More people are entering higher education (HE) in England despite the tuition fees hike in 2012. The proportion of people going to university by the age of 30 has increased from 42 per cent in 2006-07, to 48 per cent in 2014-15.
Challenges
However, despite this expansion, the proportion of students from disadvantaged areas that have low HE participation rates has only increased from 9.6 to 11.3 per cent over this period. Even worse, in highly selective universities the increase has only been from 5.7 to 6.5 per cent (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Proportional intake of disadvantaged students at English universities
The selection process in English universities does not generally appear to be biased by the background of applicants. The bigger problem is that there are few disadvantaged school leavers with the necessary attainment levels. It could therefore be argued that it is not universities' role to widen participation. However, meaningful improvements to social mobility will require action at all levels of the education and employment system. The alternative is neither economically sensible nor morally defensible.
While the probability of attending a university at the age of 18-19 is almost entirely determined by attainment, some universities still seem to be recruiting fewer disadvantaged students than their subject mix, selectiveness and geography would suggest.
These issues are recognised by the Government, and since 2004 the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) has been working to ensure that universities take the necessary steps to widen participation. As a result, real-term spending on such activities, including outreach to school pupils and financial support for university students, has risen since 2012-13, reaching almost £1.2 billion in 2016-17 (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Main sources of WP funding (real terms)
Reform's new report investigates whether this money is being spent in the most effective way, finding no correlation between expenditure and widening participation (WP) outcomes over the past five years. This does not mean such programmes are ineffective, but, it suggests there are inefficiencies in how these funds are currently spent (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: High-tariff universities’ progress over five years against their benchmarks and universities’ spending on outreach activities (real terms)
Also concerning is that there is a lack of accountability for this spending. Currently, OFFA only requires universities to report spending in a limited number of top-level categories, without detail between different types of WP activity. This prevents evaluation of interventions and sharing of best practice.
For example, there is a fundamental difference between outreach work aimed at 17-year-old students (like summer schools), and that targeted at 7-year-old pupils still in primary school. Evidence suggests the latter investment is more effective, but its outcomes are delayed and difficult to evaluate. Current OFFA expenditure categories do not make a distinction between these two initiatives, making estimates of the returns from these two types of investments impossible.
Solutions
To overcome this issue, the report recommends that clearer and more detailed spending breakdowns be submitted to OFFA. To evaluate the impact of outreach work with younger students, the report also recommends that universities subscribe to systems that track student outcomes over time, such as the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT).
One WP policy that was repeatedly highlighted as effective in interviews for this paper was contextualised admissions. This practice judges an applicants' attainment in the context of their background, meaning that somebody who went to a poor-performing school or grew up in a disadvantaged area may be given extra merit.
There are many nuances to contextualised admissions. Some universities may only consider background after the filing of an extenuating circumstances form, while others may go as far as lowering offers for disadvantaged applicants. The report proposes a clearer typography of seven different levels of contextualised admissions (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Spectrum of contextualised admissions
The one university that by far makes the most out of contextualised admissions is the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The report estimates that due to its approach to contextualised admissions, LSE increased the proportional intake of students from low HE-participation neighbourhoods by more than 3 percentage points compared to if it had not implemented the policy (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Disadvantaged student intake at LSE and at synthetic control group
If these results can be reproduced by other institutions in this group, more than 3,500 disadvantaged students could go to a highly selective university every year. A good contextualised admissions programme requires a university to invest in modern data and analysis systems, and universities should be encouraged to report this expenditure in a new separate category.
The report presents a league table to illustrate how different institutions perform in terms of the proportion of disadvantaged students admitted, where their 'benchmark' suggests they should be, and spending (see Figure 6).
Figure 6: High-tariff university access rankings
Widening participation in higher education is an important economic and social goal. Universities have already put in considerable effort towards this. However, without better data and accountability, it is impossible to know which policies really make a difference, or are cost-effective. Reform makes four recommendations to address this (see Figure 7).
Figure 7: Report recommendations
