Not Thinking of Numbers!

For the first time in almost a decade, we now have controls on undergraduate numbers for providers in England, and controls on the recruitment of English students who may want to cross the border of one the three other home countries

The Department for Education (DfE) has attempted to stabilise 2020 undergraduate recruitment by doing something which arguably manages to make it significantly less stable, and at the same time undo many years of trying to widen access.

Although the caps are not public, providers have just been told how many undergraduates they can recruit based on last year's numbers, plus whatever was forecast for 2020/21, plus another 5%.

Instead of the expected (and frequently threatened fine) over-recruitment will be punished by a reduced fee level next time round for providers in England, and there’s a reduced Student Loan Company payment for the devolved nation miscreants.

And if that's not enough to disadvantage increasing popular FECs (and the majority of HEIs), there's a competition for 5,000 additional student numbers in subjects without an obviously common economic or societal skills need, which has designed to be available (at least in part)only to “elite” institutions. Numbers in these subjects (architecture, science, maths, engineering, and veterinary science) will only be available to providers whose non-benchmarked continuation rate is over 90 per cent, and which have a highly skilled employment/further study rate of over 75 per cent, and I can't think of a single FEC with a student demographic profiles those measures will apply to.

But the most damaging aspect, at least as far as FECs and any basic concepts of sense is concerned, is that the Full Time Student Number includes Apprentices, and most of them only attend college for one day a week, some maybe just for an afternoon or evening, So since their employers consider them to be PT they pay only PT fees - and why wouldn't they? - and the students don't come with OfS funding, colleges are now punished for recruiting the students the government has spent the last few encouraging them to educate!!!

All of which leaves me struggling to think of a positive. It certainly isn't to the benefit of students now more likely to want to study locally instead of leaving home for an expensive university experience. And it's going to negatively impact FECs by hundreds of thousand of pounds.

Who comes up with ideas like this and why?