Student number controls should be reintroduced in England to end the “zero-sum game” that has allowed some institutions to prosper at the expense of others, according to academics who are attempting to instigate a big push on the issue within the University and College Union.
A motion will be debated at the UCU congress next week that calls for a “high profile campaign for the better management and distribution of student numbers across all higher education institutions”.
The union, the motion says, should commission research on “models of student distribution which can create recruitment balance in HE,” with those backing the motion saying this could involve universities being given a moving percentage target that regulates expansion year-on-year.
Student number controls were scrapped for England by the Conservative government in 2015-16, allowing some institutions – many of them members of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities – to expand rapidly.
