Today Universities UK, Guild HE and the NUS  are hosting a conference attended by over 100 delegates from a wide range of universities and student unions to explore the most effective ways to monitor and measure the value and impact of university outreach and widening access activities.   

Higher education institutions charging more than £6,000 a year from 2012 have submitted access agreements to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), setting out their planned expenditure on access activities. We now know that English universities and colleges plan to boost their spending on access measures to £602 million a year by 2015-16.

The chart below illustrates where the majority of the OFFA expenditure will be focused in academic years 2011-12, 2012-13 and three years later in 2015-16.

OFFA expenditure in academic years 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2015-16. From OFFA data December 2011.

Where the money is being targeted is clear – however, what is less certain is how succesful  these activities will be in increasing universities’  intake of under-represented groups. 
 
Fee waivers, bursaries and scholarships
As we can see from the OFFA chart, student financial support is the biggest spending commitment.  An analysis of  the access agreements for 2012/13 shows that, across the board, this will be targeted mainly on those with a family income of under £16,000.

It has been argued that the impact of offering financial support remains ambiguous. For example a study conducted  by OFFA in 2010 found that bursary levels had no impact on the choice of university among students from low-income backgrounds.  An internal study by Exeter University, on the other hand, indicated that 82% of those in receipt of a bursary considered it crucial in enabling them to continue with their studies. It is also possible that perceptions on the value of bursaries and fee waivers  may change for students facing higher tuition fee levels. 

Attainment raising programmes
Outreach also features heavily in the OFFA expenditure into higher education. This is an important area of activity for universities to ensure that anyone who has the ability and potential to succeed at university, regardless of their background, has the opportunity to attend.

An example of such activity is Queen Mary, University of London, which delivers a 6 week outreach project targeted a local school in Tower Hamlets. Each week focusing on different aspects of university life:

1. Introduction to university life
2. Media
3. Sport
4. Societies
5. Democracy and representation
6. On campus introduction

This is just one example of a range of aspiration and attainment activities that were presented. What remains clear from today, however, is that measuring the impact of this wide range of  these initiatives is a challenging task. Work has begun and we have seen that some institutions are already quite advanced, but it does vary.  

The emphasis is now very much about enhancing techniques for tracking, monitoring and evaluation. Universities are committed to this but cannot do this in isolation. The underlying message emerging from today was that if we are to achieve a step change in progress, universities, schools, colleges, students’ unions, employers and others will all need to work in partnership to deliver on access.

Those occupations which rely heavily on staff with high level skills, such as those associated with knowledge-based industries, are projected to see the most significant growth in job creation by the end of the decade (see fig 1.14 in Driving economic growth).

Projection of new jobs to be created in the UK between 2007 and 2017

The role of Universities will be essential to meeting the demand for higher level skills. There is some feeling that there are already too many graduates in the UK, but the reality is that in the future we will need more graduates not less. Looking at emerging economies such as China, we have seen significant growth in Higher Education. By 2020, China is expected to be producing more graduates than the USA and EU combined (see fig 1.9 in driving economic growth). So we mustn’t be complacent, in order to remain globally competitive the UK must continue to equip its population with the necessary skills.

Projected number of graduates per year

But this is not a new revelation; most of us already know that universities are vital to developing highly skilled workers. The problem can often be that the focus is too narrowly on skill creation and there needs to be a wider recognition that there is more to universities than this. One of the important roles that Universities play is within their own regional economies. A report by IPPR North Beyond bricks and mortar boards: universities and the future of regional economic development, launched this week, examines this role in more detail and considers how recent developments in the regional infrastructure might present new challenges, and opportunities, for Universities.

The 2010 Localism Bill outlined a number of changes to the regional policy landscape. The most significant of these saw the demise of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and their replacement with Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). LEPs are intended to be more locally-owned partnerships responsible for setting the local economic agenda; driving economic growth and creating jobs. Universities have much to offer LEPs, not just in providing highly skilled graduates to the region, but in the vast experience and expertise they have to offer.

One of the key recommendations from the IPPR report is that the LEPs must ensure that they are making the best use of Universities in their region. Universities are a crucial asset to individual regions and have a fundamental role to play in driving innovation, attracting inward investment, providing civic leadership and enhancing the reputation of regions on the world stage. It is in this vein that LEPs and Universities must be fully engaged to ensure that they are creating the best possible conditions for economic success.

This week, Universities UK hosted a debate at the University of Manchester to launch the IPPR report. This event provided the opportunity for people to debate some of the issues raised by the report.

There is already much work underway in individual regions to address some of these issues and Universities UK will continue to work with the sector to identify areas of best practice, better understand the LEPs and consider how some of these challenges might be addressed.

The media tend to focus on the decline in actual numbers or the percentage decline from 2011 to 2012. But when we look at the rates at which UK students are applying we get a better insight into what’s going on.

Even more illuminating are the application rates for UK 18-year-olds in particular. They’re interesting because we can reasonably assume that the 2012 applications cycle is the first time they’ve been able to apply to university (unlike everyone else who could have applied last year if they’d wanted to). They’re also the biggest group of applicants.

It gets even more intriguing when you consider that the number of 18-year-olds in the UK population is actually declining.

Demographic insight
UCAS has now combined applicant data with demographic data to measure the changes in applicant demand.  By doing this, they can measure demand without being affected by yearly changes in the size of the population, which could have a big impact.

The graph below shows application rates for 18-year-olds by country (image from UCAS analysis). In England, they remain in line with recent trends and saw a decline of only one percentage point in 2012. The application rate is not inconsistent with longer-term trends, which means that there are some peaks and troughs over the years but the general trend continues.

January deadline application rates18 year olds by country

The effect on applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds will be what many people look for when they look at this release. The analysis below shows there has been a smaller decrease in the application rate for 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas in England than from the most advantaged areas.  There is no evidence here that students from these areas are being disproportionately deterred from applying to university: good news as far as widening participation measures go.

Application rates for 18-year-olds (most disadvantaged areas), January deadline 2012

Application rates 18-year olds (most advantaged areas), January 2012 deadline

Still time to apply
We still don’t have a complete picture of this year’s applicants yet. These ‘on-time applicants’ have equal chances to be considered for a place because they applied before the 15 January deadline. But there are still about eight more months in which prospective students can send their applications to UCAS.

Looking back at the two previous years, only slightly more than 80 per cent of the applicants who would apply to UCAS had applied before the 15 January deadline. This means that in the following eight months we are likely to see over 100, 000 more applicants applying to UCAS. The majority of these may be mature applicants, but several tens of thousands of younger applicants are also expected. The graph below shows the pattern from last year.

Non-aggregated, monthly applicant figures for 2011 intake

So even though there was a decline of 11 per cent in mature applicants in January 2012 compared to January 2011, there is still time for this picture to change before September. We should also remember that January 2010 saw a significant increase in the application rate for UK 21-24 year olds, possibly as a result of the recession; the application rate for January 2012 is still above 2009 levels.

It’s important to stress again that this all relates to applicants and we don’t yet know what the outcomes are going to be, given that higher education’s funding has changed dramatically in one year and the fact the government has introduced new rules that change how many students universities can take. For now, we need to keep monitoring the applications, especially when A-level results are in over the summer.

We will have to wait until September to see how many applicants get accepted onto courses.  And of course, acceptances aren’t the same thing as enrolment!

We heard a number of chilling instances of misconduct, mostly in the medical field, which have put patients at risk, jeopardised the reputation and careers of those who speak out and have the potential to undermine the reputation of UK research. We also heard about the potentially corrosive effect of ‘lesser offences’, such as bias reporting. The desire for action was compounded by a BMJ survey, which suggested that 13 per cent of researchers had first-hand knowledge of misconduct, and 6 per cent believed that allegations had not been properly investigated by their own institutions. Critical articles in the BMJ, Nature and the Financial Times have ensured that this survey has been widely reported.

Universities carry out a substantial amount of the research undertaken in the UK and it is crucial that they take their responsibilities seriously. On the whole I think they do, but there is more that can be done. The BMJ meeting and statement are very helpful in bringing the issue into focus and highlighting the need for action with institutions, research institutes, funders and other bodies.

At Universities UK we also take this issue very seriously. But in considering the actions raised in the BMJ meeting there are a number of points we should bear in mind.

Professor Michael Farthing, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex raised a critical point. He was clear on the need to act, but struck a note of caution: we should be very careful not to inadvertently talk down UK research and overstate the problem.

The reporting of the BMJ survey sailed quite close to the wind in this regard. The survey wasn’t intended to be the most ‘scientific’ piece of research (and some have raised questions over its own integrity), but it did make headlines. The way the results were reported could lead readers to believe that misconduct in the UK is pervasive, rather than the exception. It is one thing to develop a sense of urgency, but we need to be mindful of how this may be perceived. We need to ensure that such surveys can really help us be clear about the true extent of the problem so that we can devise proportionate solutions.

I came away from the BMJ meeting with the sense that most present agreed direct regulation wasn’t appropriate in a UK context. But some called for greater surveillance and detection and some of this language found its way through to the consensus statement. Aside from the costs of doing this, I can’t imagine anyone would actually want to police researchers in such a heavy handed way, or for their institutions to do this. Surely developing a strong sense of responsibility, transparency and accountability and working with the grain of regulatory frameworks already in place is a better approach and more in tune with the principle of academic freedom?

There was also a strong focus on setting up a new national oversight body . The advantage of having a body is that it can provide a focus and reassure us that it’s someone’s job at a national level to be thinking about research integrity; and that there is a ‘go to’ for institutions and researchers who need help. However, it’s by no means a silver bullet. Indeed, having a body whose job it is to deal with research integrity raises the danger that institutions may not continue to recognise it is primarily their responsibility as an employer. Arms-length bodies can also struggle with the stubborn but important issue of cultural change. The UK Research Integrity Office was an important pilot project, and continues to work with institutions, but their ability to really leverage change across the sector has to date been fairly limited.

The BMJ discussion was wide ranging, but I left with the feeling at it was dictated by concerns in medicine. I can understand why this is the case, with patient safety paramount in everyone’s mind, but a sustainable solution should be flexible and work for all disciplines. Engagement with a wider group of disciplines, to make sure they see it as their concern and not just one for medicine, will be important. Universities UK is committed to acting on the issues that came up at the meeting (the BMJ will publish a consensus statement arising from this shortly) and we now have a vehicle in place to do this.

We have been working with research funders to develop a Concordat that can articulate the broad principles that underpin integrity in research and outline the shared expectations, roles and responsibilities of researchers, employers and research funders. For example, the Concordat will promote enhanced processes and transparency at institutional level. It won’t preclude other mechanisms to promote research integrity or to provide support in dealing with research misconduct.

However, , the Concordat can ensure we are in a better position to increase the profile of this issue with all involved. With a clear statement of expectations agreed by all signatories, it can create a stronger and more joined up framework for further action.

We hope to publish later in the spring along with plans for implementation monitoring progress and we’ll give a heads up of the draft principles on the UUK blog in March.

In light of this, it is worth checking where we now stand. Reports from the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) show that in 2009-10 English universities and colleges spent a record £395 million on access measures. This includes £355.7 million on bursaries and scholarships for lower income students and students from other under-represented groups and £38.3 million on outreach activities. OFFA’s focus on additional income in access agreement monitoring reports is only a part of the picture and resources were also given to a number of other activities, including widening participation.

 However, many argue that the amount spent is beside the point. For them the Holy Grail is whether or not universities’ activities are actually successful in getting people to university and ensuring that they can successfully complete their degree and graduate.

OFFA will be closely scrutinising universities performances, as will the government and the wider public. Universities recognise that it is even more important than ever for them to evaluate and monitor the impact of their outreach and access initiatives.

For universities to be successful at widening participation, in addition to the need to raise attainment levels at 16-18, the key will be to share information on what works across the sector. It is vital that we get better at learning from each other to find the best ways to widen participation quickly, effectively and continuously. 

Next month’s Universities UK, NUS and Guild HE event, ‘Evaluation and impact of access and outreach activities’ will address just these issues. We’ll explore exactly how universities can make use of the latest trends, share information and get the insight of their students’ unions to devise effective access agreements.

We’ll follow up in a few weeks on this blog with a little more detail about how exactly funds are being distributed, what universities are doing with the money to support participation and retention and look at the latest evidence regarding the impact of some of these schemes.  

In the meantime do let us know what you think! Is your university involved in any particularly great schemes? Is classroom volunteering as part of aspiration-raising something you and your peers might consider? And do you think bursaries will make a difference?

 ’Evaluation and impact of access and outreach activities’ will take place at Universities UK, Woburn House, Tavistock Sq, London W1CH 9HQ, 21 February 2012, 9.30am-3.45pm.

And if you want to tweet about access or widening participation in the build up to the event or when you’re here, the Twitter hashtag is #ImpactAccessHE

Open debate and transparency in research are very important, and Universities UK supports moves to increase access to research data through measures like open access repositories. But the Freedom of Information Act is the wrong tool for the job. We don’t think Parliament envisaged how it would apply within universities, and especially to university research, when the Act was passed in 2000. In any case, since that time, the proportion of funding universities get from public sources has fallen considerably, and will continue to fall, making their inclusion within the definition of ‘public authorities’ all the more strange.

Meanwhile, over in the House of Commons, the Justice Committee has just announced its Post-Legislative Scrutiny of the FOI Act. This will offer us another opportunity to raise these concerns, even if we are not successful in pushing for an amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Bill.

All support in our efforts will be gratefully received!

Today’s Innovation and Research Strategy for growth starts to fill in these gaps. It’s good to see a clear recognition from Government of the important role universities play in driving innovation and a commitment to identify opportunities for driving innovation and business investment and support research. 
 
Our universities are well-known for their groundbreaking research. We have evidence that shows that UK universities are global leaders in research, second only to the USA in most measures according to the most recent data. But this data also shows that the UK has comparatively low levels of R&D investment as a percentage of GDP. 

A recent report from UUK showed how important universities are to innovation, and how critical it is to the future health of our economy. But it’s also the people, the graduates that our universities produce who are the lifeblood of this innovative economy.

And we know that there are other areas of untapped potential. Business and university collaboration is one of them.

Universities receive R&D income from a variety of sources. Business investment provides the smallest proportion of that income and levels of investment have not changed for almost a decade.

Source of funds for UK Higher Education R&D 2000-2010

But the data shows that collaboration works for businesses. What’s good for universities R&D funding is also good for business.

In its annual innovation survey BIS asked businesses about the importance they placed on different collaboration partners.  The results showed only small numbers of businesses were collaborating with universities – they tended to rely more heavily on suppliers and customers as partners for innovation.  But in the same research we can clearly see that when businesses do collaborate with universities, it turns out very well for them. It enhances firm performance in terms of product range, market share and product quality.  So some companies have cottoned on to the upside of working with universities, but questions still remain. Why aren’t businesses taking more advantage of what’s on offer from universities and what can be done to encourage more collaboration?

The initiatives announced today are a start. Clearly the global reputation of the UK research base has an essential role to play, but we shouldn’t forget the equally important wider impact universities have: producing graduates, up-skilling the existing workforce and drawing in the brightest and best from around the world.

Today’s strategy doesn’t provide the nitty-gritty policy detail for universities and business.  For that, we’ll have to wait until Sir Tim Wilson’s review, due to be published before the end of the year.

But we all know for sure that the challenge now is to come up with practical and innovative ideas to build on our successes.

Many column inches have been taken up with the changes to funding for teaching in all the countries of the UK. Important as these changes are it’s vital that we don’t forget the significant impact higher education and universities in particular, have on the UK’s economic and social well being. Universities UK’s new visual data report Driving Economic Growth shows this in full technicolour.

Higher education didn’t play a big part in the Chancellor’s statement this week, but the announcement on VAT on shared services and the launch of HE Global, an online portal to help universities build up their international presence are welcome steps. But universities have a bigger part to play than you may have been led to believe this week and it’s especially heartening to see that the FT agrees with us. (Subscription.)

Figure 1: Share of world citations

Figure 2: Relative index of share of world citations per unit spend on GERD

Figure 3: Potential for growth of high level skills in adult population, 2009

Graduates are key

UK Universities have a long tradition of contributing to major breakthroughs and innovations. And this world leading research will be key in helping generate the growth of tomorrow. Equally as important is universities core function: producing graduates who enable the UK to compete globally. It is often said that the UK has too many graduates. But impressive as the recent increases in participation are they have only meant we are playing catch up with our competitors. These countries are in a race to increase the skill levels of their populations, with developed nations wishing to consolidate their positions as world leading economies and developing nations wanting to join them. By 2020 it is estimated that China will be producing more graduates than the US and EU combined. These are figures that should make everyone sit up and take notice.

Figure 4: Higher level skills in the UK creative sector, 2010

An innovative economy needs graduates

Innovative graduate-led companies will be doing more than their fair share at pulling us out of the economic doldrums. Compared to UK business in general, innovative companies generate a disproportionate number of jobs. And they’re more resilient, so are better at weathering economic storms.  You only have to look at the creative industries, a key plank in the government’s growth plans to see how critical graduates are to their success.

And let’s not forget that UK higher education is one of the most thriving export industries. But it’s a tough world out there and the likes of Australia and Canada are snapping at our heels. The current climate and messages emanating from the government, in such a competitive environment, are putting our envied position at stake. In 2010, universities contributed £8.3bn in export earnings for the UK economy and this is projected to increase to at least £16.9bn by 2025. Aside from the benefits to the academy, international and cultural relations, we simply can’t afford not to attract the brightest and best, from every corner of the globe.

Driving Economic Growth is a new kind of report for Universities UK and I hope you agree that it brings the many great and insightful facts and figures about UK universities to life.  It’s part of a new series ‘Higher Education in Focus’ looking at the shape and impact of the university system, so watch this space for more. Please let us know your thoughts in the meantime!

Jovan Luzajic

Senior Policy and Data Analyst

It is a pretty limited request – there are many other problems to do with the way FOI works in universities – but we think it is an especially reasonable one since an exemption of this sort already exists in Scottish FOI legislation.

We’ve got a narrow window of opportunity to get this change because a related Bill, the Protection of Freedoms Bill, is currently making its way through the House of Lords. We’re making some hopeful progress. During Tuesday’s Second Reading debate,  10 of the 30 Peers who spoke mentioned our concerns. We think that’s a pretty good platform for pushing for the amendment at Committee Stage, which should happen in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, if you have evidence of how Freedom of Information requests relating to unpublished research can cause difficulties, please email us or leave a comment below. You can read more about this in our briefing on the issue.  

I’d also recommend taking a look at the Second Reading debate on the Protection of Freedoms Bill to get a flavour of where the political debate is at.

Vivienne Stern, Head of Political Affairs

Universities UK

But as always with statistics, there’s more to the story than that.

So, what does that 9 per cent represent and what does it actually tell us?

Who are these applicants?
They fall into two distinct categories:

1. People who had a real deadline for application i.e. those who applied for Oxford or Cambridge or for medicine, dentistry, veterinary science courses . These courses and universities have a final deadline of 15 October.
2. People who chose to apply early.

It’s also important to underline at this point that the applications cycle is a still only a matter of weeks old. For everyone out there who doesn’t fall into the first category above, you have until 15 January 2012 to get your application in. Context is everything here.

Looking at this graphic, we can see that the applicants who had a real deadline of 15 October make up just seven per cent of this reduction in numbers. The second category of people, the ones who, for whatever reason, were organised enough to apply early in the cycle, make up 93 per cent of the fall.
 
There was plenty of speculation about why this fall in early applicants occurred, with most of the blame laid at the Government’s door. Higher tuition fees were frightening the early birds away. While much of the reporting of the data left a lot to be desired, perhaps there’s some element of truth to this line of thought. Universities are undergoing a big upheaval, so would it be so surprising if prospective students were waiting longer to decide what to do?

Are we able to forecast final acceptance numbers from this data?
We’ve also seen the tendency to use the October application data to predict a general trend: “applications are down now, so of course they’ll be down in the New Year after the final deadline”. But can we really use the data to forecast acceptance numbers (the numbers of people who actually get a place at university)? Remember, at this stage this is just about levels of people who, by applying, are expressing a desire to go to university , not about who is turning up to lectures in autumn 2012.

*All data final end of year except 2011 - end of clearing applicants & acceptances

In 2009, changes in final acceptances did seem to follow changes in the earlier October data. However, between the 2009 and 2010 cycles, October applications were up 12 per cent, while acceptances increased by just 1 per cent. There’s no second dark blue arrow in 2012 because we don’t yet know how many applications there will be in total and how many universities will accept.

So what can we make of that? Well, one thing we can say is that the October data is not necessarily a predictor of the applicants and acceptances overall. And there’s more complexity than you might think looking at the headline figures: for a university to accept a candidate, they need to have a place to give them. There’s also the small issue that these numbers include applicants who have deferred to the following year.

What can we deduce from the October data release?
We’ve established that there’s a lot we can’t predict, mainly because it hasn’t happened yet and the figures we do have haven’t proved themselves to be a reliable indicator of things to come.

However, focusing on courses with time-critical deadlines, the fall was 0.8 per cent. The level of reduction varied by course subject and there was a 3.1 per cent fall in medicine and dentistry applications (choices). These results are concrete and require investigation; has demand fallen from particular groups?

Age profiles of October 2011 applicants can give us some insights. The demography of applicants has changed; the typical applicant this year, compared to October 2010, was an estimated three and a half months younger. The 18 year-old age band has grown as a proportion of all applications by 7.6 per cent, and ‘17 year olds and younger’ by 13.4 per cent. This is an example of how data can throw up leads, asking us to follow the trail. Could this subtle change in age reflect a wider change in applicant profile and could be having a pronounced effect on medicine and dentistry? Or could the reduction be down to something we can’t know yet?

“It’s the context, stupid”
A misquote, but I think Bill would forgive us because it captures the essence of the argument here. A question to always ask yourself when it comes to sensationalist, but fact-filled headlines is – what does this data actually cover? In universities there are many different types of students – part-time and postgraduate, as well as full-time undergraduates who apply through UCAS. Of all students in their first year of a higher education course in 2009-10, only two in five applied through UCAS. The October applicant data last year represented just one in ten of all UCAS applicants for the 2011 cycle. It’s apparent then, that useful as it is, the UCAS data isn’t the whole picture.

Getting this kind of stuff right matters, because selective or incorrect interpretation of data has effects in the real world. Saying it’s simply too early to read too much into these figures may sound like a cop-out but it’s the exact opposite in this case. We need to monitor the impact of these policy changes very carefully and it’s vitally important we do so objectively, with the information we have to hand. And we must be very clear about what conclusions can and can’t be drawn from any given set of data. If new data appear to match your presumptions, alarm bells should ring. The best thing to do then is to stop and think. And then start digging a little deeper.