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Real Student Engagement
July 4, 2008
Alex Usher, Vice President, Educational Policy Institute
When the word “university” first cropped up in Bologna about 800 years ago, it didn’t refer to knowledge or an institution per se. It just meant the totality of something – in this case, the totality of students, who had banded together to bargain collectively as a kind of guild. They negotiated standard fees for lodgings with the townspeople and laid down rules for lecturers (mainly so the professors couldn’t collect fees and then skip town). In a very concrete historical way, the university really is all about students.
So why don’t students have a bigger say in the way we run higher education?
At a meeting I was at a few weeks ago, researcher Cliff Adelman remarked on the differences in the way higher education policy is made in America and how it is made in Europe. In Europe, students have always been invited to the top policy discussion tables where things like Bologna are involved, mostly through the European Student Information Bureau, a loose confederation of national student unions. In Canada, too, there is a fair bit of student input into senior decision tables, like the National Advisory Group on Student Financial Aid. The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation has always had one or two students on its Board of Directors making important contributions, and government education commissions are usually smart enough to include a youth voice, such as Leslie Church’s on the Rae Report.
But in the United States, it’s a different story. Big national commissions – like, say, the Spellings Commission – almost never have a student presence. Within institutions, too, the actual student governments are relatively weak.
What accounts for the differences? Let me hazard a few guesses:
An obvious difference is age. European students are, on average, a couple of years older than American students, and their added maturity makes them better spokespeople for their cause. I’ve had occasion to sit through a number of presentations from European student leaders, and while I don’t always agree with them, I think they state their case in a mature and persuasive manner.
Another obvious difference is that Americans have, over the years, increasingly infantilized young adulthood. The advent of helicopter parents in combination have increasingly made it seem that undergraduates are really just children who can’t be trusted to do things on their own (this is increasingly the case in Canada as well as far as I can tell). I can only assume this attitude rubs off on the kids themselves and that can’t do much for their self-esteem.
The third difference is that I suspect the commercialization of higher education has gone further down the road in the US than elsewhere. Students are more likely to be seen there as “customers” – people whose views should be listened to in order to craft a better product, but not people who should be brought into governance. Elsewhere, I suspect that there is at least more of a pretence that students are part of a community of learners and as such are more welcome within governing structures.
The final important difference is the way that student government and student activities are programmed. In Canada and Europe, student activities are almost entirely student-run with funds and governance usually provided through the elected students’ union. In the US, student government and most student activities are funded and overseen at least in part by the institution itself.
This has plusses and minuses. It means that in the US, student activities are consistently well-funded and groups are provided with advice through faculty liaisons and mentors. This is enormously beneficial in terms of creating good campus atmospheres and better conditions for student engagement. In comparison, student clubs and activities in Canada and Europe are poorer and suffer from more erratic management from year-to-year. This is a huge plus for the US from a retention point of view (a thought for my colleagues in Canadian institutions who fret about having weaker NSSE results than their US counterparts – how much of the difference do you think accounted for by these different models of student activity governance? My bet is quite a bit.)
However, the downside of this approach is that student engagement in matters relating to the academic and financial management of higher education is somewhat pro forma – a sponsored activity rather than a spontaneous one. The European (and to a lesser extent, Canadian) version of student unionism might sometimes seem more hysterical than the American one, but it is at least drawn from an authentic source.
Anyways, for whatever reason, the view in North America is too often that students are not worth listening to, that the questions of institutional and system governance are too complex for them and therefore their views should be ignored. Sometimes, there is some truth to this view: the issues are complex, students don’t always grasp the subtleties, and they have a shorter-term view of the institution than do other stakeholders (for the very good reason that most of them won’t be hanging around too long). And yet they have important things to say and need to be encouraged to bring their views to the table in a constructive manner.
This is a difficult balancing act: even if one wants more and better student representation, one has to be aware that such things cannot simply be mandated from above – indeed, doing this from the top-down is precisely the wrong thing to do. It’s almost a catch-22: people in power don’t want student representation because it’s quality is so low, but quality can’t improve as long as students are shut out of the process?
So how can institutions and governments induce better-quality student representation? Try giving students some responsibilities. In Canada, it’s notable that those student unions with large ancillary business responsibilities tend to gravitate to the national and provincial student organizations which view lobbying as a serious job to be done professionally (such as the truly excellent Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance) while the smaller ones, which tend to have few assets or businesses, often drift towards the Canadian Federation of Students, whose style of presentation and lobbying is characterized by hysterical shrillness.
As long as student government is prevented opportunities to be more than a talk-shop, it will never attract the serious-minded students who can give adequate voice to real student concerns and aspirations. Give students opportunities to make real contribute, and they will do so. And sure, there might be the odd problem or even disaster along the way – but isn’t that what education and learning is all about?
Enjoy the Weekend, and Happy Fourth to our American friends
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