Thursday, March 19, 2009

Student-consumers demand value for money and efficient service

An interesting piece from the online Guardian today.

A reflection on the changes in universities ( an interesting comment is posted after the article on the debate on what a University shoud do), but the article does pick up on the issues of widening particpation that are faced by all universities:

"Gone are the days when universities just put out their prospectuses, and hoped willing punters would come through the doors come September. Now learning is linked to skills needs and to individual student requirements. It is at our place, or at your place; in our time, or in your time; just-in-time or for a lifetime.

"Only connect," wrote EM Forster a century ago in Howards End. Now it is schools, colleges and universities, employers and their future employees, who need to build enduring connections. Thereby, Leitch's ambition for 2020, "prosperity for all in the global economy", will have a chance of being achieved."

These connections are what we as a Fsculty are now working on, in developing our links with major employers, so that we can deliver awards to their workforce; so that the organisation benefits from upskilling of that workforce, and so that individuals reach their own personal educational goals.


1 comment:

FlorenceinSummer said...

Of course it is important for the university as a whole to ensure that it can support these connections with proccesses and services that allow them to develop, rather than continuing to use traditional and less flexible ones.