Blog also published on 6th Sep 2023 on The Higher Educationalist, as part of a three-way #HEBlogSwap. Please also check out:
👉A guest blog post “This is STILL a moonshot moment for higher education” for #HEBlogswap by Santanu Vasant – Head of Educational Development and Digital Education, London Metropolitan University, as part of #HEBlogSwap 2023.
👉A guest blog post “The Academic Professional Apprenticeship: adjusting to change and how to make it work” for #HEBlogswap by Emma Kennedy – Senior Lecturer in HE Learning and Teaching, University of Greenwich, as part of #HEBlogSwap 2023.
Would you be the one who will detonate the bomb in your own camp – on your own army?
Of course not !!
Yet, every year, every month, and every week that goes by, our Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) relentlessly make staff redundant under the excuse of “budget cuts”. Have you ever noticed how those so-called budget cuts are only applicable to certain categories of staff?
Stating the WHY loud and clear
HEIs news in the UK nowadays sound more like obituaries – the broadcasted message is loud and clear – our HEIs are detonating bombS in their own camps.
Yet, in HEIs, we are a lovely bunch of people, we – or rather many of us – have the grit to educate our younger generation and to secure them a better future than we have seen and had ourselves. It is an era of AI, where past daydreams are coming to life, creating in its making, modern chaos that was once unheard of – it is an era of opportunities for the younger generation and for US too. Yet HEIs are boycotting their mission by playing the baddie game.
Let’s rewind a little bit to 2010, a crucial time when the education provider-customer model got reinforced in UK HEIs – with a few HEIs even setting the tone and trend on higher fees to outwit competitors on the basis of “quality”.
What’s all this got to do with you and I?
To take the next generation into the future, senior leadership teams (SLTs) have created a defensive trench against budget cuts, equipped with detonated bombs, which they are ready to detonate on their own army – the very staff who are on the frontline along with students to get education done. Part of the workforce is made redundant, the existing workforce is wedged to perform to burnout, and you and I are both negatively impacted.
Here are some figures for you:
- More than 50% of HEIs staff are still employed on short-term contracts
- More than 100,000 teaching staff still lack the security of permanent employment
- One particular university made 500+ staff redundant within a single year
- The start of this academic year 2023-24 has already seen strikes within 140 HEIs.
For those thinking, it is the pandemic, and aftermath of the pandemic, just pop your bubble for once and step out to have a holistic overview of the higher education sector worldwide and what’s happening outside the UK.
What’s this got to do with you and I, you ask? We are caught up between two opposing lines of action – one a theory with zero evidence and which is failing in practice (budget cuts & staff redundancies) v/s a well-founded practice that guarantees success (the direct correlation between staff satisfaction & student satisfaction).
Students at the heart of HEIs
We have all heard of the consistent and persistent message of putting students at the heart of the university – obviously with marketing variances among HEIs. We have even seen a government White Paper published in 2021 “Higher Education – Putting students at the heart of the system“, which focused on four broad areas: reforming funding; delivering a better student experience; enabling universities to increase social mobility; and reducing regulation and removing barriers for new providers – a report that somehow was fully read but only partly understood and executed by SLTs.
Ironically, anyone in the business world would also tell you that in the provider-customer relationship – employee satisfaction is directly linked to customer satisfaction.
The more satisfied HEIs staff are, the more they will provide better service to students, the more students will provide positive feedback, the more students will join in PGs and PGRs, the more research will happen, the more impact HEIs will have among their staff, students, community and internationally. It is a simple cyclical chain reaction that is well understood in the business world, and yet educated SLTs in HEIs seem to be in a “no comprendo” state when it comes to this simple understanding.
Is there light at the end of all of this?
If I say no, would you believe me? No number of summits or round tables on UK higher education will resolve this issue for UK HEIs, if SLTs do not think they have accountability towards the 3 Ss – staff, students, and society.
Or should we go into this round of witless strategies from UK HEIs and still never realise that UK HEIs have a stagnant present and future. Unless of course, if UK HEIs calls out Kyrie Eleison to Ares and re-strategise to safeguard their reputation at the international level.
What more to check out?
While you are on this page, please do also check out my 2022 #HEBlogswap collaboration with Pip McDonald and Lisa Mustoe.
👉A guest blog post “This is STILL a moonshot moment for higher education” for #HEBlogswap by Santanu Vasant, Head of Educational Development and Digital Education, London Metropolitan University as part of #HEBlogSwap 2023.
👉A guest blog post “The Academic Professional Apprenticeship: adjusting to change and how to make it work” for #HEBlogswap by Emma Kennedy – Senior Lecturer in HE Learning and Teaching, University of Greenwich, as part of #HEBlogSwap 2023.
References:
“Higher Education – Putting students at the heart of the system”, June 2021, White Paper, by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a79900ce5274a684690a79c/11-944-higher-education-students-at-heart-of-system.pdf
Impact Coaching & Mentoring (ICM) for Leaders 