OfS director warns universities on outreach work

Universities should spend more money and effort on improving access to their own institutions rather than on general outreach programmes, an Office for Students director has said.

Speaking at a London conference on 21 November, Chris Millward, the OfS’s director for fair access and participation, said that some universities had been spending increasing amounts of money on general outreach schemes rather than on diversifying their own student population.

“It’s of course important to ensure that universities’ outreach is not just focused on recruitment to the institution itself, and that there is dispassionate advice for students,” said Millward. “But I guess my sense coming into this role is there’s been a lot of that, and perhaps in some institutions not enough focus on diversifying your own student population. I think there may well need to be some rebalancing of that over the coming years.”