The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has released a set of proposals to provide a fast-track route for institutions to gain degree-awarding powers and drive up teaching standards for the whole of the UK’s higher education sector. Stakeholders say the proposals will benefit international students and create greater parity between HEIs and other quality providers licensed to recruit internationally.
A green paper released today proposes that providers be required to have contingency arrangements in place to ensure students are protected in the event of a campus or course closure, or ‘exit from the market’ including in the case of loss of a Tier 4 licence to recruit international students.
“It’s the first time the sector’s been asked: how do we address this issue of continuity for both home and international students?””
Institutions will be required to offer both domestic and international students an alternative course or support them in organising an alternative course at another provider where their visa allows.
Joy Elliott-Bowman, policy and public affairs officer at private FE and HE association Study UK, said the provision addresses what has sometimes been an “ad hoc” process of reallocating students in past closures.
The proposals also indicate that the government is listening to sector feedback more than it has in the past, she told The PIE News. “It’s the first government paper to do so, the first time the sector’s been asked: how do we address this issue of continuity for both home and international students?”
Central to the paper is the introduction of a Teaching Excellence Framework, which it says will “recognise and reward high quality teaching”, and a single route to operating in higher education.
Under the single route, institutions will apply for a level to show the quality of teaching they offer based on a Higher Education Review, and Tier 4 sponsorship will be contingent upon a Level 1 rating.
“If you think about those that have already exited the system, the 88 from last year [that lost licences through a government crackdown on Tier 4 visa abuses], how many of them would have passed that first level of TEF? Very few,” commented Elliott-Bowman. “BIS is saying, they shouldn’t have had a licence anyway.”
The recognition of high quality teaching in UK universities through the TEF is a “welcome step” for the sector, according to Julia Goodfellow, president of Universities UK.
However, she cautioned: “We must ensure that this exercise is not an additional burden for those teaching in our universities and that it provides useful information for students, parents, and employers.”
Elliott-Bowman also recognised that the additional financial requirements of the HER are likely to trigger a “cull in the market”.
“I think there’s going to be quite a few providers who cannot meet the financial requirements and so will lose their licence”
“I think there’s going to be quite a few providers who cannot meet the financial requirements and so will lose their licence,” she noted, but said that “regulation has to keep up” with the demand from students for quality assurance.
The introduction of an across-the-board framework to monitor teaching quality should help to level the playing field for private and further education providers, she added.
Current policy has created two sets of regulations for degree awarding and non-degree awarding Tier 4 sponsors. Work rights and visa extensions are significantly limited for students at private HEIs.
“We’ve been trying to really push this idea that there’s equality within the system, and once you start to achieve that then the Home Office’s distinction becomes very questionable,” she said.
If the green paper policies are accepted, some of these non-HEI providers may soon be able to apply for degree-awarding powers with greater ease.
“We have a great higher education sector in this country and we want there to be more competition, so there is a process of driving up standards,” Universities Minister Jo Johnson told BBC programme Newsnight last night.
“We want to make it easier for new entrants to come into the HE market and offer wider choice of provision,” he added.
The proposals will now undergo a consultation period, during which stakeholders will weigh in on how the reforms should be implemented and managed.
A spokesperson for the UK HE International Unit stressed that it will be “looking at all these elements in detail” before the January 15 deadline for submissions, while the Association of Colleges will be advocating for equality across sectors.
“Government needs also to remember that not everyone studies higher education in universities,” commented Martin Doel, chief executive of the AoC.
“The teaching excellence framework and other reforms must take these students into account too,” he noted. “We hope that the new, speedier process to gaining degree awarding powers will also apply to awarding powers for foundation degrees.”
