The University Court is an annual event which invites all key stakeholders of the University to hear from the University Treasurer and Vice-Chancellor and from the Union President.
Here is my state of the Union speech:
Pro-Chancellor, Members of Court …..
This academic year has been a year of new beginnings with all the opportunities they bring. It is not often that a President, constitutionally only entitled to one year in office, can come before Court, welcoming the VC as the new boy.
But, having taken up my job three months earlier, it was great to welcome Professor Keith Burnett to this University. From the outset, Keith, has been keen to build positive relationships with us as a Students’ Union – and I know not only with us. Prior to becoming President, I had no idea what to expect of a VC nor of what our relationship would be like. And advice from Union Officers in other universities suggested that it was a relationship to approach with caution. But they were wrong. As Union Officers we have found that Keith has been great to work with. He is keen to listen and learn from us and from our students. He’s always approachable and relaxed. He has almost inspired me to take up learning Chinese in my spare time. Unfortunately I don’t have any. We’ve established a really positive working relationship and I’m sure many of my successors will experience the same in the coming years. On behalf of the Union Officers and all of our students here at this fine University, welcome Keith.
I think that you’ve already found what an important role the Students’ Union plays in the life of this University and in attracting new students to come and study here. But today provides me with another opportunity to make the point.
As you will see from this year’s Annual Report, it has been a year in which we have once again seen the Union of Students recognised nationally with the awards flowing in. As highlighted by my predecessor, the last academic year saw us celebrating success with the Sheffield Business Awards, organised by the Chamber of Commerce. This was especially satisfying to win as we defeated the minnows of Meadowhall Shopping Centre, Hallam FM and Kier Construction to take the award.
The Royal Mail Community Impact Award followed an evaluation of our volunteering programme, charitable fundraising and work on community relations. And this year, our success was reinforced by winning the Guardian Public Service Award in November 2007, beating UBS, the large investment bank, to scoop the award. Initiatives such as Love Where You Live have sought to tie our student body into the local community so that they see themselves and are recognised as a valuable part of the richly diverse community. This summer will see us launch the biggest city wide volunteering initiative to date - with around 400 students engaging in a wide range of projects, giving something back to this great city. The summer will also see us add a global theme to the Broomhill Festival in which many of our International students will be actively involved from Samba drumming to Salsa dancing.
We have recently secured funding from the National Youth Volunteering Programme for a 3 year post to develop new initiatives and expand existing projects. We are the only Union in the country to receive this funding perhaps due to the fact that we were an exceptional winner in the Outstanding Project category at the National Student Volunteering awards in December.
To cap it all off, we were once again acknowledged to be the best in the UK , winning the Club Mirror Students’ Union of the year award …. Again … and to win top placing in the Times Higher student experience league table.
Our development over the years was highlighted to me personally in October, when I had the fortune of meeting with a group of former students who had begun their studies here in Sheffield in 1957. They had met up at least once a year ever since. 2007 saw the 50th anniversary of their friendship and so they chose to celebrate this by returning to Sheffield. After a tour of Firth Court I took them on an action packed, adrenaline fuelled ride around our Union building, met with gasps of amazement at what the old graves building had become. A few mentioned to me how they were expecting the Union building tour to be the least interesting bit of their weekend and that they only expected it to take a few minutes. Two hours later we completed the tour, due partly to my filibustering but mostly to their interest in the substance of what we offer our students. Some of the most rewarding comments were not just about the nature of the building improvements, which are no doubt fantastic, but how it was all so student focussed and so obviously student led.
Awards recognise our success, but they, don’t explain it. For that, I ‘d turn to the current Higher Education minister Bill Rammell who said that; “The best thing about Sheffield Students’ Union is that it is constantly re-inventing itself.”
Just like the ageless pop sensation Madonna, we are not content with a smattering of number ones or superficial hair-do changes and gym workouts. We realise that if we want to remain relevant to our members and effective in representing them, we must evolve. Last year we began work on our next strategic plan, for the three academic years from 2009.
I was at a conference on the future of students’ unions last week, and one of the speakers on change management made the case for every plan to be driven by an inspiring vision ……… After all, Martin Luther-King did not say “I have a strategic plan…”
He had a dream and we do too. We have a clear vision for 2012 – placing student leadership at the heart of the Union, refreshing the Union building, and developing our work for our members well beyond the building . And we’ve begun work on new initiatives which will bring the vision to life. To be at the cutting edge of developments, leading the way nationally in best practice and innovation.
Crucially to this vision, we want to be recognised as being More than a building. The Union is a membership organisation with a role to play in all aspects of our students’ lives. And it is a project with the University’s Accommodation and Campus Services Department that has perhaps best highlighted this approach last year. We have been centrally involved in supporting the development of the new University residences, working to ensure smooth transition for students, and helping to build communities in the new accommodation. We have established ourselves as a crucial partner in bringing about the very best experience for students where they live.
And we’re not complacent about what we do and not complacent about student leadership of the Union. Our annual elections are taking place this week, as you might have seen on your way here today. We already have the highest student participation in the country in our elections. But we want to be better.
So last year saw new Union governance structures with the specific intent of embedding democracy at the heart of this organisation and strengthening student leadership.
Following a comprehensive review of our structures in light of the Charities Act, we have made some of the biggest changes to our governance since the Union was established in 1906. We have set up a Trustee Board with 3 independent external trustees joining the 8 student officer trustees - ensuring good governance and effective scrutiny of our operations. Our committee structures were also significantly altered to enable greater and more diverse engagement of our members. Both have been successful. The final, and most significant change has been to Students’ Union Council, the sovereign body of the Students’ Union. Previously, Union Council had just been made up of stakeholders within our membership. It was inward looking, involving just the traditional activists and those already engaged with the Union structures. The review wanted to reach out beyond those traditional stakeholders to all our members.
Councillors are now elected directly from every academic department enshrining academic representation at the heart of what this Union is about. It might not seem radical, but we’re the first Union in the country to have a directly elected Council rooted in academic constituencies. The 40 departmental Councillors are accompanied by 8 Councillors from the representative groups ensuring representation of the full range of our membership. The 8 Student Officers make up the rest of Council.
We are in the early days of these new structures but already we are able to see enormous benefits. We had high levels of nominations for each position and good turnout for the elections. It has brought a variety of voices from ordinary students to the decision making. Home and International. Undergraduate and postgraduate. Council has also welcomed the Vice Chancellor who hosted a reception to meet the Councillors and to outline the governance review of his own. We hope that this will happen again in the future.
Elections for Council are now held early in the academic year which makes an important statement at the start of the year that this Union is a democratic, student led organisation in which every student has the power to get involved, to change and to shape its future.
It accentuates the point that right at the heart of the Union is democratic student leadership.
We provide great services and activities as have been recognised throughout this year and highlighted in my previous comments. But the distinctive role of the Union, the one thing it can do that nobody else can, is to provide a voice for our students.
Internally this voice has been clear on the issues like personal tutors and assessment and assessment feedback, where we are working positively with the University.
Externally, the single biggest issue facing students in the UK today is the Government’s review of UK Undergraduate funding due in 2009.
I don’t know whether you saw the recent Guardian report on 14th February. It highlighted two things. Firstly that education continues even on Valentines Day. Secondly, that despite a rise of 7% in applications to University, research from the Sutton Trust demonstrates that the effects of debt are significantly affecting those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, many of whom are deciding to live at home and attend a local university or not to bother at all.
Education is one of the greatest determinants of social mobility. A society which does not allow fair access to education is socially regressive, and can neither be described as free nor just. Fair access to education requires selection only on the grounds of ability. Hence, any system which selects on other grounds, positively or negatively, is improper. Just such a thing, and a threat to the very integrity of our society, is a market in higher education which would be created by lifting the cap to introduce variable top-up fees.
Though the current system allows for variable top-up fees, the £3,000 cap means that the vast majority of institutions charge the full amount for the vast majority of courses, so variability is largely nominal. De facto, this means that we have a flat rate tuition fee, which is paid after graduation. Though this is not ideal for students, it represents a relatively good compromise. It is understandable that students should have to make some contribution to the cost of their education, particularly given the exponential expansion of higher education sector in recent years. The current system encapsulates two important principles, one by design and one by providence, which make it acceptable: first, by design, education is free at the point of access. The student’s contribution is made only when he or she is sufficiently well be paid to be able to afford to do so. The other, which happens because of the £3,000 cap, is that almost all UK undergraduate students pay the same fee, and thus there is no market in higher education. This principle is threatened by the review of the cap due to take place in 2009/10.
Intuitively, it may seem, that variable fees are a sound idea: different courses require different provisions and incur different costs. A lab-based science course, for example, will cost more than an arts or humanities degree. Furthermore, some institutions are better than others and some will certainly add more to your CV, so why shouldn’t you pay more? Quite simply because the market it would create would be socially disastrous. If different funding levels are required between courses and institutions they can be defined, as they already are, on merit, and distributed through the grants that institutions receive through Hefce. A market is no way to determine them, given that markets work on the principle of supply and demand. The number of places to read PPE at Oxford are limited, and could not realistically be increased, whilst the demand for such places is to all intents and purposes infinite: there is no way that supply could ever meet demand, so the market would fail and the vendor could charge whatever it liked for the course, not what it is reasonably worth.
We know many things about markets. One is that people with less money buy cheaper products; that is why Tesco have a value range and a finest range of own brand products. So instantly the less well off in society will be directed to cheaper, and inevitably less good, institutions. Yes, there would be some bursaries, but realistically these would only aid the very brightest of the very poorest. Vast swathes of young people would be excluded, or at least strongly deterred, from the nation’s premier institutions, for example Imperial College has publicly declared it would charge in the region of £15,000 per annum if it could. £45,000 in tuition fees for a 3 year undergraduate degree would be a disincentive to anyone, but it would be a particular disincentive to those from poorer homes, who have less financial backing and are more debt averse.
A market in higher education would be like introducing a value range and a finest range for universities. Though many laud the introduction of variable fees as a way of increasing participation from lower-income homes, as has been seen in Australia and Canada, these people ignore the important subtleties of detail. In 2002 the proportion of low income students in higher education in Australia had increased, but the proportion of those students on the costliest courses had declined by 38%.
University for all, but the top institutions for the few.
A marketplace in higher education is simply a poverty trap; it is something that you must oppose if you believe in equality of opportunity.
We are not naïve. We recognise that students must make a contribution but with a fair system in place which is ‘means-blind’.
As I mentioned earlier, we are in the midst of election fever. Part of the election is to elect the leadership to take this Union forward for the next year. Alongside this is a referendum to define our position moving into the funding debate of the next couple of years. We are proposing that we use the opportunity of 2009 to carry out a thorough review of Higher Education funding which does far more than just lift the cap by a couple of thousand pounds and delay a decision for a few years.
We’ve laid down the key principles for that debate:
- Adequate bursaries to ensure that there are no financial barriers to higher education.
- No variable fees which would create a market in higher education.
- Increased student loans available to cover all living costs, preventing students from being forced into high-interest commercial loans and credit card debt.
- Loans to be available on low-interest rates.
- No return to upfront fees.
- The introduction of student loans for postgraduate student
This University prides itself on excellence. On producing a Sheffield Graduate with distinctive skills and a professionalism which will be recognisable across the world in all sectors. On being excellent at research and excellent at teaching.
Let’s not support the regressive step of pushing students to exorbitant levels of debt and making access to excellent education impossible for those without sufficient funding. Let’s not be pushed in to creating a hugely inequitable system because it is deemed the only option available to us. But instead let’s find a solution which won’t price people out of our best universities of which this is one.
It has been refreshing to have dialogue with our Vice Chancellor on this issue. We share his view that we should aim for excellence with affordability. Let’s work together, not in opposition, to begin to shape the debate nationally and subsequently to shape the future of the lives of students for years to come.
Thank you.
It is with some sadness that I write this which is probably to be my last blog.
