The implications of many of the recent changes to the fees regime and to the control of the numbers of home students admitted to each university have become something of a 'Trivial Pursuit' question. Few people really understand the bigger picture or the potential implications that flow from it. I have been involved in two recent presentations to schoolteachers who have watched aghast as I try to explain what is happening and what might happen. I have also done a presentation to Senate at which the body language of many present indicated that they had not appreciated the significance of the new system.
We are moving (or being moved) into a very uncomfortable position somewhere between a fully free market system and a fully controlled one. If the rhetoric of governmant ministers and others is to be believed, we will in future see a system where student choice is dominant ('Students at the Heart of the System' was the title of last year's White Paper). Yet this autumn there is a danger that many universities that students choose to go to by preference will be fined for exceeding a number control that has been handed down to them. The President of the NUS summed it up at a HEFCE conference when he queried why places were being taken away from popular universities and given to institutions "where there isn't exactly a queue out the door". Sheffield has not had very many places withdrawn to give to institutions that have lower fees (and which, as Liam points out, are not amongst the most popular). But even so we could well find that we accidentally exceed our recruitment limits for students with A level grades of less than AAB next month, and the 'fine' for doing so could be as much as £15,000 per student for each year of those students' courses. So much for real student choice in a free market.
On Monday of this week UCAS published an analysis of the behaviour of candidates in this, the first year of the new fee regime. In complete contradiction to the government's expectations, instead of universities with lower stated levels of fees seeing an increase in applications, the reverse has happened. The proportion of applications to the highest fee universities has risen, putting them under pressure in relation to the capped numbers we have been given for below AAB students. Candidates are not stupid - they recognise that they are unlikely to get the same quality of education from an institution charging £6500 as from one charging £9000 and are opting for the latter group. We have hypothesised that there would be this 'flight to quality'and now we have national evidence that it is indeed occurring.
But the complexity of the arrangements now in place is such that I am sure there will be a number of outcomes, both this year and in 2013, that are far from predictable. There will be apparent injustices done to individual students who fall on borders between different parts of the system. I have been warning HEFCE about this for some months. It should be a field day for the media to pick up 'hard-done-by' stories and make a big splash of them. The saving grace of the system is that the media don't understand it, and in that they are in the same boat as most teachers, most parents, and many of our own staff. This afternoon I have spent time with colleagues from Admissions, Finance, and Planning and Governance Services working on how we are going to handle the issues that arise during the week A level results are declared. It should be a interesting week!
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