Sunday Posts

I have written about Exit and Voice before ( See here ) but not in the specific context of Higher Ed. I believe this merits special mention as Higher Education becomes more business-like. As Businesses try to become more like Knowledge Communities (and build campuses, among other things), the talk in Higher Ed is to turn students into 'customers' and of reigning in costs and instilling 'accountability': This may indeed have an impact on how the students engage with the institutions, and Hirschman's mechanics of Exit and Voice may become as relevant in the classroom. Hirschman's key point is that the organisations can exist and function at a sub-optimal level, something that is an impossibility in classical economics with its obsession with equilibrium and efficiency.  So, if a firm misbehaves or does not deliver, its customers will leave them and the firm will disappear, is the assumption which led mainstream economics to devote so little attention to sub-...

It is indeed time that we ask this question and seek an answer. After all, we live in the age of, what some observers claim, an education bubble. Who would have thought, only a couple of decades back, that more education could be seen as a bad thing? However, as the college debts soar in America, and graduate unemployment keeps rising, it seems that some people will indeed go bankrupt for their education, and there is a real fear that it may pull an economy or two down. It is therefore pertinent to ask what the college does to a person, and see if it has, as an institution, any ongoing relevance in the modern society. But, before that, let us acknowledge that it is indeed one of those big hairy questions that no one wants to answer. College is a good thing, we have come to accept. We live in a knowledge economy, we have come to accept. More education means greater productivity, and only a moron can question this assumption. Education has become key to employability, and this shoul...

We have lately discovered that the students want to be consumers. In Britain, where the Government is trying to put the students at the heart of the system by raising, in some cases three-fold, the fees they pay for higher education, the pitch is rather acute. Everyone concerned, including the universities, seem to believe that by this strange play of fate, where the students have to assume the costs of their own education, they will suddenly become consumers; ironically, this means they will turn rather passive - as the consumers do - and disengaged, and expecting the education services to be delivered to them. The manifestation of this belief is plastered everywhere, from what the government counts as the most important aspects of education (contact time, graduate employment rate etc), to what the bureaucrats mandate as the measures of quality of education (adequate and accurate information, communicating what is to be delivered and ensuring the delivery of what is expected), and to...

Background This study was carried out in a Private Business College based in the City of London, which offers MBA degrees validated by the University of Wales. The college decided to implement a VLE supporting its campus-based students in October 2010, with the goal of improving its ‘student engagement’. The college, following a common practice in the sector, used Adjunct Lecturers rather than Tenured ones, and the Management was concerned that this affects the Tutor availability and consequent engagement of the students with the programme or the institution. The Study This study looked what, if any, impact the implementation of the VLE has had on the student engagement one year after it was rolled out. Two focus groups, one consisting of five students from across two cohorts, and another consisting of four Tutors and Course Administrators, were arranged. Also, three separate interviews were also conducted, two with Tutors using the VLE to deliver their courses an...

“Students At the Heart of Higher Education” At the time of writing, the Higher Education system in the UK is at the cusp of a revolutionary change. The change, brought about by a mixture of financial necessity and ideological persuasion of the government in power, is designed to ensure ‘substantially more money will flow via students and less via HEFCE’ (Willetts, 2011). The Ministers claim that this will ‘reduce central political control, put more power in the hands of consumers and promote innovative delivery methods’ (Willetts, 2011). This market-based and consumption-driven system has been presented with the claim that this will put ‘students at the heart of Higher Education’. Whether or not the new system will create a better Higher Education system is still being debated. However, highlighting students as the primary beneficiary of the Higher Education system, rather than the communities or the nation, imply a shift of emphasis and has called for new discussions ...