Life in the UK higher education sector certainly isn’t getting any easier. Many of the issues that the sector is grappling with have been on the agendas of senior leaders within our universities for a number of years – equality of opportunity via access and participation plans, supporting successful student outcomes for all students, balancing the books in a time when real fee income is dropping, recruitment, visas for international students, the cost-of-living crisis. I could go on. 

It is all a bit tense! 

These themes were unsurprisingly prominent during conversations at our recent StREAM Leadership Summit, an event for senior leaders representing universities in our user community. Here we focused on ways to use data more effectively within personal tutoring or academic advising – however the provision of academic and pastoral support at a university is framed. This group of staff – who may be academics with personal tutor hats on, or who may be professional services colleagues with a designated remit around personal and pastoral support – are typically the primary end users of StREAM. 

During discussions, I was struck by the ways in which universities are being pulled in multiple different directions by different policy agendas and regulatory requirements. I was also struck by the seeming tensions between these policy and regulatory requirements and wanted to unpick some of them here. 

Personalisation ‘vs’ scalability and sustainability 

All three of these ‘buzzwords’ have been evident in higher education nomenclature for years.  

Personalisation seems to be strongly connected to the widening participation agenda – the desire to make higher education accessible to a wider range of people than the traditional university applicant groups. In reality, this seems to focus on how universities use the additional fee income arising from being both registered with the Office for Students (OfS) and having an approved Access and Participation plan in place. This additional fee income is to be used to support activity to reduce risks to the equality of opportunity for different student groups and cohorts.

On the ground, personalisation appears trickier to actualise. When a student presents to the university seeking help and support, does it matter whether the issue giving rise to the request for support originates from their gender, ethnicity, parental income or any other factor, or is it more important to listen to the nature of the challenge or barrier being experienced by the student and then work with them to provide appropriate support? 

The problem is that universities are measured against activity to address access, awarding or other gaps in outcomes for identified student groups. So, there is a managerial need to ‘know’ which group(s) students fall into and any associated challenges or issues that they are facing. A level of ‘knowing’ is required for universities to proactively and intentionally take action to address those gaps and reduce the risks to equality of opportunity for those student groups. This need to categorise is difficult in light of the challenges around establishing a causal link between the personal characteristic and the identified support need. 

Against this need for personalised and tailored support at the individual level is the need for universities to balance the books. To do this, any planned, structured outreach and support activity needs to be both sustainable and scalable – particularly in this world where the real value of the student fee continues to decline. 

All of which brings me to a second identified tension

Between this need for personalisation and the implementation of wider policy imperatives across the institution combined with a desire to ensure a consistent (fair and equitable) student experience for all. And that does not mean consistency in provision, but rather in outcome. 

The importance of consistency was brought home to me many years ago when a more senior colleague at the institution I was working at made the incredibly simple point that ‘student’s talk.’ I do not think anyone will disagree with me when I say that one of the aims of welcome and induction activity is to support students to feel like they belong to their programme, faculty, and institution, to build friendships beyond their programme. Universities actively encourage students to make friends with a wide range of fellow students via student-organised clubs and societies, through extra-curricular activity, through their student accommodation. And some of that talk will, no doubt, include comparisons around their academic experiences. Inconsistencies – especially unexplained or unjustifiable ones – will surface and, if they are particularly annoying to students, will be mentioned in internal and external feedback surveys. 

While consistency in provision may be relatively easy to enable within a programme of study or subject discipline, differences in provision, expectation, resourcing and delivery mode and mechanism exist between programmes and subject areas. In many institutions, this is intentional due to the level of autonomy that exists for faculties and departments. In some areas, these differences may even be necessary, for example due to professional or regulatory body requirements.  

One way in which this tension may be tackled is through principled approaches that seek to retain flexibility in approach that is valued by the university as a whole, and the separate faculties and departments. Provision of a minimum entitlement can certainly help, allowing for additionality where externally required or where resources are available. 

Triaging students in crisis ‘vs’ the reality of limits in HEI responsibilities and capabilities 

Anyone interested in UK higher education cannot fail to be aware of the many discussions, events and initiatives seeking to tackle the current student mental health crisis and much good work is going on in this area. (For examples of what is working and for suggestions for initiatives to tailor to your own institutional context, check out the online Student Mental Health Evidence Hub produced by a consortium of organisations and available on the TASO website). 

The tension here seems primarily to focus on the roles, responsibilities, capabilities, and boundaries that exist (or perhaps, should exist) for universities when it comes to supporting student health and wellbeing and, in particular, working with students presenting with mental health issues and conditions. On the one hand, universities are, by definition, places of education and are not specialist healthcare providers. But unlike many other places of education, they often also provide accommodation and a social belonging ‘hub’ for new students who have moved away from home for their university education. Hence university provision of health centres, faith-based support, social activity etc. 

On 5 June 2023, the UK Parliament debated a proposed duty of care for students in HE [1], seeking to provide a statutory duty on universities akin to that owed by pupils in the care of a school. The debate surfaced this tension acutely as it sought to explore precisely where university responsibilities for their students ended and where healthcare services should take over. The government stopped short of imposing a statutory duty, stating instead that the duty that exists under the current general duty of care is that universities are ‘expected to act reasonably to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their students.’ In reality, as Universities UK stated in their response [2] to the Government position, universities do need to demonstrate good practice in this area and show that the work they are doing shows progress as against agreed frameworks such as signing up to the University Mental Health Charter from Student Minds by September 2024. There is definitely more to come in this area.

It goes without saying that students struggling in one aspect of their life – let us say with their mental health given this is the area we are currently looking at – are going to see the fruit of those struggles manifesting in other areas of their life – let us say in their academic studies. The two are not and cannot be separated and kept distinct. The same person is involved in both. When a student is experiencing challenges with their mental health, this is likely to be evident in their ability to participate in their studies and to socialise [3]. And vice versa. A student who is struggling academically is likely to find this stressful and challenging. While this may be part and parcel of learning a new subject and being at university – and there is much to think about here in terms of understanding that there is a level of normality to some of these challenges – for some students however, the impact on their physical and mental health is more significant. The difficulty is to find ways to balance what is ‘normal’ about these challenges with the creation of a model that medicalises them and which may also lead to a perceived need for remedial support for the individual student. 

On-campus attendance ‘vs’ learning effectively online 

Although we are coming up on 4 years since the start of the government-initiated lockdowns with COVID-19, the pandemic seems to have provided a watershed moment from which there may never be a full return. Having actively promoted the message to students that you can still learn effectively online – a necessity if higher education, indeed any education or work for that matter – was going to continue during those many months of lockdown, the return to campus has required a dismantling of that message. To get students back on campus – to support that belonging agenda that is known to be so critical to supporting student transition and a successful student experience [4] – students need to see value in being on campus rather than continuing to learn in an individualistic and, depending on how effectively the tutor has designed opportunities for collaborative learning into the academic experiences, often isolated way.  

Thinking back to the conversations that universities are having around their duty of care to their students and the ongoing mental health crisis in the student population, you might ask whether it is the case that the push for students to be on campus is more about wellbeing, and belonging, than it is about education? 

This tension between in-personal attendance and effective online learning is exacerbated by the ongoing shifts in expectations around attendance and engagement from the UK government for international students. From an initial focus on in-person attendance, UK Visas, and Immigration (UKVI) shifted its stance to one of engagement – arguably also borne out of pandemic necessity – through COVID-19 but is now firmly back on requiring universities to focus on in-person attendance. How do universities support belonging, community, and collaborative learning etc in an environment where international students are legally obliged to be present on campus, but where universities are seeking to preserve best practice around hybrid, online and blended learning, add value to the in-person learning experience and where some students are not on campus as much as was once the case? 

Belonging ‘vs’ mattering

One final tension, that surfaced during our conversation, was this difference in language around the community aspect of university life. I have already talked here around ‘belonging’ and initiatives to support student transitions into university that focus on making friends, building new communities and support networks etc. One interesting counterpoint to this conversation was how, for many students, they were focused less on widely-accepted notions of belonging, and more on ‘mattering’ – the individual’s perception that they are important and valued in their interpersonal relationships [5].  

The question here is what this shift in the language means for all the work that universities are doing around ‘belonging.’ Is it rendered irrelevant? Mattering as a concept may be coming to the fore making this another tension that universities will need to consider among these many competing policy agendas and drivers that consume their working lives. 

Can student engagement data help? 

Not all the tensions need resolution – in fact, many of them can, and indeed, must co-exist. It is perfectly reasonable to expect a level of personalisation to be provided for students in their 1:1 conversations with university staff providing academic and pastoral information and guidance, to be signposted or referred to a support team that they are happy to meet with and work with to address any identified barriers to engagement. 

Equally, it is necessary for staff with different institutional remits and responsibilities to adopt a very different perspective around student engagement data focused more on questions of resourcing and the holistic provision of support to students. To know what initiatives are going to bear the most fruit, reach the widest number of students and most effectively tackle any identified risks to equality of opportunity, managers and university leaders need aggregated data insights to show progress against targets, to identify bottlenecks in supply and demand for support services and to help ensure that they are doing what they can to effectively meet the regulatory requirement of Condition B3 of registration to deliver successful outcomes for all students.  

While not easy, there is no doubt that student engagement data can help. Understanding in real-time how individual students are participating in their learning and triangulating this with assessment data to determine the effectiveness of that learning strategy is necessary to help each student maximise their potential for success. StREAM provides just those kinds of insights and further enables effective signposting and referral mechanisms that align to the contextual provision of support within a university, to ensure that no student falls through the gap. 

Understanding what engagement looks like at a cohort level, making comparisons year-on-year, evaluating engagement and outcomes for different student groups and overlaying different protected characteristics to help determine the value and impact of support interventions is increasingly essential if universities are to turn the dial on some of the sector-level metrics that inform TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) evaluations and awards.  

StREAM by Kortext are currently developing a new set of management-level insights that combine data from student participation in educationally purposeful activities with more granular data from their learning experiences into a common data platform that will enable universities to use and consume student data in different ways, to more easily address risks to equality of opportunity and surface that data in different platforms tailored to different users and operational requirements. Ultimately, these insights will help institutions to better balance the tensions explored above, deliver the personalised, tailored experience that students are seeking, to feel like they ‘matter,’ with the ability to report on progress against relevant sector metrics, informing future TEF submissions and supporting APP-related activity. 

To find out more, please book StREAM demo. 

Footnotes

1 See further, Kendle, A. (2023) University statutory duty of care for students [online]. Available from: https://www.farrer.co.uk/news-and-insights/university-statutory-duty-of-care-for-students/#:~:text=In%20the%20parliamentary%20debate%2C%20Robert,a%20statutory%20duty%20of%20care

2 Universities UK (2023) Universities UK parliamentary briefing. Position for debate: Creating a statutory legal duty of care for students in Higher Education [online]. Available from: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/sites/default/files/field/downloads/2023-06/Universities-UK-briefing-Westminster-Hall-Debate-5-June-2023.pdf  

3 Clark, C. (2021) How does poor mental health affect students? 6 key impacts [online]. Available from: https://heprofessional.co.uk/edition/how-does-poor-mental-health-affect-students-6-key-impacts#:~:text=Student%20facing%20mental%20health%20risks%20can%20often%20very%20quickly%20become,take%20part%20in%20social%20activities.  

4 See for example, Jackson, A., Capper, G. and Blake, S. (2022). The four foundations of belonging at university [online]. Available from: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-four-foundations-of-belonging-at-university/  

5 See further, Dixon, A. and Tucker, C. (2008). Every student matters: Enhancing strengths-based school counselling through the application of mattering. Professional School Counseling 12(2) pp. 123-126.