The Government released its long-awaited Higher Education White Paper this week, entitled ‘Students at the Heart of the System’. Our summary is provided below or you can see the full White Paper on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website.

The Government has said that the White Paper is a plan to put undergraduate experience at the heart of the system. A separate strategy for research and innovation will be released later this year. The White Paper has the following three themes:

1) Putting HE on a sustainable footing

• Higher fees, including the ‘pay as you earn’ loan pay-back system which has already been introduced, will continue to be implemented.
• There will be an estimated cash increase in funding for HE of around 10 per cent by 2014-15, but increasing amounts of expenditure will eventually be recouped from graduates’ contributions.
• HE providers will be consulted on whether it is possible to remove some of the VAT barriers which can currently deter institutions from sharing costs. Other similar measures may also be consulted on in light of the current review of efficiency in the HE sector, led by Professor Ian Diamond of the University of Aberdeen.

2) Delivering a better student experience: improving teaching, assessment, feedback and preparation for the world of work

• The Government believes that the measures above will drive a more responsive system; putting financial power into the hands of learners, making student choice more meaningful, and pressuring institutions to make themselves more appealing to students and employers. Several measures may be taken in light of the current Diamond review of efficiency in the HE sector.
• Approximately 98,500 student places will become contestable between institutions in 2012/13, with unconstrained recruitment of the estimated 65,000 students who will score the equivalent of AAB or above at A-Level. Universities whose average tuition charge after waivers is at or below £7,500 who ‘combine good quality with value for money’ will have access to a flexible margin of about 20,000 places.
• Arrangements for employers and charities to sponsor individual places outside student number controls will become more flexible.
• Regulatory barriers that ‘are preventing a level playing field’ for all providers will be removed, and the White Paper will also simplify the regime for obtaining and renewing degree-awarding powers, making a more diverse sector. The White Paper proposes to decouple degree-awarding powers from teaching in order to facilitate externally-assessed degrees by trusted awarding bodies, for example.
• The Government will work with UCAS and other possible partners such as Which? and bestcourse4me to expand information available to prospective students – e.g. employment and earnings outcomes of graduates of each course. Universities will also be expected to publish online summary reports of student surveys of lecture courses. As part of these measures, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) will be preserved.
• An innovation and research strategy will be published which will explore the roles of knowledge creation, business investment, skills and training, and the public sector in innovation and growth performance. This is likely to be intertwined with the rolling out of a programme of Technology Innovation Centres later this year.
• A new regulatory system will be introduced with HEFCE adhering to a risk-based approach to quality assurance.
• Professor Sir Tim Wilson will undertake a review into how the UK can be the best place in the world for university-industry collaboration.

3) Increasing social mobility

• Maintenance grants and loans for nearly all students are being increased, and a National Scholarship Programme is being introduced.
• Through the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) and Director of Fair Access, institutions will continue to be required to fulfil their outreach, retention and academic freedom obligations. OFFA will remain independent and be strengthened with an increase in resource over time.
• Depending on the outcomes of the UCAS review of admissions procedures, there may be a move to a Post-Qualification Applications (PQA) system, where students apply for university after they receive their exam results, not before.