Thirty seven things Labour should do now to make things better for students

Whoever ends up holding the universities brief, and whichever government department ends up looking after higher education, it’s tempting to think that the sector and its students should now just play a “survive and wait” game until something more substantial can come along.

But there’s actually all sorts of things that the new government can – and very much should – do to start to improve things for students.

In his acceptance speech, the new Prime Minister said that changing a country “is not like flicking a switch”.

It’s “hard work, patient work, determined work”. And we will have to “get moving immediately”.

So maybe a major review of HE funding and student finance will take time. But there are ways to both signal intent, provide relief and change the way that government works in the interests of students.

And so I’ve got going on a list. If you have ideas, please do add to it.

Many of the things on my list are process changes that matter – because they’ve led to bad decision making. Others are about using the government’s convening power. Some are about starting the process of change.

Many are likely to not involve the minister(s) and department(s) formally responsible for the sector – they involve a “Change” government making clear that circa 3m people can’t be treated all as undergraduate children at big school – and won’t be from here on in.

They’re in no particular order – and yes, I know some of these are devolved – although a wider review of some of that complexity from a student point of view would help too.

1. 1. Good policy means good data. As I recall, it’s technically the Treasury that holds the formal overseeing responsibility for the Office for National Statistics (ONS). But whoever it is, large chunks of the data we hold on the population barely cover students – either because sampling involves long(er) term residents, or because in some surveys ONS accesses students through parents (!), and in some cases just ignore halls altogether. The government should ask Ian Diamond (ex-Aberdeen and National Statistician) to review and fix.
   2. On a related matter, the DWP’s official poverty stats currently count student tuition fee loans as income. That hugely distorts our overall poverty stats, significantly distorts student household stats, and is reflective of a “DWP thinks students are someone else’s problem” problem. Maybe it made sense when all of the loan was paid back – but it’s long been pretty much a tax. The new Work and Pensions minister should demand a fix – pivoting later to a proper review of the interaction between student finance and the benefits system, where there’s all sorts of gaps and overlaps.
   3. When students live away from home, they can’t be registered at two GPs at once. And if they cross one of the UK’s internal borders, things get even more complicated. It’s a silly mess – if you can be registered to vote in two locations, this shouldn’t be hard to fix. The new Health Secretary should make it happen – as a precursor to a proper student health strategy that sorts out once and for all what is the responsibility of universities, and what the NHS does – to avoid the Spiderman meme blame game we often get now.
   4. The EHRC will shortly publish a raft of recommendations to universities on disabled students arising from the Abrahart case now the pre-election period restrictions are off. The Equalities Minister and the new universities minister should order a review of the regulation in this space – because it hasn’t been working. In the longer term, there should be nothing wrong (at least in England) with the Office for Students fronting out source material from other regulators – it does this now on consumer rights, but not on access to education.
   5. Although on that, the last government promised that students would be protected from risks to the continuation of their study. Whatever it thinks it put in place, it didn’t work during strikes and now universities are making staff redundant and changing the size and shape of courses beyond recognition and claiming it’s still the same course. Ministers should order an urgent review of enforcement of student protection measures to ensure that promises have to be kept.
   6. In the King’s speech we’re expecting a work bill that will improve rights, drive up the minimum wage and ban unpaid internships. Changes to rights and wages will generate costs that need to be covered – money universities don’t have at just the point that more students need more jobs. A small amount of money in the grand scheme of things should be allocated to cover the changes, and civil servants should be asked to consult carefully with students on the unpaid internships ban to make sure that HE providers aren’t able to evade the ban by claiming that the “placements” they charge a fee for are educational – when students often they pay a fee to work for free, and for no credit to boot.
   7. While we’re on work, when we get a promised change to the Living Wage (with no age bands), a few pence should be taxed from employers to go into a student services fund that students’ unions can spend on student employment support – finding jobs, learning from those jobs, enforcing rights in those jobs. If Slovenia can do it, then the UK should be able to do so too.
   8. When the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIAHE) was created for England and Wales, the sector was much much smaller. Now we have a system that students can’t reach in micro providers – because they dare not complain. It’s a system that is too distant from mega providers – who prioritise risk mitigation rather than learning from complaints. And anyone on a 1-year PGT course will find the system is just too slow. Ministers should order a trial of independent ombus, partly elected by students, to adjudicate in large providers and groups of small providers.
   9. A simple change to the student finance system would involve allowing students to pull down full-time student maintenance at less than full-time credits. That would allow students who experience health problems, setbacks, want to earn to learn or volunteer to do so without a full “stop” with a later “start” – and then a wider review should have students completing at a pace that suits them rather than the student finance policy of the late 80s as a central tenet.
   10. In less than a month, students’ unions and universities are to be expected to implement free speech and harassment arrangements when it remains the case that pretty much nobody can define the line between the two – especially over Israel/Gaza. Pausing implementation while the grown-ups sort that out should be implemented immediately – pending a wider review of campus culture that incorporates, rather than finger wags, over both ends of the campus culture see-saw.
   11. We’ve had endless versions of “course labelling” over the past two decades – but nothing on honesty about the costs that students will face – an acute problem for international and first in family students. Ministers should demand that UUK round-tables some solutions to clarify in this area – with a clear demand that if the sector can’t get its stories straight and accurate over how much it costs to live somewhere, regulation will be introduced.
   12. There’s new regulation that bans “non-disclosure agreements” over harassment complaints. But universities are free to cajole students into signing them over other types of complaint. That’s preposterous, prevents learning, and universities should be asked to stop voluntarily now, pending regulation if the practice remains.
   13. Changes to the formal licensing regulation in England and Wales now means that pubs and clubs will be told to think a bit about spiking, and a little bit about harassment. Toughening up those lines – and ordering councils to bring forward licensing policy reviews that involve consultation with students – would help.
   14. If I was a new minister I’d be baffled that the quality arrangements in England appear to be slow, mired in legal conflict and don’t involve students as reviewers. I’d order OfS and QAA to make up – using QAA-style methods while not ditching the helpful detail in the B Conditions that is missing from the vague statements in the new Quality Code. Best of both worlds, and all that.
   15. If the government is about to pick up the Renter’s (Reform) Bill where the Conservatives left off, it needs to demand that proper thinking is done about the student housing market that doesn’t trade off rights to students based on landlord lobbying and un-evidenced threats about landlords exiting the market. Whatever joint working groups are set up on that should later be the core of the delivery of a new student housing strategy – as there is in pretty much every other European country. And any new housing Ombuds should be asked to fast-track student housing complaints – given their average length of tenure.
   16. If there’s a problem with teacher recruitment, do what the Austrians do and involve students from all sorts of subjects as supply capacity. Students need the work, it would be good for access and WP, and so on and so on.
   17. The Home Office should scrap the daft rules that prevent international students from working more than 20 hours a week, or being self-employed at all. Both push international students into the grey economy where they’re being exploited – and even if we told them their rights, they’d be terrified of complaining for fear of immigration reprisals. Just treat them like adults – it might even help grow the economy.
   18. Tell all departments that if they’re doing something for people in full-time work, they have to treat full-time students as if they are working. I’m thinking mainly about the scandal of the childcare offer for working people – but there are plenty of examples too. The Opportunity Mission is meaningless if we penalise people for undertaking full-time study.
   19. Another early priority for the tertiary part of the Opportunity Mission board should be to use convening power to get the costs of being a student down. If we only focus on loaning students the money for exorbitant rent or inflated catering prices, we just grow debt. Everyone should be working together on the principle that students shouldn’t be something to profit from.
   20. If there’s a new voting bill to get Votes at 16 through, automatic student voter registration should return. The current system is a sledgehammer to crack an imagined nut – and just means that universities and SUs spend all their time on getting students to fill out forms instead of talking about issues.
   21. A decade ago the government promised that UCAS, Student Finance England and universities would work together to consolidate the information on student financial support on offer to students into single communications. If they can pull that off in the wild west of the USA, it is surely not beyond the wit of the big names to make it happen here. Students shouldn’t be piecing together shards of information from multiple sources – and it would mean better visibility (with later policy action) on the vast differences in student financial support on offer in different providers.
   22. The government should crack-on with Sharia-compliant student finance. The system was promised 14 years ago and designed about 5 or 6 years ago. The legislation to allow it was passed in 2017. Get on with it.
   23. In the first remit letter to OfS, ministers should demand an NSS for postgraduates. There’s no justification for it not existing in such a large part of provision – and both OfS and providers should be asked to formally report on action taken on it annually so that students can see it was worth filling out.
   24. The “duty of care” debate was never about “in-loco parentis” – it was about establishing a formal baseline duty of care for students that would mirror that that is offered to employees, which flexes sensibly by provider and employee type. If they can do it in Sweden without the sky falling in, we can do it here.
   25. If the government continues to allocate “premium funding” for support for students, it should ban itself from pretending that that’s a hardship fund. Instead it should order OfS to order providers to work with students and their unions on how it’s spent – with a focus on peer delivery. That should act as a precursor to a funding system that doesn’t route all funding for everything through fees and a single grant to university. Trust students to know and be creative over how it should be spent.
   26. The culture department should be asked to work with the organisations it funds and meets with to create a UK “Arts Offer” for students – free/discounted access to performances and spaces and so on. It would get students in the habit, reduce their costs, and be a great international recruiting tool.
   27. Similarly if we get planning legislation or any strategies over rebuilding our broken town centres, councils should be ordered to work with students in their areas to create community spaces for them to work, study, meet and perform in that they share with the community. If every remaining empty Debenhams in the UK was a student-run community centre, it would transform those places, provide employment, build relations and end the scandal of the lack of “third spaces” for those in value-engineered accommodation blocks or houses with no living rooms.
   28. When changes are made to student loan terms, they should be treated as tax changes and scrutinised alongside other tax changes – because for graduates, student loans pretty much are a tax. That would stop economists having to calculate residual tax rates that are obviously too high for some graduates – it would make it more obvious at the right time.
   29. We should ban landlords from being able to profit from “all inclusive” bills on energy in houses. Get civil servants to build that in to the coming legislation.
   30. The Transport department should extend the student railcard to whatever’s done on buses. And open up access to the data DfT holds on punctuality, so students can hold companies to account over capacity and reliability.
   31. The two reviews of international agents should be consolidate into one and actually involve some users of the system giving honest feedback.
   32. Public Health England should be ordered to work with SUs on getting STI rates down.
   33. Harassment complaints about staff from students should be handled by an external body in the first instance to boost confidence. Ask the sector to form one.
   34. Councils should have a statutory duty to engage students (as temporary residents) in decision making. If devolution legislation is coming, build it in.
   35. Steps should be taken to rejoin Erasmus.
   36. The CMA should be ordered to treat students as vulnerable consumers and review the markets they but from (given competition doesn’t work in almost all of them).
   37. UKRI should be asked to get on with its review of stipends in conjunction with whoever deals with the new Minimum Wage calculations. And while they’re at it, give the remit over calculating an annually updated “minimum income for students” to the same people. Wider reviews will then be able to riff off it.

Do you see the jist? “Change” for 3m students doesn’t to mean only fees and funding. It could mean causing government across its departments to crack on with not treating them like someone’s problem. Habits form. Change should start now.