Value for money polling from YouGov
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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One of the more annoying things about “value for money” polling as it relates to higher education is the inability to distinguish between the opinion that university-level study is not good value in a general sense, and the opinion that £9,000 and above is just way too much for a person to pay for a year of undergraduate provision (especially when older graduates paid a lot less).
The first is, clearly, of huge concern to providers and to everyone involved in higher education. The second – well, I’ve heard vice chancellors, lecturers, politicians, and people at the bar argue that the perception and experience of individual debt is unfair and inequitable.
New polling from YouGov, covering 4,000 graduates from universities in England, sheds some welcome light. Some 53 per cent of graduates who paid more than £9,000 (from 2012 onwards) feel that this was fairly or very bad value for money – compared to 35 per cent who paid £3,000 a year (2006 to 2011) and 22 per cent who paid £1,000 a year (1998 to 2005). Among those who paid no tuition fees (started before 1998) it was just 3 per cent.
Now, there are still two valid readings here:
- Universities have gradually got worse over time
- Graduates don’t like paying tuition fees
And it is equally possible that an element of both may be contributing. Yougov asked the same groups whether the quality of teaching was “good” or “bad” – this peaks at 93 per cent “good” in the pre-fee years and falls to 82 per cent for those at university during the pandemic (starting between 2017 and 2021).
There’s also been a drop across these fee level cohorts regarding expectations of higher earnings over time, although most recent graduates expect greater lifetime earnings. Some 70 per cent of all graduates think their degree has been helpful for their career so far, most (57 per cent) think it would be helpful in future too.
Polling like this is a step above what we usually deal with – but we still can’t reliably disaggregate graduate perceptions of quality from opinions about graduate debt incurred, any more than we can reliably disaggregate graduate outcomes from the wider state of the economy.
I am always really surprised how rarely conversations on the value for money of a University undergraduate education focus on the way that the vast majority of Universities charge the same fee for most of their degree courses, regardless of the subject studied.
An undergraduate studying maths may have a few lectures per week, a group session with a personal tutor, and perhaps one workshop, during the core term time. They might use a few books from the library and perhaps occasionally a computer suite, but the majority of their time is probably spent doing independent study at home using their own laptop and a good old paper and pen. They would probably imagine that the University does not spend a lot of time and effort on their education and may split the £9000 by the number of lectures they receive and estimate that they pay hundreds of pounds per hour to sit in a massive lecture theater where one academic delivers a lecture to a large group, all of whom are paying the same huge price tag.
An undergraduate studying geology may well have more lectures per week, workshops, practical lab sessions, samples and microscopes, access to specimens and specialist equipment and computer software, not to mention field trips and travel, many of which may occur during holiday seasons when other students are not receiving any teaching at all. They will have a very different experience and will likely spend a lot more time on campus or trips. If they attempted to calculate how much they are paying for teaching time, likely in much smaller groups, they would come out with a significantly lower figure than the maths student.
As far as these two students can see, their courses cost a very different amount of money to deliver, but they both pay the same to take them. It would be fair for the maths student to question why they have to pay the same but receive so much less ‘value for money’. Of course, the truth is that neither of these students are paying £9,000 for the teaching and facilities which they actually receive. A huge portion of what they both pay goes towards the cost of keeping the whole show on the road, maintaining huge fancy buildings for administrative staff to sit working in, meetings, planning, data collection, support services which these two students may never use but which have to be there for those who do need them, paperwork, etc. The cost and the value of a University education will always be two very different numbers whilst students continue to pay for the ‘University’ not for the ‘education’.
As a student how do you get best value for money out of your University?
You go and use it – attend your lectures, utilise the library and IT suites, join social groups, chat to coursemates in the cafes, sign up for the gym, drop in on your personal tutor to ask a question and so much more.
During covid, many of these ways to get value for money were unavailable or more difficult to access and it’s no wonder that students started to feel as if they were not getting the experience which they had hoped for when they initially made the decision to pay £9,000 a year to attend.
So what about after Covid? It seems that students have not all returned to pre-Covid behaviours and habits. They are much more likely to spend greater periods of time away from campus, much less equipt and inclined to socialise and generally make far less use of the campus and facilities than before.
Why is this the case? Some of it can be blamed on the lasting effects of the pandemic and lockdowns on the mental health and skills development of many young people. Some can be blamed on a more general societal change where working from home and going out less has become the norm and students are influenced by this. Some is down to economic factors, students are more likely to be living further away from campus and facing higher costs and travel times to commute, they are also more likely to be working part time or just generally feeling more pressures on their time as they try to make ends meet such as walking to several shops to get the best prices for groceries and buying items which take longer to prepare, instead of taking a taxi to one store and buying convenience foods. Perhaps Universities can take some of the blame if facilities have become less available or less accessible, but I think it’s a fairly solid bet that your average University still has the same libraries, social spaces and IT suites available, they just don’t get used in the same way.
As someone who fits into that ‘paid £1,000 a year (1998 to 2005)’ and has been working in HE for over ten years, looking back at my undergrad experience critically, I think many elements of the university offer have improved. I was personally involved in a crackdown on tutors who provided only the most cursory feedback on essays – feedback that was of very similar quality to the feedback I received on my essays as an undergraduate, only I didn’t think to question it then. Now students at my alma mater get to have all their teaching in warm permanent buildings, there’s not a crumbling portacabin in sight. The library is open longer. There are more extracurricular activities. The careers service does more to introduce students to employers, they don’t just hand out leaflets and offer one interview practice session per student. Staff do innovative things and try out different pedagogical ideas to promote learning, gone are the days of every module being a one hour lecture followed by a one hour seminar.
Yes, I’m jealous – but also aware that if I was a student now I wouldn’t have time to enjoy all this as I’d have to spend quite a substantial amount of time working in order to live. I’d also be worried about how paying off the debt would impact the rest of my life – if I failed to get a super high paid job, would it prolong the poverty? Some of my awareness of quality has come from working in the sector, but I think if I could only afford to access a tiny slice of the university experience, I’d be much more inclined to be critical of that piece.