Target 70 per cent tertiary participation, says UUK blueprint

England should set a target of increasing participation in tertiary education to 70 per cent by 2040, according to Universities UK, which has outlined a comprehensive programme of reform aimed at stabilising and improving the sector over the next decade.

Particular focus should be paid to engaging with 18- and 19-year-olds in low-participation neighbourhoods, the organisation’s long-awaited “blueprint” says, with a target of increasing access for this cohort from 30.5 per cent to 50 per cent by 2035.

Reaching new student populations is also seen as a key part of how universities will adapt and evolve in the face of financial pressures caused by the long tuition fee freeze, rising costs and declining international recruitment.

The document proposes a two-phase solution to the sector’s funding crisis; with the government first being asked to raise fees with inflation and increase the teaching grant before supporting “university-led transformation”.

This second phase could include more efficiency savings, greater use of AI in operations, revised teaching models, more focused research budgets and the development of new group structures and shared services, supported by a government-backed “transformation fund”.

UUK’s blueprint has been shaped by various high-profile commissioners from inside and outside the sector and aims to influence the new Labour government’s thinking ahead of its first budget and spending review next month.

For an at-a-glance summary of the UUK blueprint, click here.

Dame Sally Mapstone, the president of UUK, said the country faced a choice between developing better and stronger universities or letting them “slide into decline”.

“We must choose the former path”, said Dame Sally, principal of the University of St Andrews. “This is not just government’s responsibility. It is a shared responsibility with universities themselves, and one which we are taking head on with this blueprint.”

Nick Pearce, former head of the No 10 Policy Unit, writes in his section on access that the 70 per cent target for those aged 25 was not focused on university participation but in all forms of education at level 4 and above, including diplomas and higher technical qualifications.

Collaboration is needed across the tertiary sector, says Professor Pearce, now director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath, and he proposes the creation of a tertiary education opportunity fund that would award grants to support partnerships between higher and further education that respond to local needs and target learners in low-participation areas.

Writing in his section on research and innovation, Lord Mandelson, the former business secretary, says the current system “creates a perverse paradox in which the more successful a university is in bidding for grants, the more money it loses by having to pay costs not covered by research contracts”.

Government should provide a real-terms increase in quality-related funding, Lord Mandelson argues, and funders should review requirements that research grants are match-funded so that universities do not have to contribute more than 20 per cent of the costs. Industry should cover all the costs when sponsoring research, he says.

The influential Labour figure also proposes a new target for research and development investment as a proportion of gross domestic product – after the previous one was met as a result of an accounting quirk – that matches ones used by the “most competitive and innovative countries in the world”.

On funding, Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor of King’s College London, and John Rushforth, executive secretary of the Committee of University Chairs, point out that English higher education has the lowest amount of public investment among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development members.

Per-student funding is at its lowest point since 2004, they highlight, with the £9,250 fee currently worth £5,924 in 2012-13 prices.

They propose that fees should be indexed to inflation “as soon as possible” alongside increasing maintenance loans and reintroducing grants for the poorest students “not to address the funding shortfall, but to allow fee income to maintain its real-terms value over time”.

The blueprint also calls for the government to provide more upfront funding towards the cost of teaching through its strategic priorities grant.

“This could be targeted to support high-cost, strategically important and vulnerable subjects and create incentives for universities to respond to national and local priorities,” it says.

Recognising that support for international students has declined, Lord Willetts, the former Conservative universities minister, says there is a need for a “new compact” on internationalisation whereby both government and universities take action “to secure sustainable levels of international student recruitment and well-managed growth”.

He also proposes a review of immigration costs for academics, entrepreneurs and technical staff after widespread concerns that fee hikes made under the last government are putting off the best researchers from joining UK universities.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com