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Universities are engaged in a fight for survival, a fact that cannot be doubted by anyone who has ever cast an eye over the supplements advertising places available through the UCAS clearing scheme that appear in the newspapers as soon as the Alevel results are published. The rapid expansion of university courses in the last 10 years, combined with the recent cuts in funding available to students, means that there is intense competition to attract and retain students. There is an increasing awareness that many students arrive at university with difficulties that threaten their chances of academic success. This has forced new thinking on the level and type of support they need, in a context of ever-increasing pressure on the resources available for this.
Ravi Rana's book, published this year, is the latest contribution to a growing literature on counselling students in higher education. This book is part of a series entitled Basic Texts in Counselling and Psychotherapy and the author has combined an explanation of the psychodynamics affecting adolescents and the way in which these are played out in the university setting with a guide to theoretical concepts.
In the first five chapters, the author explains the psychoanalytic concepts that inform her work - she is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist as well as a student counsellor of many years standing - and writes about the developmental stages that adolescents have to negotiate before they can leave home and achieve success in their own right, away from their families. This is an ambitious project. Ravi Rana makes use of a large number of case vignettes - and, though they are illustrative and clearly drawn on extensive experience, this reader felt rather overwhelmed, particularly in the first two chapters. Dr Rana explains they are composite illustrative examples rather than actual students, and they clearly have a vivid presence in her mind.
Each chapter is used as an opportunity to explain a group of theoretical concept