# Excerpts from my BILP - Students unions help university middle and senior managers cut through Mintzbergs's fallacy of distance. Finally it is difficult for students to understand whether or not they are receiving value for money as customers, partly because most UK-based undergraduate students pay for their fees through a loan system which is written off after 30 years, and partly because what is sold to students- a student experience and career prospects- is different to what they are contractually entitled: learning outcomes. --- Used the [[Co-efficient of determination]] (r²) to assess the strength of the relationship between the BMI and NPS. Could not use a Pearson analysis as the distribution is not normalised. However, given the nature of the close working partnership between the two organisations, and the similarity of BMI scores between the two organisations, it is not clear if SU staff are always aware which activity pertains to which bureaucracy . This also suggests that the SU should investigate how much time colleagues spend engaging in the University bureaucracy. --- Should have done more testing of the survey. Avoid issue with questions 2, 4 and 5 in the University set of questions. And the issue that some questions refer to a respondents' perceptions of the University bureaucracy, and some ask them to consider a third party's view of the bureaucracy. Where does this sit? ==Given the power dynamics expressed above, and students' unions desire to have more influence over their universities, many have adopted the core themes of the new regulatory environment in order to further their own aims [[Source - The Changing Role of Students’ Unions within Contemporary Higher Education|(Brooks, Byford & Sela, 2015)]]. ==Students' Unions are partly insulated from neo-liberalism in that the block grant provides funding outside a marketised environment. Students' unions are not in competition with each other, nor are they in competition with their university. Due to their political orientation they are aware of the impact of neo-liberalism and massification on higher education, and can act as a foil to it. However, students' unions also use the narrative of students as customers in order to achieve goals, and this is a neoliberal tool [[Source - The Changing Role of Students’ Unions within Contemporary Higher Education|(Brooks, Byford & Sela, 2015)]]. == # Other Notes - Candidate 9 does not know much about the Uni bureaucracy- very few responses. It is very likely that if a regulatory regime was more interested in the experiences of students, and took a Humboldtian view of the purpose of higher education, that SUs would have more efficacy and change agency. However, as it stands, the organisational 'bandwidth' available to leaders does not accommodate this additional change programme. This correlates with Bacon’s view that 'systomania', or what he defines as "a cult of constant change which stops people thinking rationally", exists in Higher Education (Bacon, 2014).