My research is conducted in a single university that operates within a fairly conventional structure of faculties, subdivided into departments or schools according to various subject or academic disciplines. The faculties are supported by a range of centralised and faculty level support services. The university executive (for example, Vice Chancellor, Pro-Vice Chancellors and Faculty Deans), had remained largely unchanged, especially at the time of data collection for this thesis, offering the institution a period of general organisational stability.
In past years, the university where I work used to be a cluster of HE colleges within local community, and later became a polytechnic centre in 1991, which was further awarded a university status in 1992. The awarding of the university status was a part of British university expansion system, following the Education Reform Act of 1988 (Dearlove, 2002). Due to the institution being a regional college and later a polytechnic, the institution operated under local authority control, primarily responding to local community needs, and enrolling a high percentage of local students (Shattock, 2002; Archer, 2007). The institution’s polytechnic legacy is still evident in the demography of students as well as in the range of subjects offered in different faculties, a majority of which are applied subjects, with a vocational focus, for example, Early Childhood Studies (ECS) courses.
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Moving out of its polytechnic past, the university is currently a global university, with 39,400 students from 177 countries, gaining qualifications in four continents (University website, 2016). The university also “helps some 2,000 businesses to grow quicker and partner with organisations to deliver a spectrum of educational and commercial projects”
(University website, 2016). A very high percentage of its graduates secure professional jobs (3 out of 4). The university values itself as “exceptional and imaginative in the advancement of knowledge and education of students” (University website, 2016). The values statement also projects its passion about “collaboration, innovation and transformation to enhance social, cultural and economic well-being” (University website, 2016).
Student engagement holds a prime position in university’s strategic plan. Goal three of The Corporate Plan (2015-17: 6) clearly states that the university “will increase student engagement within and outside the curriculum, so as to enrich students’ time at the university, support their academic success, give them a distinctive ‘edge’ in the job market and enrich their lives after university”. There are, however, various factors that affect the level of student engagement and active participation in various institutional activities, despite its holding a prime position in the university’s strategic plan. The university offers residential opportunities to its students but a majority of its students come from local communities, who, due to increased HE fees, either continue to live in family homes or are in part-time employment. Students’ participation, with this demography of students, have to be considered with a caveat as they may struggle to fully integrate and participate in university life (Thomas, 2012).
Another factor affecting students’ participation is student numbers. The number of students in my institution has been rising steadily, currently enrolling 39,400 students (University website, 2016). The larger the university, the less likelihood of its students to engage and put themselves forward to participate in various university activities (Carey, 2013a, 2013c).
According to HESA (2015); the statistics for HE students by HE provider, level of study, mode of study and domicile 2014/15; my university is 45th largest, out of a total of 170 HE institutions within the UK (HESA, 2015) . The number, as stated in these statistics, has since gone up quite steadily (from 19,830 students to 39,400, including the overseas students studying in affiliated institutions in four continents) (University website, 2016).
The level of participation and engagement is not only dependent on the number of students
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but, as pointed out by Porter (2006), is also influenced by the density of students. To identify the density of students, an easy indicator is to look at the student: staff ratio. With a ratio of over 19:1, my university sits in the lower quartile of British universities (Complete University Guide, 2015), influencing the quality of interaction and relationship that staff can develop with big groups of students at one time.
The distinctive characteristics of my university, as discussed above, are not unique. Most post 1992 universities share similar characteristics. There is some commonality in how British universities involve their students in institutional decision making, or, in other words, encourage students’ participation. Consequently, this research may have wider reach than initially implied. The most common students’ participation is through representation mechanisms used across the HE sector, such as module evaluations, course and institutional surveys and students’ representation in various meetings and institutional governance;
mechanisms providing new forms of power to students (Carey, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c;
Freeman, 2014). The training of student representatives is organised by the Student Union (Little et al., 2009). This is in keeping with common practice across the sector (Carey, 2013a, 2013c; Freeman, 2014). The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), sets out quality expectations for all UK HEIs, and makes special reference to meeting expectations on student engagement. Student engagement is an explicit chapter in the Quality Code (QAA, 2012) setting out clear expectations or the different ways in which student voice can be framed within a university, especially through student charters and student representation.
These structural procedures that support students’ participation in HE, such as the formalisation of student representation in quality assurance procedures, formal mechanisms of student voice through module evaluations and national surveys, all have implications for institutions and pedagogy. These mechanisms influence the ways in which teaching is constructed and managed, as well as how students and staff interact with each other (Currens, 2011). Also, the influence that these policies can have on recruitment, success, staffing and delivery of the courses is being realised across the HE sector. There is growing evidence that the procedures also affect institutional decision making and actions (HEFCE, 2008; Currens, 2011). These sectorial and institutional aspects, collectively, influence the conceptualisation of students’ participation in HE, in England. The dominant influences on its conceptualisation, currently, are market driven initiatives rather than pedagogical
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inspirations. Pedagogically, too, institutions have been applying the notions of transferable skills, embedding them within the curricula and learning and teaching (Carey, 2013a). The overall inclination of the sector and institution, therefore, is towards the standardisation and marketisation of learning (Shore, 2008), fitting in with a broader national and international neo-liberal economic policy agenda (Jaitli, 2010; Carey, 2013b).
2.4 Students’ preferences for participation and the context of student participants