Key themes in institutional perspectives

Government policies for students in higher education have increasingly prioritised graduate ‘employability’, and for HEIs, including Wrottesley, this has been taken to mean graduate employment, usually six months after graduation in accordance with the DHLE scores (Knight & Yorke, 2004). In this case study, it can be seen that this pressure has led senior management at Wrottesley to use a range of student activities to aid this agenda, including the ViC programme.

Notwithstanding this, most of the senior staff members interviewed expressed their belief that it was important for student development and to help their graduate employment prospects, although this was sometimes expressed in a generalised way:

Looking for something above and beyond getting a degree, I mean the assumption will be if you go to university you come out with a degree so they’ll want some value-added and it will be things like the

volunteering and helping them to articulate what they’ve got from the volunteering that makes them stand out in terms of getting a job. That will be

important to the university, very, very important (U1).

The emphasis here on graduate ‘employability’ acknowledges a ‘value- addedness’ through the volunteering experience, but does not address the distinction between accredited and non-accredited volunteering.

Overall, all four senior staff interviewees emphasised the post-1992 status of the university. These pressures intensify the focus that university senior management need to put on policy initiatives on graduate ‘employability’. As can be seen in section 4.5. above, these pressures are also felt by the Students Union in the form of financial inducement to increase student volunteering activity. The implications for the ViC programme is that it is seen and understood institutionally as being beneficial to the student only, (the one-way street dimension of the job-shop model of volunteering) which is in line with the narrow definition of ‘employability’ being utilised within the institution.

Government policy discourse on ‘employability’ is driving this emphasis, and in so doing is also accountable for the collapsing of labels which describe student activities. There is little distinction here then for those activities which take place outside of the classroom, whether work- based learning, work placements, work experience, or volunteering. The key message being put out by university management and

Students Union alike, is the one-way benefit to students in the form of enhanced ‘employability’. Neoliberal policies are continuing to effect higher education delivery in terms of costly tuition fees, the burden of student debt, and the notion of the reward of graduate employment at the end of study (Olssen & Peters, 2005; Radice, 2013).

In this vein, the institution is proud to proclaim that the most recent Destination of Leavers of Higher Education Survey (DHLES) shows:

Overall, 96.3% of graduates who graduated from the University of [Wrottesley] were in work or further study after they had left – outperforming the UK average for all universities and a record high for the University (Careers and Enterprise Department, University of Wrottesley 2017).

University rankings are ever more important for the recruitment of students, and it has been a distinctive trend in recent years that HEIs make a point of advertising good ‘employability’ rates to prospective students (Coughlan, 2017). However, as Knight & Yorke (2004:9) point out, ‘employability, understood as suitability for graduate employment, is clearly not the same as graduate employment rates’. Graduate

‘employability’ here is equated with the relatively high success rates of graduates getting jobs within six months of graduating. This

demonstrates a narrow understanding of ‘employability’ rather than the notion of suitability for graduate level employment as espoused by Knight & Yorke (2004; 2007).

The institution’s decision to continue to support university wide volunteering through the Volunteer Unit (which includes the ViC

programme) as well as to drive volunteering within the Student Union resulted in resentment and confusion. The unintended consequences thus emerging from policy decisions show the power dynamics of key players in the institution. Thus the target-driven agenda of

‘employability’, and of drawing general volunteering and ViC modules into this, sets up competition between distinctive sets of provision.

What Evans (2003:418) calls the ‘surface features/outward forms of systems’ do not recognise the ‘internally differentiated ways systems operate in practice’. Thus the ‘policy as espoused’, ‘policy as enacted’, and ‘policy as experienced’ (Evans, 2003:420) are all demonstrated here as a consequence of layered, and sometimes limited, thinking and planning.

The disconnect between ‘policies as espoused’, ‘policies as enacted’, and ‘policies as experienced’ (Evans, 2003:420) has serious and potentially damaging consequences for the institution in terms of the inability to recognise the different goals and complexities and intended outcomes of different parts of the university. The lack of understanding of the ViC programme too, by both senior institutional management and the Students Union, limit the potential to capitalise on a wider set of outcomes than CV enhancement, or successful employment six months after graduation.

4.6. Conclusions

It is evident then, that general student volunteering, and ViC,

developed at Wrottesley without being strategically incorporated into institutional policies regarding any wider initiatives for university-

community engagement. No top-down institutional policy drivers were in place until relatively recently, and the Student Union were not

involved in early developments. Wrottesley was one of the earliest institutions to implement accredited volunteering programmes, and the success of this initiative had been a key player in the decision to

support and develop this further once HEACF funding was forthcoming. One of the key success factors in community-university partnerships is a commitment from senior staff, which includes a shared vision about such collaborations in general (Dhillon, 2015; Watson, 2007; Hart et al, 2007; Darwen & Rannard, 2011). These shared visions are likely to be one of the key elements in developing and delivering strong messages both within the HEI and the wider community, validating the work of such community-university partnerships (Dhillon, 2015). An example of such strong support from the top is the CUPP project, established at Brighton University (Watson, 2007; Hart et al, 2007). Darwen and Rannard (2011:186) have pointed out that:

those who would act as champions for student

volunteering need a coherent strategy and vision for its development that is relevant to all sectors, connecting HEIs to business, the public and communities.

Nevertheless, successful partnerships with a wide range of not-for- profit organisations were built up at Wrottesley by the few committed staff responsible for the development of the ViC provision. When the national funding stream from HEACF became available, systems were put in place for brokering non-accredited volunteering student

opportunities, as well as accredited activities through ViC. Given that the national policy agenda on ‘employability’ was being intensified, it is not surprising that institutional responses to a range of opportunities for students to gain experience outwith the classroom gained priority on narrow terms. Institutional rhetoric prioritised the ‘employability’

by senior management and Students Union principally in this light. Institutional policy developments, identified by both senior

management and student union personnel (particularly U1, S1 & S2), came in the form of the [Wrottesley] offer to every student to have the possibility of a placement (including volunteering) to enhance

‘employability’. This has the effect of merging the image of volunteering with that of placements, work experience, and internships. This is

potentially damaging to the image of the ViC programme, since the wider learning opportunities therein, and students’ social action in the community is rendered invisible by this discourse.

In response to the first research question then, the evidence drawn on here shows that the political and national policy context in terms of graduate ‘employability’ has had an important impact on institutional policy drivers. ‘Employability’ has been prioritised at Wrottesley, and student volunteering activity has been drawn into this rhetoric,

developed and promoted at institutional level. Some of the evidence presented here, particularly from U1 and U2, has shown that this has been, at times, in an accidental and accumulating way, and it has emerged as an activity specifically linked to the university’s policy for ‘employability’. This selection of policy priorities sidelines other

potential outcomes for students such as the enhancement of learning, community engagement, and growing critical understanding of the political and economic context in which this activity is carried out. It also downgrades partnership strategies that can make connections to

the community in significant measures. In an institution such as Wrottesley, this is surprising since it has long been considered that connection to community is a strategic part of its mission, as made clear in the evidence from all four senior management staff interviews. In the following chapter, an examination of the student experience of ViC will be explored. This evidence will be able to show if, and how, student perceptions and experience of ViC connects to, or contrasts with, this institutional picture.