'Students need a reality check – university is not school'

With an average price tag just shy of £27,000, a degree from an English university doesn’t come cheap nowadays. Increases in tuition fees have triggered hand-wringing over the value of higher education.

Debates continue as to whether the value of a degree should be measured in potential future earnings or the immediacy of the student experience. Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus that students do not think they are getting value for money.

The results of a survey conducted last month by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Higher Education Academy suggest one-third of students feel they are receiving poor, or very poor, value for money.

Which?, the consumer rights group familiar to many a confused shopper, finds students even more dissatisfied. Their recently published report claims nearly half of all students do not think their degree is worth the money.

Most students’ complaints focus upon the quality of the teaching they receive and the number of contact hours they have with academics.

Some students report spending fewer than ten hours each week in lectures or seminars, while others claim that up to 40 per cent of their classes are not taught by a member of academic staff.

A quick back-of-an-envelope calculation might lead to the conclusion that universities are indeed expecting an awful lot of money while offering very little in return.

But students need to be given a reality check: they are no longer pupils sitting at the feet of their teacher and university is not school.

School teachers spend time planning lessons so as to guide closely their pupils’ learning; they think of imaginative ways to engage even reluctant children in progressively more complex content; the best will consider what their pupils know already and how they can bring about the intellectual leaps to take them beyond this.

Lecturers, generally, do not do these things because what’s expected of students in higher education is qualitatively different. Whereas the good pupil is obedient, imbibes transmitted knowledge, and follows rules to pass tests; being a successful student demands more than this.

Students need to take responsibility for their own learning, pursuing ideas and knowledge beyond the formal curriculum and developing an independent critique of the material they encounter.

Academics cannot make students do these things. At best, lecturers can provide a knowledge base to stimulate students’ thinking; they can encourage intellectual risk-taking and inspire independent research.

Ultimately however, the interest, motivation, and sheer effort needed to master a subject can only come from students themselves. Learning cannot be done to people any more than it can be bought.

For this reason, students’ complaints about being taught by non-academic members of staff are also misplaced.

Many PhD students employed by universities to lead undergraduate seminars, are working at the cutting edge of disciplinary knowledge; they are excited about their own research and are keen to convey their findings to others.

Most PhD students who teach are bright, lively and engaged with their subject; what they lack in experience they often compensate for with enthusiasm.

The demand from students for lecturers to possess a formal teaching qualification speaks to the expectation that academics will have a box of magical pedagogic tricks they can use to bring about learning and circumvent the efforts students are expected to make on their own behalf.

One way to encourage independent learning is for those who teach in the academy to have high aspirations of what their students are capable of achieving. When lecturers expect much, students rise to the challenge.

Unfortunately, evidence from the Which? report is not good in this respect. Over a quarter of the students questioned claimed to be doing less academic work at university than they did when they were at school and a similar proportion say their lecturers could be pushing them harder.

Too often universities discourage independent learning, individual interests and academic risk taking. Prescribed reading lists, often reduced to downloadable chapters and articles – as well as predetermined learning outcomes – curb students’ tendencies to strike out intellectually on their own.

Too often, just like at school, credit is given for conformity rather than adventure.

Academics, students, parents, and consumer-campaign groups alike all need to reassess the concept of value in relation to higher education. Measuring the worth of a degree on the basis of short term satisfaction only hastens trends towards spoon-feeding and teaching-to-tests.

The real value of a degree is not based on what students get out of a university but on the effort they put into learning and contributing to a knowledge driven project of understanding more about the world.

No price can be put on the intellectual adventure of a lifetime.

Joanna Williams is a senior lecturer in higher education at the University of Kent and author of Consuming Higher Education Why Learning Can’t Be Bought

Twitter: @jowilliams293