Press Story

Embargoed: 00:01h Monday 10 June 2013

The Government should bring back the "Polytechnic", according to the final report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, published by the think tank IPPR today. The report argues that large further education colleges where students studying higher education courses make up the majority of their student body could be eligible to apply for Polytechnic status, with around half a dozen meeting demanding thresholds in the first wave.

Big further education colleges like Newcastle College Group and New College Durham already have degree awarding powers and can give out Foundation Degrees, while others like The Grimsby Institute and Blackburn College are likely to gain degree awarding status in the future.

The report also recommends:

o New £5,000 'fee only' degrees, focused on vocational learning and higher level apprenticeships offered to local students who would be eligible for fee loans but not maintenance support. Many of these places would be offered by the new Polytechnics and by FE Colleges working in partnership with universities.
o A new 'student premium' of £1000 extra per student from a low participation area or who has received free school meals to create an incentive to recruit such students.
o More widespread use of contextual admissions data should be promoted so that lower offers can be made to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
o International students to be removed from the net migration target.

The report argues for more low cost online courses that can count towards degree programmes, with the Open University accrediting Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provided via the FutureLearn platform. Accreditation of MOOCs towards degree programmes would allow for further expansion of opportunity to study at a higher level, while keeping costs down at a time of financial pressure.

Nigel Thrift, Chair of IPPR's Commission on the Future of Higher Education and Vice Chancellor of Warwick University, said:

"Polytechnic status would carve out a distinctive place in our tertiary education system for institutions that focus on providing higher level vocational qualifications. While many universities also provide such qualifications, a different title would protect a distinctive role for higher vocational learning that was lost in 1992. Polytechnic status would be a mark of vocational excellence that would send out wider signals about the importance of vocational learning. It would signal that the university title and the university route are not the only form of high status in our system."

Summary of recommendations in the Commission's final report:

1. Higher education opportunities should continue to expand. While resources are constrained in the next parliament, we should sustain the current proportion of 18-21 year olds entering higher education until 2020, while focusing additional places on locally available, flexible and low cost courses, aimed in particular at those who seek vocationally-orientated learning.
2. Universities and their partners in further education colleges should be able to bid for new £5,000 fee degrees, focused on vocational learning and offered to local students who would be eligible for fee loans but not maintenance support.
3. The government should consider reforms to the approximately £5 billion companies receive in training tax relief to better incentivise employers to invest in courses leading to accredited qualifications and continuing professional development, whether in further or higher education.
4. We must strengthen our systems of vocational provision and in particular our provision of advanced vocational learning through Further Education Colleges. More Further Education Colleges should be given the ability to award degrees and should be granted the renewed title of Polytechnic.
5. International students to be removed from the net migration target and arrangements for post work study to be brought into line with those of our key competitors.
6. We should continue to ring fence and sustain in cash terms the science and research budget through the next spending review period until 2017/18. Because this implies a continued real terms decline in funding, we argue that once the structural deficit on the public finances has been eradicated we should commit to a ten year strategy of raising public investment in research each year above inflation.
7. We should reallocate £1 billion a year currently inefficiently spent on R&D tax incentives to set up a national network of Applied Research and Innovation Centres focused on boosting applied research in the strategic industries of the future and on revitalising regions with below average growth.
8. Universities in Britain should follow the best practice of the US Ivy League in recruiting students to craft diverse and representative intakes. This is to ensure that students are educated not merely for individual advancement but also to be effective and responsible leaders with an understanding of an increasingly diverse society and interconnected world.
9. Funding should be shifted out of fee waivers and bursaries and into outreach programmes which have a stronger track record of recruiting applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.
10. We should introduce a student premium of £1000 extra per student from a low participation area or who has received free school meals to create an incentive to recruit such students and to recognise the additional learning support some students need, funded by reallocating existing widening participation resources and the abolition of the National Student Scholarship.
11. Institutions that currently have freedom to recruit unlimited numbers of students achieving ABB grades to do the same for those who qualify for the student premium.
12. The more widespread use of contextual admissions data should be promoted so that lower offers can be made to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This will be enabled by exempting 10 per cent of the lowest grades from entry tariff calculations in university league tables, provided universities commit to using them for contextual offers.
13. Eligibility for part time loans should be extended to tackle the crisis of part time learning.
14. A new postgraduate loans system should be introduced to enable fair and wider access to postgraduate courses.
15. HEIs should strengthen the active participation of students in improving teaching and learning.
16. English HEIs should embrace the potential of new technologies by recognising credit from low cost online courses so that they can count towards degree programmes. To make a start down this road we recommend that the Open University should accredit MOOCs provided via the FutureLearn platform so that they can count towards degree programmes offered by the OU itself and its partner institutions.
17. All universities should follow the example of those that have created an established career path for academics who want to focus on teaching.
18. To enable greater transferability throughout the system:
o HEFCE should exempt those students that transfer directly from one institution to another from student number controls.
o HEIs should be encouraged to establish transfer arrangements with other institutions, both regionally and nationally. The regulator should include accreditation of prior learning as a good practice in access agreements. It should also set benchmarks for how many transfer students from disadvantaged backgrounds institutions should aim to admit.
o HESA should collect data on the extent to which institutions engage in transfers and accredit previous qualifications of students.
19. We recommend that HEFCE, QAA and OFFA be merged into a single higher education regulator. This will reduce bureaucracy by simplifying the relationships between universities and government.
20. The regulator should keep a watching brief on the international competitiveness of HEIs across England. Where necessary it should encourage institutions to collaborate in regional federations to secure research funding, as many are now doing. The regulator should also monitor the financial health of HEIs and where necessary facilitate federations or mergers between universities.
21. Degree awarding powers should only be given to those who pass demanding quality thresholds, that such powers should never be bought or sold and that the university title should be reserved for institutions oriented towards the public good.
22. In order that universities contribute efficiency gains of their own to the task of fiscal consolidation the £9,000 tuition fee and teaching grants should be held constant in cash terms until the end of the next spending review period in 2017/18.
23. The current student funding system is unsustainable and should be reformed. Any system must protect university autonomy, be fair to students across all social backgrounds and modes of study, not place all of the burden on the current generation going through university and be sustainable for the public purse. We have modeled a range of alternatives to the current system, examining their cost to the government and their fairness to graduates, universities and the taxpayer. We hope this menu of options will help to inform the debate on higher education funding between now and the general election.

Notes to Editors:

The final report of IPPR's Commission on the Future of Higher Education will be published on Monday 10 June and will be available from: http://www.ippr.org/publication/55/10847/a?critical-path?securing?the?future?of?higher?education?in?england

The members of IPPR's Commission on the Future of Higher Education are:

Chair: Professor Nigel Thrift, Vice Chancellor and President, Warwick University
o Professor Janet Beer, Vice Chancellor, Oxford Brookes University
o Professor Sir Steve Smith, Vice Chancellor, University of Exeter
o Professor Sir Rick Trainor, Principal, King's College London
o Thom Arnold, President, Sheffield Students' Union, 2011-2012
o Dame Jackie Fisher, Principal and Chief Executive, Newcastle College Group
o Dr Sandra McNally, Director of the education programme at the Centre for
o Economic Performance, London School of Economics
o Hugh Morgan Williams, Chairman, Canford Group plc and North East Access to Finance Ltd
o Professor John Sexton, President, New York University

Contacts:

Richard Darlington, 07525 481 602, r.darlington@ippr.org

Tim Finch, 07595 920 899, t.finch@ippr.org