At the University of London I initiated and delivered many projects of which I’m proud. However, inevitably there were some that I just couldn’t get over the line. Of all of these, the biggest regret was not being able to deliver a qualification in Student Housing Management. I felt that this proposal could have and still could revolutionise the sector.
Before delving into the specifics of the proposal, I should briefly describe the history and context of the idea.
Some history
My involvement in the Purpose Built Student Accommodation sector developed around 2008. Previously I had been solely focused on managing the University of London’s private sector housing service. Our role was to provide advice and support to students living in the private rented sector. This involved maintaining a searchable database of registered landlords and providing legal advice to individuals and groups of students. Typically our landlords rented out single flats and houses with some offering rooms within their own homes.
In the wake of the great financial crash of 2008, there was a huge increase in private sector investment in new Purpose Built Student Accommodation. As could be expected these developers by and large concentrated on the most lucrative end of the market. This was predominantly overseas students, most of whom were either postgraduates or undergraduates moving out of university halls in the second year of their degrees. It was unclear for many universities how to respond. These developments were housing large numbers of our students but they weren’t the typical flats and houses we had previously dealt with. I took the view that they came within our remit as private sector housing, regardless of the typology.
A concern that I had, which was widely shared across the university sector, was that these developers may have been committed to providing a good customer experience but that they had little practical knowledge of managing large numbers of students in halls. The ANUK Code of Standards for larger developments, established by UNIPOL in 2004, provided excellent guidance on issues of health and safety but had little in it about managing students.
As a first step to engaging with the private sector, I organised a conference in 2008. The aim was to cover the issues that private developers were typically most interested in (the size of the market, and planning) but would also include sessions on managing students in halls (cultural sensitivities, bullying, creating a community). The conference sold out but not surprisingly the seminars on managing students were notably less well attended than those with a purely commercial focus.
The conference was a success in that, off the back of it I was invited to talk with the planners at City Hall regarding proposed changes to the London Plan relating to student housing (twelve years later, we were finally able to get those changes adopted- Policy H15 of the London Plan). It also established our service as the place for private developers to advertise to students in London, meaning that we generated considerable advertising revenue for publications such as our London Student Housing Guide.
What it didn’t do was ensure that student welfare was elevated to more than a reputational issue. The focus for most private developers remained on providing facilities rather than creating communities.
In our bi-annual student satisfaction surveys, university provision of PBSA tended to outperform private providers for, at least, the next twelve years, despite the universities’ ageing stock. Universities may not have been able to compete with the private sector on facilities, but in creating a nurturing environment for young people away from home for the first time, the results appeared to suggest that the universities were doing something right.
Up to the present
Since then, as private developers have gained more experience, there have been significant improvements. Some larger private developers now have their own in house training programmes, many of which are similar to university training. Many also benefit from the training available at the ASRA conference or from organisations such as Unipol or ULHS. However, much of this still feels piece meal and a little haphazard.
In the USA, ACUHO-I has a large range of courses for those involved in managing student housing, with much of the focus being on student welfare. The sector is fully professionalised. The question is, why has this not happened here? There are over 750,000 purpose-built student accommodation bed spaces in the UK, implying that there has to be between 5,000 to 10,000 employees that could benefit from an accredited student accommodation management course.
As anyone who has worked in the sector knows, there is no shortage of passion and enthusiasm amongst staff to learn and improve and, apart from anything else, the provision of training represents a commercial opportunity.
It is true that the work to establish a course to meet the needs of the sector would be painstaking. Everyone, will have different ideas about what should be included, what level to pitch the course material and methods for assessment. There are also different accreditation bodies with which to work. Should it be an apprenticeship programme or a CIH course?
Nevertheless, the benefits must surely outweigh the work needed to set it up. If providers of PBSA make sure that their employees complete certain courses, then they could provide a kitemark similar to the existing ANUK code one. This would provide reassurance to both students and their parents. For staff there would be the opportunity not just to learn but to demonstrate that learning. Courses could evolve addressing new subjects as and when these come to prominence.
In short, it would provide a framework for developing the sector.
Roland Shanks Consulting 