By Gavin Mackintosh-
Universities in Britain could be restricted in recruiting students to poor quality courses, under new government plans.
The Department of Education today said that students and taxpayers will be better protected against rip-off degree courses that have high drop-out rates, don’t lead to good jobs and leave young people with poor pay and high debts, the Prime Minister and Education Secretary have announced
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Under the plans, the Office for Students (OfS) will be asked to limit the number of students universities can recruit onto courses that are failing to deliver good outcomes for students.
The UK has some of the world’s leading universities, but a minority of the courses on offer leave students saddled with debt, low earnings and faced with poor job prospects. The British government wants to make the system fairer for them, but also for taxpayers – who make a huge investment in higher education and are liable for billions of pounds in unrecovered tuition fees if graduate earnings are low
Ministers will ask the independent regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), to limit numbers on courses that do not have “good outcomes”.
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Education Minister Robert Halfon said imposing restrictions would encourage universities to improve course quality.
Labour said the move would “put up fresh barriers to opportunity in areas with fewer graduate jobs”.
The advocacy group Universities UK said university was a great investment for the vast majority of students.
A spokeswoman for the organisation warned any measures must be “targeted and proportionate, and not a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.
The government said courses that do not have “good outcomes” for students would include those that have high drop-out rates or have a low proportion of students going on to professional jobs. It will also look at potential earnings when deciding if a degree offers enough value.
PM Rishi Sunak said: “The UK is home to some of the best universities in the world and studying for a degree can be immensely rewarding. But too many young people are being sold a false dream and end up doing a poor-quality course at the taxpayers’ expense that doesn’t offer the prospect of a decent job at the end of it.”
Nearly three-in-10 graduates do not progress into highly-skilled jobs or further study 15 months after graduating, according to the OfS.
The OfS already has the power to investigate and sanction universities which offer degrees falling below minimum performance thresholds – but the new rules would permit the regulator to limit student numbers for those courses.
The current thresholds for full-time students doing a first degree are for 80% of students to continue their studies 75% of students to complete their course 60% of students to go on to further study, professional work, or other positive outcomes, within 15 months of graduating.
The Department of Education said the announcement does not change these criteria, and other aspects of the policy are unclear, such as how many students may be denied a place at university in future.
If one in five students would have been better off not going to university (according to a study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies) is that the kind of numbers the government has in mind? It won’t say.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Education Minister Robert Halfon said putting limits on underperforming degrees will mean those courses “will then improve”.
“Students will be able to make informed choices,” he said. “If a course has poor outcomes they might choose to do another course at university, they may still decide to do that course but will have the recruitment limits on it.”
He said any recruitment limits on courses will be a matter for the regulator, the OfS, rather than the government.
He suggested that the OfS would use “existing powers” to look into poor quality courses, saying: “We can’t order the Office for Students to do anything.”
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the announcement was “an attack on the aspirations of young people”.
But Mr Halfon dubbed that accusation as “nonsense”.
“The Labour party has been obsessed with quantity over quality and had been party of poor standards in education,” he said.
Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Munira Wilson said the prime minister was “out of ideas” and had “dug up a policy the Conservatives announced and then unannounced twice over”.
She said: “Universities don’t want this. It’s a cap on aspiration, making it harder for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to go on to further study.”
Universities UK said the UK had the highest completion rates of any OECD country and overall satisfaction rates were high.
“However, it is right that the regulatory framework is there as a backstop to protect student interests in the very small proportion of instances where quality needs to be improved,” a spokeswoman said.
The idea originated in a 2018 review set up under then-Prime Minister Theresa May. The same review also suggested that more money needed to be pumped into education and that tuition fees needed to be cut – but these are not being implemented.
The new pledge comes ahead of three by-elections in Conservative-held seats on Thursday.
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