See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/230132561

Student Support in Higher Education: Understandings, Implications and

Challenges

Article  in  Higher Education Quarterly · March 2009

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00420.x

CITATIONS READS

15 298

1 author:

Brendan Bartram
University of Wolverhampton
30 PUBLICATIONS   275 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Teaching excellence in Higher Education: a comparison of English and Australian academics’ perspectives View project

Teaching English as Foreign Language in Palestinian HEIs: An e-Learning Initiative that Bridges Educational and Socio-Political Gaps “TEFL-ePAL” View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Brendan Bartram on 20 September 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Higher Education Quarterly, 0951–5224
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00420.x
Volume ••, No. ••, •• 2009, pp ••–••

Endpiece
Student Support in Higher
Education: Understandings,
Implications and Challenges
Brendan Bartram, University of Wolverhampton

Abstract
This paper attempts to offer a critical examination of the notion of student
support in higher education in the UK. It compares some of the key ways in
which student support is understood across the sector and contrasts a human-
istic view with understandings driven more by instrumental and therapeutic
concerns. The possible risks and effects that could be associated with these
differing understandings are also examined. Against this background, consid-
eration is additionally afforded to international students studying at UK
universities. Finally, the paper identifies a number of questions worthy of
institutional consideration.

Introduction
Supporting students has arguably always been part of the professional
remit of academics working in higher education, and few would dispute
that universities in the UK have, in recent years, come to pay greater
attention to this notion, perhaps as a result of ‘student support and
guidance’ now being identified as one of the key ‘auditable’ areas within
the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) inspection
framework. Although some claim that a concern to assist students in
their personal and academic development is an integral element in
common understandings of a professional academic identity, others
question the extent to which such understandings are in fact shared,
particularly in an educational sector that lacks even a unified sense of
purpose and identity (Evans and Abbott, 1998; Patrick and Smart, 1998)
If such matters as these remain elusive, it would certainly appear

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600
Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4, 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148,
USA.
2 Higher Education Quarterly

legitimate to speculate that the notion of ‘student support’ will have

different meanings and emphases for different lecturers and students
and, indeed, different institutions.
Against this background, it is worth subjecting the idea of student
support to critical scrutiny and considering the implications of the dif-
ferent ways in which it can be understood and interpreted. It is perhaps
unsurprising that this area has rarely been problematised in the literature
as efforts in this direction might be interpreted as attempts to legitimise
unacceptable or ‘antiquated’ views of students as intruders distracting
academics from the important business of research and scholarly activity.
Although this paper does not, in any way, wish to lend support to such
views, there is arguably still a case for critically examining the role of
student support in higher education. This evaluation involves an exami-
nation of two areas: first, some of the ways in which support for students
is understood in higher education, and second, the possible challenges
and effects that could be associated with these particular understandings
of the role of support.

The humanistic interpretation

Some might argue that beliefs in the value of support and guidance are
rooted in the classical humanist ideology that underpins English educa-
tional traditions and attaches great significance to the pastoral role in
schooling. Concerns to build and maintain supportive and individual
relationships with students, driven by convictions that such an approach
will support academic learning and promote personal development,
could arguably be seen as long-standing priorities that resonate with
Holmes and McLean’s (1989) description of classical humanist values in
English education. Such an understanding of support arises thus from
pedagogic and social beliefs in the importance of assisting and develop-
ing learners in an attempt to help them achieve their potential. Smith
(2007, p. 688) sums up a sense of the key values underpinning this view
of support:
Meaningful, holistic support proceeds from a position that education contains
constituent elements of nurturing. In other words, it belongs to the domain of
human cultural interactions . . .

These beliefs may be confined to particular individuals working within

particular institutions; elsewhere, such beliefs may have been signifi-
cant in moulding the entire ethos of an institutional support culture.
Some commentators (e.g. Mills, 1999) have suggested that this

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Student Support in Higher Education 3

support model has characterised many (although not exclusively) older

institutions in the UK, perhaps most notably Oxford and Cambridge,
where the small-group tutorial is believed to offer academic guidance
in conjunction with the kind of personal support that can be facilitated
by smaller group sizes. This view of support is clearly predicated on the
primacy of students’ academic needs, with expert tutors as the primary
‘support agents’, and its success is dependent on the relative intimacy
that smaller groups afford. Questions remain, however, about its
adequacy with regard to fulfilling other student needs (e.g. social, emo-
tional, integrational, practical) and the extent to which this kind of
support experience can be provided in the majority of higher education
institutions, where student numbers have significantly swelled in recent
years, thereby increasing staff-to-student ratios and presenting chal-
lenges for small-group teaching formats. Results from Wilcox et al.’s
(2005) research even suggest that the reliance on academic tutors for
support may not be as important as often believed. Their study showed
that forms of social support provided by peers were far more
valued than the support first-year students received from tutors, for
example.

The instrumental view

There are, however, different understandings and motivations that lie
behind concerns to support students. Smith (2007) argues, for instance,
that institutions that are more susceptible to managerialist cultures will
be more inclined to conceive of support as technical solutions, whereby
students are directed away from academic staff to specialist services and
products. This more technicist view might, at first sight, appear to cast
support in a particularly prominent role, with great emphasis on publi-
cised ‘support mechanisms’ and conspicuously documented procedures
on glossy leaflets. Yet a closer inspection might suggest that an instru-
mentally inspired understanding reduces the notion to an indicator of
‘performance’ and encourages forms of support that may even be coun-
terproductive in the higher education environment.The shift towards the
higher education mass market, where students’ evaluation of support
provided and received has become one of the barometers of QAA
success (Pelletier, 2003) is one factor that potentially accounts for an
instrumentalised view of student support. In this sense, it could be
argued that the importance of and expectations around support have
increased in line with the rising number of auditable mechanisms
(module evaluation forms, QAA focus groups, staff–student consultative

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

4 Higher Education Quarterly

meetings and annual monitoring) through which students report on their

level of satisfaction. Some, like Furedi (2004, p. 9), have argued that such
processes have led to a formalisation of relationships in education, one
effect of which has been the transformation of issues such as support
‘into carefully regulated transactions’, motivated more by the desire to
avoid ‘hassle, complaints and litigation’ (Furedi, 2004, p. 10) and a
concern ‘with how they [teachers and lecturers] are seen to be doing
their job than with what they actually do’. In this view, the notion of
support becomes understood as a contractual obligation between con-
sumers and service providers, a further effect of which may be a dete-
rioration rather than an improvement in trust relations. Smith (2007,
p. 688) argues this point very clearly and, in the process, makes a
sharp contrast with the holistic, humanistic understanding of support
described earlier:
the commodified roles of student-as-consumer and institution-as-product-
provider undercut the authenticity of the relationship [between student and
tutor].
Although some may challenge this analysis, several commentators
(Bathmaker, 2003, p. 183) have suggested that the marketisation of
higher education has resulted in students adopting increasingly
consumer-centric orientations. Their support expectations have perhaps
increased as a result of ‘value for money’ concerns and, as Smith (2007)
goes on to argue, chiefly in view of institutional desires to maintain
customer satisfaction in the face of retention and achievement targets. At
the same time, the widening participation agenda would often appear to
be accompanied by assumptions that the ‘non-traditional learners’
recruited to meet the 2010 participation targets are, by their nature, in
need of greater and more extensive support. Recent media reporting of
a likely rise in dropout rates at UK universities, for example, prompted
predictable calls for ‘more support’ for such learners, although the spe-
cifics of exactly what this might involve are rarely defined:
The drop-out rate after one year also improved slightly but statisticians’
projections are that it will rise. Funding councils and unions say more needs
doing to support new students. (BBC News, 2008, p. 1)
Although this may be true for many individuals, there are certain dangers
associated with this view. Apart from the risk of homogenising ‘non-
traditional learners’, one possible danger is that students may increas-
ingly be seen within a deficit model, a model which enshrines ‘a vision of
young people as being hapless, hopeless and in need of therapy’ (Hayes,
2004, p. 184).

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Student Support in Higher Education 5

The therapeutic angle

This vision of diminished student capacity may relate in part to
what Ecclestone (2004, p. 135) describes as ‘a broader cultural
de-moralisation’ in England, which has given rise to what both Eccle-
stone (2004) and Hayes (2004) see as a new therapeutic orientation in
education, whereby ‘new tendencies to see people as victims’ (Eccle-
stone, 2004, p. 135) and an over-concern for the development of self-
esteem and supporting the vulnerable has oriented educational priorities
towards forms of therapeutic pedagogy, and whereby lecturers ‘fashion
their teaching around a range of therapeutic and counselling techniques
and an overriding concern with their own and their pupils’ or students’
feelings’ (Hayes, 2004, p. 184).
Leonard and Morley (2003, p. 5) argue that research literature on
international students in particular sees constructions of them ‘in a
victim role – as in need of rescue and “help” ’. Pelletier (2003) comes to
similar conclusions in her meta-analysis of unpublished research on
overseas students, noting the construction of ‘the international student
as a counselling case’:
One is immediately struck by the emphasis on the problems and need for help
which international students are perceived to have . . . This emphasis on
student problems leads to different constructions in the literature. Firstly, the
international student as victim; under-informed, mismanaged by supervisors,
poorly adjusted socially and culturally, and unable to address these problems
without help. (p. 15)

Walker (1997, p. 8), observing similar tendencies, ascribes this view of

international students to two prevalent camps: those belonging to the
‘problem approach’, who view students from a paternalistic angle, and
those she describes as ‘the bleeding hearts welfare lobby’, driven by an
overdeveloped sense of welfare concerns and an awareness of market
expectations relating to ‘after-sales services’.
This combination of market and therapeutic values may then not only
be responsible for placing what some might see as an undesirable or
inappropriate over-emphasis on student support in some institutions but
also for increasing tendencies to homogenise groups of students and
legitimating views of their diminished capacity. An associated danger is
that some students themselves might also come to accept this rather
impoverished view; a view clearly antithetical to supporting the devel-
opment of the independent and self-directing learner that higher educa-
tion arguably aims to promote. Such views may, in fact, already be
helping to construct what some have referred to as a growing culture of

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

6 Higher Education Quarterly

dependency among home and international students in higher

education, and writers such as Pelletier (2003, p. 17) acknowledge the
resultant challenge faced by the sector in developing such qualities as
self-reliance amid increasing pressures to provide ever more support.
The growth of support services provided by many universities, along
with a renewed focus on funded research activities into improving
student support in higher education, may then not only further the
impression that student needs should be increasingly prioritised by uni-
versities and their staff, perhaps thus helping to sustain some of the above
constructions of students, but may also serve to reshape student support
expectations beyond what some might consider appropriate, reasonable
or desirable in higher education.

Conclusion
It would seem, then, that there are a number of ways of understanding
the nature of student support, and this will therefore have implications
for defining not only what the concept includes but also the ways in
which staff, students and institutions interact. This paper has examined
three broad ways of approaching the concept, contrasting a humanistic
view with a more instrumental or therapeutic angle on support. Smith
(2007) applies a similar analysis in his consideration of the topic, con-
trasting what he describes as a holistic versus technical position on
support. He acknowledges quite logically that a continuum of under-
standings may well exist between these two points, and it is worth adding
that these potentially conflicting understandings will be located in dif-
ferent lecturers, students and institutional support cultures. As such, the
potential for tension between these different intersections is increased:
a number of issues are thus worthy of individual and institutional
consideration. First, it is worth examining ways in which staff and
universities can clarify their understandings of and aspirations for
student support. Transparency in this regard could contribute to resolv-
ing some of the tensions referred to above. Second, it would be useful to
identify potential models of support located between the two poles
referred to here and to examine the driving forces and intentions behind
them, together with the ways in which they define and attempt to address
student needs, whether these be chiefly conceived of as academic, pas-
toral, personal, social, emotional, informational or practical, etc.
The diversity of student needs in itself raises questions about the
nature of student support and the best ways to provide this. Are these
needs equally important (for all students), or can a hierarchy of student

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Student Support in Higher Education 7

needs be established? Such scrutiny might no doubt lead to the formali-

sation of student support policies, which, given the points made here,
would require consideration in light of their potential implications
and consequences for (financial) resources and, not least of all, staff and
student behaviour or cultures. Questions regarding appropriateness and
desirability are key in this respect, although this raises further questions
about the criteria that have been used to define these terms. Such
questions do not find easy answers, but it is hoped that this paper has at
least gone some way to demonstrating the importance of tackling these
issues in the interests of developing more informed and sustainable
policies and cultures.

References
Bathmaker, A. (2003) The Expansion of Higher Education: A Consideration of Control,
Funding and Quality. In S. Bartlett and D. Burton (eds.), Education Studies: Essential
Issues. London: Sage, pp. 169–189.
BBC News (2008) Undergraduate Intake Mix Widens, 4 June 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/
1/hi/education/7435641.stm, last accessed 5 June 2008.
Ecclestone, K. (2004) The Rise of Low Self-Esteem and the Lowering of Educational
Expectations. In D. Hayes (ed.), Key Debates in Education. London: Routledge-Falmer,
pp. 133–137.
Evans, L. and Abbott, I. (1998) Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. London:
Cassell.
Furedi, F. (2004) The Formalisation of Relationships in Education. In D. Hayes (ed.), Key
Debates in Education. London: Routledge-Falmer, pp. 9–11.
Hayes, D. (2004) The Therapeutic Turn in Education. In D. Hayes (ed.), Key Debates in
Education. London: Routledge-Falmer, pp. 180–185.
Holmes, B. and McLean, M. (1989) The Curriculum. London: Unwin Hyman.
Leonard, D. and Morley, L. (2003) The Experiences of International Students in UK Higher
Education: Preface. http://www.ukcosa.org.uk/files/docs/ioepreface.doc, last accessed 19
December 2008.
Mills, R. (1999) Diversity, Convergence and the Evolution of Student Support in Higher
Education in the UK. In A. Tait and R. Mills (eds.), The Convergence of Distance and
Conventional Education. New York: Routledge, pp. 71–85.
Patrick, J. and Smart, R. (1998) An Empirical Evaluation of Teacher Effectiveness: the
Emergence of Three Critical Factors. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 23
(2), pp. 165–178.
Pelletier, C. (2003) The Experiences of International Students in UK Higher Education.
http://www.ukcosa.org.uk/files/docs/ioereport.doc, last accessed 19 December 2008.
Smith, R. (2007) An Overview of Research on Student Support: Helping Students to
Achieve or Achieving Institutional Targets. Nurture or Denature? Teaching in Higher
Education, 12 (5–6), pp. 683–695.
Walker, P. (1997) The Commodification of British Higher Education: International
Student Curriculum Initiatives. PhD thesis, Oxford Brookes University
Wilcox, P., Winn, S. and Fyvie-Gauld, M. (2005) ‘It Was Nothing to Do with the
University, It Was Just the People’: the Role of Social Support in the First-Year
Experience of Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education, 30 (6), pp. 707–722.

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

View publication stats