HESA and the private providers (again)

I posted many months ago about HESA and the private providers, predicting an unsightly mess:

the UK Border Agency is obliging all private providers to be regulated by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), which in turn is likely to mean in future that they will all have to return data to HESA. However HESA's idea of who is 'registering' the students is very different from UKBA's idea of who is 'sponsoring' the visa.... These technicalities are therefore likely to lead to an almighty brawl in the not-too-distant future simply because there isn't capacity for everyone to meet their obligations with the precision required to make the data add up

If you have been closely monitoring the news, you will have noted that this prediction of mine has (ahem) yet to come to pass. However I was at a HESA event yesterday where I learnt from colleagues that the first wave of private providers -about half a dozen institutions - are in very active discussions with HESA but have yet to make much progress because no-one has taken any decisions about what exactly they will be required to do. It seems cruel and inhumane to make them return the full dataset when many of the most challenging fields relate to HEFCE funding which they will never receive, but I suppose that no-one wants to set a precedent by asking for less either. The issue is not primarily one for HESA but for the statutory customers which - in England - really means HEFCE.

Apart from giving me a straw to clutch whilst I continue to believe that I'm not wrong on this issue (I just haven't been proven right yet), I also think it demonstrates the concern I have expressed before that HEFCE is struggling to come to terms with its new remit over private providers. The longer this drags on, the more abruptly it will have to be resolved when the time comes, and the more that will hurt.

Those who have experience of the breed will know that this ability to interpret any datum as fitting our pre-conceptions is very common amongst middle-to-senior managers in universities, and will reach for an appropriately-sized pinch of salt.

Is it open season for AABs?

Kim Catchside in the Guardian likens the AABs to Grouse on the Glorious 12th. Not, I confess, quite the language I would have used since -hopefully - being eagerly pursued by many prestigious HEIs will be more fun for the AABs than grouse shooting is for the grouse.

Kim makes a couple of mistakes in the piece. One isn't important in the context of her argument, but could confuse people thinking in a different context. She says:

The only reason that the Treasury allowed David Willetts to make AAB students off quota at a time of deficit reduction was that there are very few other qualifications that are equivalent to A-level performance at that level, so the bean counters could be fairly confident that the numbers wouldn't go above the 65,000 budgeted for.

 This isn't correct. HEFCE have defined the AAB equivalencies for this purpose out of whole cloth, not relating in any way to existing standards such as the UCAS Tariff. The issue is rather that at the very high qualification levels, almost everyone already goes straight into HE. There isn't scope for students who currently decide to go straight into the workforce to be tempted into HE instead, nor are there many mid-30 year old AABs who might fancy a degree and haven't got one yet. As you go lower down the grade scale, there are more and more people who opt - or have opted in the past - out of HE and might therefore be tempted back, thus costing the Treasury extra money.

This is a minor issue, though, because it doesn't really affect Kim's argument. Much more important is her judgement about who is at risk of having their AABs nicked.

The institutions most at risk of losing students who've done best in their A-levels are those in the bottom quarter of the league table for academic entry. They often have a hundred or more AAB students each year. These are often students who've actively rejected more elite universities for reasons of culture, geography or course, but this surely will be the richest hunting ground for academic expansionists touting generous merit-based bursaries.

This is completely wrong, and to understand why you need to know that some of the 'AAB equivalent' qualifications are things such as degrees. In consequence a minority of these 'AAB' students are completely unlike the rest. There is essentially no chance that someone with an existing English degree looking to retrain as a social worker will be tempted to do so at Cambridge. The real risk - as I have been saying since my SOAS post at least - is to some really pretty prestigious institutions which have many AAB+ students, but also many sub-AAB.

This in turn tells you something about the dynamic in the AAB system. If the rules were going to strip a few hundred students away from each or the bottom-25 institutions in the league tables, no-one (I mean no-one who counts at Westminster) would much mind that. If it rips many hundreds of students away from a small group of really rather well-regarded places which Ministers' children might be likely to attend, that will be a different issue. The AAB threshold cannot stay where it is. It either has to come down, so that the institutions currently cut in half at AAB can be entirely above the line, and start putting effective pressure on those below them, or the whole policy will have to be abandoned.

But if the AAB threshold comes down, then there is a big risk to the Government funding and Kim's other mistake becomes relevant again. This isn't an issue of equivalencies which could be subject to some technical fix. This is why the evidence that Government has started to move the level of the average fee was so important. If that comes down, then the AAB threshold can come down too, and - for good or ill - the current dispensation stands a chance of lasting.  If not, then not.

Cambridge Admissions: Bureaucracy in action.

The Guardian published a piece on Cambridge admissions yesterday. It is tempting to do no more than poke fun. This, in particular, reaches a remarkably high standard of naivety:

Although a candidate's ethnicity is generally evident from his or her name and the photograph in their file, there is never any overt discussion of race. This seems surprising when both Oxford  and Cambridge have been accused of being racially as well as socially exclusive.

But just this once, I can resist that temptation because what really strikes me about this piece is the immense power of bureaucracy as an organisational form, and the way it shields the bureaucrats from feeling responsibility for their decisions. Consideration is given to a candidate of obvious ability from a disadvantaged background.

The rapid pace of Cambridge would "kill her", one of the academics says. Another agrees: "I would really like to give her a place, but for her own sanity, she's much better going to one of the other redbrick, Russell Group universities, and just taking her time."
Partington says: "If we gave her a chance she would do what everybody else would do, and think: 'I'll probably be all right' and she will probably be wrong."
There is a despairing consensus around the table that the university cannot repair the gaps in this candidate's knowledge. A damning line from the school's reference – which lays bare its inability to teach the candidate – is read aloud by a tutor who raises outstretched hands in exasperation. The candidate's file goes back into the trolley with a clang.

Why is there a consensus amongst this group that Cambridge - one of the best resourced educational institutions in the world - 'cannot' fill the gaps in this candidate's knowledge? The reason is that Cambridge has chosen not to when it decided to structure its programme in a particular way. The programme could take longer, or start slower and speed up later, or an optional additional year could be tacked on the front. But the beauty of bureaucracy is that when the programme is designed and validated, that happens in a different room at a different time - perhaps even some of the people are different. By the time any individual admissions case comes up for consideration, the design and structure of the course - chosen by Cambridge - has become a hard constraint in the face of which fair-minded individuals are helpless. A group of bureaucrats get to sit in Cambridge perpetuating systems of inequality, and feeling like decent people while they do it.

More UCAS data

UCAS published data on applications as at 19 December earlier this week. This time, the spin is about a 'late surge', although I can't see much surging in this chart myself.

An even newer University Challenge

You may have seen via the BBC that David Willetts has announced a Government ambition to create more universities. The text of his speech is here, and the critical paragraphs are these ones:

Globalisation is still at its early stages when it comes to Higher Education. The next round of new institutions may well link existing British universities with international partners. The surge in international investment in science and technology would make this a key part of the mission of a new foundation. It might be that today’s institutions propose a new campus or a new international partnership. Or it might be new providers wanting to enter with different models. Today I can announce therefore that the Coalition is inviting proposals for a new type of university with a focus on science and technology and on postgraduates. Local economic partnerships, universities, businesses and international partners can come together to put forward proposals for new institutions.

Citation metrics

Here in the UK, we are sometimes inclined to blame the RAE for setting off fierce competition between universities for research 'stars' and their citations. I suppose it is normal and natural for the British to see themselves as the centres of the universe, and therefore to ascribe international outcomes to national causes, but it isn't very well informed.

More Christmas Spirit

When a Russell Group Vice Chancellor calls for funding to be taken away from universities that teach poor people, and given instead to universities that teach science, it is easy to see that as just another example of the Christian spirit of generosity that comes over all of us (to a greater or lesser extent) at Christmas. The way David Eastwood lavishes praise on the Browne Review whilst modestly avoiding any mention of his own role in the review is also, surely, praiseworthy.

Reporting in the Higher suggests that at least some of the less posh fear he is pushing at a half-open door as Treasury wants to withdraw the Widening Participation funding as a cost-saving measure. There are a number of funding streams associated with WP. For 2011/12 they break down as follows:

• Widening Participation £141,630,239 (allocated on the basis of postcode data to identify students from low-participation areas, and Disabled Students Allowance data to identify disabled students);
• Teaching Enhancement and Student Success £263,856,011 (allocated primarily on the basis of students' age and entry qualifications);
• Other targeted allocations £203,550,592 (a grab-bag not all of which is WP-related, but including support for part time, accelerated and Foundation Degree programmes).

The WP and TESS funding goes primarily to new Universities. Leeds gets £1,106,592 and £1,141,339 respectively, which are non-trivial sums even in an overall HEFCE grant of £134,237,874 (1.7% of grant), but Leeds Met gets £1,679,582 for WP and £4,437,660 for TESS out of £63,460,810 (9.6%).

You can see how it would be painful and difficult for the coalition to withdraw this funding, however, because it directly supports the supposed Government priority of fair access for all. David Eastwood is formidably well-connected, but I wouldn't bet on him having a hotline to Santa this time.