Archive for University of Bristol

Are Students Customers?

Posted in Education with tags , on December 6, 2023 by telescoper

When tuition fees were brought in to the UK higher education system many academics worried that the relationship between students and lecturers would be changed for the worse, as students would be encouraged to see themselves as customers. I haven’t taught in a UK university since 2018 but I have to say I never met any physics students who saw themselves as customers. On the other hand, over the years I have met many parents of students who saw themselves as customers. Maybe the tendency of students to think of themselves as customers has increased over the last six years. I don’t know.

These thoughts popped into my head when my attention was recently drawn to an advertisement for a job at the University of Bristol (which I used to think of as a good university):

Whether or not students see themselves as customers, there is clearly one University that seems to think that’s what they are; at least that’s what the advertisement says.

I have only two comments on this advertisement.

First, it set the ‘Bullshit Job” claxon* ringing very loudly. David Graeber’s book is full of testimonies from people whose job description is just like this! The third paragraph makes it clear that the plan is to bring in someone from outside the higher education system to impose private-sector methods where there is no reason to think they will be productive. I wonder how if the “human-centred approach to experience design” will include anything at all to do with teaching?

Second, I don’t think universities really see students this way at all. The reality is much worse. Students are not really customers, for the same reason that cattle are not customers. They are commodities, the income from which generates profit. A “cattle-centred approach” would have been a more honest form of words…

*If I had time I’d maintain a “Bullshit Jobs” folder in memory of David Graeber…

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Critical Masses

Posted in Education, Science Politics with tags , , , , , , , on January 26, 2013 by telescoper

One of the interesting bits of news floating around academia at the moment is the announcement that my current employer (until the end of next week), Cardiff University is to join forces with the Universities of Bath, Exeter and Bristol in an alliance intended to create a ‘critical mass of knowledge’ and help Cardiff  ‘better compete for more research income’ (apparently by pretending to be in England rather than in Wales).  How successful this will be – or even what form this alliance will take – remains to be seen.

There’s been a lot of gossip about what inspired this move, but it’s not the first attempt to create a collaborative bloc of this kind. Last year five universities from the Midlands announced plans to do something similar. The “M5” group of   Birmingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham and Warwick got together primarily to share infrastructure in order to help them win grants, which is probably what also lies behind the Cardiff-Bath-Exeter-Bristol deal.

Of course there are also a myriad  alliances at the level of individual Schools and Departments. I’ll shortly be joining the University of Sussex, which is a major player in SEPNET – the South-East Physics Physics Network which was set up with help from HEFCE There are other such networks in England, as well as SUPA in Scotland, funded by the devolved Scottish Funding Council. Attempts to form a similar arrangement for Physics in Wales were given short shrift by the Welsh Funding Agency, HEFCW. The inability or unwillingness of HEFCW to properly engage with research in Wales is no doubt behind Cardiff’s decision to seek alliances with English universities but I wonder how it will translate into funding. Surely HEFCE wouldn’t be allowed to fund a Welsh University, so presumably this is more aimed at funding from the research councils or further afield, perhaps in Europe. Or perhaps the idea is that if GW4 can persuade HEFCE to fund Bath, Bristol and Exeter, HEFCW will be shamed into stumping up something for Cardiff? Sneaky.

Anyway, good luck to the new “GW4” alliance. Although I’m moving to pastures new I’ll certainly keep an eye on any developments, and hope that they’re positive. The only thing that really disturbs me is that the name “Great Western Four” is apparently inspired by the Great Western Railway, now run by an outfit called First Great Western. My recent experiences of travelling on that have left a lot to be desired and I’m sure the name will have negative connotations in the minds of many who are fed up of their unreliable, overcrowded, overpriced and poorly managed services. They say a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but so far this is only a name – and one with a distinctly questionable odour.

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