Divisiones de lo posible.

The White Paper Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System (BIS 2011c) proposed opening up the higher education market to further education colleges and alternative providers. The FECs in England that taught courses of higher education are, it noted, among more than 1600 bodies – public and private, home and overseas – offering some kind of UK higher education provision. These bodies are diverse in their aims and audiences but further education colleges have a ‘distinctive mission’. They offer local, accessible, flexible and vocational forms of higher education to adults and young people from a range of educational and social backgrounds:

Colleges have displayed particular strengths in reaching out to non-traditional higher education learners including mature and part-time students. They also have a distinctive mission particularly in delivering locally-relevant, vocational

higher-level skills such as HNCs, HNDs, Foundation Degrees and Apprenticeships.

Further education colleges also offer professional qualifications and awards which are predominantly studied part-time by people over 25 in employment. This kind of learning is increasingly being offered on a very flexible basis, including distance and online learning. Students are often able to take a break from their courses, which helps them build their study around their working and family responsibilities. We recognise the importance of this type of higher education provision (sometimes called “non-prescribed”) and will consider how it relates to other forms of provision. (BIS, 2011c, p. 46)

Nevertheless, there are ‘barriers to fair competition’ and the current rules controlling student numbers and awarding degrees make it difficult for colleges to compete with

universities for students. Indirect funding and validation arrangements are examples where the system treated FECs and HEIs ‘very differently’:

In some cases, universities enter into franchise arrangements with a college where the university “owns” the student places and allocates them to the college. These can get difficult at a time when student number growth is tightly constrained for all providers. Even where a college has its own student number allocation, it may need a higher education institution, with degree-awarding powers, to validate its degree. There are some long-standing and successful partnerships, but either party can withdraw or seek to renegotiate the

arrangement, which can cause friction. (ibid. p.47)

To create a level playing field for all providers, a single regulatory framework is intended for the whole of the higher education system. A technical consultation on the new

regulatory framework, with HEFCE as lead regulator, opened in August and closed in October 2011.

As part of establishing this framework, the criteria and the process for granting and renewing taught degree-awarding powers at undergraduate level will be reviewed, with a proposal to allow non-teaching organisations to award degrees. More bodies with such powers or an extension of the external degree model could increase choice for students including ‘the possibility of progressing directly to a degree with a national awarding body brand’. They should appeal as well to colleges ‘whose ability to provide higher education is dependent on a university being willing to validate their degrees’. In particular:

Models that allow awarding bodies to hold degree-awarding powers could provide a clear progression model and a new nationally recognised offer for higher education provided by further education colleges (“HE in FE”). (ibid. p.73)

With the exception of colleges granted powers to award Foundation Degrees, further education institutions do not award their own degrees. Foundation Degree-awarding powers were made available to FECs by legislation in 2007 and the first two colleges granted these powers were approved in 2011. No changes to these powers are proposed in the White Paper but they will be reviewed in 2012. Nor is it intended to extend the title of ‘college of further and higher education’ beyond those FECs who have a minimum of 10%

of their full-time equivalent students in higher education and a minimum number of 500 full-time equivalent higher education students. These criteria will also be reviewed in 2012. Some in the further education sector had called for the higher education contribution of FECs to be recognised through a distinctive title of this kind.

In the longer term, the White Paper expected to see better alignment of the quality review processes applied to FECs and HEIs, ‘for the sake of coherence and simplicity’. Similarly, the agencies responsible for data collection, in collaboration with HEFCE and the SFA, are asked to promote ‘simplification and alignment’ across both the higher and further

education sectors.

The funding reforms in the White Paper are intended to develop a demand-led system for the funding of teaching which will promote student choice and greater competition between providers. To support these aims as well as drive efficiency, quality and innovation, the Government announced a ‘core and margin’ model to ‘free up student number controls, while ensuring that overall costs are managed’. Administered by HEFCE, this involved two changes to the way in which student number controls would operate from 2012-13.

The first allowed unrestricted recruitment of high-achieving students (those with grades AAB or higher at A-Level). The second allowed higher education providers that ‘combine good quality with value for money’ and whose average fee (after fee waivers) is at or below £7500 to expand by competing for a share of about 20,000 student places. The places (the margin) would be made available by reducing the core student number control allocations of all institutions (after the removal of AAB+ students). Institutions would bid for a share of these places against agreed criteria. In this manner, every institution will have to compete year to year for the student numbers outside its core allocation and ‘the core will reduce every year’.

It is in the second of these two competitions that a wider range of providers should find it easier to offer and gain places, that responsiveness and a diversity of provision should be enabled, and that the overall cost to the taxpayer should be reduced. In short:

This will make it easier for further education colleges, new entrants and other non-traditional providers that can attract students, to expand to meet to demand. (ibid., p. 52)

and

We expect this to mean more higher education in further education colleges, more variety in modes of learning and wholly new providers delivering

innovative forms of higher education.’ (ibid., p. 3)

2.1.2 Higher education in the reform plan for further education and skills