I was thinking the other day, what is a university? In one sense the answer is obvious, but in another it is not. Of course its an institution with certian concerns, or these days, core buisness practices, there is a campus and a management heirarchy, and yah de yah .. But what it really is, and by that what i mean what it is in its essence, is a collection of minds. That is its key resource, not its buidlings or its campus or in actuality even its brand.

It is the minds that inhabit the buildings that matter, everything else is just so much backdrop. And for students it is the access to those minds that really matters because that is what is going to shape their educational experience, for good or ill (mutatis mutandis). I know that sounds slightly pretentious, but I’m trying to get at something that is a little intangiable, something that is not easily defined or measurable (there are no HESA derived stats for instance).. what does it mean to go to university? Of course peoples motivations differ, but I believe the real value does not simply lie in having an advantage in the labour market via a credential (nice as that is) but in what Kant referred to as ‘enlightenment’, by this he meant (briefly) the ability to think for oneself unaided by another.

but its late now, so gotta get my zzz’s

Has anyone noted a news item last week which recalled Jack Straw’s student days at Leeds University? Leeds University has an exhibition at the moment looking at student radicalism in the sixties (Leeds being Jacks old university – that’s right, no Oxbridge!).
Anyways, it was one of those snippets of information that suddenly strikes you as a humm … moment. Straw was criticising the then Polytechnics by drawing a contrast with the universities, and quoted a statistic on the average staff to student ratios; with the universities enjoying a 1:5 (staff to students ratio) whilst Polytechnics had 1:9/1:11. Now I don’t know where Straw got his figures from, but his point was that developing the Polytechnics would mean giving many students a second rate education, something he did not approve of (remember he had principles in those days).

Well, how times have changed. Like a lot of people who have been through the university sector (I also ended up working for one) those figures Straw was criticizing now seem pretty damned good, indeed, they highlight the extent to which student staff ratios have deteriorated markedly over the years since Straw himself benefited from a university education!

I can’t imagine any politician now (aspiring, established or otherwise) criticising an educational institute for having student staff ratios above a 1:5 – in fact the idea would be unthinkable! I wonder how many universities can offer their students that kind of ratio - one tutor for every five students, I bet most can’t even get close – I know mine can’t!

In fact I never hear any politicians talking about staff student ratios, except when pressed, in schools. It’s like it doesn’t exist or matter at Universities, which is something very curious… no more so because the British higher education system was designed around an elitist model i.e. get the brightest students and expose them to the best academics over a relatively short time (many countries have 4+ year degrees rather than our quick 3) and hey presto, a well educated individual. Trouble is whilst the model works very well for small numbers it starts to break down the more students you try to squeeze in without a commensurate resourcing to match – something that was never forthcoming. In fact that last sentence recounts the entire history of higher education since Jack’s day.

So whilst now we have a higher education system which is a mass higher education system, its quality is very much up for question, in part because it’s so variable. All of which proves why prospective students need to exercise extreme caution when reading all those glossy colour prospectuses, their the last place where you’ll find a student staff ratio.