Costs, commitment, attainment, market reliance…

Ruth ThompsonDirector General, Higher Education

Department for Innovation, Universities and SkillsChicago, July 2007

Thoughts - attainment

• Contentious data: we can all complain about EAG methodology

• Measure needs to be proportion of people in the workforce with higher level qualifications (sub-degree or degree)

• Even that doesn’t capture really important employability/productivity added measure

Thoughts - spending

• Various figures are a spur and a goad• Don’t capture value for money – without

completion rates miss outputs, without employability consequences don’t capture outcomes

• Consensus is that spend should go up because returns are good (but see above) – but whose money are we talking about – state, individual (student/household), employer?

Thoughts – growing attainment

• Getting the drop-outs to hang in there

• Interventions to encourage progression and completion

• Pre-HE interventions to widen participation and access

• Manage transitions better: curriculum adjustment

• Support (financial, but more IAG)

Thoughts – enrolments and revenues or costs

• England : unit of funding guarantee (stands out) - slows expansion

• Elsewhere: squeeze on funding but competition ensures enrolments hold up?

• Cost structure needs to be understood, but not assumed or generalised by funders, not compensated (except as deliberate incentive)

Regulatory/Market continuum

• No point in generalising

• Taxonomy interesting but only if policy makers want to state a direction of travel and be clear about trajectory

• Question how much movement since Wellington: Scots less market orientated, others static or some slight movement to market