including the school teachers and parents/guardians who have a responsibility for preparing prospective students for what is likely to be one of the most important transitional and transformational experiences of their lives.

The book is certainly not intended as a manual or handbook of student service practice, although I hope that it might stimulate and encourage those who work in this sector of higher education in the UK and in other parts of the world, as I aim to bring what they do and achieve to greater prominence. I wish to encourage all those who work in HE to have a broader understanding of their students, the realities of their lives, the challenges that they may face and their successes. I wish to highlight the increasing importance of professional advice and guidance in helping stu-dents to overcome any difficulties and challenges they may face and develop the confidence and independence that will enable them to achieve their ambitions now and in the future. I am certain that student services should no longer be viewed as an optional add-on but as an essential part of UK higher education playing a significant role in helping to achieve the UK higher education sector’s mission, which, as Universities

ix Preface

UK (UUK) has expressed it, is ‘… to provide students with a world-class education so that they can achieve their full potential’.1

The book’s structural organisation is broadly thematic beginning in Chap. 1 by putting the relevant practices and concerns of the UK higher education sector into an historical context. I make no apologies for devot-ing some of my allotted word count to outlining the history that has shaped the landscape of contemporary higher education and the role of student services within it. As have been writing this book I have become increasingly concerned about the short memories of governments and of those who lead and work in the sector and a seeming lack of interest in what has already been achieved in the past. We seem to be constantly reinventing wheels and launching supposedly new initiatives without looking first at what is already known. All those who embark on any piece of academic research know that the task that they must first address is the literature review. I hope that this book might encourage the sector to reconsider and build on its many past successes and also learn from its failures in order to avoid repeating them.

Several interrelated themes are addressed in the following chapters of which the most evident are student achievement and wellbeing. These run as undercurrents throughout the book but are most particularly addressed in Chaps. 2 and 3 respectively. In Chap. 4 the value of concep-tualising HEIs as learning and living communities and the responsibili-ties that ensue is examined.

In the current climate where the key drivers are finances, league table rankings, audit regimes and external expectations, matters of principle and the ethical responsibilities of HEIs in respect of the duty of care and respect owed to their students and staff are rarely discussed or even openly addressed at sector or institutional level. Some are brought to light in several of the book chapters but are most specifically addressed in Chap. 5. The final and concluding Chap. 6 pulls out some final thoughts about matters such as league tables and their impact, the importance of rigorous evaluation of the impact of all policies and practices, and the ongoing future development of professional student advisory services.

1 http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/Pages/student-experience.aspx.

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The higher education sector is complex and diverse, and I do not even hope to do justice to the very different missions, perspectives and prac-tices of its wide range of institutions, subjects taught, qualifications offered, modes of study and so on. Readers will find a clear bias towards full-time students—undergraduate and postgraduate—and the pre-1992 HE sector, as these are those I know and understand the best. I have not been able to pay much attention to the particularities of higher education in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, nor sufficiently consider the diversity in the missions of the different HE sectors and the contributions of alterna-tive providers and the further education sector. I do not say much at all about distance and online learning, although it seems likely that these will have an increasingly important place in the higher education of the future. I did not set out to ignore any of these, but the task in hand has proved to be far too great and unrealistically ambitious to cover every-thing of importance.

The three years or more years during which I have been writing and further researching for this book has turned out to be a particularly tur-bulent time in higher education politics. The Office for Students (OfS)2 was established as the new regulatory body for UK higher education in 2018 and has been settling in amidst some controversy and dissent. A Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF)3 has been rolled out, ‘big data’ are the new gods and student mental health and the risk of sexual assault on campus make almost daily news. The politics of HE are constantly shifting with new guidance materials, policy initia-tives, research reports, analyses of data,4 etcetera appearing or updated weekly and I cannot claim to have been able to keep pace with them all nor address all the topics that I consider to be important. Nonetheless, student aspirations and the challenges they face are more fundamentally constant. The several references I make in the following chapters to Mary Swainson’s (1977) pioneering work with students in the middle of the

2 https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk.3 https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-students/the-tef/.4 When I make reference to websites and other electronic resources that are regularly updated and may have changed since the time of writing, I have proved a direct link in a footnote rather than a formal reference.

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twentieth century and the insights she passed on in her writing, provide for me compelling and also humbling evidence to support this view.

I have learned much from my many discussions with colleagues from across the sector, especially through the collaborative endeavours that characterise the work undertaken by the UK network of professional stu-dent advisers that membership of AMOSSHE, the UK student services organisation, provides. I have also benefited from finding out about the diverse ways institutions function and organise themselves when I have worked with some of them in a consultancy capacity.

My starting point has not been that of a theorist but is rather more ethnographic in approach and also as much as possible evidence-based. I have undertaken an extensive but not systematically comprehensive review of relevant research literature from the UK, North America and to a lesser extent Australia. I have also referred to some student research studies that I have undertaken or been involved in myself. However, what has most influenced the views expressed in this book has been my direct experiences of working closely with students, first as an academic researcher, teacher and supervisor in several universities in the UK and abroad during the first part of my career, and in the following quarter of a century, developing and leading student services in two rather different UK universities.

In order to keep the scale and scope of this book to manageable and publishable proportions, the main focus here is the personal face-to-face interactions and between universities and their adult, that is over-18 years old students. Despite a claim made at the 2017 British Science Festival lecture that the inspirational teachers of the future will be intelligent machines rather than humans, I doubt and certainly hope that this is any more likely to happen than is the paperless office we were promised when information technology first started to make its mark. We all need direct contact with other human beings whose reactions we can see and emo-tions and feelings sense. What helps us to learn and grow in a way that embeds knowledge and promotes deep understanding of self and others, provides reassurance and fosters self-respect and confidence are the face to face interactions, the discussions during and after lectures and semi-nars, the active processing of what we have learned through experiment, debate, challenge and resolving disagreement. Direct human contact is

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even more important when students seek ways to overcome personal challenges. Yes, TED talks, web resources, books, distance learning courses, self-help Apps and Zoom meetings can all play a role, but I remain convinced that what has long-lasting value will or should always include being listened to and when appropriate challenged by those who know what they are talking about, show empathy, compassion and their genuine commitment to task as they try to make it possible for students of any age or background to take ownership of their own intellectual and emotional development and ongoing path through life. This is what I sincerely hope will always count most and will continue be valued, main-tained and further developed by all universities.

NB: I have avoided naming specific institutions other than when it was particularly appropriate to do so. No assumptions should be made about the identity of the institutions where practices and experiences I refer to took place. When I have included a student case study, I trust that I have changed the details sufficiently to preserve anonymity.

Norwich, UK Annie Grant

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Many people have willingly or inadvertently contributed to this book in many different ways. They include colleagues and in particular the many students whom I have taught and supervised, or who have sought my advice, and the students and staff who have anonymously completed the survey questionnaires devised to help further my understanding of higher education and how it is experienced by students and those who teach and support them.

It would be impossible to name everyone who has had an influence on my thinking and the views I express in this book. Singling out some risks offending others I do not mention but have also been important to me. If I have caused offence this was not deliberate, and I apologise. Those I name below, together with those I shall undoubtedly regret having not included as soon as the book has gone to press, have been important in different ways, whether these be through their professional and practical insights, their feedback on sections of my writing where their specialist knowledge was needed, or through the ongoing friendships and personal support that has kept me going.

My thanks go to Jayne Aldridge; Jane Amos; Ellie Baker; Caroline Ball; Paul Coathup; Anne Hillary; Richard Clark; Sally Downes; David

Acknowledgements

xiv Acknowledgements

Eastwood; Ken Edwards; Luke Jefferies; Ruth Liss; Maria Lorenzini; Margaret Mathieson; Rachel McShane; Geoff Moore; Judy Moore; Sally Olohan; David Owens; Martin Pennington; Michael Reynier; Jeremy Schildt; Johannes Siemons; Darren Thornton; David Thurkettle; Julie Walkling, Ezra and Marcia Zubrow, and very many more, including, of course, my family.

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This book provides an insight into the aspirations, challenges and experi-ences of twenty-first century university students through the ears and eyes of those who provide professional advisory services. It focusses on student academic and career success and their wellbeing, stressing the importance of understanding and respecting the diversity of the higher education student body. It emphasises the value of envisioning universi-ties as inclusive and safe communities that challenge discrimination, prejudice and bullying and the importance of proactive initiatives that help students to develop their self-confidence and resilience. It also addresses other important but less frequently discussed matters that impact on students’ lives including the ethical and moral values of higher education, alcohol and drug abuse and the marketisation of higher edu-cation. The book also includes a brief outline of the growth of the UK Higher Education sector and that of student advisory provision in par-ticular, highlighting the breadth and depth of the role that professional advisory staff now play and arguing for this to be much better understood and respected.

Annie Grant Book Description

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1 Universities, Students and the Development of Student Advisory Services 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Higher Education in the UK 2 1.3 Institutional Diversity 8 1.4 Student Diversity 9 1.5 The Development of Pastoral Support and Student

Services in the UK 17 1.6 Institutional Role and Status 21 1.7 Student Services Structures 23 1.8 Funding Student Services 25 1.9 Personal Tutors and Their Relationships with

Professional Advisers 27 1.10 The Student Voice and Students’ Unions 29References 31

2 Academic Achievement and Career Progression 35 2.1 Introduction 35 2.2 The Transition to Higher Education Learning 36 2.3 Learning Enhancement 38 2.4 Addressing Cheating and Plagiarism 44 2.5 EU and International Students 47

Contents

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2.6 Postgraduate Students 50 2.7 Equality of Academic Outcome 52 2.8 Addressing the Personal Factors that can Impede

Academic Success 60 2.9 Peer Support for Learning 61 2.10 Preparing for the Future 63 2.11 Government and Employer Expectations 64 2.12 Institutional Expectations 67 2.13 The Student Perspective 68 2.14 Inequality in Career Progression and the Benefits of

Collaborative Approaches 70 2.15 Final Thoughts 74References 75

3 Health and Wellbeing 81 3.1 Introduction 81 3.2 Mental Health and Wellbeing 82 3.3 Mental Ill-health in the Student Population 83 3.4 How Has the Sector Responded? 86 3.5 Understanding the Causes of Mental Distress and Stress

in the Student Population 88 3.6 Disclosure and Help Seeking 96 3.7 Postgraduate Wellbeing 102 3.8 What Can Be Done to Minimise Student Stress? 102 3.9 Shifting the Balance: Promoting Personal Strength and

Responsibility 106 3.10 Staff Training 108 3.11 Peer Support 110 3.12 Working with the Statutory and Voluntary Sectors 111 3.13 Final Thoughts 115References 118

4 Building Community in Higher Education Settings 127 4.1 Introduction 127 4.2 The Institutional Context 128 4.3 Student Living Arrangements 129

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4.4 The Residential Experience 131 4.5 Living at Home 134 4.6 Student Arrival and Induction 135 4.7 Creating an Inclusive Community: Involving the

Whole Institution 139 4.8 Inclusion and Belonging 143 4.9 Community Engagement and Citizenship 149 4.10 Keeping the Community Safe 151 4.11 Discrimination, Religion and Belief 152 4.12 Bullying and Harassment 154 4.13 Sexual Mores and Behaviours 156 4.14 Alcohol and Drug Use and Misuse 159 4.15 Final Thoughts 168References 168

5 Setting a Moral Compass 173 5.1 Introduction 173 5.2 The Moral and Ethical Values of UK Higher Education 174 5.3 Duty of Care 176 5.4 In loco parentis? 177 5.5 Confidentiality 181 5.6 Policy Development: Concessions and Extenuating

Circumstances 185 5.7 Fitness for Study and Professionalism 187 5.8 Postgraduate Research Students and Their Supervisors 190 5.9 Responding to External Pressures and Setting Clear

Boundaries 193 5.10 Inequality: Retention and Achievement 196 5.11 The Marketisation of Higher Education and Ethical

Recruitment 200 5.12 Student Discipline 206 5.13 Supporting the Supporters 212 5.14 Further Thoughts 214References 216

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6 League Tables, the Future Role of Student Services and the Importance of Measuring Impact and Effectiveness 221 6.1 Introduction 221 6.2 Measuring and Ranking HEIs: ‘Quality’ Control and

League Tables 223 6.3 The Current and Future Roles of UK Student Services 226 6.4 Measuring Impact and Effectiveness 230 6.5 Avoiding the Reinvention of the Wheel 234 6.6 Final Thoughts 237References 240

Index 243

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Annie  Grant has a degree and doctorate in archaeology. Following a successful career as a much published researcher and teacher in her spe-cialist field, her work with students as a teacher and PhD supervisor led to her decision to shift her focus to student guidance and support. She developed and directed the student advisory services in two UK universi-ties and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship for her contribu-tion to student success and wellbeing. She is currently an Associate of Newnham College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Trustee of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, thus maintaining her ongoing interests in both students and archaeology.

About the Author

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ADD/ADHD Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

AdvanceHE A higher education agency formed in 2018 through a merger of the HEA, ECU and LFHE

AGCAS Association of Graduate Careers Advisory ServicesAMOSSHE Association of Managers of Student Services in Higher

EducationAUCC Association of University and College CounsellingBACP British Association of Counselling and PsychotherapyBAME/BME Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic/Black and Minority EthnicBIS Department of Business and SkillsBMI Body Mass IndexBSI Brief Symptom InventoryBUCS British Universities and Colleges SportCMA Competition and Markets AuthorityCNAA Council for National Academic AwardsCPR Cardiopulmonary ResuscitationCVCP Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (renamed

Universities UK (UUK) in 2000)DBS Disclosure and Barring ServiceDDA Disability Discrimination Act (in 2010 incorporated within

the 2010 Equality Act)

Abbreviations

xxiv Abbreviations

DENI Department of Education (Northern Ireland)DfEE Department for Education and Employment (now the DfE)DfE Department for EducationDSA Disabled Students’ AllowanceECU Equality Challenge UnitESRC Economic and Social Research Council (formerly the Economic

and Social Science Research Council, ESSRC)FDTL Fund for the Development of Teaching and LearningFE Further EducationGHS General Household SurveyGLS General Lifestyle SurveyGMC General Medical CouncilGP General PractitionerGuildHE Formerly the Standing Conference for Principals (SCOP)HE Higher educationHEA The Higher Education AcademyHEI Higher Education InstitutionHEFCE Higher Education Funding Council for EnglandHEPI Higher Education Policy InstituteHESA Higher Education Statistical AgencyHUCS Heads of University Counselling ServicesICAC Independent Commission against Corruption of New South

Wales, AustraliaIELTS International English Language Test SystemISE Institute of Student EmployersJISC Joint Information Systems CommitteeLFHE Leadership Foundation for Higher EducationLGBTQ+ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning +MA Master of ArtsMWBHE Working group for Mental Wellbeing in Higher EducationNADP National Association of Disability PractitionersNASMA National Association of Money AdvisersNHS National Health Service (UK)NPD Non-medical use of Prescription DrugsNSS National Student SurveyNUS National Union of StudentsOECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and DevelopmentOfqual The Office of Qualifications and Examinations RegulationOfS Office for Students

xxv Abbreviations

ONS Office for National StatisticsOxbridge Oxford and Cambridge universities (colloquial)PAL Peer Assisted LearningPASS Peer Assisted Study SupportPatoss Professional association of teachers of students with specific

learning difficultiesPGT Postgraduate Taught student (for example, a Master’s student)PGR Postgraduate Research StudentPOLAR Participation of local areas: a classification into 5 groups from

lowest (1) to highest (5)) of UK postcode areas based on the proportion of the young population participating in HE. POLAR3 is the most recent version.

PRES Postgraduate Research Experience SurveyPTES Postgraduate Taught Experience SurveyQAA Quality Assurance AgencyQAR Quality Assessment ReviewSCOP Standing Conference for Principals (now GuildHE)SHEFC Higher Education Funding Council for ScotlandSKILL A former student disability charitySpLD Specific Learning Difficulties/DifferencesSU Students’ UnionSTEM Science, Technology, Engineering and MathematicsTESOF Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes FrameworkTHE Times Higher Education (a weekly publication devoted to HE

matters)UCCA Universities Central Council on Admissions (replaced by UCAS

in 1993)UCAS Universities and Colleges Admissions ServiceUCU University and College UnionUKCGE UK Council for Graduate EducationUKCISA University Council for International Student AffairsUMHAN University Mental Health Advisers NetworkUNITE UNITE STUDENTS: a commercial company proving private

student residential accommodationUUK Universities UK (formerly CVCP)WDHE Writing Development in Higher EducationWHO World Health OrganisationWP Widening participation, also used as a personal descriptor, e.g. a

WP student