Here is a bog-standard stock photo of new students arriving at university.
When reading this, please be aware that no resemblance to any specific Hannah or Laura is intended.
Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of the £9k annual tuition fee that English universities now charge undergraduate students, or the subsequent political manoeuvring around “selling off the loan book” and so on. But as they say, we are where we are. I quite often hear students, and their parents, complaining that £9k annual tuition fees for a few hours per week contact time isn’t good value for money.
Well, it wouldn’t be good value for money, if a few hours contact time was all you were getting for your £9k. But students aren’t “buying” a certain amount of teaching time – and they certainly aren’t “buying” a degree. I think the nomenclature is unhelpful – calling this payment the “tuition fee” implies that it’s a payment specifically for the teaching that a student receives, where as in fact it’s a payment for far more than just a few hours’ teaching per week. I think it’s much more like a subscription to an expensive gym; and let’s imagine two young women, Hannah and Laura, joining this expensive gym.
Both Hannah and Laura take out identical year-long memberships to this particular expensive gym. It’s got a great reputation, has fabulous facilities, and even being eligible to join is highly competitive. Their membership fees entitle them to use any of the facilities at any time, without any additional cost. Not only does the gym have great spaces and equipment for all sorts of different sports and activities, it has really good social spaces, and a large, lively, sociable clientele from all over the UK, as well as from many other countries. As part of the “welcome pack” that all new joiners receive, Hannah and Laura get information about all the facilities and equipment, and are invited to join a week-long orientation programme where they can meet other new gym members, as well as people who’ve belonged for a while, and the gym staff, all of whom are committed to making sure that Hannah, Laura and their fellow new members get the best out of their membership.
As part of the package that Hannah and Laura are entitled to for their annual membership fee, they have a number of timetabled sessions with a fitness trainer. Some of these sessions might be for quite large numbers of gym members, and others might be smaller sessions where they’ll get more personal attention. In addition, they’ll be positively encouraged to check in regularly with a specific member of staff – let’s call these staff members Hannah and Laura’s personal trainers – to discuss any issues they might be having with developing their fitness; every personal trainer has regular “office hours” when they’re available for consultation by gym members.
As well as the fitness trainers, the gym employs lots of other categories of staff; some of them are there to work with and help the gym members, but others are there to look after the trainers – they manage the HR functions, they manage the payroll, and do all the other things that are essential to keep a big organisation running smoothly. Still other staff are there to maintain the facilities, which, because this gym has a large membership mainly made up of exuberant young people who test the facilities quite hard, need a lot of looking after.
Both Hannah and Laura have identical gym memberships, costing the same, but the way they use these are quite different.
Hannah gives a cursory glance to her welcome pack and puts it on one side. She doesn’t look at the schedule for the orientation week, and doesn’t attend many of the sessions – after all, they’re not compulsory, are they? Throughout the year, Hannah turns up to most of her timetabled sessions (obviously, if she’s got a cold, or a hangover, she might well miss a session) and makes a point of doing exactly the amount of “independent exercise” which the trainers recommend as the minimum to allow gym members to keep up with the timetabled sessions. She doesn’t ever check in with her personal trainer, and she doesn’t ever interact with any of the other staff who are there to help the gym members. She doesn’t ever try any of the other activities or sports apart from her main sport, and although she uses the social spaces, she only ever talks to people she knows already.
Laura, on the other hand, reads through her welcome pack and makes a couple of notes about information she’d like to follow up. She attends as many of the sessions offered during the orientation week as she can, and uses these opportunities to find out more about what’s available to her as part of her membership. She also meets two or three other new gym members she gets on with, as well as someone who joined last year and knows the ropes. All year, Laura turns up not only to her timetabled sessions (unless she is genuinely ill) but also makes a point of regularly checking in with her personal trainer. She explores other sports and activities, and finds a couple she enjoys that she feels add to her ability to make progress in her main sport, and attends occasional sessions in those activities. She finds out what the other staff at the gym have to offer her, and makes appointments with those who offer services or advice that she’s interested in. She does the scheduled “independent exercise”, but she does a bit more than the minimum; she finds that the friends she made during the orientation week are a great support to her, and introduce her to other interesting people and ideas about ways she can improve her fitness.
Both Hannah and Laura are paying the same for their gym membership. But which of them is getting better value for money, which of them is getting more out of their gym membership, and which of them is likely to achieve more impressive results at the end-of-year fitness assessment?
The Martian Anthropologist 