Students are being forced to sign contracts promising to work hard and dress smartly for lectures, an education watchdog said yesterday.

Baroness Ruth Deech, the independent adjudicator for higher education, said some students signed lengthy documents at the start of their courses, without knowing what they contained.

She criticised such charters for being “too legalistic”, and said growing numbers of universities were insisting upon them.

Her comments coincided with the publication of the annual report on the adjudictor’s work resolving disputes between universities and students.

Of the contracts, Baroness Deech said: “A number of universities have gone down this track and I know more are thinking about it.”

She said she could see the “good will” behind the idea of contracts that clearly set out universities’ commitments to teaching and students’ responsibilities for working hard.

But some of the documents are “very lengthy”, stretching to more than 10 pages of legal terms and conditions, she said.

“I have seen one that even laid down that students should dress neatly when going to lectures,” she said. “I don’t know that that is enforceable.

“Students of 17 and 18, maybe from families without much experience of university, don’t know what they are signing up to.

“Our view on balance is that the student contract is not a good thing. It is useful to let students know they have to work hard but I think the contract is too legalistic.”

The adjudicator’s annual report said contracts typically covered issues such as student accommodation, bursaries, discipline policies and the use of computers.

The report continued: “Our concern with the new written university-student contracts is that students do not appear to favour them, regarding them as one-sided and non-negotiable, laying down, they would say, duties on students and using exclusion clauses to protect the university from liability.”

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator ran a workshop on the contracts at which delegates warned that a formal written contract “will not of itself help a university avoid litigation”.

The report added: “It remains to be seen to what extent contracts would be enforceable by the courts.”

Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students, said: “NUS has always been strongly opposed to these biased student contracts.

“It is understandable that higher education institutions are seeking to ensure that students understand their obligations to attend lectures and keep to basic norms of good behaviour.

“If a contract is to bind students to attending lectures and tutorials, surely it should also bind the university to specifying levels of teaching provision.”

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