House of Commons - Government reform of Higher Education - Business, Innovation and Skills Committee

Government reform of Higher Education - Business, Innovation and Skills Committee Contents

6 Widening participation in higher education

Introduction

180. The terms 'access' or 'fair access' and 'widening participation' are commonly used almost interchangeably, to refer to the aspiration of increasing the proportion of students from under-represented groups entering and completing higher education. Professor Colin Riordan of Universities UK drew the following distinction between them:

Fair access is whether what you might call elite universities are really open to all. […] Widening participation is the activity generally in the sector of reaching out to students who just have not gone to higher education.[188]

181. The term 'under-represented groups' is also often used in this context. While is most commonly refers to students from lower-income backgrounds, who may have attended schools with generally lower attainment rates at A-level, it also includes disabled and mature students, care leavers, and students from minority ethnic backgrounds. As the National Forum for Lifelong Learning Networks cautions in its written evidence to the Committee:

Care should be taken not to identify potential learners in terms of their economic status alone; this is very significant of course but ambitions to widen participation should be not be limited to those learners entitled to free school meals.[189]

182. There is a consensus that improving access and widening participation are worthwhile investments which brings private benefits to the graduate, as well as socio-economic benefits to the UK by increasing tax revenue from graduates (who generally earn more, and thus pay more tax over their career than non-graduates), promoting social mobility and ensuring that employers have access to the largest possible pool of highly-qualified and skilled graduates. As the University Alliance said:

With 80% of new jobs in high-skill areas it is vital that we have a system that enables all those who have the ambition and ability to succeed at university.[190]

Funding widening participation work

183. Both the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Office for Fair Access oversee the efforts of universities in relation to widening participation. Funding for this work is allocated by HEFCE though the block teaching grant. In 2010-11, HEFCE allocated a total of £372.7 million to institutions for:

the additional costs for outreach activity to raise aspirations and attainment among potential students from under-represented groups (£130.3 million);
to assist with the costs of supporting those students with disabilities (£13.2 million); and
to improve student retention rates (£229.2 million).[191]

This funding is provided as part of the block teaching grant and was "protected" in the recent cost-saving exercise. The Minister told us that universities would have £407 million in 2012-13 to spend on access and outreach work, which would rise to over £600 million per year by 2015-16.[192]

184. In 2007, HEFCE guidance on effective ways to target outreach activities stated that "as a principle":

Resources should be targeted at learners with the potential to benefit from higher education who come from under-represented communities. Overwhelmingly these learners are from lower socio-economic groups (groups 4-8 in the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification, NS-SEC), and those from disadvantaged backgrounds who live in areas of relative deprivation where participation in HE is low.[193]

185. The Office for Fair Access (OFFA) is an independent public body that helps safeguard and promote fair access to higher education. OFFA validates, approves and monitors universities 'access agreements'. Under the current system this includes the monitoring of universities bursaries schemes which they are required to offer to students from families with an income of below £25,000 per year. The minimum bursary for 2010-11 was £329, although institutions were responsible for determining their own bursary regime and many offered much higher awards. The average bursary in 2010-11 was £900.[194] However, the Government is proposing to replace this compulsory bursary with a National Scholarship Programme, which we consider later in this section.

186. The current system of outreach and financial support offered by higher education institutions was subject to a review by OFFA. The research was conducted in 2010 and demonstrated that the current activity, while well-intentioned, was not achieving the desired outcomes. The research concluded that:

The introduction of bursaries has not influenced the choice of university for disadvantaged young people.
Applications from disadvantaged young people have not changed in favour of universities offering higher bursaries.
Disadvantaged young people have not become more likely to choose conditional offers from universities offering higher bursaries.
Since bursaries were introduced most of the increase in the participation of disadvantaged young people has been in universities offering lower bursaries.[195]

Government proposals

187. From 2012, OFFA will play a more central role in improving access. Each institution wishing to charge annual tuition fees above £6,000 must agree an access agreement with OFFA, setting out what it will spend and the measures it will take to improve access, measured against targets specific to each institution (depending on the university's existing success in attracting and retaining students from under-represented groups). OFFA will the power to impose financial sanctions on institutions which fail to meet their agreed access targets or fail to deliver the support they agreed to provide without good reason. These financial sanctions can include asking HEFCE to withhold up to £500,000 of the institution's teaching grant, or refusing to grant permission for it to charge tuition fees above £6,000.

188. In assessing these targets OFFA has recommended that institutions with the lowest proportion of students from under-represented groups should invest around 30% of their fee income over £6,000 on measures to improve access. Institutions with average or higher proportions of students from under-represented groups may assign a smaller proportion of income, between 22.5% or 15%. However, OFFA made clear that the suggested proportions were "not precise minimums" and that "the purpose of access agreements is to deliver progress in respect of access and student retention, not to secure a precise amount of money to this end".[196]

189. Bahram Bekhradnia of the Higher Education Policy Institute welcomed the expenditure on access and widening participation but he was sceptical that it would, in the long term, be an effective system:

What we have is OFFA being told that they have to insist that universities spend a higher and higher proportion of the fees that they get from these students explicitly on activity that is not going to benefit those students; it is going to benefit future generations of students, and perhaps not even that.[197]

He also argued that it was both "unfair and a pity" that funding for widening participation came from students through a higher fee and not through Government from general taxation.[198]

190. There is also a concern that a requirement to spend a specified proportion of fee income on access and retention measures may create an incentive for institutions seeking to replace lost teaching-grant funding with fee income to charge even higher tuition fees to incorporate this required spend on access. The result of this is that the costs of widening participation are passed on to students (or more accurately, to graduates once they begin repaying their loans). Furthermore, it risks raising fees further and potentially discouraging the very students the spending on widening participation is intended to attract.[199]

191. An alternative approach to funding was offered by Professor Barr. He proposed that:

For equity reasons, there should be a pupil premium payable for each disadvantaged student, independent of university. The premium could be paid to the university as additional income, creating an incentive to recruit students from disadvantaged backgrounds, or to the student acting as a scholarship by paying a fraction of fees upfront.[200]

192. We are concerned that efforts to fund wider participation through a proportion of tuition fees will not achieve the Government's objectives in this area. Widening participation in higher education has an important impact on future economic prosperity and therefore is worthy of public investment. We therefore recommend that the Government reconsider funding this activity through a programme similar to the 'pupil premium'. This could reduce headline tuition fees, and consequently also reduce the size of student loans and improve repayment rates.

National Scholarship Programme

193. The Government also proposes to introduce a new National Scholarship Programme (NSP) as a replacement to compulsory bursaries. The Government has undertaken to contribute £50m to the NSP in the financial year 2012-13, with a £100m contribution in 2013-14, and £150m in 2014-15. Institutions charging above £6,000 will have to match fund any Government contribution.[201] The Department went on to say that participation in the new National Scholarship Programme is mandatory for universities wishing to charge over £6,000.[202]

194. According to HEFCE the NSP will:

It will provide a direct benefit to individual, eligible students.
Each eligible student will receive a benefit of not less than £3,000 (full-time and pro rata part-time to a minimum intensity of 25 per cent). This is a one-year benefit, not a recurrent, annual entitlement.
No more than £1,000 of the overall award is to be provided as a cash bursary.
The programme will not to be used to fund outreach programmes, which universities will continue to fund through alternative means.
The Government's contribution to the programme will be £50 million in financial year 2012-13, £100 million in 2013-14 and £150 million from 2014-15.
It is expected that those institutions wishing to charge above the 2012-13 basic fee level of £6,000 who are required to submit an access agreement to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) will provide a matched contribution to the programme of at least the same value as the government contribution.[203]

195. The NUS, million+ and others have expressed concerns about the proposed National Scholarship Programme, particularly that the match-funding requirement will be most onerous on those institutions with a higher proportion of under-represented students, and that awards from the fund are at the discretion of individual institutions, rather than an objective entitlement.[204]

196. Furthermore, the NUS warned that as the bursary awards under the National Scholarship Programme would be made after a successful application, the programme "will do nothing to influence the application behaviours of the students it is designed to target".[205] This point of view was shared by Sir Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust:

We are concerned at the speed at which that programme has been put together. We are also concerned that it is going to break down into 100 different schemes, effectively, with individual universities running them, which does not seem to us be something that is going to be persuasive to someone who is doubtful about continuing education. We are also concerned in regard to the National Scholarship Programme that you can only access the scholarship after having applied for a place.[206]

197. The Association of Colleges also questioned whether the NSP was "fit for purpose" as a scholarship scheme to help bright people from poor backgrounds enter higher education and believed that the existence of "possibly over one hundred institutionally based schemes" could lead to "unnecessary complexity and confusion for applicants".[207] To help increase certainty for applicants, the Association of Colleges recommended that eligibility for support from the NSP should be linked to eligibility for the 16-18 Bursary fund (the replacement for the Educational Maintenance Allowance).[208] This potential for inconsistency and complexity was summarised by Bahram Bekhradnia who stated "If student needs are the issue, then there is no argument for them to vary by university".[209]

198. However, the Minister told us that leaving individual institutions to develop their own models of support under the National Scholarship Programme was a policy decision and that the Government had "deliberately decentralised, or localised" the Programme as part of a specific coalition policy "to give a little bit more discretion to universities".[210]

FEE WAIVERS VERSUS BURSARIES

199. The Minister argued that the Government favoured fee-waivers could reduce the amount the Treasury would need to lend to the student, and thus also reduce the headline national 'average' fee.[211] This argument was not supported by Sir Peter Lampl who believed that the promotion of fee-waivers in this manner sent out a contradictory message to the Government's central claim that higher fees should not be a deterrent to participation:

We are all arguing these fees are not a deterrent […] that is the official argument. We are saying that if we give kids a little bit of money so they do not have to incur such high costs, it acts as an incentive. That is where I see the inconsistency.[212]

200. While a fee waiver undoubtedly reduces the graduate's long-term debt, it also reduces the total financial support that the student may claim. A better-off student may have the resources to pay some or all of their tuition fees up front, but may still choose to take out a full fee loan and use those funds to spend on books, food, accommodation, field-trips etc. A student from a low-income background who is awarded a fee waiver does not have this option. The amount they may borrow to cover tuition fees is reduced accordingly, but they will only benefit from a lower debt as a graduate if and when they come within a few thousand pounds of completely paying off their loan. Many graduates do not become high earners, may never pay off their loan, and so would never actually benefit from having borrowed less as a result of the fee waiver than they might have done. At the same time, they may have accrued additional (and more expensive) commercial debts through overdrafts and credit cards to support themselves during their studies.

201. Aaron Porter, then President of the National Union of Students believed that support for less privileged students was better targeted at living costs:

I believe a discount on something that you are not repaying until you get to £21,000 is not as well spent as something that can put money in the pockets of poorer students while they are there.[213]

This view was also supported by Simon Hughes MP, who said that when he discussed support for student "they were clear that any scholarships should be to pay off things other than fees and not be fee waivers".[214] In his Report to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister he recommended that "from 2013 national scholarships should only be available for payment of accommodation and living costs, unless the student expressly requests the scholarship for fee waiver instead".[215]

202. We welcome any additional investment to remove barriers to participation in higher education. However, we are not convinced that the Government's policies for widening participation will achieve its objectives as effectively as it may have hoped. What prospective students need is a level of certainty about their entitlement and support before making an application.

203. We believe that focusing financial support on providing money for living costs to students while they are studying would be a more effective means of support than fee-waivers and would be more consistent with the message that students should not be dissuaded from applying to university because of the cost. We therefore recommend that the National Scholarship Programme be refocused to direct public funds to support living costs of students.

188 Q 137 Back

189 Ev w59 Back

190 Ev 274 Back

191 Ev 239 Back

192 Q 663 Back

193 Higher Education Outreach: targeting disadvantaged learners, May 2007, HEFCE http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2007/07_12/07_12.pdf Back

194 OFFA bursary leaflet for HE advisors 2010-11 Back

195 Office for Fair Access, Have bursaries influenced choices between universities?: A report to the Office for Fair Access by Dr Mark Corver, senior analyst at Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (September 2010) page 2 Back

196 Office for Fair Access, How to produce an access agreement for 2012/13, (March 2011/01) Back

197 Q 458 Back

198 Q 460 Back

199 Ev 224 and 227 Back