Thursday 05-09-2024 - 14:00

The trickle of students coming into the Advice Centre had begun. They brought stories of their resits and how they impacted their visa requirements. Our Full Time Officers started to hear about the plight of some of the students on their WhatsApp groups. Students were told that they would need to leave the country before getting their grades for their final resit, which would then mean that they could not qualify for the post-student work visa. All the hard work they had put in they would need to go back to their families, some of whom took on great debt to send their son or daughter abroad to achieve a better life, and tell them that even though they had tried hard and had followed the customary practices, they would be getting their degree but not the vital work experience that they originally sought. They were distraught by the mixed messaging they were receiving from the university – that resits were a common part of the student experience but because of their circumstances, the university systems could not facilitate their resits early enough to be graded before their visa expires. The system seemed to be working against them.

We are not usually a “shouty” Students’ Association. We believe in getting stuff done through collaboration and partnership. However, we also believe in being a “critical friend” to the university. You know, that friend that wants to see the best for you so that is why they tell you your new squeeze is showing some red flags. It is not because you want to harm your friend, you, and we, are doing this out of a place of love and respect.

Plus we get the inside scope – we are run by students for the benefit of students. Our Advice Centre helps hundreds of students a year. Our Full Time Officers are enmeshed in student life. We see the data from the university and hear the discussion they are having on policies and practices in the university. We bring together these aspects to see the emerging themes that are affecting students. Some of them are positive and we encourage the university to keep going to get it over the finish line. Some of them bring challenges to certain demographics of students that the university might have not realised when the policy/practice emerged. So we bring these points to the university, by representing students on committees where policies are created and changed, by having one-to-one meetings with the key decision-makers in the university, and by feeding in the student perspective, we believe, GCU can be the best place to study in Scotland.

That is what we did and the university listened. At the Learning Enhancement committee, VP GSBS, Tom Tom Osinubi, asked questions about the visa implications of students who are sitting resits. VP SHLS, Friday Oshiotse, arranged a meeting with the Pro-Vice Chancellor Education and the visa team to discuss the troubling themes that the trickle of students was bringing into the Advice Centre and we were hearing about in chatting with students. In response, the university has put in measures to help students who are resitting and with visa deadlines looming to receive their grades before their visa expires. Through partnership working, we were able to address the issue before the trickle became a flood.

This is a win for students and for the university. It might not have caught many people’s attention because were able to nip it in the bud early – but that is a good thing. We are now working with the university to ensure there is a sustainable measure put in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. This is how we work for you – we might not be shouting from the rooftops but we are working away in the corridors, the meeting rooms, and the committees making sure that the student experience is at the heart of everything the university does.

 

By Sara MacLean,

Student Voice Team Leader, GCU Students' Association