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Category: Students
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PowerSchool Got Hacked. Now What? – The 74
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Were you a current or former student in the last few decades? Or a parent? Or an educator?
If so, your sensitive data — like Social Security numbers and medical records — may have fallen into the hands of cybercriminals. Their target was education technology behemoth PowerSchool, which provides a centralized system for reams of student data to damn near every school in America.
Given the cyberattack’s high stakes and its potential to harm millions of current and former students, I teamed up Wednesday with Doug Levin of the K12 Security Information eXchange to moderate a timely webinar about what happened, who was affected — and the steps school districts must take to keep their communities safe.
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Concern about the PowerSchool breach is clearly high: Some 600 people tuned into the live event at one point and pummeled Levin and panelists Wesley Lombardo, technology director at Tennessee’s Maryville City Schools; Mark Racine, co-founder of RootED Solutions; and Amelia Vance, president of the Public Interest Privacy Center, with questions.
PowerSchool declined our invitation to participate but sent a statement, saying it is “working to complete our investigation of the incident and [is] coordinating with districts and schools to provide more information and resources (including credit monitoring or identity protection services if applicable) as it becomes available.”
The individual or group who hacked the ed tech giant has yet to be publicly identified.
Asked and answered: Why has the company’s security safeguards faced widespread scrutiny? What steps should parents take to keep their kids’ data secure? Will anyone be held accountable?
In the news
Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, who says undocumented immigrants have placed “severe financial and operational strain” on schools in his state, proposed rules requiring parents to show proof of citizenship or legal immigration status when enrolling their kids — a proposal that not only violates federal law, but is likely to keep some parents from sending their children to school. | The 74
- Not playing along: Leaders of the state’s two largest school districts — Oklahoma City and Tulsa — rebuked the proposal and said they would not collect students’ immigration information. Educators nationwide fear the incoming Trump administration could carry out arrests on campuses. | Oklahoma Watch
- Walters filed a $474 million federal lawsuit this week alleging immigration enforcement officials mismanaged the U.S.-Mexico border, leading to “skyrocketing costs” for Oklahoma schools required “to accommodate an influx of non-citizen students.” | The Oklahoman
- Timely resource guide: With ramped-up immigration enforcement on the horizon — and with many schools already sharing student information with ICE — here are the steps school administrators must take to comply with longstanding privacy and civil rights laws. | Center for Democracy & Technology
A federal judge in Kentucky struck down the Biden administration’s Title IX rules that enshrined civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students in schools, siding with several conservative state attorneys general who argued that harassment of transgender students based on their gender identity doesn’t constitute sex discrimination. Mother Jones
Fires throw L.A. schools into chaos: As fatal wildfires rage in California, the students and families of America’s second-largest school district have had their lives thrown into disarray. Schools serving thousands of students were badly damaged or destroyed. Many children have lost their homes. Hundreds of kids whose schools burned down returned to makeshift classrooms Wednesday after losing “their whole lifestyle in a matter of hours.” | The Washington Post
- At least seven public schools in Los Angeles that were destroyed, damaged or threatened by flames will remain closed, along with campuses in other districts. | The 74
Has TikTok’s time run out? With a national ban looming for the popular social media app, many teens say they’re ready to move on (and have already flocked to a replacement). | Business Insider
Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta restricted LGBTQ+-related content from teens’ accounts for months under its so-called sensitive content policy until the effort was exposed by journalist Taylor Lorenz. | Fast Company
Students’ lunch boxes sit in a locker at California’s Marquez Charter Elementary School, which was destroyed by the Palisades fire on Jan. 7. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday announced the participants in a $200 million pilot program to help schools and libraries bolster their cybersecurity defenses. They include 645 schools and districts and 50 libraries. | FCC
Scholastic falls to “furry” hackers: The education and publishing giant that brought us Harry Potter has fallen victim to a cyberattacker, who reportedly stole the records of some 8 million people. In an added twist, the culprit gave a shout-out to “the puppygirl hacker polycule,” an apparent reference to a hacker dating group interested in human-like animal characters. | Daily Dot
Not just in New Jersey: In a new survey, nearly a quarter of teachers said their schools are patrolled by drones and a third said their schools have surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities. | Center for Democracy & Technology
The number of teens abstaining from drugs, alcohol and tobacco use has hit record highs, with experts calling the latest data unprecedented and unexpected. | Ars Technica
ICYMI @The74
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RFK Jr. Could Pull Many Levers to Hinder Childhood Immunization as HHS Head
Feds: Philadelphia Schools Failed to Address Antisemitism in School, Online
Emotional Support
New pup just dropped.
Meet Woodford, who, at just 9 weeks, has already aged like a fine bourbon. I’m told that Woody — and the duck, obviously — have come under the good care of 74 reporter Linda Jacobson’s daughter.
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- Not playing along: Leaders of the state’s two largest school districts — Oklahoma City and Tulsa — rebuked the proposal and said they would not collect students’ immigration information. Educators nationwide fear the incoming Trump administration could carry out arrests on campuses. | Oklahoma Watch
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The courts are slowly clarifying universities’ duty of care
Imagine you’re a student, a member of staff, a parent or even an MP trying to work out what type, level or nature of “duty of care” is owed by a university to students.
The other day Janet Daby, whose day job is Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing but who also moonlights as a kind of spokesperson for HE given that Jacqui Smith is in the Lords, was asked about duty of care.
Her answer was as follows:
The department’s position is that a duty of care in HE may arise in certain circumstances. Such circumstances would be a matter for the courts to decide, based on the specific facts and context of the case being considered, and will be dependent on the application by a court of accepted common law principles.
That’s unhelpful enough – but the courts don’t seem to be very clear either. Of relevance down this rabbit hole, there’s a fairly lurid bit of press coverage doing the rounds on a case involving a law student at Cambridge who has sued the university for its refusal to award him a PhD.
The Mail, with its usual insinuative air quotes, runs the headline as follows:
Cambridge law student sues university after he failed his PhD, claiming it held up his career as a barrister because he was “less able” to write a thesis.
The case itself is interesting because of the way in which the judge in a recent appeal has differentiated between different bits of law that are supposed to protect students.
And in a context of disabled students routinely reporting problems with the way in which reasonable adjustments are delivered, there could be significant implications, depending on what happens next, for practice in the future.
Background
Jacob Meagher is a disabled PhD student at Cambridge who alleges that he was not provided with an adequate supervisor or advisor, and was denied certain scholarships – acts which he claims were acts of victimisation.
He previously brought a claim against the university on those issues in 2017, and reached a settlement in 2019 which involved him restarting his PhD. But he alleges he was subjected to a number of detriments after the settlement – crucially, that in connection with his PhD examination, the university was aware of the adjustments he needed to avoid a disadvantage because of his disability, but failed to provide them.
That’s partly because they had been recommended by the university’s Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre (ADRC) in a plan, but not implemented in the department, which is the sort of scenario that Disabled Students UK’s research suggests is common.
That, Meagher claims, led to a suicide attempt and hospital admissions – things he claims the university was made aware of but refused to help or support him. Then following complaints, the university recognised the issues with the initial viva and is working to ensure a fair process for his re-examination.
But even though the university agreed to let the student re-defend his thesis and implement reasonable adjustments, he took the university to court for several reasons:
- The case includes additional claims beyond the failure to implement reasonable adjustments during the initial viva. He alleges various breaches of the Equality Act 2010, including victimisation and discrimination, stemming from incidents throughout his PhD program. These include claims of inadequate supervision, vetoing of scholarships, and mishandling of complaints.
- Meagher is seeking compensation for damages already incurred. He claims that the university’s actions have caused him financial losses, including missed opportunities for a tenancy as a barrister due to the delay in completing his PhD. He is also seeking general damages for the distress and harm to his mental health caused by the university’s alleged actions.
- He is seeking a legal declaration that the university unlawfully discriminated against him, validating his claims and potentially influencing future practice at the university. He is also seeking to clarify legal issues concerning the university’s obligations ahead of that agreed re-examination.
The university or individuals?
When he initially brought his claim in August 2023, he included six individuals as defendants in the case – all senior employees of the university that held specific leadership roles within the departments and committees relevant to his complaints.
He argued that in addition to the liability of their employer under section 109, section 110 of the Equality Act 2010 allows individuals to be held personally liable for acts of discrimination committed in the course of their employment.
Meagher’s argument was that these individuals, by virtue of their positions, were responsible for the university’s decisions and actions that he alleged were discriminatory and caused him harm. So he sought a declaration from the court that these individuals had discriminated against him, in addition to the declaration sought against the university.
The university’s legal team argued that including these individuals as defendants provided no tangible benefit to Meagher as the university had acknowledged its liability for discriminatory acts committed by its employees, and that the claims against them were duplicative and unnecessarily increased the cost and complexity of the legal proceedings.
The County Court Judge hearing the initial applications in the case agreed with the university’s arguments and struck out the claims against the individuals, citing the “Jameel principle” that allows the courts to strike out claims that are technically valid but considered an abuse of process due to the disproportionate costs and burden they impose on the defendants compared to the potential benefit to the claimant.
And on appeal, a High Court judge has now agreed – hence the headlines. But it’s where the High Court has disagreed with the County Court where things get interesting.
Breach of contract?
In the County Court, Meagher argued that the university’s failure to implement adjustments recommended by the ADRC for his viva constituted not just breaches of the Equality Act 2010, but also breaches of contract and tort – and once you’re in that space the legal principles of foreseeability of harm, and the duty of care in providing services with reasonable skill and care, kick in.
On the duty to avoid foreseeable harm, the principle basically means that individuals and organisations have a legal responsibility to take reasonable steps to prevent harm that is reasonably foreseeable as a consequence of their actions or omissions. If the Court determines that the harm Meagher experienced (e.g. psychological distress, academic setbacks) was a foreseeable consequence of the university’s failure to implement the adjustments, that would strengthen his claim for breach of contract and tort.
Then there’s the duty of care in carrying out a service with reasonable skill and care issue. That’s enshrined in section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and also applies under common law principles of negligence – and requires service providers, in this case, the university, to exercise reasonable skill and care in the provision of their services to consumers, in this instance, Meagher as a student.
The question in this case is whether the university, by failing to implement the adjustments recommended by its own ADRC, breached this duty of care by not conducting his PhD viva with the requisite skill and care, considering his disability. Meagher argues that the university’s failure to implement the ADRC’s recommendations, which he says were specific to his needs and aimed at ensuring a fair and accessible assessment process, constitutes a breach of this duty.
And at the heart of all that is the question of competence standards and how they intersect with reasonable adjustments for disabled students under the Equality Act 2010.
Competence standards
Competence standards are essentially the academic benchmarks used to assess whether a student has attained the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities for a particular qualification. You’ll recall from the Natasha Abrahart case that there was disagreement about whether presenting in-person to a lecture theatre was itself a required competence, or merely a way of assessing competence that could be (reasonably) adjusted.
The Equality Act doesn’t require universities to adjust competence standards to accommodate disabled students – but it does require universities to make reasonable adjustments to the assessment processes used to evaluate a student’s competence.
This distinction is crucial in Meagher’s case because he argues that the university’s failure to implement certain adjustments, specifically those recommended by the ADRC, resulted in him being disadvantaged in demonstrating his competence during his viva.
He argues that requiring him to take the viva in a standard format, without the recommended adjustments, placed him at a substantial disadvantage due to his disabilities, and that they were necessary to enable him to fairly demonstrate his understanding of the subject matter and meet the PhD competence standard.
Meagher proposed that his PhD assessment be based on an analysis of his published academic papers, a method already used for university staff, rather than a traditional thesis. He requested a legally-qualified editor to proofread his thesis for aesthetic and presentation standards, along with significant restructuring or adjustments to the viva process. His proposed adjustments included written feedback from examiners on areas needing improvement, followed by revisions and reassessment, as well as receiving written questions and a detailed agenda seven days prior to the viva to reduce anxiety.
To further support his needs, Meagher requested oral questions be linked to specific thesis sections in active voice, pauses and breaks after oral questions for cognitive processing, and the ability to write down questions for clarity. He also sought the option to clarify ambiguous questions with examiner explanations and breaks of at least ten minutes every hour to manage fatigue and maintain focus during the viva.
The Student Support Document (SSD) created by the ADRC included much of that – but Meagher says that the university failed to provide it to the examiners before the viva, leaving them unaware of his disabilities and the necessary adjustments – only providing a list of adjustments. He also alleges that adjustments to the viva format were not made – the examiners, he says, failed to avoid unnotified topics, clearly signpost questions, and accommodate the thesis format.
He was then granted an interim injunction against the university in July 2024 preventing it from taking any action over his PhD course or examination without consent from both parties pending the conclusion of the legal proceedings.
Two big issues
In other words, there are two things going on. On the one hand, in the discrimination arguments the student wants clarity over the reasonable adjustments/competence standards issue before that re-examination issue goes ahead.
Depending on what happens next, there could be significant implications across the sector as it continues to try to wrangle reasonable adjustments to assessment and the differences between competence standards in a subject that shouldn’t change, and mere methods for assessing them that could.
On the other hand, the potential compensation would be higher if Meagher was able to make the contract/tort arguments for a breach of contract and the implied duty to act with reasonable skill and care. Crucial there is whether, once it was agreed, the plan from the ADRC became part of the contract with the student – where if so we’re into avoiding foreseeable harm and so on. And that matters because it looks like it could create a form of duty of care.
On that issue, in the County Court Meagher argued that the failure to implement adjustments for his viva constituted breaches of contract and tort – but the judge reasoned that that was an attempt to improperly import the statutory duty to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 into contractual and duties of care.
But on appeal in the High Court, the contract and tort claims have been reinstated – the judge found that the County Court judge had got it wrong on “you’re trying to use two bits of law on one issue,” and argued that once it had agreed them, the university had separate contractual and tortious duties to implement the recommendations, irrespective of whether those recommendations aligned with the reasonable adjustments duty under the Equality Act.
And so that’s where things now get very interesting – because of who the pressure goes on now in any tug of war between professional services and academics that disabled students often find themselves in.
Where will the pressure fall?
It is possible that the pressure goes onto academic departments. If universities face potential legal liability for breaches of contract or tort when they fail to implement their reasonable adjustment plans, that could strengthen the hand of frustrated disabled students, and strengthen the authority of disability services departments within universities to ensure that their recommendations are given due weight and followed through.
It could also mean better training for academic staff on disability law, or clearer procedures for communicating and implementing reasonable adjustments so academic departments are aware of their obligations.
But it’s also possible that the risk of legal action causes universities to pressure their professional disability staff to be more cautious in creating and publishing reasonable adjustment plans that they could later be held to account over. They may put in steps like ensuring relevant academics agree first, slowing down already slow processes. There may also be a chilling effect on adjustments that beleaguered staff know will be hard to get academic staff to agree to.
And of course there’s more to run here – in the eventual potential outcome of the case – on what is and isn’t a reasonable adjustment to a PhD viva as a method of assessment.
What is clear is that the chances of an individual student having the money, time or smarts to take a case as far as Meagher has so far are slim. It also remains the case that disabled students’ rights in areas like this are desperately unclear, that the legal frameworks surrounding them interact in potentially unhelpful ways, and their access to support is heavily restricted once at the end of their course.
Someone, somewhere – perhaps OfS’ Disability in Higher Education Advisory Panel – needs to grip these issues properly. And next time Janet Daby is forced to issue an answer like “well it’s for the courts to decide”, perhaps she could remind herself and her boss in the other place that she’s a lawmaker.
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Bridget Phillipson reaffirms commitment to free speech
Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson has delivered a statement to Parliament on her regulatory approach to higher education – specifically, the future of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act.
Ahead of her day in court with the Free Speech Union – which is taking her to court over her implementation pause – she announced that key provisions will be brought into force, whilst “burdensome provisions” will be scrapped.
And the good news is that pretty much for the first time from a minister on this issue, there’s an explicit recognition of the fine lines, complexities and contradictions often in play on the issue. A press notice covers largely the same material.
You’ll recall that on taking office back in July, Phillipson paused further commencement of the Act in response to “concerns raised by a cross section of voices” – and controversially, at least for some, a “source” branded the Act as passed a “Tory hate charter”.
In the intro, Phillipson said she was still committed to ensuring the protection of academic freedom and free speech – “vital pillars” of the university system:
Universities are spaces for debate, exploration, and the exchange of ideas, not for shutting down dissenting views… extensive engagement with academics, universities, students, and minority groups revealed concerns about unworkable duties, legal system burdens, and potential impacts on safety, particularly amid rising antisemitism on campuses.
Insights from her work to consult with interested stakeholders (both for and against the act), says Phillipson, have shaped a “balanced, effective, and proportionate approach” to safeguard free speech while addressing minority welfare.
What stays
First up, the government will commence the following requirements currently in the act (in sections 1,2 and 6):
- The duties on higher education providers to take reasonably practicable steps to secure and promote freedom of speech within the law
- The duty on higher education providers to put in place a code of conduct [practice] on freedom of speech
Those are relatively uncontroversial – most providers were preparing in that spirit already, although the (very) detailed suggestions on compliance previously proposed by OfS may yet change.
Underpinning that, Phillipson also intends to commence the duties on the Office for Students (OfS) (section 5) to promote freedom of speech and the power to give advice and share best practice. And unsurprisingly, the ban on non-disclosure agreements for staff and students making complaints about bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct will also remain.
There was a curious passage on the Director for Free Speech and Academic Freedom role – the Secretary of State said that she had “complete confidence” in Arif Ahmed who will be staying on – but then criticised how he’d been appointed, drawing on interim Chair David Behan’s review of the regulator that had recommended a look at how all OfS executive and board appointments should be made.
She said will decide on the process of appointing directors to the independent regulator “shortly”.
What’s going
A couple of other measures were “not proportionate or necessary”, so she’ll be seeking repeal.
The duties on students’ unions are to go – because they’re neither “equipped nor funded” to navigate such a complex regulatory environment, and are already regulated by the Charity Commission:
But I fully expect students unions to protect lawful free speech, whether they agree with the views expressed or not, and expect providers to work closely with them to make sure that happens, to act decisively to make sure their students union complies with their free speech code of conduct.
That effectively returns us to the Education Act 1986 position – of providers taking reasonably practicable steps to get their SU to comply – and sensibly removes the prospect of a new student being told about two codes of practice to follow depending on who they’d booked a room with.
Most controversially for some, she will also repeal the legal tort, on the basis that it would have resulted in:
Costly litigation that risks diverting resources away from students at a time when University finances are already strained – remaining routes of redress have plenty of teeth.
Those pro the tort worry that that only leaves OfS’ powers to find as the compliance lever – although others worried that the threat of it would have resulted in more threatening letters than sensible, nuanced decisions.
What’s changing
On the OfS free speech complaints scheme, it will remain in place for university staff and visiting speakers – but there will be two changes. OfS will first be freed up to prioritise the more serious complaints – and be officially empowered to ignore others.
And the government will remove the “confusing duplication” of complaint schemes for students. Students will be diverted to using the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA, and OfS will take complaints from staff, external speakers and university members.
That doesn’t quite remove the potential duplication of the two bodies considering the same incident or issue from different angles/complaints – but it’s a sensible start.
And the government will also amend the mandatory condition of registration on providers to give OfS flexibility in how they apply those conditions to different types of providers – we’d expect that to cover issues like the obvious oversight of 14-year olds in FE colleges caught by the Act suddenly gaining free speech rights.
The government says it will also take more time to consider implementation of the overseas funding measures in the act as it “works at pace” on the wider implementation of the foreign influence registration scheme that was part of the National Security Act 2023. Those two bits of legislation never felt properly aligned – so that also feels pretty sensible.
In the debate that ensued, there was some lingering suspicion from the opposition that that all amounted to the government going soft on China – and regardless of the foreign funding clauses, there were some concerns from providers about the workability of the draft OfS guidance on the main duties re oppressive regimes and TNE. That will be one to watch.
Finally, we will also get a policy paper to set out the proposals in more detail, potentially alongside a decision on information provision for overseas funding.
What’s next
As we signalled back in March, the interaction with allegations and incidents of antisemitism appears to have been a big influence on the decisions – the press notice reminds readers that there were fears that the legislation would encourage providers to “overlook” the safety and wellbeing of minority groups, including Jewish students, and instead protect those who use hateful or degrading speech on campus:
Groups representing Jewish students also expressed concerns that sanctions could lead to providers overlooking the safety and well-being of minority groups.
Phillipson even referenced the faux pas from Michelle Donelan way back in May 2021 when, on the day the Bill was launched, she was unable to explain how the government’s proposals would prevent Holocaust deniers coming to campus.
Phillipson said that she could see “no good reason” why any university would invite a Holocaust denier onto campus to deny the overwhelming evidence that the Holocaust is an “appalling form of antisemitism”. Even when the last government had clarified the position on holocaust denial, it never confirmed that holocaust deniers could be banned – and the point about many external speaker edge cases is that they rarely fill the form in with “I’m going to say something unlawful”.
There’s still a way to go yet on these (and other) fine lines – in the ensuing debate, Phillipson said that she was worried that the regime that was due to launch would have “unduly prioritized” free speech which is hateful or degrading over the interests of those who feel harassed and intimidated – these issues, she said, can be “very finely balanced”. That may well see a push from the SOS that the two sets of guidance – on OfS’ new Harassment and Sexual Misconduct duties, and the drafts on this regime, are integrated more sensibly.
The ongoing questions surrounding the IHRA definition of antisemitism may also yet pop up again too – not least because of Arif Ahmed’s own apparent u-turn on it and the ensuing cases challenging its usage in disciplinary procedures. Questions of pro-Palestinian activism on camps and where that might stray into antisemitism were notably absent from OfS’ guidance drafts.
Overall, some in the debate will be furious at the government’s apparent watering down of the Act, others will be pleased that some of the arguably more unworkable aspects are being amended.
But probably the most important signal from Phillipson was a recognition that the area is complex and decisions often finely balanced – putting a degree of trust in universities (and their SUs) that they will also take it seriously.
Whatever else has happened over the past few years, there’s plenty of evidence that understanding has improved in the sector – it looks it has in Whitehall too. The question now is whether, next time an incident or issue comes along, it is handled by a university (or its SU) in a way that commands confidence.
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What does it mean to be political for today’s students?
When we think about student politics, it is inevitable that the images of student protest and rebellion come to mind. These views of what counts as student politics have been shaped by rather romantic ideals of what it meant to be a student and do politics in 1960s, or perhaps even in 2010-2011 when we witnessed the last large scale student rebellion in England, but also more globally. When we stretch our imagination, perhaps we can also see students engaging with electoral politics, and them being stereotypically more left leaning compared to the general population – or ‘woke’ as portrayed by many right-wing media outlets today. In cases where students do not meet these expectations of political activity, they are often derogatively called ‘snowflakes’: a fragile generation of apolitical students. While there may be some truth in students becoming less politically active, it is important to question why this might be the case, but also to consider the extent to which our own understandings of student politics are perhaps outdated and need changing.
The cost of student protest
In contexts where higher education is marketed as an investment into one’s future, the student-as-consumer positioning becomes unavoidable. Consumerism in our universities may be brutally explicit as in the UK where students are protected by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or more subtle in systems where laws and regulations do not treat students as consumers, but the transactional idea of higher education and human capital development still imply similar understandings. As students are constantly reminded to prioritise ‘value for money’ and question their investment into successful graduate employment, deviating from such a mindset and standing out as a disruptive or disobedient student cannot be a preferred or safe option. This was evident with the recent pro-Palestinian encampments which on British campuses were rather short-lived, often adopted around the exam periods and ending with the closure of the academic year 2023/2024. The cost of non-compliance is very high for our students: how could a student who has accumulated an average of £45k student debt with already insecure graduate employment trajectory drop everything and revolt? My recent book Student Identity and Political Agency: Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights deals with these dilemmas and argues that the modes of student politics have had to change alongside the generational pressures that contemporary students face. In other words, the form that student politics takes is intertwined with what it means to be a student today.
Alternative forms of political agency
To counteract the view that students have become apolitical or snowflakes, we need to imagine student politics as more fluid and situational: something that gets embedded within the everyday practices of being a student.
First, this revisioning invites us to be more open-minded about what counts as student protest. For example, it is evident that when today’s students do protest, their actions tend to be more short-lived while triggered by identity-based issues that matter to them personally. We should also look at the new and alternative spaces that activism takes place within, eg digital platforms. The latter could of course relate to generational shifts and students being more digitally adept, but also to the fact that the university campuses have become heavily regulated by timetabling pressures and health and safety rules, making it difficult for students to socialise, let alone organise on campus.
Second, our universities have never emphasised student voice as much as they do today. In addition to students’ unions, there is a wide range of new representative roles on university committees and working groups. While there are questions about tokenism and the effectiveness of these roles – and perhaps fairly so – one cannot deny that there is an incredible infrastructure emerging for students to (peacefully) exercise their interest. This could also be politically motivated, and we should not underestimate the power that students as collectives hold through such representative roles.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, I invite us to consider the power that the student-as-consumer holds. In the age of marketised universities, we need to ask some uncomfortable questions related to the extent to which student-as-consumer positioning itself empowers students with new types of political agency. We know that an increasing number of students are exercising their right to complain, and they often do this to call out universities for their wrongdoings. These wrongdoings may relate to consumer rights and personal grievances, but often they also reflect wider structural inequalities. It could therefore be argued that consumer rights have granted students new tools to exercise their interest. There is a tendency for the sector to view student complaints as something negative and unreasonable, and none of us would want to be the subject of one. However, it is likely that if students are increasingly treated as consumers, it is also this consumer positioning that offers new opportunities for political agency to be exercised. In today’s highly pressurised university environments, consumer complaints might be a more effective way to make oneself heard: making complaints is a legal right for our students, and the potential reputational damage to universities makes complaints high stakes.
In summary, I argue that the market forces and consumerist discourses that brutally shape students are also what trigger, enable and disable certain new and altered forms of political agency. Such understanding invites us to shift away from the prevailing assumption that contemporary students are becoming apolitical and instead to rethink our normative understanding of what counts as political agency.
For more details, please see my book published as part of the SRHE and Routledge book series Research into Higher Education:
Raaper, R (2024). Student Identity and Political Agency. Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights Oxon: Routledge
Rille Raaper is Associate Professor at Durham University. Rille’s research interests lie in the sociology of higher education with a particular focus on student identity, experience and political agency in a variety of higher education settings. Her research is primarily concerned with how universities organise their work in competitive higher education markets, and the implications market forces have on current and future students. The two particular strands of Rille’s research relate to: a) student identity and experience in consumerist higher education; b) student agency, citizenship and political activism.
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Resolving the tensions in campus culture requires leadership from within
You’ve heard a version of this story before.
The 16 days against gender-based violence campaign has been running around the world for over 30 years now, and manifestations on campus can include everything from assertiveness and self-defense workshops to panels on violence, discrimination and harassment in student life.
Back in 2021, students at the oldest university in Poland had put together a programme of activity for the campaign that included a lecture on the criminological aspects of the murders of women from a lecturer in the Department of Criminology.
But days before she was due to give the talk, the Forensic Psychology Section of the Scientific Association of Psychology Students at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (one of the co-organisers alongside the LGBTQ+ society and the SU) announced that the lecture had been cancelled:
When inviting Dr. Magdalena Grzyb to give a lecture, we were not aware of the views she represents. We would also like to point out that we absolutely do not agree with the opinions she expresses, and we do not consent to any manifestations of transphobia in the university space.
The previous year, Grzyb had penned a piece in Kultura Liberalna – a weekly Polish magazine focusing on liberal values, intellectual debate, and cultural analysis – critiquing the acceptance of non-binary and queer identities in liberal and progressive circles, suggesting that prioritising individual self-identification over systemic efforts to deconstruct stereotypes and achieve real gender equality was a problem:
Does every man, even a serial rapist or a domestic torturer, if he says he feels like a woman, have the right to demand to be placed in a cell with women, often victims of such men? (…) A woman who repairs a dishwasher at home is also non-binary. Heck, a woman who earns more than her husband is also non-binary. A man who irons his clothes and washes the floor with a mop is also non-binary. (…) Do they deserve special treatment and a place in a cell with women because of this?
A few days later Jerzy Pisuliński, Dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration at Jagiellonian, issued a statement making clear that the lecture would take place after all, on the basis that the university should be a place for “debate on important social problems” and that it “cannot avoid controversial topics”.
Setting an example
That was an announcement welcomed by HE minister Przemysław Czarnek, whose conservative and nationalist Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) had only months previously, egged on by the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, proposed an amendment to the Law on Higher Education that sought to tackle wokery and cancel culture:
I welcome with satisfaction the decision of the Rector of the Jagiellonian University to restore the lecture of Ms. Dr. Magdalena Grzyb. The Jagiellonian University is setting an example.
A year previous a sociology lecturer at the University of Silesia in Katowice resigned in protest after students accused her of promoting intolerant anti-choice and homophobic views in her classes. The university’s disciplinary official found evidence of intolerance – prompting Czarnek’s predecessor Jarosław Gowin to condemn what he termed “ideological censorship”:
The Bill will be intended to help the university community and the rector to ensure that these freedoms are not violated, that the university is a temple of freedom of speech, freedom of exchange of views and discussion.
When it eventually appeared a few months later, it proposed to guarantee academic teachers’ freedoms in teaching, speech, research, and publication; protect the expression of religious, philosophical, or worldview beliefs, ensuring they would not constitute disciplinary offenses; and oblige university rectors to uphold respect for these freedoms, all aimed at guaranteeing an environment of “ideological pluralism” within academic institutions.
Campaign groups weren’t happy – arguing that student organisations should be able to invite or not invite lecturers to their events:
…that is their sacred right, just as it is not a restriction of freedom of speech that I or any other person was not invited. Other people may not like it and may criticise this decision.
Just as in the UK, some argued that the reforms could undermine the independence of academic institutions – allowing government influence over academic discourse and research priorities, and discouraging open discussion and critical analysis on topics that might conflict with the government’s conservative stance.
Others puzzled over the practical differences between not refusing a speaker and forcing a voluntary student group to go ahead with one even if it didn’t want to – the sort of detail lost in the noise in cases like this.
But back at Jagiellonian, there was the thorny issue of Ernest Figiel to resolve.
Enemies of the people
Figiel, a trans activist student at Jagiellonian had accused Grzyb of being a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, and in the process had called for TERFs to be “thrown into a sack and into a lake”, disposed of “in lime pits” and had praised Stalin’s methods of dealing with “enemies of the people” – which he thought should apply to Grzyb and her ilk.
And as disciplinary proceedings against Figiel ensued and a counter campaign kicked off, it was down to Beata Kowalska, who in 2020 became the university’s first Advocate [Ombusperson] for Academic Rights and Values, to chart a way through:
It does not matter who the hate speech comes from. Allegations of hate speech are carefully investigated in the case of any member of the university community. As is well known, hate speech can have disastrous consequences when used publicly, sometimes contrary to the original intentions of the sender… Figiel publicly used polemical statements of a dehumanizing nature against his opponents, using extermination and genocidal metaphors…
Such statements are unacceptable in the academic community. Trivializing the extermination or using in an allegedly humorous way images of genocide, which Mr. Figiel publicly wished for his opponents, constitute a flagrant transgression of the boundaries of freedom of speech.
The full statement is excellent – carefully integrating concerns that discrimination against non-heteronormative people had intensified with the need to uphold freedom of speech as a “pillar of democratic debate”. And while that was not a universally popular intervention, it pretty much doused the flames and helped the university community move on. The question is how and why.
What goes on tour
Jagiellonian in Krakow and Silesia in Katowice were two of the universities we visited on this year’s Wonkhe SUs January bus tour of students’ unions – which took in the Visegrad countries of Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia and Poland.
Over the past few years, we’ve been assembling groups of SU officers (and the staff that support them) to meet with students’ unions, guilds, associations across countries in Europe – and we’ve seen any number of fascinating projects, initiatives, buildings, services and schemes that students deliver in the student interest.
But on the long (and often winding) roads between university towns and cities across Europe, we’ve also been trying to work out what it is that underpins all of the impressive stuff that we’ve seen.
Much like the other three countries’ systems, Polish higher education’s governance is effectively a communitarian power-sharing arrangement that “combines the preferences of policymakers towards the market model” with the legacy of the “institutionalized, deeply-entrenched, and change-resistant academic self-governance model” that was reintroduced in 1990 after communist rule.
The Law on Higher Education has an extensive section on student rights – setting out a positive role for students’ unions to deliver training on those rights to students, as well as recognising their role in giving voice to student concerns, and organising activities aimed at the social integration and cultural development of students.
Built almost entirely on pyramids of faculty-based student involvement that start with summer student integration camps and talks for new students on rights and obligations, we met any number of impressive, unpaid student leaders who were keen to support other students because they themselves had experienced being supported by others.
The law also provides for state universities to be partially democratically run both at faculty and institutional level – with students given at least 20 per cent of seats and veto power over key decisions like who gets to be Dean or Rector, and what goes into study programmes.
At Silesia, the SU President – who started his talk with a slide quoting from the law – concluded by turning to the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs to say that “we often argue, but we couldn’t wish for anyone better for the job”. That’s partly because to get elected, she had to command the confidence of those electing her. And it’s partly because him and his colleagues obviously thought they had real power in the process.
He, like all the other SUs we had met in Poland, had mentioned the Ombudsperson at the university as a key figure that students had the right to access – and as we burned through SIM data between visits, we set about trying to understand why.
Law 2.0
In 2018, ruling party PiS had enacted a new Law on Higher Education and Science, commonly known as Law 2.0, to modernize higher education. University councils (as opposed to Senates) were given external stakeholders, funding mechanisms were modernised to promote research excellence, universities were given more flexibility in financial management, and toughened duties were placed on universities to uphold ethical standards, including those related to freedom of speech and debate.
A handful of academic ombudspeople were already in place at the University of Warsaw, the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the Catholic University in Lublin and the Medical University of Warsaw – but Law 2.0 gave a group of universities the opportunity to integrate democratic governance and student rights and obligations into an optional model charter for universities, Section V of which provided for the appointment of an ombudsman for academic rights and values.
Jagiellonian’s students and staff were among those who’d spotted a need to be seen to be both integrating and providing leadership on EDI and freedom of speech – and the job spec for their first ombuds oozes a need to command confidence.
They have to be an academic teacher who has been employed at the university for at least ten years and holds a professor or university professor position. They can’t hold any managerial or governing roles and should be widely respected within the university community, demonstrating strong social sensitivity.
Candidates can be nominated by various groups, including the Senate, university employees, both the UG and doctoral SUs, and the trade unions. Their job is to monitor and address violations of academic rights and values, provide support to affected parties, mediate disputes, and collaborate with university entities to create a respectful academic environment.
They investigate reported violations, recommend corrective measures to university bodies, and advocate for affected individuals during proceedings. They also have the authority to advise on initiating disciplinary or mediation processes and can request information or documentation from university bodies as needed. And every year, they submit a comprehensive report to the Senate detailing their activities and cases handled – which is subsequently made publicly available.
No to parameterization
This interview with the inaugural postholder Beata Kowalska – a feminist sociologist involved in the Scholars at Risk Network – is inspiring:
A university is not a place where we collect points and are subjected to parameterization, but rather a community of people who work together. They do not work only individually to build their own careers, the mission of the university is much broader.
Universities are spaces where academic freedom and equality should flourish. This means identifying solutions, sharing good practices, and creating tools that will support these goals. I plan to hold discussions on topics like climate change and academic integrity. Recently, we even used sociological “teams” during the pandemic lockdown to address social isolation among students.
One challenge is bridging the gap between academic life and society. Universities must be critical spaces where ideas are debated freely and without fear of discrimination or exclusion. This applies not only to faculty and students but to the broader society they serve.
In year one, Kowalska’s office handled 236 cases involving staff, students, and doctoral candidates, addressing issues like academic ethics, workplace conditions, and conflict resolution, as well as the promotion of academic values, mediation efforts, and educational programmes to support a culture of respect and dialogue within the university.
And since then her office and team of mediators have gone on to tackle violations of students’ rights by academics, wider academic values, workplace conditions, unwanted behaviours and harassment, complaints about study organisation, anti-discrimination training and cultural events – as well as collaborating internationally.
Somehow we know more about how the University of Jagiellonian has been handling disputes between students, staff and the university by using Google Translate on a couple of PDFs than pretty much any university in the UK with their bulletproof PR processes and bland press statements when a row ensues.
And so successful have the institutional ombudspeople been at commanding confidence that PiS backed off on further reforms – and now, along with announcements on encouraging mergers (federalisation first), financial aid for doctoral students, a plan to build more places in dorms and scholarships for students engaged in running activities for others, last September the new government announced that it would strengthen the powers of student and doctoral student ombuds.
In December HE minister Dariusz Wieczorek ended up embroiled in some kind of whistleblowing scandal, but you get a real sense that the Donald Tusk-led coalition has students’ concerns at heart:
According to the Central Statistical Office, there are over a million students in Poland. I really want each of you to have the best possible conditions for learning and pursuing your passions, so that your studies are a chance for you to deepen your knowledge, acquire new skills, but also a time for making friends and comprehensive development. That is why at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education we consistently introduce solutions that will ensure high quality of education at Polish universities, we transfer funds for investments related to the teaching activities of universities, and we also co-finance the construction and modernization of dormitories.
In addition, a student culture support program will be launched in the first quarter of 2025, aimed at clubs, teams and organizations operating in higher education institutions. I am convinced that it will allow for the activation and integration of the environment, and above all, it will contribute to the development of student culture in Poland.
Commanding confidence
As ever on our study tours, back on the bus we tended to conclude that there’s lots to be proud of in the UK – in particular, for all of the issues that present, we figure that our sector’s work on mental health and the progress being made on harassment and sexual misconduct and access and participation really is streets ahead of many other countries’ efforts.
But when it comes to treating students as real stakeholders, it’s not the size of the SU’s block grant that matters – and when it comes to the tensions between academic freedom and EDI, the pausing of the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is less a defeat or victory, and more a reflection of the “jury’s out” position that pretty much everyone has on the sector’s ability to reconcile the tensions in a way that will command real confidence.
Democracy in universities – real democracy, not events where you can scrawl ideas that consultants ignore on sheets of flipchart paper – is in pretty short supply in a UK sector that has largely abolished it in universities and only really turns to it for a popularity contest for leaders in March in SUs. And universities back home are never wrong – at least not in public.
If nothing else, what we saw in various forms across the Visegrad group this year was real democracy in action – imperfect, messy, bureaucratic and uncomfortably open, but powerfully symbolic of the sort of society that universities hope their graduates will want to build in the future.
Back on the academic freedom and freedom of speech issue, the truth is that there have always been and always will be tensions and conflicts – between freedom from harm and freedom to speak, between supporters of Israel and Palestine, between protecting the university and protecting students, between the young keen to be on the right side of history and an older generation defensive of it, and between the role that universities play both critiquing society and being a part of it. Conflicts require resolution.
Having the confidence to take the national widespread credibility of the OIA and establish local versions of it like that exemplified by Beata Kowalska at Jagiellonian – commanding the confidence of students, staff, management, politicians and the wider public by being somewhere independent where folk can raise and resolve disputes – wouldn’t be a defeat for the UK sector, and nor would it represent a risk.
It would be a reflection of what higher education in the UK often says it is – an open, reflective, capable and self-critical community of students and staff – but all too often is too defensive and too proud to trust its own people to make it a reality.
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Unveiling the gatekeepers in PGR admissions
The journey to postgraduate research (PGR) remains cloaked in ambiguity.
For many students, gaining access to PGR programmes is less about merit and more about chance encounters and privilege. The perceived casual tap on the shoulder culture — an informal recommendation by a supervisor or academic insider — can often play a significant role in greasing the wheels for a fortunate few but risks perpetuating systemic inequities that disproportionately affect those from a non-research-intensive (NRI) institution, where there is a greater focus on teaching and vocational practice rather than research.
While Wellcome and UKRI have done significant work in mandating equitable admissions practices into their programmes over the past five years with reasonable success, there remain significant barriers and structural biases that prevent talented students from progressing. The reality is that the landscape is murky at best and for those students who are trying to navigate the space without the right support network and background, postgraduate study remains inaccessible and opaque.
Our recent report, delivered as a partnership between the Martingale Foundation and Public First, shines a stark light on these challenges, revealing how admissions to research-intensive (RI) universities frequently sidestep fairness in favour of tradition and unconscious bias. While undergraduate admissions strive toward equity – for example the recent removal of the UCAS personal statement – PGR selections often rest on unspoken networks, opaque criteria, and subjective judgment, exacerbating inequalities in the academic pipeline.
Funding remains one of the most significant barriers to supporting more talented PhD students, with the situation getting increasingly competitive. However, this only exacerbates the importance of ensuring that the funded places available are awarded fairly through a transparent process, not just to those privileged people with the right networks and ‘know how’.
The power of privilege in the pipeline
In PGR admissions, luck and proximity can outweigh potential and merit. Informal processes, such as a direct supervisor’s recommendation, can act as a decisive factor, leaving out candidates unfamiliar with academic norms or lacking the cultural capital to navigate these unspoken rules. This is especially evident for students who attend NRI universities, where exposure to PGR pathways is limited, and interactions with research-focused mentors are less frequent.
Students from NRI institutions are not only underrepresented in RI postgraduate programmes but face significant barriers even when they are academically qualified. These barriers are not associated with a candidate’s potential but more to do with their prior training that will enable them to thrive in RI postgraduate research. However, it should be noted that the impact of these barriers varies by subject with some subjects like mathematics relying heavily on the building blocks of the knowledge gained in prior years, while other disciplines are more flexible to learning and upskilling during PGR study.
Transparency: The missing link
The Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation (EDEPI) project underscores the opaque nature of the admissions process with only 47 per cent of admissions tutors believing current selection criteria are effective indicators of a candidate’s potential as an independent researcher. This lack of consensus results in admissions practices that reward familiarity over talent, further marginalising students without access to insider knowledge.
The opacity of these systems reinforces privilege, creating a hidden curriculum that rewards those who already know how to play the game. Without explicit guidelines, students from underrepresented backgrounds are left guessing what is expected. On the other hand, their more advantaged peers often benefit from UG degrees in a RI institution, and family knowledge of the HE sector and professional networks to help navigate the process into PGR.
Undermatching and the domino effect
For many students from NRI backgrounds, their educational trajectory is shaped long before postgraduate study becomes a consideration. The report identifies undermatching as a critical barrier — a phenomenon where students, often due to financial or geographical constraints, attend institutions below their academic attainment. These decisions, made as early as age 17 or 18, have far-reaching consequences. NRI universities, while excelling in teaching and certain research areas, typically lack the resources and networks that RI institutions possess to guide students into PGR pathways.
This mismatch compounds inequities. When these students attempt to transition to RI universities for postgraduate study, they are not only underprepared for the research culture but also more likely to face feelings of isolation and imposter syndrome. According to a survey understanding the mental health of doctoral researchers by McPhearson et al, these challenges significantly impact mental health for those who feel like outsiders in elite academic spaces.
Supervisor bias: A double-edged sword
The role of the supervisor is another critical factor in perpetuating inequities. Supervisors often act as gatekeepers to PGR opportunities, and their personal biases—whether conscious or unconscious—can shape admissions outcomes. The report highlights that some disciplines depend heavily on supervisors for admissions decisions, creating a single point of failure in the system. This affinity bias can exacerbate inequities, as supervisors may prefer candidates who resemble their own academic profiles or fit traditional moulds of excellence.
Moreover, supervisors may hesitate to take on students perceived as requiring additional support, especially in resource-constrained environments where time and funding are limited – something that is increasingly a factor with further demands on academic time. This disproportionately affects candidates from NRI backgrounds, who may need additional guidance to bridge gaps in their academic preparation.
Pathways to change
Addressing entrenched inequities in PGR admissions requires decisive action across multiple fronts. Developing a standardised admissions framework, akin to UCAS but tailored for the diverse needs of PGR programmes, could enhance transparency and accountability while reducing reliance on subjective criteria. Though creating a universal system for all disciplines may not be feasible, unifying processes within institutions would be a significant step forward.
Bridging knowledge gaps through initiatives like summer research internships and pre-doctoral courses can equip students from NRI institutions with vital skills and cultural capital. Established programmes like UNIQ+ and In2research highlight the effectiveness of such interventions, which require sustained support from both institutions and funders to expand their reach.
Collaborative models, exemplified by partnerships like the London Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme (LIDo), foster inclusivity by sharing resources and expertise between research-intensive and NRI institutions. Similarly, enhancing supervisor training on inclusive practices and unconscious bias, along with encouraging co-supervision models, ensures a broader support network for students and reduces over-reliance on individual supervisors.
Regulatory oversight is crucial in setting standards and incentivising equitable practices in PGR admissions. Bodies such as the Office for Students and UKRI must actively enforce diversity and transparency measures. Furthermore, funders, including smaller charitable organisations, should adopt structural initiatives to support equitable access to postgraduate study, building on the progress made by UKRI and Wellcome. These combined efforts can create a more inclusive and equitable PGR landscape.
Toward a more equitable future
The hidden hierarchies in PGR admissions are not insurmountable. By acknowledging the biases embedded in current practices and committing to systemic reforms, the sector can unlock the potential of a more diverse pool of talent. As the Martingale Foundation and Public First report makes clear, this is not just a moral imperative but a practical necessity. The challenges of the 21st century demand innovative, inclusive research cultures capable of harnessing the full spectrum of human potential.
The lingering “tap on the shoulder” recruitment pathways need to be replaced with a fair and transparent system, where every student, regardless of their background, has an equal opportunity to thrive. Only then can we build a truly meritocratic academic landscape—one that recognises talent over tradition and potential over privilege.
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The rubbish bin theory of the student experience
Students have two kinds of problems.
There are the big, systemic, institutional policy failures that make their lives miserable. These might be social ills of discrimination and prejudice rendered into the classroom experience. These might be reasonable adjustment policies that turn out to be entirely unreasonable. Or it might be the pecuniary architecture that collapses the student experience into unending part-time work and just about squeezing study in.
In general students’ unions and universities are set up to address these kinds of challenges. There are committees, policies, liaison groups, central budgets, and a power and decision making architecture which faces these problems. This doesn’t mean they can always solve these issues, if they ever can be solved, but it does mean they are at least positioned to have a go at doing so.
Power
In the realm of the fundamentally bad and wrong a senior executive often can make things better. After all, they set institutional budgets, strategies, policies, contracts, and rules that impact every student. However, there is another kind of problem that impacts students where they just have less proximity to the issue.
Imagine the student where things are basically ok. Life is tough, as it is for many students, but as far as they can tell they do not believe they are being treated unfairly, they seem to be broadly getting the big things they were promised when they turned up, and all available evidence suggests their lecturers are working within a set of policies that seem to be pretty fair. In other words, things aren’t too bad.
However, as time goes on things don’t go badly wrong but they do go a little awry. The common room they went to before lectures doesn’t open until 09:30 in the winter. Their feedback has gone from arriving in six weeks to seven which adds a little bit more pressure on their exams. The library is suddenly much busier as the cold nights have set it. The buses are now much less frequent after a timetable change. The kit they need for their programmes is now more booked up as a new term has brought a new set of modules. And onward and onwards on the ever more bits of bad experience ephemera that clog up students’ lives.
This is the rubbish bin theory of the student experience. Nobody is doing anything terribly wrong, in fact many people will be doing the right thing in some context and doing the best with the time they have, but the little bit of bad experience builds up and up until the whole student experience stinks. Some of these bits of rubbish are bigger than others, some might even amount to breaches of OfS’s ongoing conditions, but nobody is doing anything which is intentionally malicious.
The rubbish bin theory of the student experience posits that everyone within a students’ ecosystem can make perfectly reasonable decisions within their own domains, turning down the heating to save on budgets, reconfiguring communal meeting space for staff offices, and changing opening hours of the reception desks might make sense in the context of the university more generally and even for some students some of the time. It is that the university is too big, too bureaucratic, and does not always operate on a small enough level to always take the rubbish out.
The rubbish bin
The problem with the smelly rubbish bin is that it’s often only noticed when it’s full. For example, the classic students’ union response is to bring together lots of information from course reps, school reps, committees, and other sources, to then feedback for subsequent years about a different bin, different ways to take out the rubbish, new bin liners (you get it I have tortured the metaphor now). The challenge is that even if you really push down the rubbish in one place it will only pop out in another (ok I am really done this time).
This is because the issues are often too small-scale to warrant institutional intervention, which the union is well set up to advocate for, and often too local, emerging in programmes or departments, to be wholly made visible to the union or to be wholly made to work with university policy. The bin is able to get more and more full because everyone just flings their bit of rubbish in and it’s not anybody’s job to take it out from time to time (ok, sorry).
The university incentive is to deal with the regulatory challenges in front of them. And while these are ongoing conditions the information the university can rely on, publish, and collate, is often a retrospective indicator. To take only two examples. NSS reporting encourages universities to deal with the issues of students no longer at the insitution. Graduate Outcomes measure student performance at a point in time in an ever changing labour market.
This isn’t to say students’ unions don’t do lots of things for individuals, it’s not to say that universities only care about the big issues, that isn’t true, it’s a question of how these two institutions keep an eye on both the structural problems and the emerging challenges.
Public administration
There are three interesting public administration and organising theories that might help conceptualise this challenge. Henry Mintzberg, one of the most important public administration theorists of the 20th century, imagines organisation strategy like a potter at a wheel. The raw ingredients exist (staff, committees, students’ unions, money, representatives, and so on), but the shape of the pot only comes into focus when hands are applied to it. This is strategy by doing says that strategic intent only becomes apparent through patterns in retrospect.
This would mean that students’ unions would have much looser resource allocations and move across departments, programmes, central university structures, representative groups, and ways of working, where the challenges and insight led them. It would mean that universities find the means to have more hands at the wheel. Giving school, departmental, and faculty committees more power, allocating budgets for taking out the rubbish bin, and challenging central structures so they spend more time focussing on emerging problems, not the retrospective ones encouraged by the regulatory reporting cycle.
Community organising, which is a direction of travel across students’ unions, is slightly different to Mintzberg’s theory of emergent strategy. As imagined by the likes of Saul Alinsky community organising assumes that communities have the solutions but not the positional power to address issues. Emergent strategy places a greater emphasis on cross-organisational actions that can both exist within and between sites of local organising. They are both about allowing ideas to emerge with greater flexibility; it is that ideas of emergent strategy places greater emphasis on the initiation of those ideas and the provision of the materials to affect change within an organisational context. This would hold that rather than having a committee of people to take the rubbish bin out let students do it themselves through helping them organise and giving them budgets and responsibilities.
The other important theorists here are Denhardt and Denhardt and their idea of New Public Service which sets out organisations to serve rather than steer their stakeholders. In this model universities and students’ unions would spend much less time trying to fix the problems of their students but instead provide the spaces through which students could learn from each other, provide resources through which students could advocate for themselves, and provide insights that would allow students to more effectively make the case for change to the people in power. In this model the emphasis would be on how universities and students’ unions open up bureaucratic spaces to allow a greater plurality of student voices to come forward.
These are just three models amongst many but they raise the question of the best means of keeping an eye on the accumulation of student issues that lead to generally bad experiences. It comes down to a set of trade-offs which could be brought into sharper relief. The extent to which the universities, students’ unions, and their partners, ultimately develop policy and ways of working to support people to solve their own problems and they extent to which they are better served putting the organisational bureaucracy behind these bigger issues.
The rubbish bin theory although a metaphor brings into focus the literal problem of how universities value maintenance. The accumulation of student issues are partially addressed by the ongoing commitment to keeping stuff open, working, reliable, and functioning. In general, reward often follows doing a good new thing rather than keeping the good old thing working. The issue of the student experience is intrinsically tied to the recognition and reward of those who take the rubbish out.
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When will the reasonable adjustments merry-go-round get fixed?
You may have missed it, but just before Christmas some new survey results emerged on the experience of disabled students that ought to be the subject of several sector-wide new year’s resolutions.
Only 39 per cent of those who had support agreed reported having all of it implemented. 62 per cent said they had gone without some adjustments because the process of chasing them up consumed too much time and energy. And 43 per cent of disabled students reported that a staff member had treated their agreed support as a mere suggestion.
Almost half – 48 per cent – of disabled students believed they have received lower marks on their course because an assessment was not accessible, 73 per cent had to repeatedly explain the same aspects of their disability or access needs to different staff members, and 59 per cent needed to chase up support that has already been agreed.
And meanwhile if they’re trying to access Disabled Students Allowance(s), email turnaround times are now down to 37 days – or half a semester, as it’s more commonly known.
It’s just not worth it
In theory, Disabled Students UK’s now annual survey – which this year gathered 1,200 self-selecting responses from disabled students across over 80 UK higher education institutions (weighted for gender) – ought to represent a national scandal.
While there were some small signs of improvement over issues like lecture capture, as well as the reasonable adjustments issues above, only 21 per cent of disabled students felt that their modules had been designed with accessibility in mind – a key “anticipatory” duty.
Of those who encountered access issues, only a quarter reported having raised all of them – three in four hold back from raising because they don’t want to be seen as difficult, don’t think it will help, fear not being understood or believed by staff, or are concerned about taking resources away from other students.
Half reported that the adjustments provided were insufficient to put them on an equal footing with peers, 43 per cent experienced staff treating agreed support as optional, and a third felt pushed from one person to the next because it was unclear who was responsible for addressing their access needs. And only 40 per cent agree that the “majority” of staff outside of Disability Services understood their legal responsibility to make reasonable adjustments.
And over 6 in 10 of those who had adjustments agreed reported having gone without some of those adjustments because it takes too much time and energy to chase them up.
As well as the teaching and learning experience, just 38 per cent of in-person students with physical or sensory needs found their campus environment accessible, and some 44 per cent reported having been unable to attend a teaching session or supervision in person due to an inaccessible location.
And nearly half (46 per cent) of disabled students needing accessible student housing reported having had to pay extra to do so.
That all takes its toll. As well as the 48 per cent that believe they received a lower mark on their course due to an assessment not being accessible, 53 per cent reported their physical health suffering at some point during their degree, and 78 per cent reported their mental health suffering.
Maximums and minimums
So what is to be done, and who by? One option is aspirational charter marks of the sort embodied in the Disabled Students’ Commitment – but my guess is that will never catch on as an optional because of the lack of commercial benefit to having the gong.
Or we default back to the idea that this isn’t an aspiration, it’s a minimum – but in a fiscally tight environment characterised partly by culture wars over equality and partly over shedding already stretched staff, just as local authorities ration Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) for children with parents that can take them to court, it has to be at least possible that higher education providers are doing something similar.
That’s a situation designed for regulators – but in reality, if UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) was on the phone about to put a provider into special measures over immigration compliance, I know the panic and urgency with which previously seemingly intractable problems either in a central service or across academic departments can be fixed.
But there is no equivalent risk, and so no equivalent urgency. And anyway, in England the Office for Students (OfS) does “minimums” regulation on outcomes – stats on getting in, on and out – and facilitates aspirations on quality experience via the TEF.
It’s been pretty clear over the past few rounds of announced “boots on the ground” inspections that it’s only red flashing lights on the outcomes dashboard that trigger a look at experience – and even then through the optic of subject and/or partnerships, rather than the obvious differentials in experience between students with different characteristics.
Notwithstanding some fairly shocking numbers inside some of the disability categories over graduate outcomes, the sector really isn’t too bad on disabled students outcomes.
And so it does beg the question – what if disabled students aren’t getting the education they deserve (and have paid for), but battle on and get the outcomes anyway?
Pillar to post
As DK pointed out on the site back in October, OfS’ 2024 national student survey results split by student characteristics were not even accompanied by a commentary.
Every year the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIAHE)’s annual report reminds us about the volume of complaints it sees from disabled students – but there’s no evidence at all that there’s a loop back into regulatory action either in England or Wales.
The courts – including in the Abrahart case – don’t seem to be able to make their mind up about whether a failure to deliver reasonable adjustments represents a consumer protection law issue or an Equality Act 2010 issue.
If it’s the former, regular readers won’t need a reminder here about how hard it is for students to know their rights and enforce them, in an environment where OfS has been promising improvements since its inception.
And if it’s the latter, it’s really the Equality and Human Rights Commission that ought to be intervening – or is it?
When it took the opportunity to clarify its interpretation of the law around reasonable adjustments following the conclusion of the appeal in the Abrahart case, the EHRC said that:
…regulators like the OIA, and student bodies such as NUS and OfS will benefit from a clear statement of the law.
But OfS is pretty clear that its key tool is access and participation plans – and that A&P dashboard on its website is all about outcomes, not experience.
And anyway, the experience data that OfS does have is about disabled students being less satisfied in general – not on specific failures over the legal duties.
And so the issue feels like it gets passed around without resolution in the same way that disabled students often experience locally, and never with strategic-level resolution or grip, either locally or nationally.
Yes but sample size
Of course, a self-selecting sample from a survey explicitly about being a disabled student – and promoted in that way – may not be nationally representative.
And that’s a potential problem with the local results too. One of the things DSUK attempts to do with the results is to construct league table-able stats by provider – which this year has seen Cambridge University come out as the worst in the country.
In a statement, a university spokesperson said:
We take the views of our disabled students seriously. The sample size of 138 people for this survey represents just 2% of Cambridge’s disabled students. We regularly conduct higher-participation surveys and continually review our provision for disabled students.
I can argue that as it’s a legal duty, one student credibly reporting an issue should be a scandal, but if anything, the Cambridge response highlights the wider problem – of both how much and how little we know about the scale of the issue.
Over in the Netherlands, NSS results also highlight differentials in disabled student experience in general. But because there’s a set of extra questions that kick in on reasonable adjustments if a student is disabled, there’s also a raft of rich data on that issue too.
That set of splits and adjustments findings is published by a body that used to just focus on disabled students – but now also works more broadly on inclusivity. With funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, ECIO supports universities in a national approach to studying with a disability and support needs and student well-being.
It also handles what England would still call “premium funding” for disabled students, carries out customised assignments for individual providers, publishes wider research and advice on stuff like Universal Design for Learning, and generally works as an integrated enabler of the accessible education agenda.
It is still the case that individual disabled students need to know their rights and be able to enforce them. But the emerging question is whether the Office for Students, the OIA and the EHRC are the right bodies to be passing the parcel on reasonable adjustments.
I don’t know which of sticks, carrots or a mix of the two would be the most effective, and I don’t know whether OfS (and its emerging equivalents in Scotland and Wales) or a separate body is the right one to be driving the agenda.
Nor do I know enough about why there’s been a sharp increase in disabled students, and the extent to which that is treated as a success inside the culture of HE, or treated with “you wouldn’t get all this in the real world” suspicion. I’ve come across both anecdotally – frequently in the same institution.
What is clear is that universities are stretched, their staff are stretched and even (in England) OfS is stretched – and is making sure providers survive rather than highlighting the corners being cut to enable that survival.
What is also clear is that as it stands and without a defendable dataset or a proper plan, it’s not just locally where students are needing to explain the same information about disability over and over again. Disabled students deserve better.
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It’s the higher education Christmas movie and TV guide
There’s nothing on the telly this Christmas.
There never is. Unless you’re searching for some hidden nuance in repeats of The Chase.
But if, like me, you have trouble switching off from work but also enjoy being slumped in front of the box with a tub of Quality Street, I have good news.
I’ve picked out ten films and TV shows released this year that either have something to say about higher education, are set on campus and/or depict contemporary student life.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll shell out for a VPN, you’ll get frustrated by torrent ratios, and you’ll almost certainly switch off, which is what the break is for – eventually.
It really was slim pickings this year from a UK perspective. Everyone talks a lot about how universities are portrayed “in the media”, but I think they mean on Newsnight or in the Telegraph. The sector will probably win more hearts and minds on Netflix, if anyone knows anyone that might be able to help.
Before you take to the comments, I’ve not put in books or podcasts. I do enough reading in this job, and I edit ours, so my appetite for either is fairly thin – but do pop suggestions below if there are any.
You’re welcome – and apologies in advance if you’re at work over the next couple of weeks.
If having worked in or around the sector you’ve not quite had your fill of toxic and manipulative relationships this year, the second season of Tell Me Lies is a good bet. Filmed largely on the picturesque campus of Agnes Scott College in Georgia, we’re whisked into a world of 2008 fashions, messy frat parties, tense dorm room interactions and academics’ office hours – all used to illustrate how central character Lucy Albright’s university experiences shaped her later life. It’s all a bit soapy, but the deep discomfort at having to hang out with your exes that campus life can require is very well played.
There are more depictions of dorm life in Sweethearts, a romantic comedy whose set-up centres on two friends breaking up with their girlfriends from home over a holiday weekend. It’s all a bit loaded lads retro – flying urine and a flaccid full-frontal give you a sense of the tone here – but treat it like gazing out of the window on a train, and you’ll take in some lovely interior scenes from Ramapo College in Mahwah, and some lush exterior shots from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
This is a low-budget “feminist horror thriller” that follows a fraternity pledge who, during a brutal hazing ritual, is pressured to lose his virginity by leading a drugged girl upstairs at a party – something that has unexpected and increasingly disturbing consequences. It’s cleverly filmed, there’s a cracking soundtrack and it’s comically gruesome – until you remember that without the blood and gore of act three, it’s depicting an unsettlingly common scenario.
Yôji Minamimaru, the central character of Land of Tanabata, navigates all the typical challenges of being a student – academic life, social relationships, self-discovery, and a supernatural ability to create small holes in objects, something he shows off as the President of the New Skills Development Research Society. It’s an unlikely hook for a series, and the murder (of a professor) mystery that ensues is a struggle to stick with in this manga adaptation.
Two old friends enroll in an adult university, looking for adventure, love and fun. What could go wrong? Quite a lot, it seems, in this Dominican go at mature student life that drags up some particularly dated caricatures of women and LGBT+ people. I got about 15 minutes in before I was tired of the buffering.
What do you fancy watching. A drama? A rom-com? A thriller? An overdone Indonesian horror film based on a viral Twitter thread from 2016? On the assumption that it’s the latter, Dosen Ghaib: Sudah Malam atau Sudah Tahu (The Ghost Lecturer: Is It Night Already or Do You Already Know) follows four university students who fail the year and are required to enrol onto a catch-up module over the holiday, who pitch up only to get a message that the lecturer can’t make it – so who is the person already in the room? For clarity, it’s a murdery ghost man, not one of his PhD students.
You might remember a story from 2023 that involved an academic specialising in the social impacts of climate change avoiding air travel to minimise his carbon footprint – only to get sacked for doing so. The Researcher chronicles Gianluca Grimalda’s 40-day journey via trains, buses, and ships to reach his research site in Papua New Guinea. Maybe he was sacked for not using Key Travel to book it all.
Decades on from the end of apartheid, Afrikaans media is only just starting to break away from its historically conservative roots. Wyfie – opening up conversations about rape, sexuality and politics – caused quite a stir when it appeared in 2023, and this year’s second season of the show, about four mismatched university roommates at a womens’ residence at the fictional Eike University, takes things up a notch. It’s especially fascinating for the insights into university life – first-year initiation ceremonies, cheating on a test to maintain academic standing and a mother-and-daughter tea event all make it in, as does a whole bunch of drama over an annual photo of those in the halls. It’s especially good on both portraying and dramatising that “you befriend people that aren’t like you” cliche.
If all of these sensitive and revealing portrayals of student life are a bit woke for your liking, and you’ve never got around to reading The Coddling of the American Mind, you’ll be pleased to learn that you watch it now instead. The central conceit of the Lukianoff and Haidt viral article-cum-bestseller gains some visuals, voxpops and dramatic music here – but decent evidence for their claims, which to these eyes and ears is age-old generational indignation dressed up as science – is still in short supply. That said, the idea that pervasive racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia are merely bad ideas that a good debate will solve is at least in the solid tradition of Christmas TV escapism.
This is set in Kota, Rajasthan – a city known as a hothousing hub for coaching centers that prepare students for India’s highly competitive IIT-JEE entrance exams. Back for a darker yet compelling third season this year, there’s plenty to learn here about the coaching system’s human impact as the focus shifts a little to draw in the coaches themselves and the choices made between the gifted students and everyone else. If there’s a fault with it, it’s the season ending – a crowbarred bit of plotting presumably designed to hang out the prospect of a fourth run.
Admissions were quite a big story in the US in 2023 – the supreme court banned the use of affirmative action policies that had been in place for decades – and Bad Genius plays into the slipstream by overlaying some higher education race politics to a remake of a Thai blockbuster from 2017. The plot centres around a clever student who helps her friends cheat on their entrance exams to reflect the struggles of first-generation Americans pressured to support their immigrant families. If you’re a fan of the original you’ll be wondering why they bothered – but given you’ve not seen the original, this is a fun way to while away an afternoon if you’re into watching the underdog poor outmaneuvering the rich.
Finally, (and no I’m not including One Day), I won’t have a word said against Big Boys, which had a criminally under-celebrated season 2 this year. The search for student housing, mental health, student sex work and plenty of students’ union activity all feature at Brent University, where Jack and Danny’s decidedly uncool struggles with the second year manage to be both laugh-out loud funny, heart-wrenching and revealing often all in the same scene. Set somewhere near Watford (and filmed largely on the Harrow campus of the University of Westminster), it’s the polar opposite of glamorous, and all the better for it.