Heidi Allen MP: students have a right to know what they're paying for

I hope the enforcement action against those institutions that are in breach of the law by failing to provide important information is not going to have to wait until a new law is passed. Is anything being done about this? It does seem extraordinary that public sector organisations like universities cannot be relied upon to provide the appropriate information unless new legislation is introduced. I hope there is more to it than that.

It is my perception that higher education below the top levels is focussed on student numbers and that there is wasteful competition. It is essential therefore that sufficient information is made available. I should like to think that one day the quality of higher education in all our academic institutions will be so high that nobody could make a wrong choice, but that is unrealistic. Even if all courses were good enough in qualitative terms, some will be more appropriate and suitable for the student than others either academically or vocationally or both, so a lot needs to be done to inform and counsel prospective students prior to choosing their university. Perhaps universities are stuck in an age when most students were in receipt of grants and hardly had to contribute to their own education. Nowadays they are purchasers and need to be treated as such beyond the annual marketing campaigns by those institutions that need to spend money to attract a sufficient intake.

In case one wondered the Bill seems likely to fail as per this part of the debate on the 23rd October. The debate I assume resumed the day after this Conversation was posted.

Joseph Johnson: I want first to deal with the substance of the Bill, so that my hon. Friend will have the satisfaction of knowing the Government’s position.
While I support the spirit behind this well-intentioned Bill, I do not believe that it is the best way in which to achieve our objectives on behalf of students, or to provide them with the increased information on higher education that they need. We do not think it appropriate to put into legislation detailed data requirements which, by their very nature, would frequently be subject to change to reflect adaptations and improvements in the sector. We believe that our forthcoming proposals on the teaching excellence framework will address our objectives in a holistic way and tackle the range of issues that my hon. Friend has rightly raised, including the need for transparency in the sector and the rights of
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students and consumers to improve their overall experience. Indeed, Universities UK has stated in its briefing note for this Bill that the teaching excellence framework will be a vehicle for introducing many of those measures.
Before I go into the detail, I shall set out the existing work we have done on student information. But first, I will happily give way to my hon. Friend.
Heidi Allen: What reassurance can the Minister give me—
2.30 pm
The debate stood adjourned (Standing Order No. 11(2)).
Ordered, That the debate be resumed on Friday 30 October.

” Seventy-six percent of UK universities have breached consumer law by failing to provide vital information to prospective students, according to Which? research.
We compared the information available to students for a 2016/17 psychology undergraduate course on 50 university websites and found that, at the time of our investigation, 38 were missing at least one piece of key information, such as the number of contact hours, expected workload and up-to-date information about fees.
Missing course information”

Yet again Which? makes startling claims which cannot surely be proven. The claim is based on a survey of 50 Psychology courses. So a claim of 76% of University psychology courses fall foul of the CMA regulations might be claimed provided it came with a rider as to the extrapolation needed to justify the claim.

We also have a the fairly obvious problem that as not all “universities” offer psychology courses the extrapolation to all “universities” is unjustifiable. There are 906 further education establishments mentioned in Ms Allen’s speech on the second reading of which only 136 offer psychology courses.

If the research had covered more subjects then the claim may seem better. As it stands the evidence to the claim is woeful.

Is researching websites the way to establish that universities are breaking the law, as if that is the only, and contractual, source of information? If something is not clear, then ask the university directly, surely.

It seems to me the student needs to spend time thinking about the career they want and researching prospective employment before they consider a course. Why rely on a third party to provide this information for you? As for quality of teaching, no doubt you can compare quality of degrees achieved if you dig around information from different establishments but, like schools or employers, you will only really find out what they are like by experiencing them first hand. I don’t see how you can guarantee a successful choice off the web. Visiting and talking to staff and other students, if that is possible, might be the best way to help in making such an important choice.

Al in all, I’m a bit grumpy about this topic. The way it is presented seems to try to relieve the student of the responsibility for doing real ground work. These are people about to move into the adult world where you have to learn to stand on your own feet.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0021/150021.pdf

Well reading the drasft Bill and with the legal onus on the Colleges I would not touch it with a bargepole.

What seems unaddressed is the problem of students signing up to courses and then wishing to drop out either for other courses, and other reasons , which may effectively destroy the commercial economics of the course running at all.

If we are to be legalistic in these matters perhaps it should be placed on a proper footing. Break clauses such as the right of Universities to cancel a course if insufficient numbers enroll/continue in each of the terms/years . Penalties for dropping out having deprived someone else of the opportunity of paying for an education. …. sorry of getting an education

If universities are failing to provide information that they are legally obliged to then they deserve criticism, but it is equally important to ensure that information is kept up to date and not just relevant to previous years.

Choosing a degree and where to study is more complex than buying a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner. If you have a definite career plan then it is necessary to establish how best to go about this. In another Conversation about higher education, one contributor did not realise that his biomedical science degree lacked the accreditation that was essential for the type of work he would be seeking.

As Malcolm says, it’s worth doing some homework. Open days provide an opportunity to discover information and ask questions to complement the official sources of information. Family who work in higher education or even schools can be worth speaking to. When speaking to new students and prospective students at open days, it was immediately apparent which ones had benefited from this input. My mentor was my uncle, who was principal of a local technical college and gave me, as a teenager, the confidence that doing a science degree was worthwhile and that the career opportunities were broader than working in industry.

I believe that the current government is making a mistake by encouraging more people to go into higher education, which is a far more serious issue than the subject under discussion. There are many who don’t have the motivation or abilities to benefit from their degree courses and would do far better in vocational jobs. What happens is that in order to minimise dropout rate and poor degree performance, the better students are often not stretched to make the best of their own abilities. Staff have to devote their time to those who are struggling instead of doing the best for those students who have the ability and motivation to succeed.

I would prefer if Which? addressed its concerns to the Higher Education Funding Council, which has the expertise to understand the issues. Heidi refers to ‘the staff delivering the learning’. They can facilitate learning but I don’t think they can deliver it.

Very shrewd point. They can, perhaps, deliver teaching but learning is the responsibility of the student.

Having attended Cambridge and also having been a lifelong educator, I am amused by the prospect of changing the word “University” or “course” in this article to something like “mate” or “spouse”. Throughout life, and particularly while young, we are all too often asked to make choices with less-than-optimal data. The Physics student lured by the prospect of working with the Large Hadron Collider or massive radio telescopes is on par with the would-be tennis player watching Roger Federer. That being said, well done to Allen’s efforts for improving those things that should be transparent, even though transparency is often the last thing under the microscope of student dreams.

You’re right about elitism, Malcolm, but that remains a potent factor even now, with the difference that it’s more to do with which University. But the increase in places wasn’t designed to combat that: it was because, back in the ’60s, the Civil Service commissioned a study which seemed to suggest that almost everyone would need a degree of some description by the year 2000, simply for the UK to be able to compete in a world marketplace.

Interestingly, they might have got it partially right, albeit they were about 20 or so years premature. As an example, the deceptively simple job of Plumber now requires multiple certifications for the holder to be able to work on different installations, while the sheer number of regulations of which the Electrician needs to be aware is quite daunting. But these are, and will remain, vocations and a different type of qualification and training is necessary for those who choose those careers.