University Challenge: School Spirit
As Universities seek to differentiate themselves more effectively in an increasingly competitive war for talent both in terms of students and academics, is there a trick being missed to develop the asset of cultural identity?
Historic prestige, grand buildings, student grades and related entry criteria, job prospects, academic profile and research reputation all combine to serve as attractors. Of these, some are critical components in the league tables prospective students and academics pore over when making a choice. However, it’s interesting to note that even some of the most prestigious UK Universities score surprisingly low on student satisfaction. They are also quite often hotbeds of division between faculty and support staff and even between academic disciplines. What if the University alongside its other attractions was simply a fantastically well-functioning and distinctive community? With fellow feeling writ large, strong social capital and a powerful sense of pride and belonging which lasted a lifetime?
A strong community culture like this would be a powerful differentiator but in practice is hard to achieve. It is not dissimilar from corporate organisations that often find it hard to develop an enduringly distinctive and emotionally rewarding culture alongside a compelling corporate brand.
Bigger isn’t Better
Are there lessons to be learned? Yes, first it’s easier to achieve if you are small. To create a cohesive community requires a high degree of alignment and the bigger you are as an organisation, the more stakeholders there are to align.
Intuitively, the smaller the university, the easier it will be to facilitate the relationships within it, encourage a shared culture and identity and develop strong social capital. This is reflected in the league tables for student satisfaction. Of the top ten performing institutions only two have over 15,000 students and seven have less than 10,000. Whilst compact, rural feeling campuses fair better than sprawling city universities. This suggests that for students, bigger isn’t necessarily better.
The same trend can be observed in class satisfaction scores. In Gakhal’s 2017 student engagement study conducted at Coventry University (‘Evaluating student satisfaction at a top-performing UK university’), satisfaction was much higher in smaller classes with less cultural friction. Evidently a sense of togetherness has an important role to play in satisfaction and engagement performance.
Lessons from America
A lot can be learnt from the U.S. universities that are leading the way on this front, leveraging their advantage of massively popular sports teams and state-associated pride to foster a university-wide culture, reinforced by student-body nicknames like the ‘Warriors’, ‘Gauchos’ or ‘Bears’. On top of this, contributing to their wider university body are lots of smaller communities. These non-academic, extra-curriculars are seen as integral to their mission and purpose and they encourage their students to prioritise them.
The benefits of this engagement are reflected in the staggering donations from alumni. Lifelong affiliations and successful network building bear longer term fruit in a more subtle way when alumni begin to rise through the ranks of corporate leadership. According to the council for Aid to Education, in 2017 U.S. university alumni donated more than $11 billion to their alma maters, with ten colleges seeing approximately half of their alumni donating. Comparatively, the UK in 2017 saw only £322 million of funds secured from alumni.
Whilst we recognise that UK universities may struggle to muster hugely popular state-backed sports teams and the associated school pride, there are lessons to be learnt around the benefits of fostering an engaging identity and encouraging extra-curricular activities to promote your university’s culture. Now more than ever, as universities continue to increase their intakes and grow their multi-site campus across the city, there is a growing challenge to connect students and staff and deliver strong satisfaction and experience rates.
The art of distillation
The start-point in developing a winning community is to distil down what it is that you aspire to stand for. It should be something enduring and emotionally engaging, something consistent with your history, traditions, even your geography. Once distilled, stakeholder engagement must be brilliant because you will be asking large numbers of people to buy into it. But once developed, it can provide an enduring compass for the long-term development of an institution. It provides an organising intelligence for recruitment, faculty development and organisation, alumni relationships, corporate partnership programmes, community outreach plans, sponsor and support service strategies, even your estate development plans.
A distinctive spirit aligned to your broader commercial strategy as a University is an asset worth developing. An asset which might have the longest-term payback of all.