Today at the meeting of he University Executive Board we agreed a new structure for our OFFA busaries for the entry cohort in 2011.  We had earlier attempted to make changes for 2010 entry, but we were turned down in our attempt to do so by the Office for Fair Access on the grounds that we could not change the conditions part-way through the admissions cycle because some candidates may have made decisions to apply on the basis of the information available to them about bursaries at an earlier stage in the process.  One of the peculiarities of the university world is how slowly we can introduce change.  We are locked in to a cycle of nearly two years for the admission of students to the university, and then into a cycle of 3 or 4 years (longer in the case of Medicine, Architecture and some other subjects) as a cohort makes its way through a programme.  In total from the conception of a new undergraduate programme through to the graduation of the first students from it, the sum generally comes to around 6 years.  Fortunately it is very much quicker for postgraduate programmes.  In what are likely to be troubled financial times in the next few years it is also worth remembering that it would generally take at least 3 years from the decision to close a programme to the point where the last cohort of students graduates from it (if it is at undergraduate level).

Because of these long lead times universities are not as fleet of foot as they might be in relation to changing circumstances around them.  The OFFA bursaries issue is a case in point. Ever since the deferred fees system was introduced in 2006 we have offered three types of bursray:
1. A bursary contingent on the household income from which the student comes.
2. A bursary for students from widening participation backgrounds who has been engaged with us on a significant outreach programme.
3. A bursary for students with high level 3 qualifications (A levels etc) entering to read certain subjects - particularly in the faculties of Engineering and Science.
Over the last year or so the world around us has changed rapidly.  There has been a surge in demand for places to read for degrees in Engineering and Science, such that we no longer ned to offer financial inducements to bring students in.  And the recession has hit household incomes.  Because we have put money into the subject-specific bursaries we have always made lower offers of income-contingent bursareis than many other bursaries around us.

Today we have agreed to change that for 2011 entry - to take out the subject-specific awards and to increase our maximum bursaries for students from low-income households.  We have retained the bursaries for students from outreach programmes.  From 2011 we will have a bursary structure is more attuned to the times.  Yet the slowness of change point I made earlier shows up in the fact that it won'e be until 2014 that all undergraduates are in the new system.

And by then we will have had the results of the Browne Review of fees and funding and we will be in another new world.