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Alistair Jarvis pours cold water on media claims of cap on university places
The chief executive of Universities UK has moved to deny claims that its board has agreed to back the return of student number controls.
A Guardian article published on 30 March claimed that a proposal that would see the government set “strict limits on the number of students that each university in England can recruit” in an effort to avoid a “free-for-all” on admissions was “backed by the board of Universities UK at a virtual meeting held on Friday”.
The Guardian article added that several members of the Russell Group had opposed the policy.
In a statement issued on 30 March, Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of UUK said it was “right to be considering stability measures at this unprecedented time” and that “financial support from government for universities is necessary”.
However, he added that the “suggestion of student number controls needs more detailed consideration”. “There would need to be a clear case of the benefits, any proposal would have to be sector-led not imposed, strictly time-limited and carefully crafted to avoid unintended consequences,” he said.
On his Twitter account, Jarvis said that the UUK board “hasn’t agreed to back student number controls, rather agreed to explore options for stability measures”. He added that student number controls were “not strongly opposed by anyone on the call” and that the agreement needed “further consideration”.
Research Professional News understands that at a meeting on Friday, the UUK board had not adopted an official policy, and that further scoping work would be conducted.
The cap on student numbers was lifted in 2015 by chancellor George Osborne. There are concerns that with A levels cancelled, and the doubts over the ability for international students to start their studies in September because of the Covid-19 pandemic, there will be intense competition between universities for domestic students.
Research Professional News reported on 20 March that some institutions had begun upgrading “conditional” student offers to “unconditional offers” in an attempt to boost numbers—a practice subsequently put on hold by the regulator, on ministerial advice.
Meanwhile, in a blog published by the Higher Education Policy Institute on 30 March, Chris Husbands and Natalie Day—vice-chancellor and head of policy and strategy at Sheffield Hallam University respectively—identify “eight interventions for mitigating the impact of Covid-19 on higher education”.
One of the suggestions is a suspension of the market in undergraduate applications and the imposition of student number controls as a way to maintain institutional stability. This suspension could last for more than a year, the authors suggest in the paper.
“We welcome early action by government to prevent poor behaviour on converting conditional to unconditional offers, but radical action is needed on university admissions for the foreseeable future,” Day and Husbands write. “This means suspending the market in admissions which has been unrestricted since 2015 and, left as it is, will generate serious institutional instability.
“In effect, this means the re-imposition of student number controls to ensure that institutions have a viable first year student population,” the Hepi blog states. Co-author Husbands is chair of the Teaching Excellence Framework and a UUK board member.