Protect and survive

There are ongoing issues in getting support for disabled students. Students are taking action over Ukraine. The British Council finds that HE is still a man’s world. On the podcast we chat to Phillip Augar about the government’s response to his reforms, and on the site we have an article on access and a postcard from Scotland.

Protect and survive

At this time of year, I tend to be asked quite frequently to speak at and contribute to SU board meetings on strategy. “Give us a sense of what’s coming”, people ask. “We need a nudge on the sorts of things we ought to be thinking about” say others. “What really needs the hard thinking” is another request.

Lots of things spring to mind. The exit from the pandemic and the epidemic of student anxiety left in its wake – with the knock-on impacts on student participation – is one thing. Another is the myriad of consultations on regulation in England and both the opportunities and threats that potentially generates. There’s also the free speech agenda, not least the extent to which ministers seem to repeatedly define it as less about “free speech” and more about work that SUs have always led on to make the world a fairer and more equitable place.

There’s a theory here. The management textbooks tell us that when under pressure, leaders (including in our context student officers, trustees and managers) tend to do two things. Sometimes they focus on the minutiae, because in a world that feels out of control, that can preserve our sense of agency over at least something. Alternatively, they focus on massive big picture items – because they matter too, and we can’t really be held directly to account if they go wrong.

The commentary on both “going small” and “going big” is that they’re both kinds of avoidance – ways of being busy without dealing with the harder but more meaningful “medium sized” issues that are coming down the track. The problem, say the theorists, is that dodging the medium-sized issues is the ultimate leadership abdication – they are the issues we’re in post for, that make the most difference to people’s lives, and become massive anyway if they’re left untackled.

They need the most time, the most creative ideas, the maximum emotional energy and unprecedented levels of collaboration. And there’s no doubt that the major “medium” issue that is coming – for students, universities and SUs – is money.

Jim Dickinson describes the financial crunch that’s coming, and sets out the case for strategic thinking to protect the student interest.
The cost of living crisis means access to higher education could be about wealth again, says Zahir Irani.
The Resolution Foundation’s “living standards rollercoaster” is much worse for students, finds Jim Dickinson.

Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered international condemnation and what risks to be the worst humanitarian crisis on the European continent in 20 years. The European Students’ Union, together with the Global Student Forum and the Ukrainian Association of Students have issued a joint statement condemning the invasion, and many ESU member unions published their statements against the war. The response of European civil society has been a big mobilisation across the frontiers to provide help and support to people fleeing Ukraine and to those remaining in the country.

As donation banks full up, attention is turning to financial support – the Ukrainian Association of Students have started a bank account. UAS is committed to use funds in accordance with wishes of donators (for instance, donations with the subject “Humanitarian aid” will be used only for humanitarian purposes), based on their best conscience and knowledge of the situation. UAS is ready to provide details of future funds movement to ensure full transparency. More details on how to donate to UAS here.

In the UK, when the crisis in Ukraine began, student leaders came together to form a group discussing the devastating impacts of the invasion, and how they might respond to support students who are impacted. After speaking with students across their institutions, they compiled a list of urgent recommendations that seek to ensure affected students are supported. They’re calling for the urgent support of Universities UK and the wider sector in considering and implementing the suggestions.

Webinar: The TEF student submission

As SUs prepare to address the risks and opportunities presented by an independent student submission into the Teaching Excellence Framework process, for this week’s webinar we’ve got a detailed guide on how to approach the exercise – how it works, what the guidance is expected to say and some of the things SUs could focus on. It’s especially but not exclusively aimed at the TEF Student Contact (ie the named sabb) and the staff supporting that exercise. The slides and recording are available here, and remember our webinar archive is always available here.

Never too late

The report of our Careers 2032 research has been published – full report here – and there’s a Wonkhe article reflecting specifically on the discussions at the SU round tables. The research did a great job of pulling out some of the themes and trends that will shape careers support in the decade ahead, and now we’re bringing the different stakeholders – student/SU reps, employers, and careers professionals – together to celebrate the report launch and discuss the next steps.

We’ve had two great events in Bristol and Edinburgh this week and it’s not too late to bag yourself a place at next week’s events in Birmingham, Manchester and London. There will be a glass of something sparkly, some nibbles, and discussion about how best to bring the findings to life.

Careers2032 BIRMINGHAM – The Cube – Monday, 14/3, 3-6pm
Careers2032 MANCHESTER – Malmaison Manchester – Tuesday, 15/3, 3-6pm
Careers2032 LONDON – Arboretum – Wednesday, 16/3, 3-6pm

There is limited space available and the events are for Wonkhe SUs subscribers only, so do make sure you’ve booked your spot!

The Wonkhe Show: Ukraine, Augar, Digifest, admissions

This week on the podcast we discuss the crisis in Ukraine and what universities can do, and would like to do if only the Home Office allowed it. There’s also Phillip Augar on the government’s response to his review, a new admissions code, a look at university finances via the National Audit Office and DK’s been to Digifest.

With Paul Greatrix, Registrar at the University of Nottingham; Laura Tamara, Co-President at BedsSU; David Kernohan, Associate Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Mark Leach, Editor in Chief at Wonkhe.

You can subscribe to the podcast on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, RadioPublic, Podchaser, Castbox, Player FM, Stitcher, TuneIn, Luminary or via your favourite app with the RSS feed.

Briefings on Wonkhe SUs

Our SU briefings archive builds every week – there’s now over 500 briefings on everything from charity law to assessment and feedback. This week:

Do extra-curricular activities help with employability? Team Wonkhe explains new research addressing student perspectives on how activities contribute to their development of skills and preparedness for the graduate workplace.
Jisc has published a new guide covering the principles of good assessment and feedback and Will Award has what you need to know about it.

If you ever want us to cover something, do get in touch – like all the worst DJs, we do take requests. And we’re keeping copies of official external briefings and guidance for SUs here (let us know if you can think of things we’ve missed).

Ten things SUs were up to this week

Preparing for elections
Training candidates
Elections
Giving away sweets to students that are voting
Explaining STV to students
Hustings
Results nights
Taking angry phonecalls from Estates about blu-tac on walls
Collapsing after elections
Normal service on this list will resume next week

We have been watching this week

The officers at Sunderland SU look back on their time in office.
The PG Common Room is back open at Lincoln.
Find out about Winchester SU’s advice centre.
There’s been lots of smiling going on at Bucks SU.
Aston SU’s sabbs went around campus asking students if they have voted in the spring election.

And do remember to follow @videos_su for all the latest YouTube action from SUs.

What else matters this week

Disabled students

Just 29 percent of students in England and Wales with a known disability received Disabled Students Allowance in 2019/20 – and those who have complained of bureaucracy, long delays, inconsistent quality of support and a lack of communication in getting the support, according to a new report from ex-paralympic swimmer Lord Chris Holmes.

Describing DSA as “a gem of a policy”, Holmes argues but too many potential recipients are unaware of its existence – and says a 30-page application and lengthy assessment process are daunting, and that the “administrative burden can act as a barrier to study rather than the support intended by the scheme”.

The SLC said there were a number of reasons why students may not apply for or be eligible for DSA and said reforms were already under way to improve and speed up the DSA application process. “It will remove key pain points in the customer journey, provide the student with a single point of contact and support throughout the process, and contractual control to ensure consistent quality of service.”

Strikes

UCU has announced that it will open ballots at 149 universities for further strikes, or action short of a strike, on pensions and its “four fights” dispute over pay, conditions and precarity. Ballots will be open from 16 March until 8 April and, if successful, could see further industrial action in the rest of 2022. In addition, Unite has announced professional support staff at five London universities will be balloted about strike action in response to a pay deal imposed by the University and Colleges Employers Association after unions rejected it last year.

Board diversity

Charity boards continue to be blighted by a lack of diversity, a report into the challenges facing trustees has found. Almost all trustees surveyed for the report admitted their boards were less diverse than they would like. They also said they are “unsure about how to resolve this issue”, according to the report by Charities Aid Foundation and accountancy body ICAEW.

In addition, not all charities see the importance of diversity among trustees, warns the report. International human rights charities are more likely to want a diverse board than “a local foodbank”, said CAF and ICAEW. The two bodies say diversity is vital to boards to ensure they are not “homogenous in opinion and experience”, adding that “different backgrounds within a trustee board can challenge old behaviours and bring new ideas”.

New Charity Commission chair

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has named a former Conservative Party candidate as the government’s preferred choice to chair the Charity Commission, sparking concern among charity leaders around his political independence. Orlando Fraser, who unsuccessfully stood for the Conservative Party in North Devon in the 2005 general election, losing to the Liberal Democrats, has been selected by the government to chair the regulator.

“There will understandably be concern about his links with party politics, even though he has not been politically active recently”, said NCVO chief executive Sarah Vibert. She adds that charity sector leaders are “disappointed that the government has not taken this opportunity to appoint a person with full political independence”.

Enough

The Home Office has launched “Enough”, a national communications campaign to tackle violence against women and girls. The aim of the campaign is to challenge perpetrators and raise awareness of what we can all do to safely call out abuse. The campaign includes television adverts, billboards, social media and radio advertising and will highlight different forms of violence against women and girls and the simple acts that anyone can take to challenge perpetrators of abuse.

Forms of violence against women and girls represented include street harassment, coercive control, unwanted touching, workplace harassment, revenge-porn and cyber-flashing. The partner pack includes more information on the campaign, and materials which SUs can share on channels. There is also more information available on the campaign website: gov.uk/enough

Man’s world

Gender inequality in wider society is being replicated within higher education across the world – leaving women experiencing a range of discriminatory practices, according to a new report commissioned by the British Council. Gender Equality in Higher Education: Maximising Impacts finds unequal access to education in many countries, fewer resources available to women, the existence of violence against women, and the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions in higher education institutions.

Men as a group remain advantaged at every stage of their academic careers, that men receive more opportunities and higher discretionary payments and are also more inclined to cite other men in journal articles, and that curriculum content often constructs men and boys as the default subject, and the default holder of knowledge.

The report says that action is required to transform discriminatory gender norms – such as unequal domestic burdens falling upon women and biases in assessment, recruitment, and promotion – as well as to address the practical barriers that disproportionately affect women because of their place in society.

And the rest

OfS has released two new guides for students’ unions covering the role of OfS and tackling sexual harassment and misconduct on campuses.
On The Conversation, Kyungmee Lee says that as lecture theatres reopen, some pandemic teaching methods should live on.
OSCR has a piece on what charities should do in response to the war in Ukraine.
NCVO has announced that Sarah Vibert has been appointed as its CEO.
Use it or don’t lose it – Personnel Today examines the detail of a new legal ruling on annual leave.
Should charities be professional? In CharityTimes, Ed Mayo, chief executive of Pilot Light, questions the necessity of professionalism in certain contexts.
The Charity Commission has issued this statement on the Ukraine crisis and its implications for charities.
NCVO has published this blog on how charities and civil society can support Ukraine.
The Covid Inquiry now has its own website here.
The House of Commons Library has published a Briefing paper on Freedom of Information requests.
A letter has been sent to the government calling for Companies House to replace the term “chairman” with the gender-neutral term “chair” in its model articles.
BEIS has published a Corporate Transparency and Register Reform White Paper which responds to various consultations on corporate transparency reform over recent years. All new and existing company directors will be required to verify their identity with Companies House.

Research round-up

Every week we try to round up the new academic papers, articles and theses on students and the student experience that we have seen:

This study examined students’ perceived levels of coping and need for help, and the relationship with their risks and protective factors during the early stages of the pandemic.
Working long hours impacts students’ grades., But why do students do it? This study aimed to find out.
This study looks at the socio-economics of students losing their virginity.
This study identifies the factors that influence the improvement of college students’ employability.
This research aimed to discover whether students were able to perform self-regulated learning during online learning during the pandemic.

They do what, where?

“If you don’t pass it the first time, you can re-take it again the following week. If you fail it then, you have to wait six months.” That might read like a particular type of assessment policy at a university, but in fact it’s in the rules for becoming a student representative or committee member (and I’m not just talking academic) at Vytautas Didžiojo University students’ union in Kaunas, Lithuania.

The test covers lots of ground – student rights, university history and procedures, even the governance and strategy of the union itself – and it means that over 10% of the student body at the university know probably as much about the university as the average sabb in the UK does by the end of an average summer. How about that!

Team Wonkhe’s reading list this week

We don’t agree with everything we read – but here’s what we found interesting this week. And do let us know if you find something worth sharing.

What people get wrong about first-generation college students “Feeling out of place didn’t go away when I arrived on campus. Move-in weekend, I was surrounded by other freshmen whose parents had attended Stanford and could show them around. That wasn’t the case for me — both of my parents are immigrants from Mexico. My mom, who never got to finish high school, and my dad, who didn’t get past middle school, were in awe of the place I would be residing in for the next four years. “

Hope for the Future “Many of us are grieving; many of us are traumatized. Many of our students are grieving; many of our students are traumatized. Most, dare I say. All of us, even. Deeply and profoundly so. To ignore this, to minimize this, to pretend as though “back to normal” can or even should happen is injurious. To prescribe a piece of technology as some sort of solution or fix to any of this is insulting. To give a keynote full of sanitized sunshine is just gross.”

It’s time to ban staff–student relationships “Many academics and students, having declared their romantic partnerships, are now enjoying long and happy marriages. Good for them. Encouraging bans is not to show disrespect; after all, no rules were broken. But times change and we must adapt. In a lecturer–student relationship it is impossible to know where consent ends and coercion begins. These are never equal partnerships and this underpins the reasoning behind any ban. We can contrast this with relationships between colleagues in different workplaces. In large organisations, managers should not be in relationships with subordinates. But undergraduates are not paid to do a job. They are paying for an education provided by teachers, who should view them solely through that lens.”

Food insecurity is a harsh reality for college students “There’s a popular notion that broke college students live off instant ramen and fast food. All the changes and freedoms that come with college result in what we’ve coined “the freshman 15.” Something we tend to ignore are the conditions that cause students to fall into these habits. Some of these include having limited access to fresh food, not enough time to prepare food, lack of transportation, and inadequate funds to purchase groceries.”

I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead “When a class discussion goes poorly for me, I can tell. During a feminist theory class in my sophomore year, I said that non-Indian women can criticize suttee, a historical practice of ritual suicide by Indian widows. This idea seems acceptable for academic discussion, but to many of my classmates, it was objectionable”

Zero-tolerance drug policies at UK universities don’t work “While Olivia’s experience of using MDMA for the first time was pretty typical, she quickly became a more habitual drug user. She began using coke and ketamine and spending increasingly more money on event tickets and drugs. “I would go out and take something every week. At that time, I didn‘t realise how dangerous that was and how much damage that was actually causing,” she recalls.”

The Real Face of Cancel Culture “You hear a lot of talk about “cancel culture” around universities these days. The term creeps into faculty meetings, sometimes to be met with muted gasps. From time to time, you hear it whispered in campus hallways, as if the mere mention of the term will summon a mob of angry protesters. Some colleagues obsess over the exact wording of a sentence in a lecture slide or a tweet to avoid a potential “canceling.”

A promising refugee dreams of college. He can’t make it on his own “Long after midnight, Deng’s mind galloped far away from the Kakuma Refugee Camp, a vast stretch of mud-brick and concrete shelters in northwestern Kenya. The 22-year-old arrived there more than a decade ago, and each year felt heavier than the last. The camp was a cage. He wanted out.”

Fiver: Mental health

We regularly look at issues surrounding student mental health on the site:

Gurbaaz Gill argues that considerations of staff and student mental health will need to underpin new approaches to the fundamentals of a university.
Neil Mackenzie argues that we should shift our focus from developing “resilient” students to developing resilient university communities, instead.
Benjamin Hunt says that student debt is a missing part of the mental health debate.
Nick Bennett makes the case for including mental fitness and wellbeing in university curricula.
How do universities protect students from harm, and what do we do when it happens? Jim Dickinson on the regulation surrounding student safety.

The full archive on student mental health is available on the site.

Around the world

TURKEY Official figures show rise in female university graduates
MALAYSIA More than 17,000 university students drop out
SOUTH AFRICA Vice-chancellor labels student protest ‘organised crime’
GERMANY More government support needed for Ukrainian students
THAILAND University ousts student leaders over choice of speakers

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New this week on Wonkhe

David Kernohan goes back to bill debates to find the roots of the stipulations and requirements that shape England’s approach to higher education quality and standards.
The Handshake Careers 2032 report pointed to trends shaping the future of careers support. Elaine Boyes describes how the careers support landscape is changing.
Universities have agreed a new admissions code. Jim Dickinson wonders whether it can deliver the fairness and transparency students need.
Elena Rodriguez-Falcon examines the barriers to women entering engineering in education and the wider workforce, and asks whether new approaches to educating engineers can help.
Curriculum flexibility is not associated with higher student satisfaction, find Talisha Schilder, Johan Adriaensen and Patrick Bijsmans.
There’s a new report on how universities’ finances were regulated during the pandemic. David Kernohan and Jim Dickinson find a struggle to define and secure value.
The TRAC return deadline is approaching and an OfS-commissioned review of TRAC has recently been published. Andrew Connolly considers what it all means.
Gavin Brown and Damian Haigh suggest that generalised support for boosting school attainment may be less effective than specialised partnerships focused on areas of particular need.
There are many researchers in academia who aren’t on research contracts. Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg asks how we can be sure of hearing their voices.
Blended and remote programmes have made learning easier for many students, Kelly Louise Preece finds.
And this week’s card from Hugh Jones’ postbag shows a university which said “no” to death and glory.