The government’s proposals on higher education reform following the Augar review of post-18 education and finding in England focused on tackling “low quality” courses, and increasing participation in study at level four and five.
The broad thinking, grounded in the Augar panel’s analysis of what had happened in the sector since the introduction of the various market-based reforms of the 2010s, seemed to be that universities and other HE providers are overly incentivised to fill their boots with less-qualified students (implicitly from lower-income backgrounds) studying full degrees – who then tend to achieve worse overall outcomes.
Whether you see this as the reality of widening participation in action or a massive con perpetrated on vulnerable people rather depends on your lens. It’s undeniable that in a number of providers, in a number of subject areas, the proportion of students hitting the B3 outcomes of retention and progression are below the threshold that the Office for Students (OfS) believes is acceptable – as DK’s modelling demonstrates.
But there’s obviously also a lot going on there in addition to the course itself: students with complex lives; student subject choices that don’t exactly match the labour market on the first pass; employer recruitment habits that don’t take account of the full diversity of talent on offer; and so on.
