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Universities face admissions review to improve access


England’s higher education regulator is to launch a review of undergraduate admissions at universities to improve access for disadvantaged students and to address concerns that applicants are being lured with inducements and misleading advertising.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Office for Students, said there were “entrenched gaps in access and participation” among students from poorer backgrounds.

“What we have seen in the past is slow but steady improvement . . . [which is] too slow when people’s livelihoods and opportunities are at stake,” she said. “That is why we are now looking for a radical improvement in progress.”

Her comments came against a backdrop of renewed criticism that universities are failing to improving access to or the performance of less privileged students, as well as practices including a jump in “conditional unconditional” offers guaranteeing undergraduate places to students regardless of their school exam results.

In recent years competition for students has intensified following a fall in the number of 18-year olds in the UK, rising Brexit-related uncertainty and increasing pension costs after a period of debt-financed expansion

Ms Dandridge’s remarks mirrored tough comments by Conservative education ministers towards the sector. Chris Skidmore, universities minister, said in a statement: “Our higher education sector is world-leading, but pockets of unacceptable poor practice harm its reputation and demonstrate the need for robust regulation.”

Speaking at the launch of the OfS’s first annual report, Ms Dandridge said: “We need to know whether the current admissions system is still fit for purpose in a much more competitive environment,” she said

She criticised “enticements and inducements” offered to vulnerable students “which are often not in their best interests”, and “false and misleading advertising” on websites and in marketing materials.

She said that she was only aware of a few such examples and cited action by the Advertising Standards Agency, which has upheld half a dozen claims during 2016-17 against the universities of East Anglia, West London, Falmouth, Leicester and Teesside, and the University of Law.

One university vice-chancellor said: “I think [the OfS] is overstepping the line significantly and is adding extra and unnecessary burdens. But it is also acting in the interests of students and much of the resentment is because the universities themselves have been insufficiently heeding the interests of students.”

The OfS was created at the start of last year with the mandate to authorise and supervise higher education institutions in England. By the middle of December, it had received over 500 applications and approved 391. It has applied specific conditions to 23 of these, refused registration to 10 other providers, pushing at least one to close and told a further 13 it was “minded” to refuse.

Ms Dandridge said the regulator would launch its review of admissions early in 2020, consult widely and aim to reach conclusions before the end of the year.

She said she did not believe the OfS needed additional powers or fresh legislation to add to its existing ability to fine, impose conditions or remove institutions from its register.

Universities UK, which represents the sector, said it had already launched a fair admissions review, due to report next spring, which is exploring “the extent to which various university admissions practices are fair, transparent and operating in the best interests of students”. That includes considering “contextual offers” of lower A level grades for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.



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