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> What's changed? Student numbers. Massive, monumental growth in student numbers. And the red tape that comes with that kind of size (as ever). Labour's push

> What's changed? Student numbers. Massive, monumental growth in student numbers. And the red tape that comes with that kind of size (as ever). Labour's push for 50% of school leavers to go to university, large swathes of new courses approved that would otherwise have been taught through vocational routes, increase in student applications vs places (in the UK you can apply [or at least could] for up to 6 places, one of the major shifts in the last few years people don't talk about is the push to use all of those slots, whereas you used to only apply to 1 or 2 - this has increased application review and support burden massively). Also, with an insane growth in the use of Clearing/Adjustment to secure your final place, there's a lot of work put into situational modelling of expected numbers. The market has gone through a phase of only-slightly-organised chaos, and students are now calling the shots at most universities, and leaving things until the last possible moment. This has also meant unis have had to commit to staff numbers before knowing really what their cohorts will look like. With GApps for Education, most people have Gmail - it doesn't solve anything really. Collaborative software only works if the people required have the time and technical ability (or desire) needed to collaborate. If they don't (like academics), then you get bodies to do it. > "assisting with research proposals" is certainly new. But is it big? Yep. University I worked at had a team in each faculty full time helping with this. The grants procedure, writing something actually comprehensible (something of a novelty with some academics, who don't appear to know what a requirement of "plain English description" is...), impact assessment and case study requirements, lining up interviews for candidates, fellows and assistants for the project team, setting up review panels etc... is a major administrative task now. Again, if there weren't support staff doing this, it'd add another bunch of hours onto each lecturer's 80 hour week. > How much falls under "pastoral support"? Most faculties will have several student support staff specifically to help with wellbeing during their time at uni. Having been a couple of doors down from someone who tried to commit suicide whilst in uni halls, remember rationalising away those support roles does have a human impact.

iguy 9y ago
Thanks! > Student numbers I still don't quite see why overall growth must change the proportion so much. Maybe the extra complication of everyone applying to 20 places is a factor which doesn't scale. I don't know exactly how you fix that. Perhaps you should cap the number of applications an individual can make? Re complicated IT, again somehow needing to collaborate on departmental memos somehow wasn't an issue when we had typewriters. I suspect a lot is weird make-work. > grants procedure OK, good. I would not have refused such help, but have never had any! This however does seem orthogonal to students. It's part of the massive stuff-up that is research funding, where we've allowed the question of allocating these funds to eat up not only a majority of the time of the scientists being supported... but also apparently a huge number of other people. All ultimately paid out of the pot we're trying to distribute. Can't we change the rules of the game so that more of the pot goes to things which aren't obviously zero-sum? > support staff specifically to help with wellbeing It's nice to do these things, certainly. But lavishing them on the best and brightest young adults while all the other ones with jobs fend for themselves doesn't seem so easy to defend. Why isn't this part of the NHS budget?
- wastedhours 9y ago
  > I still don't quite see why overall growth must change the proportion so much. As a hypothetical, if you were a Dean and you had a £100k to have the greatest impact in the department: Do you employ 2 lecturers at £50k each to teach lectures, do admin and sort out research, or 1 lecturer at £55k, and take a bunch of their tasks away and give them to a research coordinator for £20k (who can support maybe 10 lecturers) and a research assistant for £25k (who can sit on panels, do research, and teach some classes, and support maybe 2 lecturers)? Also, there are a finite number of world-class lecturers in any field - a lot of which would rather be researching than teaching, so making their time more efficient by basically taking away their "university" commitments to students (undergrads especially), give them more time to work on their projects, is almost the point. > Maybe the extra complication of everyone applying to 20 places is a factor which doesn't scale. I don't know exactly how you fix that. Perhaps you should cap the number of applications an individual can make? There is a cap (which I believe is 6). The issue is, that students never really used that many before. You'd have your preferred course, and then maybe a back up (or two tops) - now, students play the market. They used to accept their offers immediately too, now they wait until the day before the UCAS deadline to give themselves the most time (fair enough, but has an impact on universities across the board). This will bed in in the next few years, but you'd be amazed at how sharply this changed. > Can't we change the rules of the game so that more of the pot goes to things which aren't obviously zero-sum? One of the hidden effects of the university fees change was that a lot of the research funding was cut and expected to be derived from incoming students rather than distributed by government (hence why so much time now goes into external proposal writing and pandering to the last remaining government schemes with things like REF case studies). You now have to appeal to external funders more than internal ones, making the process more... processy. I've heard of some places not offering PhD places unless the subsidy was from an external source. Also (and this is a damning indictment of universities tbh), universities have increased the overhead they charge to their staff from their research grants, to spend on capital projects, meaning they need to apply for more money, potentially making the process even harder. > Why isn't this part of the NHS budget? Is that a serious question? :) mental health provision in the NHS is notoriously woeful, and "best and brightest young adults" (not especially true when you consider the aim is for 50% to go there, that's not the best and brightest, that's half the bell curve. Also, quite a few mental health professionals really want the age of being an adult recognised as 25 as social dynamics have changed to make it closer to that than 18) put under artificial pressure with little money and no support network, having to identify mental health issues themselves, and then admit themselves to treatment units over... missed coursework deadlines? True, having better mental health provision for students vs non-students is damning when you consider the social-economic issues behind university access, but as to my previous point about the Dean with cash to spend - at a university system level, the investment in students not killing themselves with dedicated support staff vs community or lecturer pastoral support is one they've balanced. EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that some of the roles I've mentioned don't always eat up a full FTE over the course of a year. Lots of people work part-time, or roles that have peaks and troughs throughout a season, are supported by teams with different remits. Those wellbeing support staff will help with enrolment during September madness, research staff will help with internal comms, programme admins will help with market research, everyone helps plan open days and applicant visit days.

iguy 9y ago

Thanks! > Student numbers I still don't quite see why overall growth must change the proportion so much. Maybe the extra complication of everyone applying to 20 places is a factor which doesn't scale. I don't know exactly how you fix that. Perhaps you should cap the number of applications an individual can make? Re complicated IT, again somehow needing to collaborate on departmental memos somehow wasn't an issue when we had typewriters. I suspect a lot is weird make-work. > grants procedure OK, good. I would not have refused such help, but have never had any! This however does seem orthogonal to students. It's part of the massive stuff-up that is research funding, where we've allowed the question of allocating these funds to eat up not only a majority of the time of the scientists being supported... but also apparently a huge number of other people. All ultimately paid out of the pot we're trying to distribute. Can't we change the rules of the game so that more of the pot goes to things which aren't obviously zero-sum? > support staff specifically to help with wellbeing It's nice to do these things, certainly. But lavishing them on the best and brightest young adults while all the other ones with jobs fend for themselves doesn't seem so easy to defend. Why isn't this part of the NHS budget?

wastedhours 9y ago
> I still don't quite see why overall growth must change the proportion so much. As a hypothetical, if you were a Dean and you had a £100k to have the greatest impact in the department: Do you employ 2 lecturers at £50k each to teach lectures, do admin and sort out research, or 1 lecturer at £55k, and take a bunch of their tasks away and give them to a research coordinator for £20k (who can support maybe 10 lecturers) and a research assistant for £25k (who can sit on panels, do research, and teach some classes, and support maybe 2 lecturers)? Also, there are a finite number of world-class lecturers in any field - a lot of which would rather be researching than teaching, so making their time more efficient by basically taking away their "university" commitments to students (undergrads especially), give them more time to work on their projects, is almost the point. > Maybe the extra complication of everyone applying to 20 places is a factor which doesn't scale. I don't know exactly how you fix that. Perhaps you should cap the number of applications an individual can make? There is a cap (which I believe is 6). The issue is, that students never really used that many before. You'd have your preferred course, and then maybe a back up (or two tops) - now, students play the market. They used to accept their offers immediately too, now they wait until the day before the UCAS deadline to give themselves the most time (fair enough, but has an impact on universities across the board). This will bed in in the next few years, but you'd be amazed at how sharply this changed. > Can't we change the rules of the game so that more of the pot goes to things which aren't obviously zero-sum? One of the hidden effects of the university fees change was that a lot of the research funding was cut and expected to be derived from incoming students rather than distributed by government (hence why so much time now goes into external proposal writing and pandering to the last remaining government schemes with things like REF case studies). You now have to appeal to external funders more than internal ones, making the process more... processy. I've heard of some places not offering PhD places unless the subsidy was from an external source. Also (and this is a damning indictment of universities tbh), universities have increased the overhead they charge to their staff from their research grants, to spend on capital projects, meaning they need to apply for more money, potentially making the process even harder. > Why isn't this part of the NHS budget? Is that a serious question? :) mental health provision in the NHS is notoriously woeful, and "best and brightest young adults" (not especially true when you consider the aim is for 50% to go there, that's not the best and brightest, that's half the bell curve. Also, quite a few mental health professionals really want the age of being an adult recognised as 25 as social dynamics have changed to make it closer to that than 18) put under artificial pressure with little money and no support network, having to identify mental health issues themselves, and then admit themselves to treatment units over... missed coursework deadlines? True, having better mental health provision for students vs non-students is damning when you consider the social-economic issues behind university access, but as to my previous point about the Dean with cash to spend - at a university system level, the investment in students not killing themselves with dedicated support staff vs community or lecturer pastoral support is one they've balanced. EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that some of the roles I've mentioned don't always eat up a full FTE over the course of a year. Lots of people work part-time, or roles that have peaks and troughs throughout a season, are supported by teams with different remits. Those wellbeing support staff will help with enrolment during September madness, research staff will help with internal comms, programme admins will help with market research, everyone helps plan open days and applicant visit days.