ABSTRACT
This chapter presents three stories of the student experience, told by students from the same department at Imperial College London, allowing readers to make their own comparative analysis with ease. Oliver Broadbent, John Collins and Eirini Spentza were invited to contribute to this chapter because they have been serious students who were notable as student leaders at department, faculty and/or college level. Each student is describing the same course at the same time, yet their experiences are highly coloured by their personal concept of what a university education ought to be. Thus we see a political model of education, a social model of education and a personal transformative model described in this chapter. Each student gives stinging and trenchant criticism of their institution where its characteristics detract from the student experience, yet each professes great enjoyment and personal development from their education. It should be noted that these students, although elected by their fellow students as representatives, are not typical students: they handle an enormous workload in their degree with an enormous workload in their extracurricular work as student leaders. (As an indicator, their workload far exceeds that of Imperial’s pre-clinical medical students.) Each of them can point to the changes they have made for other students: the schemes they created, the events they ran and the changes they wrought to the system. These are not the views of onlookers in the education system, but of participants who care. Their only priming before writing their contributions was a brief meeting with the editor, Dr Di Napoli, where they were informed of the nature of the book and invited to ask questions.
