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Anastasia De Waal, 29 June 2010

Students have long been able to choose between universities – who in turn, compete for students’ applications, touting their accolades to passengers on the tube and tv audiences, writes Zenobe Reade.

The university brand is multi-faceted: it is the advert, the league table, the breadth of exposure and the advice of friends, family and school which provoke applications. Earlier this month, David Willetts put forward the proposal that more universities allow other institutions to teach their degrees, but retain ultimate power by setting the exams necessary to receive the degree certificate. This is evocative of the externally validated qualifications that further education colleges and schools offer currently, the HNDs, BTECs, the GCSEs. So choosing a degree would become two-fold – the decision as to a course, and a second decision made between institutions offering the same course.

Students would choose whether to study for the course at a ‘local’ institution or at the institution which awards the degree. This, Willetts argues, ‘could transform the incentives to focus on high-quality teaching’. The Further Education colleges which he is implying should move into the business of offering degrees may seem comparatively deprived of academic gravitas and research, but student-teacher ratios are often higher, contact time greater and – notably – provision is cheaper. At a time when universities are challenged to create student charters, to assure students that they will not be in seminars of over 50 or that they will have essays marked within three months, this would be an interesting experiment in how internal competition might act to converge two very different sectors to their respective benefit.

The spectre of increased fees in higher education and their potential to decrease numbers of the poorest young people going to university is inherent within Willetts’ argument. He is brokering a deal: local universities will be cheaper – certainly as students could live at home, but also because of the likelihood that a further education college would offer lower fees than the core institution under a new fees regime. This is a challenge – tuition fees have thus far been largely standardised but such a move would accommodate poorer students by offering them a cheaper experience. This might stretch the university brand too far – a cheaper degree taken at a local college would be quickly differentiated from the original.

And perhaps rightly so. When the franchise is spread too thin, quality often suffers. Universities may be tempted to forfeit quality in the pursuit of income. It is already boom time for British universities exporting their brands abroad – Nottingham has high profile campuses in Malaysia and China and Imperial College is prospecting a similar project in the Persian Gulf. We heard this week that UK universities may spread to India to substantiate the new ‘special relationship’ between London and Delhi.

These ventures capitalise on a lack of geographical mobility which is in many cases appropriate – a Malaysian student can receive a quality degree without paying the cost of living abroad. Introducing smaller outlets for degrees in the UK runs the risk of writing off social mobility with geographical. Access for students of all financial means to all UK universities must remain an integral component of any new system of university fees.

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