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Now is the age of the discontented
4 June 2009
The consumer culture has contaminated higher education and student complaints are rising. Some academics, fearing litigation or poor assessment, offer flattery instead of feedback. Frank Furedi observes that no one benefits
In the current economic climate, higher education faces formidable pressures to restructure itself and cut costs. Inevitably its role and its institutional practices face criticism by policymakers and sections of the media. Recently, such criticisms have often taken the form of publicising students' complaints to call into question the legitimacy of the academy's institutional practices. Although the number of these complaints is tiny (900 in England and Wales in 2008) and the number upheld is smaller still (just 63), there is a growing perception of an explosion of student grievances. Newspapers and the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) continually point out that the numbers are rising. Complaints are rarely conveyed as just that, complaints, but are presented as markers of institutional failure.
Increasingly, the complaining student is represented as the personification of civic virtue. At times the very act of making a complaint - regardless of its validity - is interpreted as evidence of the fact that universities must change their ways. How many times have you heard the refrain that "students feel they must get their money's worth" or that "consumer-minded students are more and more aware of their rights"? Consumer consciousness and the impulse to complain are invariably associated with the sacred concepts of "rights". As Rob Behrens, the Independent Adjudicator, has noted, "The bottom line is that students are today more assertive in thinking about what their rights are and what things they can get from the commitments they make." Such representation of student consumerism represents its implicit affirmation. According to Behrens, it is "not a bad thing".
Thus the idealisation of assertive students who are fully conversant with their rights endows the act of complaining with the quality of an inherent virtue. And the exercise of such virtuous behaviour is sometimes interpreted as evidence of some institutional deficit in higher education. So it was that a recent editorial in The Sunday Times exclaimed that "Britain's students are revolting - and with good reasons" before asserting "that the state of teaching in some of our universities is shocking".
The conceptual leap from the act of complaining to the denunciation of the "shocking" state of university teaching is informed by the application of the consumer model of education. From this perspective, the dissatisfied customer serves as proof of institutional failure. It is self-evident that since the customer is always right, something must be done to respond to the complaint. The growing significance that policymakers and university administrators attach to student-satisfaction surveys is symptomatic of the ascendancy of a consumerist ethos on campuses.
In practice, the embrace of this ethos implies a role reversal between the authority of the teacher and the student. The authority of the customer trumps that of the service provider. Therefore, it is the opinion of the students and not the academic that determines the position of a university in the league table. Accordingly, if students assess their experience positively, then their university is judged to be a wonderful place of learning.
Of course the reality is that the customer is not always right, especially in higher education. What counts as a good student experience - friendly atmosphere, progressive marking, lots of spoon-feeding, great social life - may have little to do with the provision of a challenging and high-quality education. Is it bad manners to point out the obvious fact that students are often not in a position to distinguish between run-of-the-mill and quality education? The ability to discriminate and assess the quality of an academic experience is the product of years of hard work. That is why what surveys tend to indicate is how well customers' expectations are managed rather than the quality of academic life.
It is also the case that the ethos of consumerism directly contradicts the fundamental premise of an academic education. From the standpoint of service providers, the customer is always right. It is not the service providers' job to question or challenge the tastes and values of potential customers. By contrast, academics are often in the business of educating their students' tastes and encouraging them to question their values. Indeed, one of the most distinct and significant dimensions of academic and intellectual activity is that it does not often give customers what they want. Academic dialogue and instruction does not provide the customer with a clearly defined product. It does not seek to offer what the customer wants, but attempts to provide what the student needs. That is why forcing universities to prove themselves to their customers fundamentally contradicts the ethos of academic education.
The celebration of the assertion of customer interests is part of a misguided attempt to hold higher education to account according to the doctrine of value for money. It is misguided because the customer model's implicit assumption of a conflict of interest between client and service provider inexorably erodes the relationship of trust between teacher and student on which academic enterprise is founded.
It is also misguided because rather than improving the quality of university education, the advocacy and institutionalisation of complaining leads directly to its deterioration. Before dealing with this point, then, it is useful to reflect on the workings of the culture of complaint in British higher education.
It is important to note that the culture of complaint on campuses did not emerge as a response to quality-related issues that were intrinsic to the university. The advocacy of a complaining culture had its origins in developments that were external to higher education. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the Government launched a variety of consumer-oriented charters - The Citizen's Charter, The Patient's Charter, The Parent's Charter - and promoted complaining as a vehicle for encouraging the efficient delivery of services in the public sector. A statement approved by a Conservative Cabinet seminar in February 1993, to the effect that "complaints are jewels to be cherished", resonated with the thinking of all the main parliamentary parties.
The complaining consumer emerged as the righteous hero who would put right the many defects of the public sector. Even organisations that were opposed to the Conservative Government - trade unions, the National Union of Students - reinvented themselves as champions of the cause of the consumer. When the NUS launched its NUS Student Charter in December 1992, it was widely praised by the education establishment for its realism. Lorna Fitzsimons, the president of the NUS at the time, was widely commended for her statement "students as consumers have a right to quality education, equivalence and choice". In the early 1990s, it was recognised that the NUS faced a crisis of identity. The retreat of the Left and the decline of student activism deprived it of a clear identity. In line with the prevailing mood of the times, it reinvented itself as a consumerist lobby group and played a significant role in the cultural transformation of the meaning of a university student to that of a customer.
Since the 1990s, the association of higher education with the act of consumption has acquired the character of an official doctrine. In recent years, how students feel about their university has been turned into an instrument for auditing the quality of institutions of higher education. During the past four years, the transformation of student sentiment into an indicator of quality has been achieved through the National Student Survey (NSS). This annual exercise, which purports to measure student satisfaction, is explicitly used to hold universities accountable for the "experience" they provide to their students. But whatever one thinks of the formalisation of the culture of complaint in universities, it is important to note that its main driver is the imperative of auditing and bureaucratisation rather than a genuine aspiration for quality education.
The cumulative outcome of the affirmation of students' complaints is to render the process banal. There is little doubt that encouraging students to think of themselves as customers has fostered a mood in which education is regarded as a commodity that must represent value for money. Although this sensibility is rarely expressed explicitly, it influences the way universities manage their affairs and provides an idiom through which students sometimes express their grievances.
The constant affirmation of the culture of complaint inevitably influences some students to believe that because they paid for their education, they are entitled to demand satisfaction and a decent degree. That is why the vast majority of complaints are about the marks gained on essays, exams and the classification of degrees. One of the most striking manifestations of this trend is the growing tendency by students to question the marks they receive on their assessment. In some cases, students go through the motion of challenging their marks, only half believing that anything will come out of their complaint. However, since complaining is a one-way bet, there is little to be lost from having a go.
Supporters of the culture of complaint argue that its institutionalisation provides valuable information that can help universities improve the quality of the services they provide. One example that is used to show the usefulness of the NSS is its highlighting of student concern about the quality of feedback that they receive. This survey shows that students rate lowly the quality of feedback that they receive from their tutors. In response to this perceived deficit, many universities have sought to review their method of feedback and assessment.
However, complaints about feedback rarely express disappointment about the absence of a genuine dialogue and exchange with a tutor. In one social science department criticised for the quality of feedback, two thirds of the essays submitted were never picked up by their authors, who preferred to go online to learn their grades. As a result, they never had a chance to read the comments that their marker wrote on their essays.
One lecturer at a London university was taken aback when she was told by her students that they were not interested in holding a seminar discussion to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their essays. She was even more disturbed when a couple of months later she was accused of not providing good feedback by one of her students. Complaints about feedback are frequently a roundabout way of expressing disappointment about a mark that a student received for an assignment or exam. "We were not told what to expect or what we should be doing" is a common theme raised in such complaints.
There are, of course, many disturbing developments in higher education that students have every right to protest about. Universities face strong pressures to increase the number of bums on seats. Academic staff are forced to devote considerable energy and time to pointless bureaucratic exercises. Many departments charged with bringing in money end up reducing the resources they devote to teaching, research and the pursuit of scholarship. Officials who regard universities as an instrument of social engineering have forced many institutions to embark on the road of chaotic expansion. The cumulative outcome of these developments has encouraged some institutions to equate quality with quantity, which no doubt has led to the diminishing of the standard of higher education. In some institutions, students feel aggrieved by the mind-numbing experience of spoon-feeding lectures built around PowerPoint, formulaic seminars and the lack of intellectual stimulation. The discontent expressed recently by students at the University of Bristol about a planned reduction in teaching hours, large seminar groups and the proposal that essays should be marked by undergraduates is a rare but legitimate response that should be supported by academics.
However, the real issue at Bristol and other universities is not that customers' rights have been violated, but that the quality of education has been compromised in the way that institutions have responded to the demands that confront them. Perversely, one of the pressures compounding this problem is the institutionalisation of complaining and the use of student satisfaction as an instrument for auditing universities. University managers have become very anxious about avoiding student complaint and litigation. Many of the routine practices of higher education - teaching, assessment, examining - are increasingly influenced by their impact on student satisfaction. However, the current fixation of university managers with customer satisfaction has the regrettable downside of distracting from their intellectual mission.
Since nothing pleases students as much as high marks and a good degree, many universities have felt compelled to bend over backwards to keep their customers happy. In the name of student satisfaction, departments that seek to maintain standards often face pressure to adopt a more "progressive" style of grading. The new modes of assessment that have been introduced have worked to facilitate grade inflation.
The current celebration of student satisfaction has fostered a climate in which institutions are obsessed with avoiding complaints and fear that disputes with fee-paying customers could lead to litigation. The culture of complaint has produced a form of "defensive education" that is devoted to minimising sources of disputes that have the potential to lead to complaint and litigation. Defensive education encourages a climate in which educators are discouraged from exercising their professional judgment when offering feedback or responding to disputed marks. Courses, especially ones that do not rate highly in student surveys, are modified and made customer friendly. Academics have become more defensive and circumspect about expressing their views with clarity. They write formulaic letters of reference and refrain from stating opinions that could provoke complaints from their customers. One of the most obvious strategies for avoiding complaints is to flatter students. Feedback is often used as a vehicle for validating the efforts of a student instead of pointing out weaknesses in presentation and argument.
Defensive education also dissuades academics from dealing effectively with cheating. In some universities, academics have been discouraged from charging students with plagiarism because of concerns that the institution may be sued. Dealing with complaints about plagiarism sometimes serves as a disincentive to pursue the dispute. The OIA's Behrens turns this problem upside down when he speculates that the rise in complaints was partly an outcome of a "moral panic" over plagiarism by universities that led to "overzealous sanctions". Anyone even vaguely familiar with academic life would be astonished to discover that campuses were overwhelmed by a moral panic fuelled by overzealous inquisitors. On the contrary, there is one powerful reason why acts of plagiarism are dealt with leniently or overlooked - the fear of student complaint. If there is a moral panic, its focus is the slothful academics who refuse to respond to the authentic grievances of their hard-working and fee-paying customers.
The promotion of a culture of complaint has no redeeming qualities. The internalisation of this culture by universities has created an environment where managing the expectations of students takes priority over intellectually challenging them. All too often students are flattered just for being students and not infrequently academics are forced to avoid acting in accordance with their judgment in order to avoid complaint. None of this is the fault of students, who have been socialised into perceiving themselves as consumers of education.
In the end, the culture of complaint undermines the unique potential for academic collaboration and dialogue and heightens the sense of conflict of interest. It is a bad, very bad idea.
UNJUSTIFIED STUDENT COMPLAINTS: CASES FROM THE OIA FILES
Fair penalty for bad behaviour
S was a first-year student who became friends with another student, R, on commencing his course and accompanied his friend in a series of violent incidents at the university, which included the sexual harassment of female students.
Both students were taken through the university disciplinary procedure and admitted the incidents, although S blamed R for initiating the behaviour. Both students were expelled. S appealed to the university and said that as he was only an accomplice he should have received a lesser punishment than R.
The Office of the Independent Adjudicator ruled the complaint not justified: the penalty was within the discretionary range available to the university and the decision to expel was reasonable in all the circumstances.
Dissatisfaction is no proof of bias
S was registered on a four-year degree from 2002 to 2006. He received a lower-second degree in 2006. He appealed against the classification on the basis that he was not satisfied that the university had taken his third-year mitigating circumstances fully into account and that the arrangements for vivas, in borderline classification cases, had been affected by the industrial action of lecturers in May 2006.
During the course of correspondence, the university offered to take the matter back for a full consideration of all of the mitigating circumstances. The university organised a new board of examiners, with the addition of two fresh external examiners. The board examined the evidence along with comprehensive statistical evidence showing how S's results compared with the rest of the cohort. The board confirmed the decision that S had achieved a lower-second classification of degree.
The OIA ruled the complaint not justified: the question as to which degree classification a student's academic profile warrants is a question of academic judgment, which is beyond the remit of the OIA. Dissatisfaction with a degree result does not amount to proof of bias. The mitigating circumstances were classified as minor. The OIA did not consider that decision to be unreasonable.
Supervision provided was comparable
S was an MBA student who was withdrawn after two unsuccessful attempts at her dissertation. She appealed against the deregistration decision on the ground that she had received inadequate supervision. The appeal was dismissed by both appeal panels convened under stage one and two of the university's appeals procedures. Both panels found that there was no evidence to support the contention that the supervision S had received was inadequate. On the contrary, the panels found that the documentation provided by the department demonstrated that S had received supervision in accordance with the programme guidelines.
S complained to the OIA that the university's finding - that she had received appropriate supervision - was unreasonable and that there were procedural defects in the hearing of her appeal.
The OIA ruled the complaint not justified: the OIA found that the supervision S received was comparable to other students resubmitting their dissertation at the same time. The supervision record kept by the supervisor also showed that she had received supervision in excess of the guideline amount set out in the programme handbook.
If the supervision was adequate or not was a matter for the university to judge.
Progression criteria were always clear
S wanted to enrol on a part-time masters course. He had no recent academic qualifications and was advised that he could enrol on a graduate diploma with the possibility of a transfer to the masters award if he achieved very good marks in his first two modules. S did not achieve these marks and so his various requests to progress to the masters award were turned down. When S completed the diploma he complained to the university that it had misrepresented it to him and that he had no better level of qualifications than when he started. S also complained that the university had not treated him with respect.
The OIA ruled the complaint not justified: the university had been clear and courteous to S throughout the communications about the criteria for obtaining progression to the masters and the appeals process.
Frank Furedi is professor of sociology, University of Kent. His book Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating is to be published by Continuum Press in October.
Readers' comments
While Prof Furedi is quite right in the points he makes, the question remains, "Who is this article targeted towards?" Is it academics or administrators? If the former, then I would submit that Prof Furedi is preaching to the converted. If the latter, then I would submit that he is banging his head against a brick wall -- managers will not be moved unless forced to do so.
There is a crucial distinction between customers and students. Customers have rights. Students have rights - and responsibilities. Universities should respect student rights, but hold them to their responsibilities. A culture of complaint which emphasises rights but ignores or downgrades responsibilities infantilises everyone. And in the longer term it does students a great disservice.
It's the old, old, story. Paying for driving lessons doesn't make you a good driver; and it certainly doesn't give you the right to argue with the examiner...
If students are coustomers. And costumers are always right. Then students are always right. Whats the point of having to teach them, Give everyone a 1st class degree and get on with it.
I like the gym analogy: you pay for the equipment and advice, but you will not get fit unless you work hard
The analogy I prefer is that of an architect or engineer and the client. The client's requirements may or may not be right, and it is the job of the professional to sit down with the client and help to elucidate the requirements. The professional then draws up plans, circuits, drawings, or whatever, which the client approves, or more usually the client and professional discuss further, and a revised set of plans is drawn. The building or engineering artifact then gets built or manufactured, supervised by the professional and probably also by the client. No-one suggests that the client is automatically right (or wrong) - the client and the professional work together to complete the job. A degree course should be like that. At its best, it can be still, despite the best efforts of the 'consumerist' lobby.
Interesting article, although I must say I find the views expressed a little simplistic at times. Feedback from students is important, but Prof Furedi is quite right when he says that poor feedback doesn't necessarily equate to poor standards (although, of course, it can). More often, poor feedback indicates an area of poor communication. Students often get particularly exercised when they encounter something they can't see the rationale for - in the context of a degree programme, this may be the result of, say, a professional body requirement. Explaining the rationale behind what they're getting exercised about will often satisfy students. Even if they don't particualrly like the response, at least they feel they're being listened to. Of course, communicating with them effectively can be quite difficult to do.
What a missed opportunity. Yes there are problems with complaints but are we to assume that students always get an acceptable experience? How do institutions deal with poor teachers - usually by promoting them because their research ticks all the boxes. I rather like the following quote. "The academic area is one of the most difficult areas to change in our society. We continue to use the same methods of instruction, particularly lectures, that have been used for hundreds of years. Little scientific research is done to test new approaches, and little systematic attention is given to the development of new methods. Universities that study many other aspects of the world ignore the educational function in which they are engaging and from which a large part of their revenues are earned." Richard M. Cyert, former president of Carnegie Mellon University.
When students are customers, they are buying a product and will complain when the product isn't what they wanted. This attitude starts lower down the education scale with teachers giving pupils "gold stars" for attempting the work, not on the quality of the work. Perhaps it's time for universities to adopt the marketing techniques of big business; get the "customers" to think that what they want is what is offered, don't let the "customers" have what they freely think want.
Student "I want you to re-mark my work". Me (lecturer) "Why is that?". Student "I was expecting a much higher mark". Me "Have you read the feedback sheet I provided?". Student "No, it's the mark I'm not happy with". Doh...
"Is it bad manners to point out the obvious fact that students are often not in a position to distinguish between run-of-the-mill and quality education? The ability to discriminate and assess the quality of an academic experience is the product of years of hard work. " This might obtain for first years but if after three or four years of university education the student CAN'T so discriminate then perhaps the "quality" is not at the high end of the spectrum. It's also worth noting that when complaints are upheld it is all too frequently because procedures - those dreaded managment impositions - have not been followed so the benefit of doubt has to be given to the student even if everyone involved knows the student was a barely literate lie-a-bed whose greatest contribution to academic life was not turning up to any lectures. Following the procedures and documenting actions can PROTECT the academic integrity of universities by allowing them to demonstrate unambiguously that students have been treated fairly and consistently and have rightly been kicked out.
Just imagine Jesus or Socrates trying to teach at a university today. They'd get stoned, lynched or 'complained' at the second meeting.
The issues at stake here are numerous. The piling together of actual student complaints and student evaluation forms is not particularly helpful - I doubt it surprises many of us that "In one social science department criticised for the quality of feedback, two thirds of the essays submitted were never picked up by their authors". In my expereince students that have decided (attempted, maybe? - the procedure is not always as transparent or barrier-free as this article perhaps suggests) to complain about their mark DO actively express their disappointment about the absence of a genuine dialogue and exchange with a tutor, but are often rebuffed with the words 'a matter of academic judgement' ringing in their ears. This is not satisfactory, not because the students have a right as a consumer, but because we have a responsibility to uphold academic standards. We might, heaven forbid, get it wrong, have an off day, call a 2:2 a 3rd at the end of makring 150 scripts. Because there is that chance, students' recourse to question 'what they get', or at least fully interrogate why they get it, should not be deemed to be a bad idea. A final note of thought - progressive marking and modes of assessment tend to reflect attempts at providing a more inclusive HE provision that reflects the increasingly diverse student body we have encountered since the outset of the widening particpation agenda more than a decade ago. Does Prof Ferudi therefore feel that we should instead sit in our ivory tower, unchanging and without concern, defending the elite modes of assessment and dominant forms of education of years gone by?
Universities have now passed away. Universities are no longer educational centres, but business driven by money. Students are not students, they are clients that have to be pleased and, needless to say, are always right. I am an academic in one of the ancient British universities and I dont think my University deserves to be, as it is, in the world top 30 according to the THE world ranking. It shouldn't be in the top 30 at all. UK Universities are heading for major disaster. The soul of any univesity is its academics. We deliver high quality teaching and we produce internationally recognised research. If UK universities continue to treat us academics in the humiliating manner they are, then most of us will leave the UK altogether.
The funniest thing about all this is that the same consumer culture is also responsible for the dominating view that universities are mainly there to deliver trained servants to work on the Highest Court of the Holy Economy. I would really like to see some of my fellow students taking this customer attitude to their workplaces - 'No, I didn't read your comments on the last project, I know I turned it in late, but I really think I deserve a pay raise'. Good luck. It is so obvious that the universities are asked to do the job they should not be doing, and that they are asked to do it in the most inefficient way possible. I sometimes really miss the two years when I still studied in Poland. I remember when we once turned in for a tutorial not having done the reading - when the lecturer realised this, she called us hopeless timewasters and threw us out of the class. Nobody thought of complaining, because to complain would be to admit that we think that it's ok to be a hopeless timewaster at the university, or because we had that little decency to be ashamed of not having done our job properly. On the other hand, some lecturers in Poland did abuse their power quite badly - I sometimes really wonder when people will finally learn Aristotle's lesson and settle for the golden middle. Not while education is money-driven, I fear, because it's extremes that sell well, and nobody will win elections offering 'just' sensible moderation.
It is valid to state that unwaranted complaints should be dismissed however I have had firsthand experience with how professors can abuse their positions. The absolute necessity of a degree relative to the past makes it imperative to be on good terms with your academic advisor even if he is manipulating you to his own ends. There are programs that if a minimum number of students are not in them can be closed and thus I have experienced firsthand the lengths to which petty bureaucrats will go at the expense of a "paying customer" to ensure their positions continue. I am referring to Concorida University in Montreal of course and cannot really objectively comment about the situation in the U.K. Robert Hennecke.
In my experience, university administrators are there to tell us how and what to teach. These administrators are individuals who ironically have never taught a class, seminar group, tutorial, etc. in their lives, nor do they have the academic/subject specific qualifications, such as PhDs. Administrators want formalized student feedback, not because they are concerned about students, but because feedback requirements give the university another way to control academic staff, particularly young lecturers such as myself who have no power of veto. So while I agree with Professor Furedi, I don't think the students are to blame, but rather an administration that wants to have its hands in every pie in the university. Unfortunately, as Furedi rightly points out, all this creates a kind of 'us and them' atmosphere between staff and students which prevents cooperation and meaningful exchange, makes everyone very defensive - and, therefore, hampers learning.
The unspeakable wickedness of incongruously putting consumer ideas into the context of education is, of course, obvious. But even saying that is far too kind to consumer ideas, and I wonder why the manifest stupidity or stupefaction that is part of the raising of young people as consumers is not itself mercilessly criticised. Consumer triumphs include: Designer-label clothes, which are a deliberate attempt to work the nonsense of mass-market products at luxury prices. (And customer-students want "Value for money"? Bagged snacks and cans of pop, which are non-staples deliberately marketed for frequent rather than special-occasion use, as if they were staples. Obesity and rip-off prices have not stopped this monstrosity. So why is not the nettle grasped by saying that the customer-self is the stupid-self, and so politely ignored by educators? Why are students not embarrassed to call themselves customers? Then, there are the old-fashioned ideas: even if customers were rational, that is still a matter for the ordinary self, not the ideal, the projected or the improvable self, which are what the educator must appeal to. And, customers receive a service, but to teach is not to offer a service; it is to offer a civility, as is bequeathing. It means: "This is what I value; I hand it on to you (and without ulterior motive)." It would be a vile bararism to re-design the substance to meet expectations - like melting down the heirloom silverware to make a Mickey Mouse statue if that would please the recipient. Richard Barrett Calgary , Canada
This is an opinion (and conclusion) that I had come to long back, and I submit the same for whatever it is worth. I am an academic in Higher Education in India and have served both in the Public as well as Private Institutions of HE. I think this conceptualization of students being 'clients' is a contradiction of sorts. They are better described as being 'through-puts' (that gets transformed) in a molding/shaping/transforming process, in the institution. Therefore they are the 'products' of the institution and NOT clients. The clients are- organizations/institutions/companies that hire them in particular and the society at large in general.
Furedi's contempt for students is extraordinary, and goes a long way to explaining why he feels to uncomfortable dealing with their dissatisfaction. He is a little inconsistent on the matter here, but overall implies that students want to be spoonfed easy-to-learn facts that they can repeat in exams to achieve high marks; they do not want to be challenged intellectually, he claims. There are two issues here. The first, which he acknowledges in a roundabout way - some students in fact do want to be challenged, and wish to be able to participate in a debate rather than be told what to think. The second issue is that when a good teacher is confronted with a student who wants to be told how to perform well, rather than developing their thinking skills, she will challenge the student in a manner that makes the student realize not only that there are multiple interpretations of any question, rather than simply 'right' and 'wrong' answers - but also that interpretation is interesting and exciting. It is depressing when students have no interest in getting feedback on their work, but it must be recognized that this is a function of a system of examination (in schools and in universities) directed towards the constant quantification, assessment and categorisation of students. Students are generally not stupid, lazy, and more interested in their degree certificate than in the subject they study. Good lecturers work hard to find ways of stimulating students' imaginations (admittedly, not always an easy task), and students are thankful for it. In an environment in which lecturers must earn the respect of their students, rather than assume it because of their position, teaching is more difficult, and also more worthwhile. I hope Furedi will pay more attention to what makes his own students switch off, and what makes them engaged. In the struggle to inspire them, he might even learn something from them himself.
Referring to the comment above: That's all very true about some students really wanting to learn and think - I'm one of this species. But at the same time there are many students who really only want the paper, best without working at all. And even more students simply have a slightly different definition of what it means to 'learn and think' on the university level - they accept that they should learn for their degree, just not that much. And we all know that it's not much already - quite frankly, after having 36 hours per week of lectures on a Polish university I can only laugh at the students' whining over horrible workload in the UK. The problem, apart of the great deal of stress and dissatisfation to the lecturers who struggle with students who don't want to learn too much, is that, being responsible for the overall dumbing down, they jeopardize the chances of getting good education for those who want to really learn properly. Because they are customers who want to learn not-that-much and they are numerous, they win and force everybody to learn not-that-much and no more. In this way our wonderful all-inclusive system sacrifices the bright studious students for the sake of pleasing the outnumbering mediocrity.
Professor Tourish rightly identifies the responsibilities of students but fails to include similar for academic staff who surely have a responsibility to those paying their wages. Though I have little sympathy for anonymous complaint, it is a cowardly act, this may be a last resort when formal complaint falls on deaf ears or the University's 'star chamber' hides behind a 'prima facie' defence. Academic staff must be responsible for preparing themselves at least adequately for their target audience. Appointments made on research ability alone have no place in higher education since the student became the consumer. Universities have failed to understand this. I think the 'feedback' issue is the tip of the iceberg. For example, lecturers teaching in an English unversity must be able to converse in english. With the expansion of HE in the UK we are more and more using lecturers whose first language is not english. Whereas a foreign student has to satisfy the Univeristy that their standard of english is acceptable for study in a UK university the same is not true for academic staff. Multi-cultural academic Universities (staff and students) have many advantages but if the lecturers can't speak english the student is entitled to complain. Universities have a responsibility to appoint appropriate academic staff that can perform all their duties at least adequately and a criteria for lecturers is surely the ability to lecturer.