The debate over higher tuition fees has naturally focused on
the impact of rising costs on application rates and student expectations, but
where are alumni relations in the post-tuition-rise mix?
No one in academia wants to see university education turned
into a commodity but the reality of higher fees is that students are all too
often working out how they can extract as much value as they can from an
investment in their education. Pole position in league tables, new buildings,
accreditations and the promise of an enhanced student experience will always
attract new students – such factors are critical when it comes to universities
seeking to be different.
So, too – as David Willetts and others have emphasised –
will be more transparent data regarding employability of graduates from
university to university. However, students are coming to expect much more than
just information, they are seeking direct involvement from alumni. Prospective
students are increasingly seeking to understand and see the quality of those
who have graduated before and what they have since achieved. Incoming cohorts
want reassurance that alumni will play an active role in their career
development, mainly through opening up their networks of influence and sharing
their own real experiences – all of which can help students improve their job
prospects. In essence, they want to leverage alumni to support their own
employability.
The game is changing. Alumni were once seen, first and
foremost, in terms of their potential as benefactors, rewarding institutions
with endowments in return for some kind of personal gratification or
institutional recognition, whether the naming of a building, funding of an
academic post and so forth. Indeed, alumni are still a critical element to any
university's development strategy, but they have an increasingly important role
to play in how institutions are responding to and meeting the changing
expectations of their students now.
At Brunel Business School, for example, we are enhancing the
traditional view of alumni as a benefactor-driven activity through embracing
the needs of existing students that want to connect with past graduates as part
of their own development. This is being achieved through the launch of an
online mentoring platform for our Masters in Management students.
This approach embraces the principles of social networking
and creates a course-specific community. It's an environment where alumni offer
themselves as a learning resource that extends students' experience into
professional practice. By bringing these communities together, students are
able to explore industry sectors and discuss different career paths, whilst
allowing alumni to provide advice, perspectives, and play a role in student
life.
While getting alumni involved in student recruitment and
mentoring is in itself not new, where Brunel is different is in the creation of
a social networking environment where alumni provide more than just
'information' in a traditional push format. Rather, they offer direct
involvement through their own case history that supports both peer relationship
and community building. In doing so, we are responding to the game-change being
prompted by our incoming student body to enable a seamless link between those
joining university and those who have already graduated.
This kind of engagement and interaction needs to be the
backdrop against which existing students see themselves develop, whether
through mentoring each other during study or mentoring successive generations
of future students. It is important for universities to influence the way
students see themselves whilst studying – that is, as having something
worthwhile to give – as this will influence the way they see themselves once
they graduate and become alumni themselves. This investment in building and,
crucially, maintaining these long-term relationships needs to be made now.
Source: 7 November 2012, The Guardian by Professor Zahir
Irani (Head of Brunel Business School at Brunel University).
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