BU Research Blog

Monday

Student Funding Panel

The Student Funding Panel has published its final recommendations today which calls for maintenance support for students to be enhanced, while highlighting that rising government costs in the student loan system are of concern in the short term, but repayment thresholds for graduates could be frozen to offer savings in the long term.

Funding panel: keep £9K fees, boost living costs support Times Higher Education

Students ‘don’t know when to pay off loans’ The Times

Graduate opportunities

A number of stories on how top firms are “using poshness to keep poor out of best jobs”. Executives are more likely to judge potential recruits by how they speak than by how well they might do the job, research by Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found. Its review shows that more than two-thirds of the job vacancies in top legal and City firms are filled by university graduates who have been through private or grammar schools.

Firms should break through the ‘class ceiling’, says Sir Terry Leahy The Daily Telegraph

‘Poshness test’ is the new glass ceiling The Independent

Apprenticeships

The government has protected the term “apprenticeship” in law they announced yesterday.

• apprenticeships to be given equal legal treatment as degrees
• commitment to create 3 million apprenticeships by 2020 will be enshrined in law
• public sector bodies will be set targets to help reach 3 million

Government kick-starts plans to reach 3 million apprenticeships BIS 

OFFA’s Access Agreement 10th birthday

The Office for Fair Access (OFFA) are celebrating their 10th anniversary today of the first access agreements being approved by OFFA. They will be celebrating the anniversary by tweeting out using the hashtag #accessagreements10

Tuesday

Student Opportunity Allocation funding

Million+ has said Student Opportunity Allocation funding is the most vulnerable to short-term cuts. Chief executive Pam Tatlow says the fund provides long-term economic benefits by cutting drop-out rates.

University fund for struggling students ‘under threat’ BBC News

Maintenance grants

Comment piece from a student receiving maximum maintenance grants calling for the government not to cut them as they are essential for lower income students who want to succeed at university.

Don’t rob working-class students like me of our grants Guardian

Brexit impact on science

Comment piece from leading UK physicist Athene Donald about the ERC which awards grants solely on the excellence of the science proposed and the proposer. “The UK has been spectacularly successful in winning grants. Currently we host over one thousand ERC grants worth over €2 bn in total. It is worth stressing that if the UK restricted mobility – or voted to leave the EU altogether – these funds would be inaccessible. UK scientists could not apply for ERC grants at all, as Switzerland has already found out to its cost. Our science would undoubtedly suffer hugely.”

Excellent science in the UK is at risk if it votes for Brexit Guardian

Wednesday

Poshness tests

There have been several letters to the editor in both the Times and the Telegraph from a number of correspondents including Sir Peter Lampl (Sutton Trust) in response to coverage of the “poshness” tests for top firms. Sir David Lewis, Former senior partner at Norton Rose (law firm), has said that “City law firms have done an immense amount in recent years to create a level playing field for applicant trainees, paying trainees through their legal courses, for example. City firms should not be blamed for the shortcomings and lack of investment in primary and secondary education by successive governments.”

Letters: A world-class education should not be the preserve of the privileged few The Daily Telegraph

Letters: ‘Poshness’ test and social mobility The Times

Moocs

UK Mooc platform FutureLearn is to offer programmes by lower-ranked universities with specialist centres of excellence in a move likely to open the door to post-92 institutions. Having initially partnered only with those among the top 1 per cent of university rankings – which equates to about 200 institutions globally, including 40 UK universities – FutureLearn says that it is now seeking to broaden its membership base.

FutureLearn looks beyond the 1% to offerings of post-92s THE

Thursday

Student complaints

Universities in England and Wales paid £400,000 in compensation to students last year, following complaints. In 2014, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) ruled on 2,175 cases, with 500 going in favour of the students. Disputes over academic issues such as degree classification or marks for work formed 61% of complaints.

Students awarded £400,000 compensation after complaints  BBC News

Degrees awarding powers

BIS has imposed a “moratorium” on new applications submitted after 2 April for applying for degree-awarding powers and university title – the routes for private providers to cement their place in the sector – pending the completion of a review. Degree-awarding powers were at the centre of a separate development this month when Global University Systems, the umbrella group for several private colleges, completed its purchase of the University of Law.

BIS shelves bids for degree-awarding powers during rules review THE

David Willetts

Interesting and in-depth article with David Willetts – well worth a read. Discusses his experience and opinions on raising tuition fees, riots, alternative providers and student numbers cap. He always wants tuition fees to rise in line with inflation. Teaching quality he says, is “unfinished business”, asserting that “teaching has been by far the weakest aspect of English higher education”. Also mentions his irritation with the most selective research universities over their suspicion over scrapping the student numbers caps – “My view was that precisely because of their eminence, they had a leadership role for the sector as a whole. So I hoped they would look to the interests of the sector and the interests of young people…I get frustrated when higher education is treated as a zero-sum game: that if someone else benefits it must be at my expense.”

David Willetts interview: ‘what I did was in the interests of young people’ THE

Friday

Graduate teachers

Several stories on how teaching (in state schools) is attracting more graduates from Oxford and Cambridge following a report from the Sutton Trust which showed that the number has doubled in a decade. However independent schools are three times more likely to have Oxbridge-educated teachers than state schools.  The Sutton Trust stresses a top university degree is not the only factor needed for good teaching, but highlights its own earlier research saying solid subject knowledge is a key quality for able teachers.

Teaching attracting more Oxbridge graduates BBC News

Press release: Oxbridge graduates teaching in state secondary schools double in decade Sutton Trust

Select committee chairs

Chairs have now been elected for the select committees.

Iain Wright – BIS

Dr Sarah Wollaston – Health

Nicola Blackwood – Science and Technology

Full list