Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) Student President (2025/2026), Oluwatomisin Osinubi, shares lessons from a documentary exploring contemporary student experience in higher education.
For much of the conversation around student experience, we tend to focus on outcomes. We talk about retention, attainment, employability, continuation and wellbeing. We develop strategies, collect data and introduce interventions to improve them.
These conversations matter. But after spending two years as a student representative, I have increasingly found myself reflecting on a different question: are we spending enough time understanding the conditions that shape those outcomes in the first place?
This question sat at the heart of ‘Not Your Student’, a documentary I recently produced and which is now available on the Glasgow Caledonian Students’ Association YouTube channel.
The documentary was not created to provide solutions or recommendations. It was created to start a conversation.
A conversation about what it means to be a student today.
A conversation about the realities that exist behind the surveys, reports and performance indicators that often shape institutional decision-making.
Most importantly, a conversation about whether our understanding of student experience has evolved alongside the students we seek to support.
Throughout the documentary, students spoke about housing, employment, finances, wellbeing, belonging and identity. What struck me was not the presence of these issues. It was how difficult it was to separate them.
A student struggling to secure accommodation may also be working long hours to afford rent. A student working long hours may have less time to engage in university life. A student experiencing financial pressure may also experience increased stress, anxiety or isolation.
Students do not experience these challenges as separate categories. They experience them all at once.
Yet institutions often respond to them separately.
Housing becomes a housing issue.
Wellbeing becomes a wellbeing issue.
Employability becomes a careers issue.
Belonging becomes an engagement issue.
The reality for students is far more interconnected.
One of the strongest reflections to emerge from both the documentary and the panel discussion that followed its premiere was that students are not separate from communities; they are deeply part of them.
Students live in our neighbourhoods. They contribute to local economies. They volunteer, work, care for family members and build relationships beyond campus boundaries. The factors shaping their success often sit as much outside the institution as within it.
This is why I believe we need to think more holistically about student experience. Rather than asking how we improve individual services, perhaps we should spend more time asking whether we fully understand the conditions under which students are trying to learn, participate and succeed.
The documentary also prompted me to reflect on partnership.
Across the sector, there has been significant progress in recognising the value of student voice. Student representation is stronger than ever, and there is growing commitment to partnership working. This progress should be recognised.
However, one lesson I continue to reflect on is that students are often brought into conversations too late.
Too often, students are invited to comment on proposals, review draft strategies or respond to decisions that have already been substantially shaped.
Consultation is important, but partnership should begin before consultation.
Students should not only help evaluate solutions. They should help define the problems.
When students are involved at the earliest stages of policy development, service design and institutional planning, they bring perspectives that may otherwise be overlooked. They help identify assumptions, challenge blind spots and highlight lived realities that data alone cannot always reveal.
In my experience, some of the most effective initiatives I have been involved in began not with institutions asking students to approve a solution, but with institutions taking the time to understand the problem alongside them.
That shift may sound small, but its impact can be significant.
It moves student engagement from feedback to co-creation.
It moves partnership from participation to influence.
And ultimately, it leads to decisions that are more responsive to the realities students face.
Another lesson from the documentary is that stories still matter.
Higher education rightly values evidence. Evidence should continue to guide decision-making. However, stories help us understand the human experiences behind that evidence.
They provide context.
They create empathy.
They remind us that behind every statistic is a person navigating a unique set of circumstances.
For me, that is where the documentary has had its greatest value.
Not because it offers definitive answers, but because it creates space for reflection and dialogue between students, university leaders, policymakers and sector organisations.
The premiere brought together people from different parts of the higher education ecosystem. While perspectives varied, there was a shared recognition that student experience is becoming increasingly complex and that no single institution, service or policy can address that complexity alone.
If there is one takeaway I hope colleagues across the sector consider, it is this:
Student experience cannot be fully understood through institutional lenses alone.
To understand student experience, we must understand students’ lives.
We must understand the communities they belong to, the challenges they navigate beyond campus, and the conditions that shape their ability to engage and succeed.
The documentary is not intended to provide a definitive account of student experience. Nor is it intended to provide all the answers.
Instead, it is an invitation to reflect.
Are we involving students early enough?
Are we designing services around how institutions are structured, or around how students actually experience life?
Are we creating opportunities for genuine partnership, or simply seeking feedback on decisions already made?
And are we recognising students as members of communities rather than as a group separate from them?
If Not Your Student encourages more conversations around these questions, then it will have achieved exactly what it set out to do.
Oluwatomisin Osinubi is an MSc Social Innovation student at Glasgow Caledonian University and recently completed a term as Student President of Glasgow Caledonian Students’ Association. Her work has focused on student partnership, housing access, wellbeing and social innovation. She recently produced Not Your Student, a documentary exploring the realities of contemporary student life and the role of student voice in shaping change across higher education.
