Responding to diverse groups of learners
Reading the Universities UK paper on demographic changes helped clarify for me the choices available to Russell Group universities to the threats and challenges it identifies. One of the possible consequences of the increasing diversity of student groups and needs - adult work-based, returning learners, part-time, individual life long learners, employer funded and so on - is that the expanding HE sector and its public could become even more confused than it is already about what HE is and what it is for. The diversity of student groups and their needs and expectations will provide numerous opportunities for existing HEIs and for other bodies and institutions, existing or newly created in response to demand. Existing HEIs will need to be clear what is distinctive about their provision and what student sectors they are best fitted to serve. As the report says, higher education delivered by a university (emphasis in the report) “offers a unique opportunity to learn in an environment informed by current research”. What many HEIs offer students is the opportunity to join and be partners in a research and scholarship led community of learners. The excellence of their research and the way this informs the curriculum and the learning/teaching processes, resources and facilities is the key differentiator with respect to other and emerging providers of, in its increasingly indeterminate conception, higher education. Direct engagement with the secondary and FE sectors and with employers will be beneficial to all concerned but HEIs should maintain a clear distinction and concentrate on their core missions of research and knowledge creation coupled to a commitment to preparing graduates for a career and life and not, in the words of the report, “a single job”. It may be that the best way forward for many HEIs is to concentrate without compromise on their current student constituencies, UG and PG, and the excellence of their provision for them but at the same time develop the curriculum, learning materials, resources and learning and teaching processes and support so that they can be packaged and made available more flexibly to part-time and non-traditional students via mixed delivery modes. This could be achieved over a period of years in a way that allows for the required development of systems and staff. This would fall a long way short of providing an extensive distance learning offering or becoming specialists in bespoke programmes, something other institutions and bodies may choose to become. However it would allow selective engagement with the growth areas in the student ‘market’ most aligned to fundamental core missions by developing and exploiting our traditional strengths in research, knowledge creation and the development of the graduate skills suited to work, well-being and citizenship for life in a fast changing knowledge based society.
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