Why aren’t students engaging any more?

Student leaders in university meetings tell me that recently “student engagement” has been a hot topic.

There’s a feeling of stress in the sector about engagement levels being low – and a rhetoric suggesting that universities are doing more than ever for students – but they’re still not turning up.

SU Officers (and plenty of others in a student facing role) have been asked to perform the usual collective mind-reading trick and explain why cohorts of 30,000+ students aren’t taking part in the way that universities would like.

There’s work to be done here – and it arguably starts with agreeing what we’re talking about.

Is student engagement a proxy for attendance, or submitting academic work on time? Do we understand it as students engaging in extracurriculars? Is it students completing feedback forms, going to Student Staff Liaison Committees, or asking for extensions? Is it exclusively an in-person activity or can it happen online?

Do we mean online? In the classroom? Opening emails? Filling in surveys? Turning up to Office Hours?

It is probably, of course, all of things and more. If anything, the one thing that we can agree on is that it feels like students are doing fewer “student” things, less often – and when they do do them, they may be tired, ill, distracted or “half-hearted”.

And the multiple, often chaotic touch points being led by different people across a university are probably coalescing in meetings that feature those people. It’s not, it seems, just you or your service, activity, event or role. It’s across the piece.

If we don’t know, and we don’t understand, we must enquire

It sounds trite – but it’s obvious that before anyone reaches for solutions, barrier removal or incentives, the smart thing to do is try to understand the lives of those whose time is apparently more precious than it was in the past.

Knowing what the demographics are is key, as are the nuances like how many went through clearing, how many are first generation students, and how many commute long distances. Understanding the lived experiences of cohorts as a baseline enable a deeper look at the ways that enhanced engagement can be facilitated.

That can be fruitful – but assuming that the vanishing point is that students have less time than they did, and that they’re more anxious than they were, there’s then a three pronged approach I’d like to propose that exploring in itself is a useful task when considering engagement.

Easier to engage

Generally in my interactions with student leaders across the UK, it’s clear that the sector should make higher education more accessible to students through language. The transition to (and through) HE is a period of disequilibrium. Post-pandemic students report higher levels of anxiety than the general population with the cost of living crisis exacerbating this. So scaffolding transition in a way that eases anxiety and stress from when students first join our campuses through to graduation makes sense.

For example, breaking down key jargon and concepts that some are fluent in (like the mysterious aforementioned “Office Hours”) is more important than you’d expect. I was working with reps recently and they stressed the value of knowing what the person behind the (long) email signature looked like.

A module handbook that has pictures of Programme Leaders and explains what an office hour is and what you use them for goes a long way. It eases anxiety and makes it easier for them to attend because they now know what office hours are, what they’re for, what might happen in them, and where to find the room.

That reduction in anxiety drives up the value – of lecture attendance, academic referencing, student representation, the Careers Service, and winter warmer events. Knowing they can walk into a lecture 10 minutes late and that they won’t be shouted at helps.

Identifying the value

When students are choosing between heating and eating, it has to be valuable to a student to come onto campus. Students are making active choices as to whether the bus ticket is worth it to attend a lecture, office hours, event, or society socials.

Each individual that’s responsible for something knows the benefits – sense of belonging, outcomes, personal development and so on – but if students can do enough to get by at home/online and save money/time in the process, that’s what is valuable to them and it would be wrong to discount this as a lack of engagement.

It’s also important to make engagement valuable beyond the vouchers or free pizza (something I have fallen foul to in the past). Refreshments often do increase attendance because it’s free food and a heated room many don’t have right now,I’m not saying this doesn’t work. But articulating the intrinsic value of an event, mid module reviews, or attending seminars that aren’t related to the assignment they’re writing on, is key.

Showing a graph in induction that attendance equals better student outcomes from 2018 isn’t it. Promoting the benefits of working with their peers, the things they can add to their CV, and the difference they make by feeding back to the university (or is that just me?) is more like it. And if it ends up being that they engage online or in a different way, that’s okay.

Easing the barriers

Students are adults with adult lives. Meeting students where they’re at and easing the

barriers to participation so once they find it easy to engage, and they know and recognise the value, matters.

The cost of living crisis is playing hugely into this. So if students are weighing up whether they can afford to come onto campus, are microwaves for them to heat their lunch, a fridge, a low cost food option, childcare, or affordable transport?

Easing barriers is also about how accessible getting an extension is, wellbeing service waiting times, how long it takes to fill in a finance form, and whether they can find affordable housing.

There’s some brilliant examples of student basic needs centres in the US where they consider holistic wellbeing by streamlining communication and services by connecting students to campus resources when they need them.

There, if you’re stressed getting financial advice, they can connect you to wellbeing support. These centres eliminate life barriers and if UK HE wants to increase engagement, campuses and strategies need to scaffold support by meeting students’ basic needs.

Joined up thinking

As well as those steps, there is something else that I think would help. There are hundreds of engagement “touch points” that, when string together, make little sense for students who are starved of time or talking themselves out of finding the time.

University student experience forums or committees are often like compilation albums – a service, department, facility or project will present on its plans, engagement levels, successes, and so on.

But there is usually little sense that what anyone has been able to do is make all of that work together from a student perspective. In other words, while everyone’s engagement might be 20 per cent down, it’s rare to find anyone that knows whether it’s one particular set of students whose engagement has collapsed to Zero, or whether it’s all students just doing a bit less each.

If we saw higher education like trying to plan a major music festival, it’s always been the case that there are moments when two of your favourite bands are on at once.

Now that students might only be able to come for one afternoon – and are likely to want to stay in their tent unless there are others to come with them – it’s more important than every for teams across universities to be taking student archetypes, understanding their week, their burdens and pressures, and ensuring that intended engagement touchpoints aren’t loaded into times that won’t work, or that overlap in ways that would make engaging impossible.

And that likely means meetings where the agenda consists of types of students with comments from those that operate touchpoints, rather than the usual “but what about X students” when each service, department or project reports.

Adjusting the prescription

Universities can make it easy with the language used, it’s possible to demonstrate the value of engaging, and steps should be taken to ease the barriers by meeting students’ basic needs. Coordinating all of that intelligently by centering students in the discussion – so that engagement fits around them (rather than the other way around) will help too.

But one other thing that would really help would be for students to be engaged in both day to day delivery and day to day decision making.

Not all services, facilities, services or projects can be led by student volunteers or student staff – although my new colleagues tell me that far more of what is done “for” students is delivered in that way in other countries. We know that students like their advice laterally these days – and 10 poorly attended careers events may be better done through 10 partnerships with academic societies.

At the very least, having some student leadership and student staff in the teams that “provide” things for students both solves part of the cost of living crisis, and means that everything from the font on the poster to the time something is being staged can be the subject of conversation and adjustment in the office (or on teams). And students don’t tend to get another job (and leave the thing they were doing in the lurch) halfway through the year.

Students do want to engage. Whilst they might not be doing so through the lens or in the context that is imagined, the more that can be done to involve them in what would work for their peers, the better – for them and for the sector.