Complaining voices must be heard

Renewed expansion of higher education will mean more students - and more aggrieved students. So it is disappointing that almost two years after the report of the Dearing inquiry, its recommendation that universities build improved and more transparent procedures for dealing with student complaints has not been acted upon more energetically.

Now the government has decided to turn up the heat (page 1). There is always a risk when governments intervene that institutional autonomy will be eroded. Much better that institutions remove that temptation by getting their houses in order themselves.

Part of institutions' reluctance arises from the fear that simpler procedures will mean more complaints. No doubt they will, with attendant extra work and legal fees. But that is not a good reason for foot-dragging.Students now invest a lot in their education. Higher education institutions owe it to them to have clear, open and fair ways of handling complaints. This is anyway one of the best ways of improving quality.

Some standardisation would be useful. The present visitorial system, still surviving in the old universities, is past its sell-by date. It looks like a mechanism for obfuscation, secrecy and delay. It should go the way of hereditaries in the House of Lords.

Arrangements in newer universities may be better, but there is too much reliance on final appeal to the university council. With councils becoming smaller and more closely involved in running institutions, they can be too supportive of the university's management.

When the Department for Education and Employment looks this summer at universities' complaints procedures, a priority ought to be to ensure that they all start with the principle of subsidiarity - that every complaint be dealt with at the lowest and most local level possible. Most complaints should be despatched without institution-wide or even broader systems being brought into play. Everyone agrees that fee-paying students are going to be more demanding and that academics need to get better at not incurring complaints and dealing promptly with them when they arise.

But there is no agreement about how to cope with the small number of complaints that turn into full-scale disputes between student and university. The National Union of Students wants a complaints ombudsman, an idea that the government seems to dislike. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals would prefer a system of arbitration. Dennis Farrington, an expert on higher education law, has suggested a system of national complaints panels with members drawn from the ranks of retired senior academics and administrators. Such panels might not inspire student trust.

The key may lie with the Quality Assurance Agency. Complaints procedures are to be the subject of QAA guidance, and assessment of each institution's procedures will form part of the overall quality assessment. This is the right way to go. It is entirely proper for the QAA to require that robust arrangements be in place. It is reasonable for it to suggest what these might be should existing arrangements be found wanting.

What is not so obvious is that another bureaucratised system is required. There must be one common element - that complainants should, as a last resort, have access to courts and tribunals like any other aggrieved citizens. Both the Visitor system and the CVCP's proposed scheme deny that access.

The involvement of the QAA, which is after all to some extent the creature of the institutions themselves, should not be seen as an attack on institutional freedom but as a protection against political interference and a spur to proper and prompt treatment of students' grievances. The right way to avoid complaints is to treat people fairly, not make it hard for them to get redress.