[New material added below] In an action that questions its institutional intelligence, the University of the West of Scotland [UWS] has announced that, to retain its attractiveness in the global market, it is considering offering a money-back guarantee to fee-paying students if they fail to graduate.
This daft decision means that this University is accepting the responsibility – the blame, if you like – for failing students and will therefore compensate the failures in this way – if they are fee-paying.
Does this mean that non fee-paying students can take what they get, with no recourse for failures in their ranks where they too are let down by the university?
Or does it mean that non fee-paying students are more robustly intelligent and are less likely to fail?
You see the problems – and we’ve not even started yet.
Next is the implication that students who do not pay fees – Scottish students – somehow pass through a university course consuming services that cost nobody anything.
Fees are of course paid – by the Scottish Government, on behalf of Scottish students studying at Scottish universities.
So if you have a university admitting that if a fee-paying student ‘fails to graduate’ it is their responsibility and they will return fees to all such failures, should ‘best value practice’ in the Scottish Government not see University of the West of Scotland’s funding cut each year by the number of paid-for students who failed to graduate the year before?
Public money is as important as any other – and that has to be recognised.
By its own admission and compensatory action, UWS would have betrayed those failing non fee-paying students as much as the fee-paying and compensated ones. Should a university be paid to fail – and by the state??
It would be financially negligent if the Scottish Government did not husband value for public money as prudently as will an individual fee-paying student from elsewhere.
Did UWS consult its paymaster before launching into such a rammy?
Fundamentally, this incredibly stupid proposition ties the award of a degree to the ability to pay for it. In other words of you pay to study – you will get a degree.
This is the first university in British history openly to consider devaluing the integrity of academic awards. It is also the first to suggest by such action, that if a pupil fails it is the teacher’s fault.. The acceptance of such a doctrine would have very wide reaching ramifications.
Until now, it has been accepted that whether or not you personally pay for your course, you will pass it only if you are good enough to do so. No longer. You may not get a degree at UWS – but if you don’t – and you’ve slapped down the readies on the counter at registration, they will accept responsibility and give you your money back if you ‘fail to graduate’.
Now let’s look at the central devaluation here that will be the inevitable result of this ill-considered initiative: the reliable objective measure of competence the award of a degree confers.
We would not pretend for one moment that there are not already systemic problems in this issue in the university sector – but they wold become become infinitely worse in this regime.
You have a university sufficiently concerned about its recruitment to pull a panicky special offer deal like this one.
This is not going to be a university flush with funds.
It will have every incentive to make sure that it has to return as few fees as possible.
How can it do that?
Go figure.
This is what we mean by the devaluating impact of this proposition and the slide to the bottom where you pay your fees knowing you will therefore get a degree.
This is not just a foolish action by an institution that has now advertised its troubles. It damages the credibility of the entire higher education sector and would devalue the degrees of able students.
New material – on press release from University of the West of Scotland
We have been sent a press release from the University of the West of Scotland which, while it makes clear that no decision has yet been taken on this proposition, simply strengthens the original concerns about UWS’s institutional intelligence.
What on earth were they thinking about in publicly floating so utterly uninterrogated a notion, clearly with not the slightest grasp of the gravity and complexity of its ramifications?
In this rash action, they get shocking public relations responses and damage the credibility of their institution.
Had they first thought through the consequences – many of which become clear when you start to look at the detail of potential implementation – which they clearly have not done and which are immense and wholly devaluing – the notion would have gone no further and no one would have known about it.
We all have magically transformative ideas in the bath but we don’t offer them up to public scrutiny before we’ve finished towelling down.
UWS Press Release
Britain’s publicly-funded universities should consider offering rebates to students who fail, the Principal of University of the West of Scotland (UWS) has said.
Professor Craig Mahoney, who is also Vice Chancellor of UWS, addressed university principals, business leaders and politicians from across the UK at an event at Westminster yesterday, where he said ‘radical change’ is required in the face of increasing competition from private education providers in order to keep pace with technological changes in the commercial world.
Speaking ahead of the event, he urged universities to act more responsibly in treating students as customers and be more flexible to respond to student needs – adding that UWS is already considering concepts such as introducing a rebate system and guaranteeing students paid employment beyond their degree.
He said: ‘It is my firm belief that the UK’s publicly-funded universities won’t have a particularly attractive future unless they become more commercially sensitive and begin to act more like private industry – including private higher education providers – to allow us to remain competitive across the globe.
‘We have to acknowledge that students are customers and we have to meet customer expectations. To do that, we have to know who our customers are and understand their needs and desires.
‘We also have to be more flexible and take bigger, bolder and faster decisions to make sure we anticipate – not react to – our student markets. The customer is truly king and we need to recognise that. For UWS and I am sure for many other universities across the UK, that means radical change.
‘One possibility we are considering is introducing a rebate system. If you are admitted to UWS on the basis we only admit students with the potential to succeed, and then you fail to complete your degree – having attended and participated in all the support and development opportunities we offer – we will refund the tuition fee you have personally paid or taken a loan for.’
He added: ‘In the global economy, the environment changes quickly and the magnitude of that change can be staggering. We cannot sit in our ivory towers, observing and imagining that we will be unaffected by the changes taking place around us.
‘If you keep doing the things you’ve always done, you keep getting what you’ve always got – and in the future that might not be enough.’
Professor Mahoney also believes a more international approach is required, with UWS already in discussions to open new campuses in London, Dubai and Berlin to supplement delivery centres in Beijing and North China.
He added: ‘This isn’t all about monetisation of higher education – it’s about ensuring the considerable investment of time and money students make in their education is an investment that delivers an acceptable return.
‘To do that, we have to create an environment where we can invest to deliver the kinds of experience our students expect.’
One last raise of the eyebrows
We cannot let Professor Mahoney’s additional notion above go without question.
He says that UWS is also considering ‘guaranteeing students paid employment beyond their degree’. As a cynic here suggested: ‘The only way they could do that would be to have an arrangement with Starbucks.;’
Think too that the majority of students who pay their own fees are from outwith Scotland; and a reasonable proportion from outwith Europe.
Making a guarantee of paid employment to fee paying students beyond their degree course can only be yet another unthought detail of this quite extraordinary set of propositions.
Note: Our original article has been edited in various versions of replacing ‘decision;’ with ‘proposition’.
