The report looks at the drivers that are propelling recent rapid developments in online learning. It also explores what lessons can be learnt from experiences of digital transitions in other sectors and the wider implications that these developments may have for higher education.

The announcement that Udacity and Georgia Tech will be offering an online master of science based on MOOC courses adds to the sense that this model of online learning is here to stay. Furthermore, Coursera’s announcement that it has entered into translation partnerships will help to extend its already significant international reach.

The media coverage surrounding MOOCs may be out of step with the actual reality of what a MOOC entails – often little more than a series of videoed lectures and a message board. However, the volume of students that enrol, and complete, many of these courses demands our attention.

As interest in these courses grows there is rightly an increasing volume of critical scrutiny about what these developments may mean for higher education and different universities.  There are the legitimate concerns about the use of a basic broadcast model by the main MOOC platforms that, in many respects, is only interesting for the fact that it is being done for free. Even then, many of the features that turn learning from informal to formal – namely accreditation and certification – still cost the student money. The democratising element of open access courses also only goes so far, and selective institutions are likely to remain so, even when their courses are based around a MOOC format, such as in the case of Georgia Tech.

The emphasis on an ‘elite’ can mask the fact that good educators can easily be found away from highly selective or research intensive institutions. It may even threaten to promote a purchaser provider split around course content that can present a challenge to the professional identity and standards of institutions and academics  – not to mention a possible threat to the diversity that drives creativity and innovation across a sector.

Concern about these issues is exacerbated by the profit motive of many of the main MOOC platforms and technology firms. In some cases, these suspicions are understandable. At times it is perhaps hard to square the high minded educational aims of widening access to world-class education by firms that are backed by venture capital offering an educational model that is largely a highly limited imitation of the real thing.

Many of these concerns are neither new nor unique to MOOCs and many if not all have been present throughout the history of distance and online learning. As with developments in the past, MOOCs are not a silver bullet that solves the challenge of how to educate students as far as possible at an affordable cost – a question that has been around since before the phrases ‘policy maker’ and student loan were even coined.

The ideas and approaches associated with MOOCs have been developed by academics exploring ways to improve higher education for the 21st century. The principle and approach of making the output of institutions and academics available, in an accessible format, for free and to students around the world deserves serious consideration for its contribution to the work of universities and their engagement with society. The peer learning, networked model of online learning may turn out to be a valuable long-term contribution to the pedagogy of higher education as our personal and professional lives move online. Equally, these approaches represent a challenge to conventional quality assurance approaches that need to be addressed with care in order to maintain the integrity of a higher education for all students.

Perhaps we need to separate out the idea of MOOCs from the start-up online learning companies that are behind the main MOOC platforms. The promotion of MOOCs may be an alliance of technologists and private profit-making firms looking to carve out a market share based around a low cost high volume pedagogical model. Even then, these new firms have been instrumental in bringing this simple idea to the forefront of the public debate and have built foundations from which they can build new product lines, for students, institutions and businesses, many of which will attract conventional fees.

We have seen from other sectors that the online world can present many searching questions for incumbent institutions that can easily find themselves behind the curve of rapid change. These undoubtedly present challenges for universities. They also present opportunities to extend their reach to more students than ever before in a variety of ways and to learn more about how online learning works in an age where lives are increasingly online. However, the organisations that may be feeling most uncomfortable at the moment are not necessarily ‘out-dated’ universities, but existing online providers wondering how to contend with new high profile competitors who have registered millions of students in the space of a year.

William Hammonds is a Policy Researcher at Universities UK

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It is the University’s conviction that being part of an international community is itself an education, and that when students make the most of opportunities to learn from those who are different to themselves, they gain insights they would not experience any other way. For us, diversity is an asset. We cite the number of countries on campus – over 130 at the last count – as a source of pride.

 Yet it is easy to forget that our pleasure in our international community is not universal. As last week’s local elections and this weekend’s tabloids show, there is a sense that a tide is turning in British public opinion. In articles about schools and higher education, there are concerns about local resources and the impact of diversity on the host community. Our experience of the great benefits brought by colleagues and students from around the world is absent from this discourse, and the foreigner is all too easily seen as alien.

These thoughts played on my mind when I joined my son last week on a trip to the cinema to watch the new Star Trek movie. I enjoyed it but it also awakened in me a sense of nostalgia for an ideal which feels under threat.

To my generation, Star Trek’s famous crew represented something new. Its fantastic plots and stories of undiscovered planets held the promise of a future in which national boundaries had been eroded and become long lost cultural absurdities. Watching it now, it is easy to underestimate how radical it was then. The images of interracial connection were stunningly important in 1968, and the makers of the TV series knew they were making a popular fable with political implications. I also realise that it represents a dream that seems to be moving further away from us as many blame other countries and cultures for our difficulties.

As I left the cinema, memories of my own encounters with internationalism came flooding back.

The first time I visited the House of Commons, I was in London for an admissions interview at Queen Mary College. The debate in the House was about membership of the European Union and I was moved by the thought that we were making a step towards an inter-national community and global governance.

I remember giving a speech at a European research collaboration meeting which surprised and seemed to delight the scientists there. I talked about the role of Science in building a new international community of academics whose home was not only the nation state, but Europe and indeed the world.

And what physicist could forget the burst of pride and delight last year when the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) discovered the Higgs Boson.

The young optimist who hoped for an academia without borders is still there within me, still hoping, but feeling more threatened. I am perturbed by the apparent growth of the view that we in the United Kingdom are essentially different and need to be kept that way.

Such feelings cannot be dispelled by exhortation. It is no good responding to people’s genuine concerns with accusations of bigotry alone. Politicians of all parties are afraid of losing voters, yet we need to be very sure about the visions we do have and whether they really are places of safety or simply of hiding. The role of a university is to acknowledge that people have genuine concerns and difficulties – and to work on solutions to these – but also to be a place of diversity, openness, inclusion and welcome.

As a University, we are in many ways an experimental country, one with citizens of every nation on a mission to make a difference in our world for all our home communities, wherever they may be. Ours is in this sense a moral voyage with an emphasis on innovation and putting knowledge to service. And if it isn’t, we will fall far short of what we can be. And we will fail to answer questions from students and society about what a university is for at a time of change and limited resource.

Last weekend, as the country’s media debated immigration, our own students put on an International Cultural Evening in Sheffield City Hall – a feast of music and dance, laughter and talent, with proceeds raised enriching needy local charities. As the tabloids focused on fears of a Romanian crime wave in inner-city London, our own Romanian Society took the award for the performance of the night for its joyful mixture of dance, irony, energy and fun. The event was hosted by our International Student Officer Fadi Dakkak, who is leading the campaign to ensure that all students – from the UK or overseas – feel the benefits of being part of a vibrant international community.

This cultural richness was increasingly visible as the week went on. At the Celebration of Enterprise Dinner which filled Firth Hall, student finalists inspired judges and guests with their superb business start-ups and concepts. Of those who were shortlisted, a large number were international students who were bringing to life concepts involving social enterprise and job creation.

And at the launch of our Insigneo Institute – a partnership between research in Medicine and Engineering and the clinical skills within the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust – we saw Professor Marco Viceconti lead a team of researchers whose names display their many nationalities, united around an ambitious goal to deliver healthcare in new, personal and life-changing ways. And of course this is just one of numerous ways in which colleagues across the University are working on international collaborations and to bring international perspectives into the educational experience.

Our University shows what an international community can and should be. A place of diversity in which talents are brought together to do good in our world. As our Union President Abdi Aziz-Suleiman says,

“We are all international… There isn’t a story of a student in the 21st century that doesn’t have an international element to it, and the richer stories are those with all the more international elements to them.”

Some of the leaders of the future are with us at Sheffield now, and our task is to make the very most of them being amongst us. Let’s learn from and teach one another about our hope for a future society typified by talent, respect and international collaboration.

Professor Sir Keith Burnett is Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University – follow on Twitter @SheffieldUni

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By any measure, the UK university sector is a global success story. It ranks second in the world in research quality and output and first in terms of research productivity. It also ranks second globally in terms of university-industry collaboration and is in the upper tier internationally in the contribution it makes to the UK’s innovation economy.

The UK’s universities have also made huge progress in terms of social mobility over the past decade. According to most recent available figures, the percentage of students from disadvantaged groups achieving a place at university has increased by 50% over the last 15 years. This is in an era of increased graduate contributions. And in 2012, the first year of £9,000 fees, entry rates for disadvantaged students increased. Universities collectively spend around £700m per year on access, outreach and financial aid to attract students from low participation groups and extend educational opportunities as widely as possible. Increasingly, they are developing innovative policies to increase the chances of success – through developing deep partnerships with schools, to using contextual data to make offers.

Universities in the UK are entirely autonomous in deciding which students to admit. This is rightly one of the most highly-prized features of the system. It allows universities to develop and implement social mobility policies which are appropriate for their mission and make-up, and devote funds accordingly. University leaders across the board are deeply committed to increasing social mobility, and are rightly accountable to the Office of Fair Access for the progress they are making in this area.

That is not to say there is not much more that can be done – either to strengthen research performance, or to improve social mobility.

On the first of these, it is essential that government continues to invest public funding in the university research base and to increase this over the next few years. There is no substitute for this funding, and even America’s top universities receive very large amounts of federal funds for research (and though their colleges receive no teaching funding, students at private US universities, including Stanford, are entitled to federal financial support). Increased investment, together with a favourable innovation policy environment, will help keep the UK’s universities at the top of the global league tables.

There are undoubted threats to the UK’s global research standing from other parts of the world – not just from the US, but increasingly Asia, and the BRIC countries. That is why we make the point in our submission to the spending round for 2015-16 that the government needs to invest to compete.

With regard to social mobility: while much progress has been made in recent years, the gap between the numbers of students attending from the highest income groups and those from the lowest remains unacceptably large. While universities have a major role to play in addressing this through their admissions and outreach work, by far the bigger issue remains aspiration and attainment at secondary school level. Changing the funding status of institutions or their organisational form will do nothing to address this. It needs a combination of funding support, increased focus on effective outreach activity, and a joined-up approach across the whole education system – from primary schools through to university entrance.

Finally, the UK’s universities are increasingly reaching out to establish regional and global partnerships, and have been doing so for years. Increased collaboration will continue to be a significant part of future strategies to compete effectively, with universities becoming ever-more outward-facing in their activities. This can be seen in a range of recent initiatives, from the South East university research partnership, to Warwick University’s partnership with New York.

Higher education is both a global and a local enterprise. The economic crisis and the demands of austerity have undoubtedly placed pressure on the UK system, but universities are resilient and adaptive. They are finding ways both to respond to the global challenges in research and to continue to deliver the highest-quality education for an increasingly diverse student population.

The post Lessons from the land of the free? This side of the pond has a lot to offer, too. appeared first on Universities UK blog.

There is no doubt, after last week’s elections, that tough immigration policy is even more important to the Government. But I was really struck by the way they presented this Bill. The Queen said: “The Bill will ensure that this country attracts people who will contribute and deters those who will not”.

And of course we know that international students contribute more to this country’s coffers than they take out. They tend to come here, study and leave and while they are here they place far less burden on public services than other migrants – they tend to be younger and are therefore less likely to use the health service. They generally live in shared accommodation and are less likely to have dependents. International students quite clearly fit the Government’s description of  “people who will contribute”.

In the pre- and post-speech spin, ministers and Number 10 were keen to make special reference to the desirability of attracting legitimate international students. This really matters. It means that the importance of attracting international students is right up there at the top of the political agenda when they are talking about one of the most central policy issues of the next election. That’s no small matter. It is a really important result of the sustained cross-party support international students have received, led by MPs like Paul Blomfield (Lab) and Nadhim Zahawi and Peers like Lord Hannay (CB) and Lord MacGregor (Con). We now have support right in the heart of the policy machine, in the form of Jo Johnson and Margot James – both of whom have supported us on this issue.

The other big news, for me, is the Intellectual Property Bill. This Bill will implement the Hargreaves recommendations relating to design and help businesses protect their intellectual property. Measures include the implementation of a Unified Patent Court and strengthening and clarifying protection of design.

Although little detail is currently available we also expect the Bill to contain an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which would exempt pre-publication research from Freedom of Information requests. This is a change which Universities UK lobbied to achieve. If confirmed, this will be a very welcome development.

Other Bills to watch:

• The Pensions Bill will have implications for schemes like USS and SAUL, introducing a new flat rate state pension and ending the option of contracting-out of the additional state pension. This will have cost and affordability implications for higher education institutions and Scheme members.
• The Deregulation Bill includes measures to enable greater flexibility in delivery and increase employer involvement in the design and assessment of apprenticeships.
• The National Insurance Contributions Bill includes measures to create a £2,000 Employment Allowance to reduce National Insurance contributions (aimed at small business) and to extend General Anti-Abuse Rule to National Insurance Contributions, and remove the presumption of self-employment for limited liability partnerships.

Universities UK will be trying to work out what these Bills will mean for universities. Meanwhile if you think I have missed something let me know, either below the line or @viviennestern

The post Queen’s Speech 2013: What’s in it for universities? appeared first on Universities UK blog.

Over the next few weeks, Universities UK will be setting out the details of our advice to government about the spending decisions they face. For now, the message is clear: it would be economically short-sighted to dis-invest in education and research. They are unequivocally essential to medium- and long-term growth prospects. They are also huge economic actors with the potential to deliver considerable short-term economic impacts. In 2009, Universities UK research showed that universities were worth £59 billion a year to the UK economy (without counting the value they create by educating students, research and links with business).

We’ll shortly unveil updated figures, which are likely to be substantially higher.

The next election will be won and lost on economic confidence. It will be all about growth. Spending decisions for 2015-16 will set the tone and the government will be judged on how it balances investment for growth with retrenchment for deficit reduction.

And for some killer facts on why government must invest in universities have a look here.

Vivienne Stern is Head of Political Affairs at Universities UK

The post Spending Review 2013: How will universities fare as the battle for funding commences? appeared first on Universities UK blog.

It is certainly true that graduates leaving university today have to work harder to find employment, everyone does – we’re in a recession! But that aside it still holds true that having a university degreeon average makes you far less likely to be unemployed. According to data from the ONS, graduates typically have higher employment rates than non-graduates; in the final quarter of 2011 86% of all graduates were in work compared with 72% for non-graduates.

According to the OECD, between 2008 and 2010 the employment rate for graduates increased by 0.1%. During the same period the employment rate for those with lower levels of education decreased by 3.3%. The earnings premium also increased over this period, from 54% to 65%. Interestingly, given the increase in supply of graduates into the UK economy you may well have expected the wage premium for those with a university qualification to have been eroded. But this simply hasn’t happened, suggesting that there continues to be value added by graduate employees.

But what types of jobs are graduates doing and will there be new jobs created in the future for those graduating in 2020?

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills produces similar statistics for the UK as those produced by the US Bureau for Labor Statistics and they tell a different story to that deduced from the US report. They estimate that by 2020 an additional 2 million jobs will have been created in higher skilled jobs; typically managerial and professional jobs. Within these types of occupations graduates make up more than 50% of the workforce, rising to 86% for professional occupations. So surely if we want to create 2 million more of these types of jobs by 2020 we need graduates to fill them.

The same US labour statistics report quoted by the Daily Telegraph suggests that while the growth in volume of new jobs will come from professions that don’t require a bachelor’s degree, occupations that will grow the most quickly are those requiring master’s level qualifications (27%) as well as those requiring a post-secondary qualification (which will both grow faster than the average for all occupations). This is reflecting a changing workforce which we have already started to see in the UK. A recent report found that more than half of the 20 types of jobs experiencing the fastest growth over the past decade were those where employees had post A-Level qualifications.

There is also an important role for vocational qualifications, apprenticeships and ensuring that the skills of school-leavers are fit for the needs of the UK labour market and steps are being taken to address these issues. But we must be careful not dismiss the important role that graduate level skills continue to play in the workforce. The truth is that the UK needs a highly-skilled workforce in order to be able to compete internationally. This will come only from an economy that is able to adapt to meet the challenges of a 2020 world.

Liz Bell is a policy and data analyst at Universities UK

The post By 2020 there will be 2 million more highly-skilled jobs in the UK – graduates will meet the demand appeared first on Universities UK blog.

While I regret to say there is no magic bullet to fix this problem, I would now like to share with you four key initiatives to address this that have recently been put in place in Australia.

Addressing the problem

1. Education Visa Consultative Committee 
The first of these initiatives is the Education Visa Consultative Committee (EVCC). Initially, it would be fair to say there were many territorial issues defended around the table and an unwillingness to share important information. However, as the same representatives have come to know each other over a two-year period, barriers have gradually broken down and full and frank discussions now take place.

At some Australian embassies abroad we discovered that the rate of student visa rejections by locally engaged staff was inordinately high. By bringing this to the attention of the committee agreement was reached that there be a one hundred percent review of any proposed student visa rejection letter by an Australian staff member. Many other such practical issues have been resolved at these meetings.

2. Co-operation across the sector
The second initiative is an increased emphasis on industry association co-operation, which interestingly enough arose as an unintended consequence of the first initiative. Much greater co-operation and even collaborative policy work between industry associations now takes place. Ironically, this means that whereas previously the Government of the day had been able to sometimes divide and conquer the various industry associations due to their competing priorities, this has now all changed. In the run up to Australia’s Federal Election in September this year, the various industry associations involved in international education intend to have one combined policy submission and one voice.

3. Streamlined visa procedures
The third initiative stemmed from another outcome of the Federal Government’s 2011 Review which provided public higher education institutions with less cumbersome student visa hurdles. Referred to as streamlined visa procedures, this policy change was a reaction to the large number of poor-quality private diploma level colleges who were gaining an inordinately high proportion of international student enrolments.

4. Post-study work rights
The fourth and final initiative is post-study work rights. At the same time that here in the UK you were ditching the policy that allowed international students to stay and work in your economy after graduation, we in Australia were embracing it.

The decision in 2011 to decouple migration from education had enormous negative implications for Australia’s ability to continue to attract high numbers of full-fee-paying international students.

A solution was found by persuading the politicians that there had to be some alternative to just ditching the migration option. Post-study work rights was seen as a legitimate compromise.

Lessons learned
I would like to emphasize some of the key lessons learned from our Australian experience with suggested approaches for you to consider which may be of relevance here in the UK.

• Ensure that your data is robust enough to be able to prove the benefits that accrue to the UK economy from international education (obviously not just tuition fee income but the multiplier effects of accommodation, food, entertainment, family visiting from overseas as tourists, etc).
• Be able to paint “what if ” negative scenarios that suggest that if public university funding gaps are not filled (by additional full-fee-paying revenue from international students, for example) then planned-for new campus buildings cannot be built and cutting edge research cannot be funded.
• Seek out “champion MPs”, “champion city councils” and “champion civil servants” and other community leaders who will assist in your lobbying efforts.
• Put together an advocacy/lobbying strategy that sets out achievable goals (short, medium and longer term).

Once all of the above is in place, it will be vital to generate some good news stories in the British media about international education’s “soft diplomacy” benefits, rather than just focusing on the dollars.

Clearly, the road ahead is fraught with challenges, but in reaching out to each other as international education professionals there is much that we can share and learn.

The Hon. Phil Honeywood is Executive Director of the International Education Association of Australia and is a former Higher Education Minister in Victoria, Australia. Phil will be speaking at the International Higher Education Forum on 17 April 2013 at Universities UK. You can follow the debate on Twitter #CompetingGlobally.

The post International education: a crisis of identity appeared first on Universities UK blog.

It is perhaps odd, in a statement which was all about aspiration and stimulating growth, that the Chancellor didn’t make more of the power of higher education to support these things. But from our point of view the red box wasn’t empty by any means.

Spending Review 2015-16

Probably the biggest single announcement for universities is that the Spending Review for 2015-16 will have to achieve a reduction in non-protection expenditure of £11.5 billion rather than the £10 billion planned.

This is on top of 1% reductions for each of the two years 2013-14 and 2014-15 announced on Tuesday, which are themselves on top of cuts from previous Budgets and Autumn Statements.

We estimate that for the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) this will mean a cut of a further £130-140 million in each of the next two years, on top of reductions of £150 million in 2013-14 and £280 million in 2014-15 announced in last year’s Autumn Statement. The Spending Review, which will be published in June, could translate to a cut in the BIS budget by a further £1 billion in 2015-16.

The science and research budget will remain ring-fenced for the remainder of the Spending Review period. The future of the ring-fence will be announced alongside the outcome of Spending Round on 26 June 2013.

BIS could not sustain cuts of this order without damaging universities’ ability to deliver the things government, the public and we ourselves want from the sector – high quality teaching; world class research; support for business; progress in widening participation; the skills the economy needs.

Government funding for higher education is basically confined to a) funding for science and research, currently protected by a ring fence, b) residual funding for teaching to support things like high-cost (e.g. lab-based) and vulnerable subjects and widening participation, which would not be sustainable without a public subsidy and c) grants and loans.

And the cuts in 2015-16 are likely to be just the start. What happens after the election in 2015 could be even more significant.

We know the Government – and other major parties – value universities. They understand the competition we face internationally. They understand that our world-class higher education system is essential to our future prosperity. The question is, how are they going to square that with the cuts announced yesterday?

We need to remind them of one simple fact: the UK already spends just 1.3% of GDP on tertiary education (public and private sources), compared to the OECD average of 1.6%. Here’s what the public element of that looks like – compared to our competitors:

UUK Public Expenditure map

Capital funding

The other announcement of interest to universities is the additional £3 billion announced for infrastructure projects – part-funded by the cuts described above. The Chancellor said this was about of “investing in the economic arteries of this country”. Universities UK will, of course, argue that some of this capital funding could be well spent in the university sector.

Industrial strategy

The government also announced £1.6 billion of long-term funding for the industrial strategy earlier this week. Higher education will be central to the industrial strategy both directly, as a sector in its own right responsible for considerable export earnings, and indirectly by underpinning the other sectors identified by Government (the creative, low-carbon construction, digital and energy industries). In the Budget the Chancellor announced £1 billion, matched by industry, to fund an Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) over the next seven years. The ATI will allow industry and academic researchers to develop technology for the next generation of quieter, more energy efficient aircraft.

Heseltine Review

Prior to the Budget the government announced the creation of Single Local Growth Fund to be distributed by competitive bids to Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs). There are two points to note here. Number one, universities have had a patchy experience engaging with LEPs. Number two, we don’t want to see universities role to be limited to skills development.  They have much more to contribute. Universities ought to be central to every LEP.

With this in mind, it’s good to see that the government has asked Sir Andrew Witty (chief executive of GSK and recently appointed Chancellor at the University of Nottingham) to lead a review to explore how universities can support LEPs and other local actors to drive growth in their area.

VAT

The Budget document contained details of the government’s current thinking on VAT treatment of for-profit providers. There has been some concern about whether it is appropriate to extend the VAT exemption for degree level education to for-profit providers. The government is going to look at “alternative options… including possible changes to the exemption for further education and will consult on those later in the year.”

Beer

On the up-side, if you feel like crying into a pint at the prospect of dramatic cuts to university funding, that pint will be 1p cheaper than it would have been before the beer tax freeze…at a cost to the Treasury of nearly £600 million by 2015-16.

Vivienne Stern is Head of Political Affairs at Universities UK

The post Budget 2013: despite first impressions, the red box has plenty in store for universities appeared first on Universities UK blog.

It may, therefore, seem an easy target for further cuts in the forthcoming spending review.

Although the Diamond report on efficiency and effectiveness in higher education showed that these accusations are far from true, the sector has clearly not been getting the message across strongly enough. The next few months will be crucial as decisions about funding for 2015-16 are made. In the current climate we shouldn’t kid ourselves that further cuts won’t be under consideration, so the sector needs to do everything it can to address the prevailing narrative and make a strong case. We have a good story to tell about delivering value for money and maintaining world-leading quality.

The UK produces internationally renowned research far more efficiently than our competitors, with far greater outputs per unit of investment. The sector has already demonstrated significant savings of £460m against targets set for the last year in the last spending review (with total savings amounting to over £1.3 billion for the last two spending review periods). The implementation of the Wakeham report on efficiency in research funding is bringing down the costs of research and releasing savings for reinvestment back into the research base. Wakeham is also leading to real changes in equipment and asset sharing, such as those seen through the excellent work of the N8. As the Diamond report showed, institutions have also been facing tough human resourcing decisions and, while decisions in this area are not taken lightly, institutions are looking to reduce staff costs and align the workforce to meet changing needs and demands. The most recent financial data from HEFCE shows that staff costs fell in real terms for a second consecutive year in 2011-12.

There is, of course, more that can be done. Diamond highlighted the unrealised potential for procurement in higher education. We now have Procurement UK (PUK), led by Professor Nick Petford, which has strong support from UUK. PUK will provide strategic direction to procurement in UK higher education and is looking to deliver on a 30% target for collaborative procurement that has the potential to realise significant savings for the sector. PUK is also focusing on raising the profile and positioning of procurement as a strategic asset in institutions, as highlighted in Nick’s excellent blog.

Sharing and implementing good practice on efficiency was also raised as a concern by Diamond, so we’ve also just launched the Efficiency Exchange as a way of promoting developments and encouraging learning. It’s early days, but it is an exciting and potentially powerful initiative. We need the sector’s input to make this work and we have initiated a survey to help us.

It’s important to remember that this work is not just about about taking costs out of the system and pursuing the mantra of ‘more with less’. Evidence supporting the Diamond report showed we have an exceptionally successful sector and efficiency initiatives are being driven by the desire to maintain this world-leading standard in the new funding environment, and in the context of the wider competitive challenges. Ultimately it is about how institutions are positioning themselves and doing things differently to thrive in a more uncertain environment. This includes finding room to continue investment in high quality teaching and research, where for example, significant capital grants are no longer forthcoming. And it’s this issue which highlights the problems with the ‘awash with cash’ accusation.

Today’s HEFCE report on the financial health of the higher education sector in England showed good cash balances and healthy reserve levels, and an operating surplus at sector level of 4.2% in 2011-12 (although this varies by institution). However, this isn’t just about having surplus cash in the system not being put to any use. Work undertaken for Diamond showed that universities are responding to the changing funding environment by implementing efficiencies so that institutions are in a position to meet their operating obligations, reinvest in capital and attract investment, and to invest to support organisational change. Standard and Poors has noted that ‘the generation of relatively modest surpluses is an important indicator of a university’s ability to meet its operating obligations, to attract external capital and service debt, to withstand unexpected shocks, and to invest adequately in its physical infrastructure.’

It is probably more accurate to talk about a margin for reinvestment, rather than use the language of surpluses. It’s also important to point out that we may see greater fluidity as institutions use their margin for reinvestment to service borrowing, capital investment or other obligations while balancing this off against the need for financial sustainability. Indeed, the HEFCE report shows that in 2011-12 there was a slight reduction in operating surpluses, and forecasts for 2012-13 suggest that the sector could see a sharper fall.

The debate about whether we can say higher education is now a market economy or not will rumble on. But what is becoming clear is that the new system is acting as a driver for efficiency and effectiveness and new institutional financial management strategies. Institutions are making sophisticated investment and financial management decisions in a challenging environment to sustain high-quality provision and to maintain our global reputation and standing. Universities UK, institutions and others in the sector need to work hard in the coming months to get this message across.

Chris Hale is Deputy Director of Policy at Universities UK

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Does this matter? Absolutely.

For many reasons, the UK’s future competitiveness for one, we need to do something about this fall in numbers. That’s why Universities UK’s President, Professor Eric Thomas, has been asked by the Universities Minister, David Willetts, to lead a review of part-time higher education.

The review aims to find out what is going on with part-time study and will use the evidence to develop recommendations on how part-time provision can be developed to meet the needs of students and the UK’s future skill requirements. Our investigation will be UK-wide and will collate and build on existing evidence.

The review will report in autumn 2013 and will consider the following.

• What explains the changes seen in the HEFCE report?
• What are the implications for UK skills and international competitiveness?
• What can be done? What practical solutions are there to removing the barriers for part-time students and encouraging more to study?

But meanwhile let’s unpick this 40% drop and put it in context

E is for England and early. The 40% figure is based on a lesser-known dataset called HESES (Higher Education Students Early Data Set). Different from the ubiquitous HESA data, HESES data is collected through a survey of English universities in December. Released in March, it gives us the number of enrolled students and is the first indication of part-time study. You can read a good guide here.

A is for accuracy. An old adage goes that the best data concerns who owes who money. This is true for HESES: by counting enrolled students, it underpins education funding agreements between HEFCE and universities. It is close to the final picture in HESA available next year, so the bottom line is: we should take note.

What does it say? The data reports a 40% fall in first year enrolments for English undergraduate part-time study since 2010-11, equivalent to 105,000 fewer students. For comparison, that is the equivalent population of Basingstoke.

Yet this fall is despite the big step forward taken by the government to offer the same tuition fee loan support to part-time students as full-time students, as well as the strong efforts of our members to enhance their flexible provision and attract part-time learners.

And who are these students? Do they matter? Some quick myth-busting.

Contrary to what recent press coverage might have you think, part-time students are not only over-60s (as Vivienne Stern, our Head of Political Affairs, has already explained elsewhere on the Universities UK blog). Rather, the majority are under 35 and are our future entrepreneurs and wealth creators, our nurses and social workers.

And do they matter? Well, in the last 10 years part-time study has been central to several major government policies and reports, including those from the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and Lord Hesletine. The Leitch Review set the target of 40% of adults to have a higher education qualification by 2020. Growing this from today’s 31% is one of the biggest education challenges the UK faces, and it can only be managed through upskilling those already in employment. Yet it is the key for the UK to compete internationally: creating wealth, boosting social mobility and empowering individuals themselves. Maintaining adequate levels of part-time study is the only way we will meet these goals.

I hope you will follow the progress of Universities UK’s review. If you are interested in providing evidence, please visit the Universities UK website. If you would like to receive updates on the review’s progress, and the latest Universities UK thinking on part-time and mature provision, please email us to join our virtual network.

For announcements and updates throughout the review, we will also be using #PartTimeMatters on Twitter.

Tom Lyscom is a researcher and analyst at Universities UK.

The post Turning the tide: introducing the Universities UK review of part-time higher education appeared first on Universities UK blog.