The document discusses the tension modern universities face in balancing student consumer demands with their commitment to intellectual transformation. It explores how the view of higher education as a private investment focusing on employability clashes with ideas of universities providing public good. While metrics like the National Student Survey emphasize student satisfaction, universities aim to cultivate critical thinking through challenges. The document advocates for pedagogical reforms, use of technology, and leadership emphasizing shared strategic purpose to bridge these perspectives.

1. Transaction or Transformation?
How does a modern university
respond to an increasingly
consumerist student body.
Dr Michael G Hamlyn
Prof Rune Todnem By
Staffordshire University

2. University Challenge: to satisfy both the
transactional demands of their students, while
still trying to remain true to their conviction of
the transformational nature of higher education

3. • changing environment in which a modern
university has to operate
• reducing the value of a degree to being viewed
as simply a passport to employability
• student satisfaction becomes a key institutional
motivator, changing the role of university?
• roles of pedagogy and underpinning scholarship,
technology, graduate attributes, and leadership

5. The new university environment
• New fees for undergraduates
• Increased charges for part time students
• Increased use of external metrics

6. What is a university for
– John Henry Newman
The University [...] has this
object and this mission; it
contemplates neither moral
impression nor mechanical
production; it professes to
exercise the mind neither in art
nor in duty; its function is
intellectual culture; here it may
leave its scholars, and it has
done its work when it has done
as much as this. It educates the
intellect to reason well in all
matters, to reach out towards
truth, and to grasp it
John Everett Millais [Public domain], via
Wikimedia Commons

7. What are universities for?
– Stefan Collini
• “public perception of universities
focuses too much on their teaching
role”
• But “they have become an
important medium for conserving
understanding extending and
handing on intellectual scientific
and artistic heritage.”
• “This wider perspective may help
us become more aware of the
limitations of treating economic
growth as the overriding test of
value”

8. What are universities for?
• O’Byrne and Bond
– 3 paradigms
• Academic
• Managerial
• Consumerist
– Tensions between these pairs
• Wend Byrne and By
– Renewal of collegiality
Darren O’Byrne and Christopher Bond (2014): Back to the future: the idea of a university revisited, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 2014, Vol. 36,
No. 6, 571–584,
Bernard Burnes , Petra Wend & Rune Todnem By (2013): The changing face of English universities: reinventing collegiality for the twenty-first century, Studies in Higher
Education, DOI:10.1080/03075079.2012.754858

9. academic
university
intellectual engagement, in which the
chief values are the inherent value of
knowledge, free and critical thinking,
diversification and disciplinary integrity,
and a passion for scholarship and
research.
consumerist managerial
performance indicators
and league tables,
quality assurance
processes and their
impact on the
curriculum, the
standardisation of
practices and the
rhetoric of employability,
and continual
restructuring.
an obsession with the National Student Survey and
the concept of ‘student satisfaction’…. possessive individualism

10. The rise of the
student consumer
• Browne Review of Higher Education
– “Students need access to high quality information,
advice and guidance in order to make the best
choices.”
• Increased focus on NSS
• Which? report – Degrees of Value
• Are students good users of information?

11. Impact of the Student
as consumer
• Initiatives on improving student satisfaction – NSS
• Increased focus on University employability and
enterprise initiatives
• Focus on short term graduate employability –
DLHE
• All outcomes reinforced through KIS, league
table, Which?
• Does this reduce Higher Education to a service or
product that can be bought?

12. Transactional view
• Education as training
• As preparation for the world of work
• Reductive view of higher education
• But….are our students really that easily
fooled?
• Still interesting, still challenging, still exploring
ideas and creating their own view of the world

13. Henry Giroux – a new brutalism
“Viewed as a private investment rather than a public good, universities are now
construed as spaces where students are valued as human capital, courses are
determined by consumer demand…….. in particular, the ideal of the university as a
vital public good no longer fits into a revamped discourse of progress, largely
defined in terms of economic growth.” (Giroux)
“Universities should individually or
collectively offer contracts to their
students, who would agree to pay to the
university they attended a given
percentage of their earnings. That
percentage could vary by course and
institution, though some agreement
between universities could be helpful to
achieve standardisation” (IEA)

14. Market and non Market
Benefits of HE
• HE is broader than transactional – it always
has been transformational
• Danger of focussing just on satisfying the
transactional consumerist view is that we
could lose the transformational part
• BIS review of benefits of HE
– Market vs non market
– Individual vs society

15. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/25410
1/bis-13-1268-benefits-of-higher-education-participation-the-quadrants.pdf

16. A Balancing act
• What students want – or at least what
they have been told that they want
• What universities want
• How do we bridge the gap?

17. Pedagogy and
underpinning
scholarship
Technology,
Graduate
attributes,
Leadership
and
management

18. Pedagogy
• Student engagement in learning and teaching
design
• Problem and practice based learning
– Teamworking and communication
– Solving real world dilemmas
– Authentic learning experiences
– Underpinned by scholarship
– Student led research
• Better management of student centred learning
and expectations

19. Technology
• Not a solution in and of itself
• To support new forms of student led and staff
supported pedagogy
• Wireless, always-on access to information
• Collaboration and creation of learning
• Use tech to move from information
transmission to curation of knowledge

20. How do we make
our students
successful
when:
Half of what they learn in the first year is out of date by the time they graduate?
They will have maybe 10 different jobs by the age of 34?
The jobs they will do don’t even exist yet using technology that isn't invented yet,
to solve problems we don’t know are problems yet?
100 Billion queries a month on Google – who did we ask before?
90% of the data in the world was created in the last 2 years?
There are more students in the top 5% in China than all of the students in the UK?

21. Graduate Attributes
• Previously driven by managerial paradigm, to
ensure consistency, and respond to perceived
employer needs
• Academic body can use attributes to
demonstrate wider HE benefit – hacking or
subverting the university?
• Employability outcomes will satisfy
consumerist paradigm

22. Professional
you will be work-ready and
employable, and understand
the importance of being
enterprising and
entrepreneurial.
Global Citizen
you will have an
understanding of global
issues, including
sustainability, and their place
in a globalised economy
Communication and
Teamwork
you will be an effective
communicator and presenter,
able to interact appropriately
with colleagues. You’ll have
developed the skills of
independence of thought and
social interaction through
teamwork
Life-long Learner
you will be technologically,
digitally and information
literate. You’ll be able to
apply the Staffordshire
Graduate attributes to your
life experiences, for life-long
learning and life-long success
Reflective and Critical
you will be able to carry out
inquiry-based learning and
critical analysis. You’ll be a
problem solver and a creator
of opportunities.
Discipline Expert
your knowledge will be at the
forefront of your chosen field

23. Leadership
“it may be argued that the actions of many senior
managers in universities are not as strategic,
transformational and as well thought out as they
maintain. Instead, research seems to show that
many are still unprepared and untrained for their
posts, quickly lose touch with the day-to-day
reality of university life, tend to act in a short-term,
transactional and inconsistent fashion, and
over-focus on boxticking exercises designed to
appease funding bodies”.
Bernard Burnes , Petra Wend & Rune Todnem By (2013): The changing face
of English universities: reinventing collegiality for the twenty-first century, Studies in Higher
Education, DOI:10.1080/03075079.2012.754858

24. A return to collegiality
• allow senior managers the flexibility to
respond to changing circumstances whilst
creating a new form of local/departmental
collegiality.
• senior managers to work with staff to develop
a ‘commonly understood strategic intent’.
• involve all staff in re-establishing and re-affirming
their rationale and purpose

25. academic
university
Relevant and modern pedagogy
Graduate attributes that reflect
consumer demands as well as academic
ideals
consumerist managerial
Shared understanding of
all parties’ contribution
to performance
indicators and league
tables outcomes, shared
purpose
Awareness of greater benefit as well as key metrics
Active engagement in learning and governance

26. References
• Darren O’Byrne and Christopher Bond (2014): Back to the future:
the idea of a university revisited, Journal of Higher Education Policy
and Management, 2014, Vol. 36, No. 6, 571–584,
• Bernard Burnes , Petra Wend & Rune Todnem By (2013): The
changing face of English universities: reinventing collegiality for the
twenty-first century, Studies in Higher Education,
DOI:10.1080/03075079.2012.754858
• https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attach
ment_data/file/254101/bis-13-1268-benefits-of-higher-education-participation-
the-quadrants.pdf
• Henry A Giroux: Higher Education and the New Brutalism, via
http://truth-out.org/news/item/27082-henry-a-giroux-higher-education-
and-the-new-brutalism accessed 5-12-14
• Stefan Colini: What are Universities for? Publisher: Penguin (2012)
ISBN-13: 978-1846144820

27. @mikehamlyn
blogs.staffs.ac.uk/mikehamlyn/