Great student bar, shame about the lecturers...

Students have won the right to comment on the quality of the teaching at university. And they are to to get an ombudsman for complaints. Is this, asks Lucy Hodges, a real shift of power on campus?

Published: 07 February 2002

COMPLAINTS IN HIGH PLACES: THE STUDENT FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BATH VS THE LORD CHANCELLOR

Neil McDougall is someone who believes he would have benefited from an independent review of student complaints. His grievance against Bath University has been wending its way around the visitor's system for the past 11 years, a record in the world of student complaints. It has still not been resolved.

A former postgraduate student who signed up for a two-year Mphil in architecture in 1988, Mr McDougall complained about poor supervision, inadequate exam procedures and maladministration in his complaint to the Queen, who acts as Bath's visitor. The case was referred to the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay, and then to Lord Irvine. Mr McDougall was unhappy with the way the Lord Chancellor handled his complaint, so he ended up complaining about that. The Lord Chancellor's department accepted that it had been slow, had ignored his requests and lost his file for a while.

This week Mr McDougall was cautiously optimistic. "It appears to be positively following the proposals by the NUS to create an independent ombudsman," he says. "It seems to put students on the same footing as other people seeking reviews through the ombudsman. That is a successful way of solving disputes without recourse to law."

The student voice on campus, which used to be pretty muted, is becoming louder by the day. The latest evidence of this came last week in two important developments: one was the agreement by a higher education task force to have an annual national survey of what students think of their teaching; the second was the decision by Universities UK to have a special ombudsman to hear student complaints.

Students have traditionally been a neglected force in university affairs, expected to put up at times with indifferent lecturing, an uncaring bureaucracy and shabby facilities. But that is changing with the introduction of tuition fees, and the abolition of grants, and with ministers asking universities to account for the millions of pounds of taxpayers' money they spend. Margaret Hodge, the minister for higher education, is known to be critical of her own education at the London School of Economics and to want to see that the public money allocated to universities is wisely spent.

The National Union of Students (NUS) wants university applicants to be given accurate and up-to-date information – down to course level – so they can make informed decisions about the subject and the institutions at which they opt to study.

"Students and their parents have a right to this information," says Owain James, the president of the NUS. "They spend a lot of money on higher education and they should be given the kind of analysis now available on hospitals, to enable them to choose wisely. Otherwise they have nothing to go on other than glossy prospectuses and grades in the research assessment exercise."

Student satisfaction surveys reveal things that other forms of monitoring don't, says Professor Lee Harvey, of the University of Central England. They give an insider view from those at the sharp end of higher education.

First, you get the view of the learner not the view of the teacher or the external reviewer. Students can provide information of use to prospective students. And second, you avoid bullshit. Students say what they think. That cuts through the convoluted verbiage that characterises reports from the higher education reviewers.

The proposed national survey is part of raft of reforms to provide more information to the outside world about university courses. Accompanying it will be the outcomes of internal subject reviews as well as the outcomes of external examiners reports. At last week's meeting of the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce) task force it was agreed to commission outside research into how best to conduct a national student survey. A steering group that will oversee the work contains key task-force members – Ron Cooke, the Vice-Chancellor of York University, Bob Burgess, the Vice-Chancellor of Leicester University, Stephen Marston of Hefce, Peter Williams, the acting chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), and Owain James. In addition, there will be a representative of postgraduates and a student union officer, so students' voices are heard.

The idea is to employ a big polling company, such as Mori, to question a sample of students who have just left university about what they thought of their lectures and seminars and how well their courses prepared them for the world of work. The Australians conduct such a survey – but it has been criticised for being superficial. The British initiative would try to get round that problem. The results might not please the universities. Research conducted by Mori and published last week showed that 17 per cent of students felt they had made the wrong choice of university.

The NUS had wanted current students to be part of the survey but agreed at last week's meeting that this would be too big an undertaking. The question of when young people should be questioned remains a hot potato. Professor Harvey agrees with the NUS that current students should be questioned; Professor Sir Adrian Webb, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan, believes it would be better to question graduates several years after they have left university rather than immediately they complete their degrees. That way, students would have a better perspective on how their higher education had prepared them for work.

In addition to a national survey, the idea is that universities will do their own internal reviews of students – subject to independent audit to ensure they are done properly. "If we can be satisfied that the authority and independence of the surveys will be protected, and that results have not been manipulated, then we will be happy," says Mr James of the NUS.

The task force also accepted the need to ensure that the findings of the student survey are acted upon - in other words, that if lecturing or libraries or computer facilities are found to be inadequate, something should be done about them, and there should be feedback to students.

Those involved are upbeat. "We are making excellent progress towards getting a sensible approach which is both practicable and useful and will serve students' needs better than the existing process," says Peter Williams of the QAA.

Many universities already ask students what they think of their courses, but the NUS believes the questionnaires are not as thorough as they could be and that the information gleaned is often not acted upon. Under the new system, universities will be given a template for their surveys, which they will be able to add to as they see fit.

Most vice-chancellors are in favour of the reform. "It's fine," says Roderick Floud, the president of Universities UK. "The more that universities can find out about how well they have done the better." However, Roger Brown, the director of Southampton Institute and formerly the director of the now-defunct Higher Education Quality Council, has some reservations. Students are not always that interested in giving their comments, he claims. "My feeling is fairly relaxed," he says. "Let's not set too much store by it. Any institution worth its salt makes considerable efforts to find out what students think. The question is 'Can you use what you get?'"

The NUS is particularly keen to have a student survey because of the abolition of the old subject review system that became so unpopular with vice-chancellors that it was abandoned after the Prime Minister intervened. For those who have forgotten this saga, the top universities, notably those in the Russell group (universities with medical schools) revolted against a system that graded each subject in each university on a 24-point scale for the quality of learning and teaching. They complained that it was too burdensome, generating roomfuls of paper and taking up too much time, and that it was meaningless because universities learnt how to play the system and to perform brilliantly. They also hated the fact that newspapers could use the results to build up league tables.

The NUS, however, liked the fact that subjects and universities could be compared with one another and would refer enquirers to the QAA website for the teaching quality scores. It hopes that the new student survey will help to fill the gap.

The other developments last week – the announcement that Universities UK is to abandon the antiquated visitorial system in old universities and opt for an independent review for student complaints instead – has delighted the NUS. Little detail, however, has been worked out yet.

The vice-chancellors met government officials last week to press for a change in the law to enable the setting up of an ombudsman system. They also asked how an independent review was going to be financed. At the moment, students from old universities can complain to the visitor if they are not happy with the way their institution has handled a complaint; students from new universities can seek redress in law.

To have such a division is thought to be unfair. The visitorial system has been criticised for not being open and speedy, and for not being sufficiently independent. Some lawyers believe it contravenes human rights law.

The vice-chancellors have been consulting on the change for a long time, following energetic prodding by the former higher education minister, Baroness Blackstone. The latest consultation, which ended in October, found sufficient support for change, said a Universities UK spokeswoman. Fifty per cent of old universities were in favour of an independent review and 50 per cent were against. The majority of vice-chancellors in new universities have been keen for an independent review system for a while, she added.

While the students are pleased that Universities UK have made this decision they are concerned to know exactly what system will replace the current one. "People are entitled to an independent hearing, so we want to have an ombudsman completely separate from the universities, funded from outside the universities, and selected independently of them," says Mr James.

Last week's developments may not satisfy the students in all respects, but they are a big leap forward, by any standards, into a brave new world of greater openness and accountability.

l.hodges@independent.co.uk