Escape the lake! A model of the student-as-consumer's relationship with an institution

Or to provide a more intellectual title: A conceptual model integrating the dual role of students in higher education as learners and customers

This article considers questions like "are students primarily learners or customers? Or both? And how much of each? And when?" It ultimately builds up a thoughtful (and memorable) conceptual model that respects our students' dual, overlapping roles as customers and learners in our contemporary marketised higher education system.

It turned out much longer I originally planned at a cool 6,000 words, so I would recommend either grabbing a cup of coffee(!) or skipping forward to the concluding section where I recap the entire ‘escape the lake’ analogy.

Introduction

When you become a member of a health club and you pay your monthly or annual membership fee, what exactly have you just purchased? Have you bought a better life outcome such as “good health” or “fitness”? Can you feel entitled to reach your health-related goals? Which would include highly measurable, short-term goals like a weight reduction of 5kg? And even in the longer-term, has the act of becoming a member put you on-track to become a ‘world class athlete of tomorrow’?

The answer to all of these is most likely “no”.

Perhaps a better way to understand your entitlements at the health club is to start from the absolute minimum instead. Such an approach may reveal that, from a purely functional, ‘physics’ point of view, the only thing you have really purchased is a plastic membership card which grants you access to a shared exercise space with relevant equipment at predetermined times.

But most of us can sense there is more to the gym membership than this.

The latter description of the purchase (the 'plastic card' one) is more difficult to refute, but to most of us who have been members of health clubs, it fails to capture a range of more meaningful but nuanced rights and benefits. These benefits could include: the feeling of being surrounded by multiple sources of motivation and support, such as resources, coaching, and a community of like-minded people who are also on a health improvement journey. Despite being a little fuzzy, these subtler benefits are probably more valuable, and therefore the main reasons people would choose to join a health club instead of exercising from home.

And finally, you may be asking: what is the connection to higher education here?

This health club example (borrowed from Guilbault 2016) provides an interesting parallel and a useful entry point into the expectations of students in higher education. In particular, it reveals that the user-provider relationship in health clubs appears to have a type of harmony that is missing from higher education.

The harmony arises from a socially accepted parsing out of the consumer’s entitlements in the exchange, which does not include benefits the provider can’t deliver, but doesn’t de-value or de-emphasise these benefits either. In other words, the health club members know the difference between the benefits they could receive and those which they are entitled to receive.

In this article I hope to demonstrate that, by applying a similar parsing of benefits in higher education, it could connect and possibly even integrate opposing ideas in the long-standing debate about whether students should be thought of primarily as ‘customers’, ‘learners’, or if some combination of the two, then how such combinations ought to be made.

In the health club example, there is an undeniable, functional exchange of money for a service. But it’s also very clear that the service provided under the transaction does not equal, or even limit, the benefits that a customer could reap from the relationship. In fact, almost any limit that the provider could place on the level of service it will directly provide to the individual, such as one-on-one time with personal trainers, does not end up limiting the overall level of benefit and achievement that the same individual might obtain from being a member. This is because the member can spend some of their own resources, such as time, to keep increasing the level of benefit they are obtaining from the relationship.

If anything, it would seem that the massive, long-term benefits obtainable from the transaction, like good health or fitness, are impossible to get without this extra investment from the individual — which also rings true for higher education

A quick review of the scholarship

Of course, there is already a substantial body of literature examining the extent to which students can or should be thought of as customers in their relationship with Higher Education Providers (HEPs).

It examines the variety of impacts the growing student-as-customer orientation has had so far on the quality of education that ultimately gets provided by HEPs, and indeed what further impacts might be experienced by both parties if the orientation were to be taken further.

This body of literature, which appears to have existed in some form or another since the advent of “customers” in the modern sense, has intensified since the financialisation and deregulation of developed economies from the 1970s, when governments sought to reduce institutions’ reliance on government and massify the availability of higher education. The discussion in the literature, which can be largely characterised as a debate, has produced thoughtful arguments in all directions, and as a result, has provided a richer understanding of what it means to be a student, to be educated, and to be satisfied with an education as the outcome of an exchange.

However I also believe this debate has been unproductive given the amount of time and publications which have been contributed to it. The debate has described the pros and cons of the rise of the student-as-customer orientation ad nauseam, but has failed to provide answers to the basic question ‘what should we do about it?’

I offer three reasons for this shortcoming:

Firstly, for whatever reason, most contributors to the discussion appear to have already chosen a side (I’ll call the sides “student-as-customer” or “learner-only” orientations). Consequently, their publications tend to ‘plant a flag’ on one side of the debate, and then support their position with a grab bag of arguments for that side.

In these listing-style papers, supporting arguments tend to draw on different kinds of evidence at different levels of abstraction and from a range of different disciplines — but usually not in an orderly or systematic fashion. If I may speculate, I think this approach of listing every available reason why one orientation is superior to the other perpetuates the (probably false) expectation that eventually one of these orientations will ‘win out’ over the other — as if it’s only a matter of landing the right blow. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of scholarship, but it seems to me that an area of inquiry will not be particularly innovative while the majority of papers fall into this format. And I believe it is the case for the student-as-customer debate.

To be fair, there are a few (but sadly very few) arguments calling for a ‘third way’ conceptualisation of students as both learners and customers — where the authors assume that the two viewpoints can co-exist and be combined into an integrated perspective, ultimately making our understanding of the student-institution relationship richer. However, I have found these attempts generally fail in two ways: these are mentioned only in passing at the conclusion of an argumentative listing-style paper mentioned above (and as a result they tend to lack any meaningful level of detail). And alternatively, the ones that do set out to find a ‘third way’ as the primary purpose of the publication have a tendency to equally acknowledge and equally value every stakeholder’s every need. Said another way, they avoid the task of integrating by simply including everything.

In my view — which I expect would be shared by most educators today — saying that HEPs have multiple stakeholders (like students, alumni, staff, employers, governments, etc.) and that each stakeholder is too important to be ignored is, in the 21st century, just a motherhood statement.

This acknowledgement of all actors in a system doesn’t render any assistance to those who are seeking to understand how to reduce or resolve the tensions that arise from competing stakeholder needs, which means this kind of thinking is not going to translate into the world of practitioners.

The contemporary marketing adage that “you can’t stand for something if you chase after everything” comes to mind here. In order to be truly helpful, I would expect a ‘third way’ model must help students and institutions to know which aspects of their relationship to emphasise and prioritise — which necessarily means choosing things to de-emphasise and de-prioritise too. Unfortunately, the existing third way models have failed to face this challenge.

What I believe the scholarship has not adequately done so far, that may be more productive going forward, is mapping both the customer and learner orientations onto a combined model of the student-institution relationship in a way that confronts, rather than ignores, the painful tradeoffs involved. Such a model may prove to be more useful to all stakeholders because they will eventually have to navigate these tradeoffs.

The fact that this hasn't already been done is, in effect, my third and final criticism of the current body of literature. There is no central theory or model that gives the discussion some clarity or structure.

I am truly surprised that nobody has tried to incorporate the strongest arguments from the two different perspectives into such a conceptual model under an agreeable structure, which would allow new thinkers to wrestle with and then clarify the more vague or untested claims around the edges of the debate. The absence of such a model is, in my view, why the productivity of the debate has stagnated for so long.

This may be very ambitious, but I hope to share and articulate a proposed model to address these gaps in the following section.

A proposed model: escaping a lake

To develop this model, I have accepted and incorporated what I see as the strongest arguments and most established truths about delivering quality education in a marketised society. I have shortlisted these by drawing on both sides of the student-as-customer and the learner-only debate (as well as some fundamental, relevant ideas from other fields like economics).

By developing the model in this way, it shows us which elements of the relationship are so unlikely to change they should be thought of as part of the landscape, which allows us to bring more focus to the aspects of the relationship we have more capacity to change.

I will explain the lake model by adding in and explain each idea one-by-one. I hasten to add this is for the sake of clearer explanation, and at times my labouring over very basic points may seem like overkill, but I believe the final product can stand alone as a conceptual model that balances simplicity with explanatory power rather well.

Let me begin:

Assumption #1: There is a limit to what can be done for students by the institution. Some of the benefits of higher education are only obtainable through student effort.

This idea was the thrust of the health club analogy in the introduction — that you cannot buy fitness. I have also found that, not only was this idea central to many of the anti-customer viewpoints in the academic literature, but the student-as-customer proponents have never tried to refute it either. The claim also seems to be very broadly supported by learning science, and it simply rings true for most people with lived experience of higher education. So altogether, this claim in Assumption #1 seems highly likely to be true.

I would also assert that making this assumption explicit is a crucial starting point for any conceptual model, because it clarifies for would-be customers seeking to enter into a transaction with a Higher Education Provider (HEP) the limits of what can actually be ‘purchased’. And because it would be unreasonable for the HEP’s stakeholders to require that students receive benefits beyond the limits of what can be done on their behalf, it means the model can immediately start coping with the ‘all things to all people’ challenge I identified in the previous section.

To start incorporating the assumption into a model then, I content that by holding Assumption #1 to be true, it allows us to divide all the ways that individuals benefit from higher education into two discrete categories:

1. Transferrable benefits — where the HEP can provide the benefit directly to the student without much or any effort on the student’s part. Examples may include a comfortable study environment, learning resources, opportunities to network, and a reliable schedule of classes taught by appropriately qualified instructors.

2. Non-transferrable benefits — where the HEP can assist the student to acquire these benefits, but cannot transfer them directly. In other words, the student must build up these benefits in their own life by investing their own resources (the many ways of which I will simply call 'effort'). Examples may include: becoming an independent thinker; having deep disciplinary knowledge; or developing reliable problem-solving, teamwork and leadership skills.

For each of these arguments that I accept as valid Assumptions, I will connect them to an evolving conceptual model using visual cues such as the Conceptualisation below.

Conceptualisation #1: Two categories of higher education benefits.

To elaborate on this division of benefits and clarify the boundary between them, I have compared them in the table below:

But I believe we can take the implications of this categorisation one step further.

If we accept that Assumption #1 creates a division of benefits into the two categories above, the following conclusions could be drawn about higher education ‘purchases’:

Transferable benefits can be legitimately promised and purchased in a marketplace whereas Non-transferrable benefits cannot; and
Students are welcome to accrue as many benefits as they are able and willing to while pursuing higher education, but they are only entitled to the Transferable benefits promised by the HEP.

And therefore if some benefits can be openly promised and promoted, but others are generally subtle and slow-release, they are likely to be delivered and received at different speeds.

Assumption #2: Students will generally obtain the Transferrable benefits before the Non-transferrable ones.

It seems to be broadly the case (if not universally so) that students will obtain the Transferable benefits before they accrue the Non-transferrable ones.

This is likely because the way that HEPs would attempt to accelerate students’ learning when compared to, say, an entirely self-directed education, is by providing the Transferable benefits first as scaffolding, support, tools, and resources that students can use to work towards the Non-transferrable ones.

For example, a trained teacher providing frequent feedback (a Transferable benefit) can accelerate a person’s journey towards developing advanced analytical skills (a Non-transferrable benefit). But it’s very hard to imagine these two benefits being accrued in the reverse order.

Conceptualisation #2: A linear, three-point model.

Because the flow of benefits is largely sequential, starting with Transferrable benefits and moving towards Non-transferrable ones — which are only unlocked through student effort — the following linear model could be considered slightly more accurate and descriptive than the table from Conceptualisation #1.

Not only to benefits vary by speed of delivery, but they also appear to vary according to the amount of investment they ask of the student.

Assumption #3: The Non-transferrable benefits of higher education are varied in nature, and can require different types of effort to obtain.

Or said another way, students have to expend different kinds of effort to unlock different types of non-transferrable benefits.

For instance, a student hoping to raise their employability may need to expend time and energy on a co-curricular activity that demonstrates work-like competencies, such as a leadership role in a student club. But to develop a deeper understanding of their discipline, that student will need to spend quality time engaging with learning material and trying to apply it. These are two different types of student effort, and they lead to two different places. They also cannot be done at the same time, and as a result, if a student finds themselves with a limited amount of time and energy to invest into their education, they may need to choose which pursuit deserves their effort.

Because students are generally unable to invest enough energy to obtain every benefit of education, this divergence described creates a series of tradeoffs for students to navigate when deciding which Non-transferrable benefits they will pursue.

Conceptualisation #3: A wheel of potential student benefits from higher education

The academic literature will have countless lists of the benefits of higher education (and I have drawn on them to synthesise an example list below). But for the purposes of this model, I will start with a very simple conceptualisation of varied benefits and build out the complexity from there.

In my view, nearly all the benefits of higher education can be rolled up into three overlapping categories:

While some specific benefits can fall into multiple categories above (like critical thinking skills, which is probably in the space overlapped by all three) and some groups of benefits could require similar types of effort to obtain (like how debating could build both critical thinking skills and communication skills), the reality is that some other benefits are completely off in another direction. You can’t get them all with the same type of effort!

To illustrate this, I have added one more level detail to the conceptualisation of benefits to show how some benefits are loosely in the same direction, but to get a truly wide range of Non-transferrable benefits, a student would need to invest in a similarly wide range of efforts.

And finally some magic... if I attempt to overlay Conceptualisations #2 and #3, by putting the linear flow model over the multi-directional wheel of benefits, we have a new visual representation below, Conceptualisation #4, which is starting to look like an aerial view of an island in the middle of a lake.

Conceputalisation #4: linear flow and wheel concepts combined

And this 'island in a lake' concept is the basic analogy behind my proposed model of the student-and-customer relationship to an institution of higher education.

In the analogy, the student’s starting point in their relationship with the HEP and in their higher education journey remains in the centre of the wheel (the lake), where they can immediately access the Transferrable benefits provided by the HEP (the island). To reach and unlock the richer, Non-transferrable benefits of higher education (beyond the shore), they will need to expend effort (to swim).

I believe this analogy, despite being a little bit quirky, can actually be a useful frame from which to continue the debate about the nature of the transaction and relationship between a student and a higher education provider.

And fortunately, this lake analogy can incorporate a few more key ideas to become a more complete model of the student-institution relationship.

Assumption #4: the higher education provider’s capability is not fixed — it can, intentionally or not, expand or reduce the amount of Transferable benefits available in the relationship.

This may be thought of as the ‘mix’ of services provided by the organisation, and may include things like teaching practices, learning technology, student services, as well as facilities and amenities.

Similar to the tradeoffs faced by students, a HEP must face up to a number of tradeoffs when deciding which Transferrable benefits to include in its total offering to students.

The HEP can expand (or reduce) the amount of service it provides in different areas which, almost inevitably, would reduce (or expand) the amount of effort a student may need to invest to unlock a particular Non-transferrable benefit.

For example, investing in better teaching practices will help students build up more knowledge in less time; building better facilities make it easier for students to connect or study; and evolving better student services may make it easier for students to recover from unexpected shocks and setbacks during their studies.

But we must also acknowledge that not all changes to capability are intentional. On the unintentional front, harmful organisational dynamics such as office politics, poor management of resources, failed projects, and high staff turnover (and so on) could lead to a diminished offering, and thus an increase in student effort. The assumption is only that the mix of services provided by the HEP will not remain static over time.

Conceptualisation #5: An institution’s offering over time as a spider / radar chart.

Changes to the offering occur over time. And if it were possible to measure the relative strength of a HEP’s offering against different Non-transferrable benefits on a neat, five-point scale, the evolution of its offering over time may look something like the below diagram. The imaginary HEP in question has invested in making its students ‘job ready’, possibly in response to some changes in government funding, which is shown by overlaying two snapshots at different points in time.

And to make the relevant update to my lake analogy, we can see the island itself (which represents the mix of Transferrable benefits) has taken on an uneven shape, which represents the non-uniform strengths of the HEP’s offering in respect to the different Non-transferrable benefits.

It is important to note that, in keeping with Assumption #1 about the limits of what a HEP can do for a student, the island cannot bridge the entire body of water to shore. Ultimately, the Non-transferrable benefits still require effort to obtain, and students will always have to swim some distance to reach them — it’s more a question of how far the swim would be for the student.

This point provides a nice segue into the final two assumptions.

Assumption #5: when investing in a greater offering to students the HEP experiences diminishing returns.

HEPs, like any other organisation, will have limited resources in the short-term. They cannot do everything, or at the very least, cannot do everything well and at the same time. Therefore, the HEPs must decide what their priorities are and then invest their resources in ways that are aligned to the priorities. A HEP without any resource constraints would simply reclaim as much land as possible in every direction.

Conceptualisation #6: standard diminishing returns curve.

A well-entrenched concept from economics is the curve for diminishing returns. So let’s not reinvent the wheel — the curve looks like this:

This is a relatively easy concept to incorporate into the lake analogy.

Let’s now imagine the island is entirely made of sand — being just a huge mound of sand in the middle of the lake. The sand is obviously money, coming from a combination of prior student fees, grants, donations, and so on. In the short-run, the HEP is unable to get much more sand than it has right now, so it has to make decisions about its priorities for using the sand. It can draw on its reserves by using some excess sand from atop the mound to reclaim bits of lake around the edge of the island.

When it fills in the shallows with surplus sand, the HEP is expanding the island, just like the radar chart in Conceptualisation #5 above. However, because of the effect of diminishing returns, it is going to take greater and greater amounts of sand to keep expanding the island in the same direction. To account for this, let’s imagine the bed of the lake slopes away from the island, getting deeper and deeper the more the HEP tries to do for its students. At some point before the shore, the lake would be impossibly deep for any organisation to reclaim.

And finally, much like how different HEPs have different offerings, there are differences in the educational journey faced by individual students. These are largely arising form the difference in their individual starting points as well as the different resources they can bring to their education.

Assumption #6: the various non-transferrable benefits of HE can require different levels of effort to obtain.

Which occurs for two main reasons: the inherent difficulty of obtaining the benefit; or differences in students’ capabilities.

Inherent difficulty

Obviously, some Non-transferrable benefits are harder to obtain than others because of their nature. Becoming an independent thinker for example may be much harder to do than make a lifelong friend. Or to stay within the same domain of benefits for a moment, it is inherently easier for the average student to ‘become employable’ than it is for them to ‘become a business leader of tomorrow’ (see the next diagram).

So therefore, similar to the way the shape of the island is uneven, the shoreline of the lake itself should be uneven as well, because the more elusive benefits should be a longer swim, so to speak.

Student capabilities

And secondly, even though it breaks the analogy a little, it’s likely that each student sees a different sized and shaped shoreline of their own personal lake because of the differences in their abilities and privilege.

This is a challenging area to write about sensitively — especially when you are comparing someone’s education to, you know, a lake — but I'll try anyway. The shifting shoreline can represent differences in students’ personal circumstances. A student with a disability that makes them, say, unable to verbally communicate at all may have a harder time networking with employers at careers expos than students without that disability. This is not to say they cannot cross the lake, because that would not be analogous to real life, but it is honest to admit they are most likely facing be facing a longer swim (will need to expend more effort) than a student without this impediment to achieve the same benefit.

Likewise, other inherent advantages and disadvantages experienced by students in higher education such as ability, privilege, prior education and training, life experiences, health disorders, disabilities, learned resilience, other personality traits — I'm sure the list very long — could all be encapsulated in the shape of a shoreline that is individually-fitted to a student's circumstances.

Limitations and future directions:

As much I think this model packs in a lot of concepts there are some important aspects of the relationship it doesn't address head on.

First, there is common conceptualisation of higher education providers which imagines them providing three big services to students, of which developing someone's skills and knowledge is only one of those services. This view envisions students accessing a learning service, then an assessment service (I can only chuckle at how hard it is for a current student to see assessment as a service!) and a credentialing service. The latter two validate that learning has occurred.

Increasingly a motivation for taking up higher education among students is the credential and so when modelling this relationship the credentialing component does matter.

And while it's possible to imagine assessment being inside the model (seems like a type of effort to me), it's not as easy to include credentialing. Thus far I have decided the intended scope of the model was to help 'fix' the dangerous perception among students they can expect Non-transferrable benefits without Effort. I'm happy to call that the scope of the model and have others either criticse that, or help me augment the model to include these later phases.

Because I refuse to quit on the updated visuals, here it is again... in 3D!

The other limitation of the model I've been able to discern is the the swim across the lake insinuates the student's effortful journey towards the bigger benefits is a solo one. Visually, the model indicates that one would gather up as many Transferrable benefits as possible as 'preparation' before attempting a big, one-off attempt at reaching the shore... much like swimming the English Channel.

However the reality is that such outcomes are generally co-produced in an institutional context. The efforts of the institution and the efforts of the students collide, combine and coalesce, ultimately picking up speed and intensity as each actor benefits from the other.

Indeed, things start to get tangled when we consider the impact of students on each other. For instance, the most electric classrooms have dozens of engaged students, not just one, so the make up of a student body and its culture will ultimately be important to locate in or around the model. I would posit that the institution is the one who has the opportunity to attract, recruit, admit and acculturate a certain type of student to create an atmosphere that supports learning and engagement, and while not all the elements are in its control, it has the most power to shape this, and thus it is most likely to be a Non-transferrable benefit provided by the institution.

To recap the entire ‘escape the lake’ analogy:

Imagine an island in the middle of a lake, made entirely of a giant mound of sand, where:

Students start their journey with a Higher Education Provider (HEP) from the centre point of the diagram, somewhere on the island.
The land area of the island is the extent and full scope of "Transferrable benefits" — being those benefits the higher education provider can reliably promise and deliver to students without any substantive effort from the students. These benefits can be transferred (i.e. delivered and received) as soon as the HEP is willing, and students are within their rights to expect, and even demand, them as part of their purchase from the HEP.
On the mainland, beyond the shore, there are the other "Non-transferrable benefits" of higher education. To obtain these benefits, students must swim from the island to the shore by investing some of their own resources, like time and energy, which I have lumped together under the term “student effort”.
The HEP can use some of the excess sand from the mound to expand the island. In other words it can invest some of its resources to broaden or strengthen its offering to students so the students can start their swim from a better position (or swim 'smarter', or attempt a swim they otherwise couldn't).
However, the HEP has limited sand (resources) in the short-run and the water gets deeper the further it goes from the island, which represents diminishing returns on investment. To make best use of its resources, the HEP probably needs a focus and a set of priorities to get the most territory from its available sand. The depth of the lake and non-transferrable nature of Non-transferrable benefits also means the HEP cannot bridge the entire distance between the island and the shore.
Each student may see a different shoreline because of their differing personal circumstances. Those with extraordinary abilities, privilege and so on, may see a closer shoreline in some areas, whereas a student with disadvantages may face a further distance to shore.

Implications

If this Escape the Lake idea were a common frame for all the people involved: students, parents, institutions, educators, policymakers, etc. — in other words, if the model entered popular discourse - I think the higher education would be changed in the following ways:

There would be a clear, socially accepted distinction between ALL the benefits of higher education, versus those an educator can reliably provide.
HEPs would be less inclined to make crazy recruitment promises in their marketing (like 'be a leader' and 'change the world').
Where these marketing representations still existed, students would be more equipped to filter out unrealistic promises and develop their own, more realistic expectations of the provider's offering.
Students might start to see effort as a resource instead of an unfair burden. The model makes the idea of student effort explicit and front-of-mind, where it can be acknowledged, discussed and valued. Pretending that the act of becoming educated is an effortless and painless process has been an enormous disservice to students and educators alike, where this has occurred. Instead students should be seeing it as a key lever of success, that's in their control, and should be told how the institution will guide and harness their effort to maximise their learning.
This would give HEPs a social licence to increase the expectation of effort from students (in the right areas). For a long time educators have been forbidden — in an informal sense from marketisation and social change (though in some news reports in recent years they have been literally forbidden by senior management at times) — from increasing the amount of effort expected from students. They have only been rewarded for reducing it. Now of course, there are aspects of the higher education experience where student effort should only be reduced (student administration for one) but the idea that a student will be held to high expectations in the right areas (e.g. the classroom) has become a taboo, right around the time the evidence for its pedagogical effectiveness became truly established!
The lake model as common point of reference would also make it widely acknowledged that HEPs are constrained. The myth that they could be providing a service that is all things to all people but are somehow choosing not to (an ailment that seems to afflict public comprehensive institutions more than others) might melt away; to be replaced with a more mature discussion about priorities. Perhaps in the future, our public institutions would share a profile of their target island shape (offering) and their stakeholders could debate if there are better, possible island shapes that the institution should be striving for instead. This is not to advocate some kind of avoidance of accountability — the opposite in fact. I believe we could be holding our institutions to a higher standard by concentrating their accountability on improvement in areas of priority rather than the vagaries of today.
The division of roles created by the Transferrables-Effort-NonTransferrables categorisation would likely help HEPs with medium- and long-term strategic planning around their offering. Having been clear that Non-transferrables are joint ventures with students, and not something they can 'deliver' to students, they would be able to maintain a more stable focus over time on which Non-transferrables they hope to impart to students. Moreover, they could articulate how they are creating the right conditions for students by designing the right mix of Transferrables and clarifying for students what types of Effort, in combination with their Transferrables, will make shorter, clearer pathways towards the Non-transferrables. At the moment, discussions about how to build these pathways is very muddy because we must ignore the role of a key actor (see my current employer's Advancing Melbourne strategy — it’s a beautiful, compelling vision, but doesn't naturally map to action because, I expect, we don't have the language to say things like "achieving this strategic goal relies on our students trying harder").
And, as a penultimate implication, I could see the life of policymakers and politicians being a lot easier. At present (in the omni-stakeholder approach I discussed in the introduction), when seeking a change, the wider social stakeholders of our higher education system tend to shake the whole tree to produce higher education reform. But because of the complexity of the system often regulation that doesn't properly address the incentives at work will get worked around (as a case in point I will track with interest the ongoing impact of the Job Ready Graduates Package in Australia, where, at the time of writing, the impetus to remake universities into something more like job training centres was just laid at the feet of 18 year old school leavers). In contrast, I think governments and communities could look at their desired changes through the lens of: am I asking HEPs to change the shape of their island here? Or am I asking students to change the direction of their efforts? which may assist them to design more targeted interventions.

The biggest implication...

What I see as a common thread running through most of these implications, which I think I am most keen to explore further, is that the 'Escape the Lake' model is one of the few models I'm aware of which can be used by both the provider and the student-customer.

I believe we need more such models in this world. Too many of the frameworks and models used by educators are written in cyphers. They are reserved for only those who are highly trained, and are not accessible to students themselves and, as a result, they don't have an impact anywhere near their potential.

Recently I've been asking myself the question: why not? Most of these models are not that complicated. If the insider language within them was stripped away, students would not struggle to understand. And if they did understand, they would be able to strive more effectively — something both students and educators want!

I mean, seriously, how often are those two groups (educators and students) not on the same page? And how many problems does it lead to? I can only imagine in the few areas where there is a common point of reference for the two groups, it serves as a kind of 'contract' where, the presence of which, makes it easier to cooperate and generate mutually beneficial outcomes. Not only does this sound far more effective and efficient for the education enterprise, it's got to be more enjoyable as well.

For that reason alone I think educators should be making more of an effort to make conceptual models accessible and fun to students. I have been experimenting with some instances of this and hope to write more articles exploring their potential soon.

Article first published on 1 September 2021. I have made occasional edits since as I've developed my thinking, but nothing substantial. Credit to my colleague David who attached the lake analogy to my prior thinking on the first three assumptions, which would have been purely conceptual otherwise; and to another colleague Richard who has stress-tested my thinking on this topic.