Discursive framings of market-based education policy and their negotiation by students: the case of ‘value for money’ in English universities

ABSTRACT

Measures that economise education are typically accompanied by discourses that prime society for change by framing the policy in individualistic and consumeristic terms. This article explores the emergence of ‘value for money’ (VfM) discourses in the English higher education sector. Using Bourdieu’s thinking tools, we explore how VfM is conceptualised by final year undergraduates paying different levels of ‘headline’ tuition fees at a Russell Group and a Post-92 university. Unsurprisingly, we find qualitative evidence of an increase in VfM negativity as fees rise. However, this does not distribute evenly across different groups of students. At both institutions, undergraduates approach VfM in complex and unexpected ways, drawing on different capitals and often pushing back against dominant discourses. A key finding is that many students report high levels of satisfaction with their institution, course and teaching, while simultaneously expressing VfM negativity because they feel tuition fees are too high.

KEYWORDS:

• Value for money
• marketisation
• tuition fees
• student finance
• student wellbeing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘Competition to recruit students leads providers to improve the experience they offer, often increasing value for money for students. The Office for Students oversees this competitive market and has a duty to promote value for money’ (Office for Students, 2018a).

2. Where VfM is used in object position in Fulfiling Our Potential (Johnson, 2015), ‘delivered’ and ‘ensured’ are the two transitive verbs that precede it most commonly. Others include ‘drive’, ‘champion’, ‘demand’ and ‘get’. The implication is that VfM is a known, measurable and attainable quality.

3. References to VfM in Students at the Heart of the System (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011) include ‘we expect new courses to offer increased value for money, as they will be delivered by a range of providers with different business models’ (2011, p. 7) and ‘institutions that can attract students, by showing them that they offer good quality and good value for money, should grow and prosper, and may well increase their overall income’ (2011, p. 15).

4. Both sources are cited directly in the 2016 government White Paper Success as a Knowledge Economy (Johnson, 2016).

5. The survey’s sample size (14,057 in 2017; 14,046 in 2018) represents under 2% of the undergraduate population in England.

6. For example, ‘for a second year, the Higher Education Policy Institute Student Survey has shown more students in England (37%) believing they have received poor value than good value (32%) … Students taking out taxpayer-backed loans to attend university rightly expect the highest quality teaching and to secure good labour market outcomes that justify their investment of time and money’ (Johnson, 2017).

7. Similar findings are reported by the OfS: ‘70% of those studying in Scotland agree that [university] has been good value for money, compared to just over half (54%) of those in England’ (2018b, p. 9).

8. Within the hotchpotch of data amassed for the Which? study were ‘qualitative focus groups and surveys to explore perceptions of value for money; diary research and analysis of the Higher Education Policy Institute/Higher Education Academy 2014 Student Academic Experience Survey to consider the academic offer; and secondary research of the literature to consider the objective evidence’ (2014, p. 8).

9. VfM discourses continued to abound following the appointment of Sam Gyimah as Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation in 2018. Though stating ‘I do not see the value of a university education solely hanging on its contribution to one’s lifetime earnings,’ he nonetheless reminds universities of the need to ‘focus relentlessly on value for money’ (Gyimah, 2018).

10. We do not discuss the National Student Survey in this article because, although the most official barometer of student satisfaction at UK universities, it includes no direct measure of VfM.

11. This question is explored in part because Student Academic Experience Surveys (e.g. Neves & Hillman, 2018) find VfM positivity to be greater among students at RG universities (42%) than among those at Post-92 universities (35%). Similar differences are noted elsewhere (Office for Students, 2018b).

12. The RG is a self-selecting group of 24 research-focused universities in the UK. Post-92 universities, also known as ‘new’ universities, are former polytechnics awarded university status in or since 1992. The RG is usually associated with higher prestige.

13. In the higher-fees cohort, as far as possible, students were ‘matched’ with those from the previous year’s lower-fees cohort. This means that we sought to identify participants who were comparable in terms of socio-economic background, gender, degree subjects and secondary school type. Where an exact match for programme of study was not possible, we matched more broadly at the level of discipline type. Perfect matches were contacted first and it was not until those students had indicated that they did not wish to be involved (or had failed to reply to the third email invitation) that second choice matches were contacted. All but 18 of the 92 participants were successfully matched. In this way, comparability was maximised (see Vigurs et al., 2018a).

14. WP stands for Widening Participation. The term is used to characterise under-represented groups, such as those from lower income families. Our definition of WP follows those of the two universities at which the research project was undertaken. A fuller discussion is offered in Vigurs et al. (2018a).

15. Though numbers are small, this fall was sharper among students at the Post-92 university than at the RG university, and among state educated students who did not qualify for bursaries than among state educated students who did qualify for bursaries.

16. Comments such as ‘there’s a lot to pay back – it is a lot of money’ (2015, RG, Healthcare Science, state school, non-WP) and ‘I’m in the deepest pit imaginable’ (2015, Post-92, Journalism, state school, WP) were familiar.

17. One interviewee noted that ‘it is annoying to hear that in, like, Scotland it’s free’ (2015, Post-92, Film, TV and Radio Studies, state school, WP).

18. One interviewee had even calculated the ‘cost’ of her individual lectures by dividing her annual tuition fees by the number of contact hours received.

19. This is because ‘students can do little to influence quality once on a course … [and] are unable to drive quality through switching providers’ (National Audit Office, 2017, p. 9).

20. OfS research drew similar conclusions, noting that ‘quality of teaching’ was the main factor that influenced VfM, with 94% of students regarding this as ‘very important’ (2018b, p. 16).

21. Our qualitative data reflects quantitative differences by school type identified in larger surveys, such as the OfS’s finding that ‘58% of those that attended a private school believe that their overall investment in higher education has been good value for money, compared to only 50% of those that attended a state school.’ (2018b, p. 12).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education (Greater Expectations of Post-Graduation Futures? A Comparative Analysis of the Views of the Last Generation of Lower-Fees Undergraduates with the First Generation of Higher-Fees Undergraduates at Two English Universities; PI: Katy Vigurs).

Notes on contributors

Steven Jones

Steven Jones is a Professor at the Manchester Institute of Education, which is part of The University of Manchester. He previously worked for the University of Central Lancashire, Birmingham City University and Coventry University. He created the University of Manchester’s PGCert in Higher Education and is currently Director of Postgraduate Research for his School. Steven conducts research into policy and practice in post-compulsory education. He has co-authored reports for the Sutton Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and HEFCE that explore how socially disadvantaged young people conceptualise, engage with and perform at university. He is particularly interested in how students’ cultural and social capital affects their higher education experience, from application to employment.

Steven has presented research findings to Universities UK, the Employers and Education Taskforce, BIS, HM Treasury and the ASCL, as well as delivering a Westminster Briefing and addressing the Sunday Times Festival of Education. He sits on HEFCE’s Expert Group for Learning Gain and participates in roundtables for the Social Mobility Commission. In 2015, Steven was listed as one of JISC’s top 50 social media influencers in higher education.

Katy Vigurs

Katy Vigurs is a Reader in Education in the ‘Centre for the Study of Practice & Culture in Education’ (CSPACE) at Birmingham City University. Previously she was Associate Professor of Career & Higher Education at the International Centre for Guidance Studies, which is based in the University of Derby. Before this she was Associate Professor of Professional and Higher Education at Staffordshire University. Katy is an experienced social researcher, with an interest in educational inequalities and social justice, particularly in relation to the context of higher education and graduate employment. She was an elected convenor of the British Educational Research Association’s Social Justice special interest group between 2014 and 2016. She has carried out research projects funded by the Office for Students, Sutton Trust, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Department for Education, The Careers and Enterprise Company, Gatsby Foundation and the Society for Research into Higher Education.

Diane Harris

Diane Harris is a researcher at the University of Manchester. She is based in Manchester Institute of Education where she previously held the directorship of the part-time BA (Hons) In Education programme. She is an experienced teacher of physics and mathematics and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Diane is passionate about encouraging children and adults to engage with science, technology, mathematics and engineering (STEM) subjects in both their education and their everyday lives, and her teaching and research interests reflect this concern. She has co-authored reports exploring these areas for the Department for Education, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Society for Research into Higher Education, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Foundation. Diane is a member of the Engineering Professors’ Council Recruitment and Admissions Committee.