“Collective Individualism”

Whilst being a critical friend at NUS, one of the points of discussion was around the changing behaviour of students and how they interact, and the phrase “collective individualism” tumbled from my lips and i joked there was a book in it. Maybe not a book, but certainly some short paragraphs.

We (certainly the University at least) talk about the personalisation of education, and the pressures being faced particularly on academics and services as student numbers grow, whilst simultaneously the payment of fees means that students have higher expectations. In fact, whisper it, students are beginning to see themselves as consumers (anecdotally, we have students using the complaints procedures because they feel they have paid for a 2:1, so maybe those students have a future in the House of Lords).

However, we as Unions traditionally see ourselves as being based around collectivism, in its broadest sense. This is true both about how we see much of our representation / campaigning role, and our interactions with the umbrella of the NUS/NUSSL. So maybe somewhere there is a gap in the way we work, and serve our members / stakeholders / consumers. Actually, lets just call them students shall we?

The idea of collective individualism is how we address this, and how we reframe both our and students expectations. And it’s nothing new (i thought of it, so it’s unlikely to be)- most of our societies already work on the same premise. Basically it is the idea that whilst students (or indeed all consumers) claim they want to be treated as individuals and have things tailored to them, the reality is they act and behave in a way to “fit in” with their chosen peer group. Hence a society attracts people who share individual needs to enhance their educational system, whilst satisfying their personal interests. We are then able to “generalise” our communications and interactions with this group, whilst making those individuals feel as if they are receiving our personal attention. It is also about the fact we are told by students they are unique, but we can still sell thousands of branded sweatshirts so students can prove where they “fit in”.

The trick for us is to balance those individual needs, and make students feel they are important individually (which they may currently only feel at a one to one representation. I discount simple good commercial customer service at this stage because we now expect that as a norm, and there is rarely a large emotional investment in such a transaction). We need to do this without diluting the strength of collectivism, whilst recognising there may not always be philanthropy in collective action. The best examples of this are the current campaigns at Bristol about contact hours – a large campaign coming from a small group based on individual concerns and resulting in collective (and possibly outside the Union) direct action. To me, this is the way forward – empowering individuals (wherever they are in the University) to not only raise, but also to act on their beliefs. Societies already do this, but we should be reducing barriers to it happening elsewhere, so we can become truly member led. And it may be that those members have a different take on the values that we hold dear – “collectivism” for instance. They may find themselves acting collectively, but they may have no idea about the values and history we associate with the term. And does that matter? What matters is how we can facilitate students to get involved and do so flexibly. Collective individualism is going to require us to give up committees and weeks, even days, of waiting for the Executive or Council to say yes or no. We will need to be fast, and a lot less bureaucratic. We also have to accept that student apathy is a conceit we have invented to hide the fact that we haven’t responded to students’ needs – students are involved and engaged – just not in some of the things we do – so are we wrong or the students? I suspect we all know the answer to that.

Collective Individualism (how i wish there was an S word in the middle – CSI would be a great acronym) also applies to how Unions may need to become organisationally. Rather than working the way we do now, where we are all broadly similar (we all have sabbs, staff and do representation via committees and individually, whatever titles we have for it) and are all, to some extent or other mirrors of the national organisation at some point in it’s history, maybe we need to embrace the individual needs we and our students have and adapt our practices to those, rather than working to the accepted model as we do now. We can be stronger for our students, in my opinion, to adapting to the way they behave and dealing with things in a way that matches that their needs. This has nothing to do with being pro or anti NUS it is to do with making the most of acting individually whilst benefitting from the collective when we need to.

I am a firm believer in trade unionism and collectivism, but i have to accept our officers generally aren’t that concerned with it as a value, and would be willing to bet most of our students aren’t either. So we have to find a way to incorporate the best of both worlds. Maybe you’re already doing it in your Union – maybe we are here at Kingston and i’ve just found a name for something that has been happening forever. But the holy grail of “personalisation” is a long way off for most of us, and it may actually be a poisoned chalice. We also have to accept, like it or not, whatever we think; students are starting to feel and act like consumers – they want to make the right choices for themselves, whilst still fitting into their own definition of “the norm” – and we have to accomodate this, but without losing that idea of being a membership organisation.

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