Following the devastating review offered by the 2023 report of the Industry and Regulators Committee of the House of Lords, the Office for Students’ (OfS) proposed strategy makes a great play of being centred around “the student interest”.
But while it recognises that students have diverse and changeable views about their interests, it is still significant that it characterises these as “the student interest” rather than “students’ interests”.
The reason for doing this is that it makes it much more rhetorically powerful to claim you are doing something in relation to an interest that is definitive, rather than interests which are multivarious and shifting.
And be clear, the OfS proposed strategy shows a huge appetite to intervene in higher education in the name of “the student interest”.
Much talk, no sources
In the draft, OfS boasts that it has done a great deal of work to renew its understanding of the student interest – polling students, holding focus groups, hosting engagement sessions and talking to their own student panel.
But two things are particularly noticeable about this work. First, whilst a lot of other sources are referenced in their strategy consultation, this is one area where no evidence is provided.
This means the OfS interpretation of the outcomes of this consultation cannot be interrogated in any way. Clearly OfS knows best how to interpret this interest and isn’t interested in collective conversations to explore its ambiguities and complexities.
Second, none of this work involves open ended engagement with students and their representative organisations (who appear to have been excluded completely, or at least their involvement is not detailed). They are all forms of consultation in which OfS would have framed the terms and agenda of the discussions (non-decision-making power, as Steven Lukes would have it). It’s consultation – but within tightly defined limits of what can legitimately be said.
This seems to explain the remarkable number of priorities in the strategy (freedom of speech, mental health, sexual harassment) that are said to be in the student interest but previously appeared in ministerial letters outlining the strategic priorities of the OfS.
Get a job
Perhaps most concerning is that the government/treasury logic that the only real reason for going to university is to get a well-paid job is now central to the student interest. Sometimes this is done more subtly by positioning it in the (never-)popular student language of “a return on investment”:
…in return for their investment of time, money and hard work they [students] expect that education to continue to provide value into the longer-term, including in ways that they may not be able to anticipate while they study (p.12).
At other times, we are left in no doubt that the primary function of higher education is to serve the economy:
Our proposals…will support a higher education system equipped to cultivate the skills the country needs and increase employer confidence in the value of English higher education qualifications. High quality higher education will be accessible to more people, and students from all backgrounds will be better able to engage with and benefit from high quality higher education, supporting a more equal society which makes better use of untapped talent and latent potential. The supply of skilled graduates will support local and national economies alike, while the ‘public goods’ associated with high quality higher education will accrue to a wide range of individuals and communities. Public goods include economic growth, a more equal society and greater knowledge understanding (OfS 2024 p.30-31).
So what we are left with is a proposed strategy that makes powerful claims to be grounded in the student interest – but which could have easily formed part of the last government’s response to the Augar review.
Whose priorities?
Through its consultation on its proposed strategy, OfS has presented the priorities of the previous government as if they are drawn straight from its engagement with students.
We don’t yet know the higher education priorities of the current government, but given the proposed strategy was published under their watch it looks like we are moving in a depressingly familiar direction.
It is worth reflecting on the profound injustice of this. Students are expected to pay back the cost of their higher education and now have the previous government’s priorities presented as their interest so that OfS can intervene in higher education.
Yes, you have to pay – but the government and its friendly neighbourhood regulator are here to tell you why you want to pay! It seems that despite the excoriating criticism of the House of Lords Committee, OfS have not really learned how to engage with students or to reflect and reconcile their interests.
