Everything open

We are, as we are continually told, in a new era of higher education management. The student is at the heart of the system, and all the decisions are based on a need to improve the student experience above all else. Because funding directly follows the student, plans are necessarily short term and thus unstable.

But what could have more impact on the quality of the experience than the staff that institutions employ who deal directly with students. Every aspect of the much-fetishised student survey returns to this need – calls for “better feedback” are calls for more time with academics, calls for “better resources” are calls for the employment of staff to enable and support access to resources. But staff – good staff, motivated staff, secure staff – represent a long term institutional investment.