Over the past three decades, since the Further and Higher Education Act (1992) there has been a considerable expansion of the higher education sector in England, with a categorisation of ‘recruiters’ and ‘selectors’ emerging. This expansion was initially a response by universities to student demand, not always funded by increased teaching grants and with student number caps in place.
The resultant pressures on university funding were addressed to some extent by the introduction of tuition fees for undergraduate students in 1998, accompanied by a system of student loans, administered by the Student Loans Company (SLC).
Undergraduate fees were subsequently increased substantially in 2006 and again in 2012, when the teaching grant was removed for all but strategically important subjects.
The move to a marketisation of the sector, with the ability to access student tuition fee payments from the SLC, encouraged a growth in the number of so-called ‘alternative’ providers. In 2015/16, the cap on the number of undergraduate students that could be recruited was removed.
