Across the university, colleagues are being asked to use new systems and follow standard processes for engaging with students. Some consistency is useful, of course! Students should receive clear information and know how to access support and a well-designed system can help staff provide that.

But the language of recent communications deserves attention. We hear increasingly about audits, compliance and programmes or units that have not followed the new standard. At the same time, NSS scores have fallen across the university.

There is a risk that a university-wide problem is translated into a series of instructions to individual staff: follow the process, complete the task, produce the evidence and student satisfaction will improve.

If only it were that simple…

Research on performance management in pubic services offers a warning. Wastell et al. (2010) described an “iron cage of performance management”, in which systems intended to improve services can begin to govern professional judgement. Munro (2011) warned that attention to process can displace attention to the quality of help people receive. Their work concerns social care, but the question travels to higher education: what happens when evidence of following a process stands in for evidence that the work is good?

An automated message can be recorded as sent. It cannot tell us whether a student understood it, felt able to respond or received the support they needed. An audit can identify a missed step. It cannot capture the lecturer who notices a student struggling, changes an explanation in the moment or brings their research and passion for a subject into a conversation that makes learning possible.

NSS results deserve serious attention. Students’ feedback should help us understand their experience and improve it. But a fall across the university calls for an examination of university-wide conditions. Staffing, workload, class sizes, timetabling, facilities and student support all shape what students experience. An emphasis on individual compliance shifts organisational responsibility towards the people with the least control over many of those conditions.

This shift is especially troubling now. Our sector is under sustained financial pressure: the Office for Students has reported continued financial strain across English higher education and substantial restructuring costs, including voluntary redundancy schemes. Colleagues here know what restructuring and job losses feel like. With fears of further redundancies, an email naming non-compliance can land as something more than a routine reminder. It can make staff feel that their work and perhaps their security, is being judged through an audit trail.

Every additional process also takes time. That time comes from preparation, feedback, research, student conversations or colleagues’ already stretched working days. Before adding another requirement, the university should ask what it achieves, how much work it creates and whether staff and students have had a meaningful say.

Our teaching ability, subject expertise, love of research and relationships with students are central to a university education.

UCU members can support changes that genuinely help students while challenging a performance culture that makes individuals answer for structural problems. Improving the student experience requires investment, trust and shared organisational responsibility, not simply another completed box.