To value something (or not) is a curious thing.
You can value anything; someone’s opinion, their feelings, their house, indeed nothing is out of the scope of being valued.
In its broadest philosophical sense, value can be considered as the importance of any object, feeling or an action, prescribed by an individual before, during or after the fact.
If we consult the ancient texts, then Plato offers a binary view of value. There is instrumental value, where something serves as a means to another end, and then there’s intrinsic value, which is just that.
Its value exists by virtue of its own existence, it does not need to enable any other end or objective.
The value of higher education
So, is a degree and any student loan repayments just a means to graduate employment and taxpayer ROI (instrumental value), or is being within university education in of itself valuable (intrinsic)?
I’m going to dodge the question early doors, to be honest, and instead invite discussion alongside a presentation of the student view of all of this. I’m nearing the end of a three-year longitudinal data collection process, whereby I’ve been annually surveying and interviewing the same cohort of undergraduate students from five different HEIs since the end of their first year back in May 2023. This has largely been in service of my part-time PhD, but with a day job in student experience and enhancement there’s some ready employment applicability.
How did we get here?
Please do check out my PhD literature review when it’s published for a fulsome answer, but in summary, a series of neoliberal policy interventions since the 1963 Robbins Report have led us to where we are today. The commodification of HE has crept in over time, and instruments like the NSS launched in 2005 (happy 20th anniversary!) and a new market regulator in 2017 are not insignificant markers of this creep.
“Value for money” as a phrase, for the full villain origin story, appeared in the 1980s via the Local Government and Finance act, defining value for money in terms of 3Es: economy, efficiency and effectiveness. With the creation of the aforementioned HE regulator in 2017, value for money became part of regular policy parlance, given it was a central feature of the OfS’ strategy documentation and purpose. It also inspired people like myself and others to get under the skin of what it actually means in this context.
Right here, right now
By annually surveying and interviewing the same cohort of students across five institutions throughout their university education so far, I’ve found a few threads to pull on that I want to share. The first one is all about time and the temporal location of student value for money perceptions.
Current policy is at odds with how students think about the value of their education. It looks into a hazy future of graduate earnings and loan repayments, with the higher of each being the better for all concerned. From my research, and the addition of a ‘temporal location’ to all my survey interview responses, student perceptions of value for money are located in the present day or recent past. They are not looking to a near-future and PAYE potential; they are looking at what they currently get versus the expectations they had and that is the challenge for institutions to overcome.
Non-users and peer influencers
A second research thread to dangle for readers here is that of non-user bias in student value for money perceptions. From my data, students are more likely to rate a particular aspect of their student experience as negative value for money when they haven’t used it. They don’t opt for neutral ratings; they go for negative as “I don’t know what they do.”
As a counterpoint from my data, those students who do engage are far more likely to rate aspects as good value for money and on the whole are receiving excellent customer service (their words, not mine!). These two things in tandem really are a challenge for institutions, as while engagement leads to positive perceptions, very few will have the resource capacity to cater for all of their students.
The influence of near-peers also can’t be understated. Students in my research will think something is bad value for money if a peer tells them so. This isn’t perhaps a shocking revelation, but what it can create is a barrier to that student ever engaging with that service for themselves, as it didn’t work out for their friend (as is their perception).
How do you deliver timely (and personalised) messages to students in order to make them aware of the variety of things on offer for them? In an NSS context this is vital because students who think over the course of their degree that something hasn’t happened or not been available may well score you as such.
Value for money when money is tight
In my research I ask students about their value for money perceptions of student services and support. For positive perceptions one thing is very apparent in that they are largely driven by a direct engagement with any particular service, and doubly that their expectations of that service were met. They got what they thought they came in for.
If you want students to think you offer value for money, then any investment you have in student support ought to focus on providing an excellent service, and meeting student expectations of that. This sounds simple, and indeed rather basic, but a bad experience leads to that student telling their peers, who may then not engage when they themselves need to access that particular service. In the current era we can’t give every student everything, and nostalgia for a more affluent time won’t help. All you can do is excel at the services you do offer to students and feed that positivity cycle.
Dark and dangerous times lie ahead
The sector is in a tricky financial situation, resources are shrinking, international numbers are in flux and your current and next incoming cohort are going to feed your APP, NSS, and TEF metrics for the remainder of this decade. Looking through a value for money lens, the things that drive positive student perceptions are excellent service levels that align to what they were expecting to happen. Focus on doing that very well is what you have to do when expansion and new projects aren’t an option.
As one last bit of insight from my research, I ask students each year if they feel like they know what their tuition fee is spent on, and the majority say no. I also ask them to rate their overall university experience for value for money, and 44 per cent give it a very good or good rating. That 44 per cent is slightly above what you see in the annual HEPI Student Academic Experience Survey, but for those in my data who do feel like they know where their tuition is spent, this rises significantly to 73 per cent. You don’t need an itemised Council Tax type bill, but something not far off that demonstrates the breadth of fee spend could work wonders.