UR TV CAST

The ensuite bathroom is gorgeous, all tiled and with a button on the showers that you can press to make sure you don’t burn yourself And there is tons of storage space. The bed lifts up so that you can store stuff underneath and there is storage space too above the door.”l.hodges independent.co.uk. I work at one of the top 20 UK universities, with a reputation for good teaching. Yet in eight years my final-year class size has quadrupled from 16 to sixty-something. In the past, introductory lectures were big, but as students progressed groups became smaller. Now I hear that students at good universities may spend all three years in classes of more than 100 Indeed, this may be the tip of an iceberg. If universities are to make a profit, class sizes will probably need to be larger still.
But the really remarkable fact is that no one knows what’s going on, because information on university class sizes is not collected.

Peter Knight, the vice-chancellor of the University of Central England, believes that because students already pay fees, we are in a welcome consumerist culture now. Whatever the interpretation, the fact is that a major campaign of building and upgrading is going on at UK universities. For all the gnashing of teeth about top-up fees, it may be that we will look back on the early 21st century as a golden age for British universities, when they awoke from decades of complacency and threw themselves into new efforts to raise funds and give students a better deal.’WE TOLD THE COLLEGE WE WANTED DOUBLE BEDS’Kirsty Marshall, 20, is president of the student union at Royal Holloway and is living in one of the rooms in a new hall of residence, complete with double bed, walk-in shower, lifts that speak and stylish kitchens.”It may seem a little bit expensive paying £87 a week for a room but it’s lovely living here. And Roy Newson, the marketing director of APU, thinks that, because top-up fees will be paid after graduation and when the individual is earning, they will be less of an issue for students than the current flat-rate fee, which is paid up front. “We are well aware that students will be more demanding when they are paying fees so we are investing substantially in the infrastructure of the university,” says Professor Les Ebdon, Luton’s vice-chancellor.Not everyone accepts the argument that student expectations will increase. APU has a new campus opening in the middle of Chelmsford containing a new sports hall and a new student facilities building. University College Winchester, which hopes to become a full-blown university before too long, is investing in a student centre, too.The University of Luton has just put £5.5m into a new media arts centre opened by Greg Dyke, the former director-general of the BBC.

But Professor David Chiddick, Lincoln’s vice-chancellor, has already decided that the university needs a new student centre, complete with a bar and cafeteria “Top-up fees are focusing our minds,” he says. “We are going to be putting the fee income back into what we call ‘the Exeter experience’,” says Professor Steve Smith, the vice-chancellor. Exeter is also looking at its staff/student ratio, which currently stands at 15:1. Professor Smith hopes to bring some relief by recruiting more staff for one school that has too many students.Universities are also shelling out on market research to find out what it is that students want.