Escaping the Atrium

A write up of a recent trip, pushing out and exploring a world beyond conditional formatting on Excel and poorly executed SQL queries....

The Atrium's a funny place. It's home for those bits and pieces of "Professional Services" which most people avoid. HR, IT, Finance, Facilities, Marketing, Admissions and the UK Recruitment team. Those sorts of people. And, more recently, a group of academics who "must have said something" and have been banished to the south east corner of the building. Listen carefully, and you can hear them, powering up SPSS and trying to tap distress signals through the malfunctioning heating system.....

While the wheels of power turn, shiny buildings take shape and teaching and learning goes on across Park St, life in The Atrium can feel disembodied and not very university-like. The place where crates hang out, looking menacing, and mismatched furniture comes to die.

The Atrium - 'come see us sometime'

It's nice to get out and about every now and again. Some time earlier this year, I was asked to facilitate a forum at the University's recent Teachers and Advisers Conference. This took place last Wednesday and was a treat, even if I missed most of the catering. My own fault; I was getting this fantastic picture taken by a proper photographer:

"Do you want fries with that?"

The session - where such diverse institutions as Vandyke Upper to Central Beds College to Hitchin Boys School were represented - enabled me to perform a covert piece of market research and to listen into the thoughts and concerns of those present. Given that everyone had signed up for a "forum", and, therefore, a meeting of minds and exchange of ideas, I saw my role very much in terms of just nudging things along and throwing in the odd question bomb or two. Such as:

"What pressures do young people face if/when they're thinking about university?"

- and -

"How can schools and universities help?"

After a series of breakouts, the first issue to generate heat was finance:

• debt aversion - potential students need to understand repayment terms;
• more communication around bursaries is needed;
• maintenance - some won't attend if none available, creating another 'squeezed middle'; i.e. households with incomes more than £25k pa, but who don't have the level of income which would support their kids through unis;
• party people - those along for a ride and who don't see themselves as ever earning enough to start paying back.

There was some discussion and one or two points of departure for people in the group. Certainly, year on year, the Save our Student quantitative survey gives some graphic stats. For the 2017 results from more than 2300 students, click here.

A more pronounced and unified response was given to unconditional offers, which were picked up on throughout the day. They're not popular with schools, let me tell you. I've blogged about unconditional offers before and explained why I think U offers aren't great.

Still, I don't have to deal with the fallout. Teachers and advisers do. We were told how unconditional offers lead in a proportion of students dropping attendance and grades. The group recognised universities' needed to maximise income, but those who have been more profligate at dishing out offers came in for heavy scorn. Nottingham Trent and Lincoln were mentioned in despatches.

The third main area of concern was mental health. No surprise, although very sobering to hear about anxiety, self-harming and communication issues among people at a key, challenging moment in their personal developments. Again, recently published statistics, this time from the Institute for Public Policy Research, quantify some of the issues (for example a six-fold increase in cases of declared mental health conditions in 2015 vs 2006 and record numbers of student suicides and a 20% increase in the number of students dropping out and suffering mental health conditions. For more detail,see the IPPR website).

All in all, a valuable day spent out of the office. I've just had and will have very different excursions this week, to the London School of Commerce. By which time, I'll probably be gagging for the reassuring comfort of my two screens, Microsoft Powerpoint and my tea/soup drawer.

Market research; back to "business as usual"