VAL0038

Written Evidence submitted by the University of Bedfordshire

 

University of Bedfordshire mission, students and income  

 

  1. The University of Bedfordshire is a modern university with a mission to expand education opportunity and broaden horizons and understanding across the communities we engage. We undertake teaching and research across multiple sites at our campuses in Luton, Bedford, Aylesbury, Milton Keynes and London. We deliver a wide range of vocationally-oriented degree courses in Business, Education, Sport, Healthcare, Social Sciences, Creative Arts, Media and Performance, Computer Science and Technology and Life Sciences. In 2019 we plan to open a new building focused on teaching and research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects, expanding our course provision in these strategically important subject areas.

 

  1. The University has an income of approximately £125 million annually, almost entirely from student fees. We have had historical success in recruiting overseas students, but have seen a decline in numbers following the implementation of a more punitive Tier IV visa regime and the implementation of a 10% visa refusal threshold for sponsors of student visas. The UK’s departure from the EU has created uncertainty in the EU student market and led to a reduction in EU student numbers applying to the University in 2017-18.

 

  1. About half of our students come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, more than one-third are mature entrants to higher education and 40 per cent are from Black or minority ethnic backgrounds. The University takes real pride in offering a supportive environment in which students without a family background in higher education can flourish and succeed. In the 2018 Guardian league table the University was ranked sixteenth in the UK on the value-added measure, representing the academic ‘distance travelled’ by students between entry and graduation.

 

  1. Over the past five years the University has placed a priority on enhancing the student learning experience. We have invested £180 million in our estates, bringing the learning environment up to date. We have enhanced student voice and feedback mechanisms, involving students at every level of academic and corporate governance. For example, the President of the Students’ Union is a full member of the Vice Chancellor’s Executive Group.

 

  1. We have undertaken detailed work at course level to enhance the student experience as measured through the annual National Student Survey, with the result that between 2013-17 the University is among the top 25 universities in the UK for improving the student experience, and was first in the UK in 2014. Our most recent higher education review by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in 2015 resulted in a commendation for enhancing student learning opportunities and the identification of eight areas of good practice. In the academic year 2015 only one-quarter of reviews conducted by the QAA resulted in a commendation.

 

  1. In 2012 we set our fee at £9,000, taking account of the average cost of course delivery and the additional costs of supporting disadvantaged students through our Access Agreement. We also recognised that in a changed funding environment students would expect to see additional investment in the student experience, and that in the higher education market price is typically perceived as an indicator of quality. Since 2012 the value of the fee has eroded through inflation to £8,275 in 2016-17. The University has also faced significant competitive pressure from the removal of the student number cap and the expansionist ambitions of hitherto highly selective universities. We have responded in line with our mission to expand opportunity through developing a new entry route via a Foundation Year, which has proved highly popular especially among mature applicants, through expansion of partnership delivery in London and elsewhere, and increasingly through higher and degree apprenticeships.

 

Graduate outcomes and the use of destination data

 

  1. The University is committed to supporting its graduates into employment and has adopted a number of employability initiatives in pursuit of that objective including optional credit-bearing employability course units, a ‘with placement’ option for every subject area, course-specific employability mapping and a graduate development programme. Employer engagement is embedded across our curriculum through employer talks, employer participation on curriculum review and the use of real-life business projects in assessment.

 

  1. The University’s graduate-level employment rate has increased by ten percentage points over the last two years to 68 per cent. By 2020 we plan to increase that number to 75 per cent.  

 

  1. The evidence suggests that expansion of higher education has not negatively affected the financial returns to higher education in the form of the graduate premium, which has held steady at £100,000 over a graduate’s lifetime earnings. Longitudinal Destination of Leavers data for 2017 shows that 84 per cent of graduates in work were employed in graduate-level jobs 3.5 years after graduation, suggesting that concerns about utilisation of graduates’ skills is at risk of being overstated.  

 

  1. Longitudinal Educational Outcome (LEO) data has indicated that for the majority of graduates, the earnings premium can reasonably be anticipated to be greater than the cost of higher education – albeit most graduates will not in any case repay the full cost of their higher education because of the (entirely appropriate) public subsidy of the student loan book.

 

  1. LEO data has prompted concerns about the minority of graduates who do not ultimately enjoy an earnings premium. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed to the effects of social background, gender and subject of study on the returns to higher education, all of which provides important context for the raw data.[1] We can reasonably presume that the field that graduates choose to work in is also an important predictor of salary.

 

  1. We do not dispute that longitudinal data on graduate employment outcomes can be of value to inform student choice. However, data of this nature must be carefully contextualised. For example, the long-term returns to graduates of particular subject areas in 2006 may not be a robust predictor of long-term outcomes in that subject area for students making choices in 2017.

 

  1. There is also no simple association that can be made between the return to the graduate and the cost of delivery of the subject. For example, creative arts, media and performance subjects and some areas of healthcare bring significant costs for equipment and materials but may not bring above-average long-term returns in earnings.

 

  1. In a system driven by student choice we would not wish to make too close an association between subjects and putative salary returns to the subject. Some students may be primarily motivated by future earnings gains, while others are motivated by the desire to help others, by the allure of working in a creative role, or working for oneself, or by the desire to work in a particular field of employment whatever the salary returns.

 

  1. We would also not wish to see a system that discouraged graduates from entrepreneurship. The University of Bedfordshire is a leading university for graduate start-ups as measured by turnover, and Universities UK estimates there were 4,100 graduate companies started in 2014-15, employing 21,000 people.[2] Not every start-up will produce significant salary returns, not least because entrepreneurs tend to reinvest profits in business growth or take their benefits in ways other than through a salary.

 

  1. Where we see real value in graduate destination data is in exploring further the causes and consequences of the gender pay gap, which is prompting us to reflect on whether we have a role in combating the pay gap in particular subject areas and if so, what that might be. We are also reflecting on how we engage with employers in fields with historically lower salary returns to understand the reasons and the extent to which these are related to graduates’ skills. The role of employers in making effective use of graduate-level skills to drive enhanced productivity is rarely invoked in the debates about returns to higher education, but it is an important dimension of the issue.  

 

Social justice in higher education and support for disadvantaged students

 

  1. The University of Bedfordshire recruits high proportions of disadvantaged and under-represented students. We have a long history of delivering outreach to schools and the community and we are at the forefront of widening access practice. We believe firmly that widening access requires work to promote progression into higher education and support for retention and success for students while studying.

 

  1. The University’s Access Agreement for 2018-19 commits £9.3 million on access measures including outreach, provision of financial support and student bursaries and activities to support student retention, progression and success.

 

  1. Higher Education Access Tracker data shows the impact of our outreach work. 37 per cent of young people from POLAR 1 and 2 postcodes who engage with the University’s access programmes progress into higher education, a rate 12 percentage points higher than the generality of young people with POLAR 1 and 2 postcodes (25 per cent). The students who progress into higher education achieve good degrees at the same rate as the general student population.

 

  1. The University’s student support structures reflect our student demographic. We offer comprehensive wellbeing and financial advice and academic skills development support. All students benefit from a personal tutor and we have rolled out a peer-assisted learning scheme in which students in their second year support those in their first. Within Faculties and courses, significant work is undertaken to keep students on track by our Associate Deans for Student Experience, working with course coordinators. Our Careers and Employability Service has developed approaches to working with students with limited experience of professional life, including additional support for communication skills. Students on our Foundation Year receive an intensive programme of academic support and development, focused on future employability and personal career aspirations.

 

  1. The University has pioneered short-term international student mobility opportunities through its innovative Go Global programme. Students spend two or three weeks based at a partner institution in countries like China, Vietnam, India, Egypt, or Mauritius. The programme is heavily subsidised to ensure that students from low-income backgrounds have access to the personal and professional development from experiencing international travel and study.

 

  1. Historically universities that recruit larger proportions of less advantaged students have benefitted from additional public support through the HEFCE-administered Student Opportunity Allocation, in recognition of the additional costs of supporting those students. Last year that funding stream was cut in half, making us more dependent on student fee income to support our access work. Moreover, the long-term future of the Student Opportunity Allocation is uncertain. Certainly, were the undergraduate fee cap to be reduced, we would expect to see a reduction in progress into higher education of those students who have most to gain from a higher education qualification.

 

  1. League tables tend to disincentivise access work, as they use the metric of entry grades as an indicator of performance. It is widely recognised that the academic performance of young people is correlated with their social background. As a consequence, those universities, like Bedfordshire, that do the heaviest lifting on access face a natural ceiling on league table performance. We are unwilling to compromise our mission to widen access for the sake of league table performance and reputation. However, we would not wish the committee to be persuaded by narratives in the media about so-called poor-performing ‘ex-polytechnics’.

 

  1. League tables do not control for student demographic and are not a robust indicator of institutional performance. The exception is the Guardian’s value-added measure which makes a meaningful effort to capture the distance travelled by students who may enter higher education with poor grades, but who, with the support of their university, manage to graduate with a good degree. As such the University commends efforts to capture and measure learning gain, believing that if robust, these will demonstrate the relative educational value for students from less advantaged backgrounds of a higher education qualification, compared to those from more privileged backgrounds.

 

  1. An additional point to make is that access work inevitably involves a degree of cross-subsidy. The access agreement system is a de facto top-slice of the unit of resource/fee per student to create a pot from which the most disadvantaged students gain the most benefit. This is a positive and progressive system, but clearly mitigates against any straightforward alignment between one student’s fee and the ‘value’ gained to that student from their higher education experience.

 

Senior management pay in universities

 

  1. The University recognises the need for constraint in executive pay, and the Vice Chancellor has refused the pay increase offered by the Remuneration Committee of the Board of Governors two years’ running. The Vice Chancellor’s pay is in any case below the national average.

 

  1. We also acknowledge the reasonable expectation of students, University staff and the public for universities to be transparent and to make reasonable judgements in the setting of executive pay. As such we are reviewing and updating our policies and processes to be confident that we are meeting those expectations.

 

  1. However, we do not consider executive pay to be a core value for money concern. The Vice Chancellor’s salary represents less than 0.2 per cent of University annual turnover. Moreover, University executives lead hugely complex organisations with significant public accountabilities. Universities must be free to set a level of executive pay that reflects the demands and responsibilities of the roles in question, and that reflects a market rate that enables universities to recruit and retain high-quality staff.

 

Quality and effectiveness of teaching

 

  1. In line with delivery of vocationally-oriented and employer-engaged qualification, the University’s pedagogy is applied, with students working in environments and on assessments designed to replicate professional employment. Students are taught by academic staff actively engaged in research and professional practice.

 

  1. For example, our Business School has pioneered the use of Practice Weeks, in which students work collaboratively on real-world problems set by regional employers. The University-sponsored company Media Junction employs students to create promotional videos and hosts regular employer networking events. Likewise our Guildford Street Press employs students for design commissions within the University and for the local community. When the University hosts high-profile speakers they are interviewed by Journalism students and the students are encouraged to pitch their interviews to local media. Psychology students benefit from a research assistant programme, giving them professional experience of Psychology research. Our unique Refugee Legal Assistance Project gives Law students the opportunity to support refugees to make family reunion applications.

 

  1. The University was proud to receive a Silver award in the Teaching Excellence Framework. In metrics for assessment and feedback the University received a positive flag, indicating performance significantly above benchmark in that area over the last three years. In making their judgement the panel made reference to the University’s curriculum framework, our systems for personalised learning, our personal academic tutoring and peer assisted learning schemes, our wraparound professional support services and our investment in the learning environment.  

 

  1. The University was also recognised for its sector-leading efforts to develop and reward teaching excellence, with 80 per cent of teaching staff holding or working towards Higher Education Academy accreditation for teaching, well above both our mission group and the sector average on this measure.

 

  1. Our internal Bedfordshire Unit Survey data tells a positive story, with the proportion of courses achieving over 70 per cent student satisfaction having increased from 61 per cent to 85 per cent between 2013/14 and 2015/16, and with more than half achieving over 90 per cent satisfaction. In questions relating to the crucial areas of student engagement and intellectual challenge we have seen in the same period a 17 percentage-point increase in students agreeing that their course has challenged them to achieve their best work, from 64 per cent to 81 per cent.

 

  1. We have invested heavily in a learning resource strategy, working closely with students in the design of a brand new library, and on the provision of the appropriate balance of hard-copy and e-resources. As a result in the National Student Survey of 2017 we entered the top quartile in the country on the learning resources scale.

 

  1. As such we are confident that we offer a high-quality learning experience, but we believe we can go even further. Our Strategic Plan for 2017-20 includes a range of new initiatives, including a student academic skills diagnostic on entry, development of the curriculum to include engagement with public policy challenges, new initiatives to measure and enhance learning gain, and the development of student academic societies to encourage student leadership in personal and professional subject-relevant development.

 

  1. We recognise that for students value is located both in the quality of teaching in the classroom/learning resources and in the co- and extra-curricular offer and the provision of services.[3] As such we have invested in the students’ union, increasing the annual block grant in 2013, and carrying out an upgrade to student social facilities worth half a million pounds in 2016. We have appointed a Student Experience team that runs initiatives such as the Vice Chancellor’s Student Experience Awards, student shadowing scheme to help develop a shared understanding between staff and students, and student-led student experience projects.

 

  1. Where we can face significant challenges in maintaining student engagement is in the complexities of our students’ lives. Many live at home, not on campus, most face occasional or frequent financial hardship, and consequentially many have jobs in addition to their study. Our students are in the main committed to their study, but their confidence levels can be low and their prior experience of education is not always positive. As such, the possibility of a family problem, a health problem or a period of financial hardship tends to have a pronounced impact, and our students are at higher risk of suspending or leaving their studies, or simply failing to take advantage of the range of opportunities for personal, academic and professional development available to them. On graduation financial pressures may encourage students to sustain their student employment, for example, in the service industry, making them less attractive to graduate-level employers.

 

  1. The University works extremely hard to enhance the social capital of its students and, as evidenced above, with a good degree of success. However, the fundamental social inequities our students face compared with those from wealthier backgrounds is always part of the equation.

 

  1. The need for wraparound services outside the classroom to support learning and teaching is also the reason why the argument that some courses are cheaper to deliver does not stand up to scrutiny. Delivery of mainly classroom-based subjects is in principle less costly than lab-based or creative subjects, but all students must have access to the virtual learning environment and hard-copy learning resources, to extra-curricular opportunities, to welfare services and the students’ union. We would not argue that students should have reduced access to centralised services on the grounds that their subject was classroom-based.

 

  1. Moreover, the University – rightly – must expend considerable resource in the registration of students, the maintenance of a complaints and appeals system, management and governance of academic quality, and the collection, maintenance and submission of student data to external bodies. None of these costs relate to the subject of study; they are part and parcel of running a university that is publicly accountable and legally compliant.  Where critics advise that we should reduce ‘managers’ in universities, it is to these necessary and important functions that they – albeit typically in ignorance – refer.

 

  1. We do not make these points to be defensive. We recognise that students and the public have legitimate value for money concerns and deserve to be assured that institutional funds are well-spent. We also acknowledge that we could do more to explain to students how we spend fee income, given that so much that universities do is essentially invisible to students and the public, or certainly not typically accounted for in calculations about value.

 

  1. However, Government and regulators must take an evidence-based approach to thinking through how universities can reasonably evidence value for money. The evidence we have presented shows that we are not working to high profit margins, and that we are investing sizeable amounts in the student learning environment, in the student experience and in access to higher education. We listen and respond to the student voice, we hold our staff to high standards of delivery, and we draw on the evidence of where we can enhance our services to students.

 

  1. Universities must balance their investment of resource (including contact time) with the educational outcomes for students. At some point there will be diminishment in the return on investment, which may in any case be beyond an individual university’s financial capability to deliver. So much of the value that can be gained from higher education depends on students’ own efforts and engagement with their course, with their peers and tutors, and with extra-curricular opportunities. While we certainly advocate wider engagement with the University community, we cannot control the level of commitment students are willing to make.

 

The role of the Office for Students

 

  1. The University believes that the role of the Office for Students in relation to value for money should be the following:

 

a)    Continue to run the Teaching Excellence Framework, which provides high-quality evidence through institutional submissions of the range and impact of activities universities are doing to deliver excellent teaching above and beyond the baseline quality expectation. Make use of the quantitative and qualitative evidence to publish examples of high-impact practices or work with an appropriate body to ensure this work is undertaken.

 

b)    The OfS should accept that it has a role in explaining and contextualising the data it publishes through TEF, including the important role of benchmarking in making judgements about relative teaching excellence. This will be particularly important when Longitudinal Educational Outcome data is added as a supplementary metric to TEF, and will need to be appropriately benchmarked in order to make meaningful comparisons.

 

c)     In any investigation of teaching intensity, approach the topic without preconceptions and with the commitment to be informed by the latest pedagogical evidence of the educational value of contact time, class size, additional academic support, online learning materials and learning resources.

 

d)    Be consistent and transparent in how it arrives at judgements, and what metrics, qualitative information, research evidence and expert advice it will take into account.

 

e)    Monitor and publish Vice Chancellor pay for the benefit of students and the public – as this is public information in any case and is currently only collated by the Universities and Colleges Union through an annual Freedom of Information request, the OfS could perform a real service in producing validated data which could then be used for benchmarking purposes.

 

f)      The OfS should consider how activities that universities undertake that add to the public good can be captured as part of a wider value for money landscape. An immediate example is the duty on OfS to ensure that universities work with local councils for the purpose of student voter registration – in order to carry out this duty the OfS will need to monitor whether voter registration is taking place and the impact on the likelihood of students to vote.

 

g)    Commit to maintaining the Student Opportunity Allocation as part of the support for equality of opportunity and access, and acknowledge and additional costs of recruiting and support less advantaged students in higher education.   

 

 

October 2017

 

 

[1] IFS working paper W16/06 How English domiciled graduate earnings vary with gender, institution attended, subject and socio-economic background (April 2016)

[2] Universities UK, The economic impact of universities in 2014-15 (2017)

[3] Universities UK report, Education, consumer rights and maintaining trust: what students want from their university (June 2017)