League Tables, the Future Role of Student Services and the Importance of Measuring Impact and Effectiveness

Abstract

This concluding chapter returns to pick up some of the threads woven through earlier chapters. These include the growth of league tables and quality assurance measures and their impact on the UK sector and its students, the importance of measuring the effectiveness of all policies and procedures that concern institutions’ students and staff, and the moral, and indeed financial imperative to build on what has been learned in the past before so called ‘new’ initiatives are funded and launched. It looks to the future development and consolidation of the roll of professional student advisory service in the UK sector, making comparisons with that of the longer established, well respected and better funded US ‘student affairs’ organisation NASPA, and its members, concluding with a hope that student advisory services across the UK higher education sector will allowed to grow and develop to meet the changing circumstances and motivations of a diverse student body and be awarded the respect and voice they and the students they serve, merit.