Mapping the eight dimensions of the ideal student in higher education

ABSTRACT

Marketisation has directed higher education institutions and policies to focus on student support and provisions that promote better experience and value. By contrast, expectations of university students are under-researched and understated, with less attention placed on what and how students should perform in higher education. This paper further develops the concept of the ideal student at university, which aims to promote transparency and explicitness about what is expected of students, and potentially alleviate inequalities driven by implicit and unspoken rules of higher education. We report on the development and findings of the ideal student survey, conducted with 1,043 university students and staff in the UK. Factor analysis revealed eight dimensions of the ideal student, which we have tentatively described as Diligence & Engagement, Organisation & Discipline, Reflection & Innovation, Positive & Confident Outlook, Supportive of Others, Academic Skills, Employability Skills and Intelligence & Strategic Approach. Each factor is discussed with a focus on the differences between the views of staff and students. We conclude with a discussion of how the concept of the ideal student has the potential to promote better equality and opportunities for student success, by making explicit what is expected of university students.

KEYWORDS:

• Ideal student
• ideal university student
• student characteristics
• expectation of student
• student identity
• student attributes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Most post-1992 UK universities have a historical orientation towards teaching and training, rather than research, whilst pre-1992 UK universities are mostly rooted in academic research.

2. For the EFA, the measurements of sampling adequacy were fine (e.g. KMO was .958, which is “superb”), and the percentage of non-redundant residuals with absolute values greater than .05 was 3.0% (it should be less than 50%). The determinant was 2.46E−012, which is sufficiently large so that multicolliniarity should not be an issue.

3. Generally, Cronbach’s alphas above .7 are considered acceptable and above .8 are good (Field, 2017).

4. A small number of staff (n = 18) did not identify with the four broad disciplines and were therefore excluded in this particular analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the British Academy under [grant number SG170137].