Back in the early noughteens when the £9,000 undergraduate fee was looming in England, the debate about risks around rising student expectation focused on an imagined version of a luxury student experience.
This essay by academic Howard Hotson in the London Review of Books in 2011 was a bit of a reference point in that era:
To judge from the American experience, comfortable accommodation, a rich programme of social events and state of the art athletic facilities are what most 18-year-olds want when they choose their ‘student experience’; and when student choice becomes the engine for driving up standards, these are the standards that are going to be driven up.
Hotson’s argument was that for their substantial investment students would expect sumptuous campus facilities, cutting edge digital learning environments, four-poster beds and the like. This was a direct critique of the market model which was justified in government by the notion that student choice would drive learning and teaching quality – the riposte was that it would drive a facilities and student lifestyle arms race as universities competed over the glossiness of the shop window rather than the quality of the product.
Thinking back while I’m sure there was a discourse around student mental health and the need for improved support services, I’m fairly confident that nobody anticipated that the student expectation “problem” would end up being about access to student support services against a backdrop of a substantial increase both in reported mental health conditions and experiences of mental ill health in the young population. About as far from the luxury argument as you can get.
