Category: Education

Beware the Ides of MAC

Aficionados of ancient Rome will know that every month had an Ides. For March, May, July and October it fell on the 15th of the month while for the rest of the year it was the 13th. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) Review of the Graduate Route is due to report on the 14th of May so it seems possible the detail will become clearer the next day.1

Some predict a ritual and metaphorical assassination of the higher education sector to suit the political aims of the Conservative government. It is certainly likely to be a day when, just as in ancient Rome, debts become due. Will MAC deserve the line “Et tu Brutus” from the sector if it echoes, “I come to bury Caesar not to praise him”, in its thinking on the graduate route?

The announcement of the Review led to some frantic rearguard action from the higher education sector which was cut out of the usual, drawn-out Call for Evidence, at a point when the Government needs to reassert its credibility on immigration ahead of an election. There may be some glimmers of hope but the politics seem to be overwhelmingly negative. It comes when the sector is beset by other negative stories and some well-respected voices are suggesting it is time to accept there are problems that need dealing with.

Last Throw of the Dice

It is difficult to know whether the effort from Kaplan, HEPI and the NUS to produce “The Exchequer benefits and costs associated with the Graduate Route visa” in advance of MAC’s publication is going to help. The main argument seems to be that MAC would be remiss in not taking into account the tax return from increasing numbers of international students entering the workforce on the Graduate Route. At a single stroke the students resolve the sector’s funding issues and become a part of the solution to the UK’s debt problems.

We didn’t really need a long and technical paper to tell us that if people go into the workplace they pay tax and contribute to the Exchequer and that if you have more of them they pay more. What the paper doesn’t say is that a logical extension of this self-serving argument would be that if the period of post-study work was extended to five years or even indefinitely, international graduates would pay even more tax. It’s unspoken because, while more years of post study work would probably attract even more international students to UK universities, it would make the student visa look more like a route to residency which most agree is politically unacceptable.

One eye catching and unhelpful point about the report is that it estimates 21% of the Graduate Route visa holders are not in paid employment. That seems a big number and some might suggest that the number is even larger because those not in employment are less likely to respond to being asked their status. It will be interesting to see if MAC has got the linking of HMRC and visa records to give more insight.

A Government, of whatever political persuasion, is more likely to believe that if there are jobs to be filled the better answer is to deal with the UK’s long-term sickness issues.2 At a single stroke you reduce the cost of welfare, get the tax benefit of having more people in work and don’t have to pay the political price of relying on overseas workers. Both main parties know, from the sector’s own research, that the majority of the British public want the same or fewer international students.

Glimmers of Hope

Even if the Report doesn’t go a long way towards changing anybody’s mind there are other straws to cling to. Much has been made of the decline in student visas issued in the first quarter of 2024 being a strong signal for the Government not to “overcorrect” on the issue by taking further action. The Home Office deadpanned by saying that, “the full effect of recent policy changes and any other impacts” would not be known until the peak in applications in August and September.

The decline in dependent visas is a big headline number but commentators including Dave Amor have noted dependent visas are only back to 2021 levels and while main applicants are down “applications without dependents sounds like they are up.” There is also the impact of the decline in Nigeria’s currency driving some of the changes. For a Government under pressure from its own back-benches on immigration it seems unlikely the numbers are down enough.

In that respect, the timing of the MAC review is interesting in that Cleverly demanded a mid-May response without any clear or evident reason. It may be that he plans to take its recommendations and use them, either positively or negatively, for a publicity blitz around the release of the “Immigration system statistics, year ending March 2024” scheduled for 9.30am on 23 May, 2024. The platform provided by the first quarter figures, the MAC review, and then the yearly figures is a decent campaigning rhythm to reinforce his statement that “Over the coming months, we will continue to show the pace of our progress as we deliver the control the public rightly expect.” It may even be the first bit of positioning for a post-election leadership run.

Let’s Get Cynical

The politics of the matter seem simple and the defection of Tory MP Natalie Elphicke to Labour with the accusal, “It’s clear they [the Tory government] have failed to keep our borders secure and cannot be trusted” will only have hardened the lines. The imperative is to retake control of the immigration debate, challenge Labour’s position ahead of the general election and perhaps even reduce their flexibility if they form the next Government. The interests of the higher education sector do not even feature in that calculation.

The last Labour government has long been known for leaving the infamous note for the incoming Chancellor, “I’m afraid there is no money”. It haunted them in future elections and it is doubtful that the Conservatives will make the same mistake. Far better to hand Labour an impoverished sector and draw a distinctive line on post-study work rights that makes it even harder to patch over gaps in funding with international student fee revenue.

So, the Conservative’s would gain twice by limiting post-study work. The immediate gain is the impression of firm government, a populist stance on a divisive issue and a sop to the troublesome right wing of the party. In the longer term, presuming an election loss, it hands the incoming Government a significant and worsening university funding situation with limited room for maneuver without seeming soft on immigration.

Pathway Woes

Almost a sideshow for now are the other reviews set in motion when the Sunday Times set a hare running with its slightly ill-formed attack on international pathways. Universities UK leapt into action with a review by the Quality Assurance Agency that seems likely to report in June 2024 (if the link with the scope is correct). The Department of Education was instructed to “investigate allegations of bad practice by agents” although it’s a little difficult to find when any outcome is expected.

Pathway operators and by default universities could really do with the reviews not hampering the growth of International Year One programmes or requiring significant policing of agent activity. Times are tough enough already. Evidence of that came with the completion of reporting from INTO’s joint venture portfolio showing that INTO enrollments were still 23.6% down on 2018 for continuing joint venture businesses.

In a previous iteration of this graph in another blog and before reporting from INTO University of East Anglia, I had presumed that the joint venture would have made some progress in 2022/23. In reality there was a further collapse from 310 to 241 students year on year which puts it 62.8% down on 2018. The only bright spot was that the wholly owned Manchester operation hit record high numbers in the year.

Source: INTO Joint Venture Annual Reports

The success of INTO Manchester seems ironical given the probability that Navitas was favourite for the £150m Embedded International Study Center contract at Manchester Metropolitan University. Uncertainties around UK international student visas seem likely to have held up further progress at a point when Navitas must already have been smarting at losing the University of Leicester and University of Northampton as partners. Evidence of another pathway operator with some issues to resolve is Kaplan at the University of York.

Just for completeness, on what some consider the ‘big four’, are the problems at Study Group which were exacerbated by the Daily Mail singling them out in a front page splash as sponsoring 804 student who then claimed asylum. The Mail makes much of the “secret Home Office database” as the source of the story but at least as far back as March 2023 the UK Visas and Immigration Study Sector Brief was noting the trend. Any suggestion student visas are being subverted in order to secure a permanent place in the UK will be used as further evidence the sector is out of control.

Voices of (T)reason

In that context there was a small breath of fresh air from Professor Wendy Alexander at the recent International Higher Education Forum conference in May 2024. She is reported as urging the sector, “We really need to be a little more self-reflective about it. The first way to build trust is to concede there was a problem..”. In that respect she echoes a broader point made by ex-Sheffield Hallam vice chancellor, Professor Chris Husbands, who in July 2023 was suggesting the sector was in danger of “tacitly defending a system that it knows is not sustainable.”

Jo Johnson and Vivienne Stern have also been talking the language of avoiding “over-correction” and “serious overcorrection” which seems to be code for accepting that a correction was reasonable and maybe an acceptance that the sector has lost the argument for the status quo. Slightly off-topic but it was amusing to see Johnson suggesting that the Teaching Excellence Framework should be the guiding light for allowing universities to raise domestic fees. Of 228 universities in TEF 2023 only three were ranked as “requires improvement” overall (11 were requiring improvement on student experience and 9 on student outcomes). Basically, he meant all universities.

Tom Petty suggested that “the waiting is the hardest part” but there is good reason to think that the reality might become even tougher after May 14th. Even then, the sector’s problems aren’t all about international tuition fee revenue even though it has offered a sticking plaster for a few years. The old stock market dictum “sell in May then go away, don’t come back until St Leger’s Day” is a good idea for anyone considering UK universities or university pathway operators as a good bet. Come September some of the dust will have cleared and we may even be seeing the election warming up with policy statements on the future shape and size of higher education.

NOTES

  1. It doesn’t really matter if not. The headline just had to be written and justified.
  2. Both parties are focusing on the issue of the growth in long-term sickness and solutions are likely to form part of the election agenda. The Conservatives, not surprisingly, are calling it as ‘sick note culture’ while Labour has accepted that a problem exists and is “..threatening the future of the sustainability of our finances and the future of our public services”

Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay

Mind the Gap

There is much heat but precious little light around the scale of cutbacks and potential job losses in the UK higher education sector.  UCU has begun its own “live page of all the redundancies, restructures, reorganisations and closures” taking place in the sector.    It’s the source of the media’s drumbeat of 55 universities cutting back and part of the storyline of a gathering apocalypse for the sector.   What is interesting is how slippery and difficult it is to get any real sense of how employment in the sector1 has grown in recent years and the extent that any cutbacks might go deeper than that growth.

It is always wise to start this type of discussion with a recognition that every redundancy is a personal story and the anxiety involved is never to be underestimated.  But it’s equally wise to try and understand the reality of what is going on and why.  There is no doubt that many in the sector have experienced a windfall in international tuition fees since the Graduate Route was introduced and it’s reasonable to try and understand how they have spent the money.

It’s also worth understanding the extent to which the attrition in university finances, due to the declining real value of domestic tuition fees, since 2012 has changed staff numbers.  Previous blogs have considered the sabre rattling around job cuts, the cost of restructuring at some institutions and the reality that some universities (and some courses) might simply be finding it hard to recruit students.  In that respect many problems in the sector are localised and a one-size fits all solution of taxpayer funded handouts is unlikely to solve them. 

Source: Graph published Mark Corver, Founder and MD of DataHe, LinkedIn

Looking Into a Lacuna

The story from HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) indicates that Academic Staff numbers (excluding atypical) grew from 198,335 in 2014/15 to 217,065 (+9.4%) in 2018/19 and then to 240,420 in 2022/23 (a further 10.8%).  Non-academic staff grew from 205,500 in 2014/15 to 222,855 in 2018/19 (+8.4%) but then the trail for non-academic goes cold.  That’s because from 2019/20 “it became optional for providers in England and Northern Ireland to report data about staff on non-academic contracts.”

Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency

*Atypical contracts are “generally non-permanent contracts for short, one-off, or as-and-when tasks”  There were 62,690 atypical academic staff in 2022/23 (down from 75,560 in 2014/15)

NB: The number of institutions reporting in any given year may change.

For a sector that wants to proclaim its impact on the economy it seems a little odd to leave a big gap where half those employed are not fully accounted for.  Around a third of institutions declined to report in 2019/20 and the number declining to report had grown to 43%.  HESA suggest “caution” in interpreting the data which is little surprise since it has no insight into getting on for half the employers.

Even more disturbing is that HESA Q&As misleadingly suggest that their numbers include “all staff” when the data they point to is only academic staff.  GOV.UK is in on the act with the Official Statistics page for Higher education staff data UK:2021 to 2022 confidently linked to HESA data that only shows academic staff numbers.  Many have talked about the sector’s approach to transparency and this seems another example of paying lip service to letting its main funders know where there money is going.

You can tell how confused UniversitiesUK are from their Higher Education in numbers release of 15 February 2024, which claims that in 2021-22 “there were 233,930 staff (excluding atypical staff) employed at UK higher education institutions.”  The source they quote is HESA staff record 2020-21 – odd as they are giving numbers for 2021-22 – which only has a complete record for academic staff.  It seems particularly misleading because the last HESA data (in 2018/19) with both academic and non-academic staff showed a total of 439,955 employed.  It’s not like UUK to short-change themselves when making claims about the sector and I suspect it’s just a mistake.

Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency

NB: The snip cannot capture the whole table but all the data is available there.1

A WonkHE blog recently touched on the data gap caused by opting out in the context of technical staff but it seems arguable that the gaping and growing hole in information on non-academic staff borders on the absurd.  As with all these things each university has the data and generally publishes a version of it in their Annual Report so that is where one has to now start looking for the answer to the sector’s employment path in recent years.

Filling in the Dots

The data collected and considered below reflects a selection, hopefully a reasonable cross-section, of universities in the UCU list referred to in the opening paragraph.  It takes the average FTE of all staff as shown in each university’s annual report since 2017/18.  This shows that the number of staff employed rose modestly in the years before the pandemic, stalled during the pandemic years, and then rose more sharply from 2021 to 2023. 

On average across all 15 the growth has been 8.8% since 2021 but this masks three universities where numbers have fallen (with Kingston down 5% the largest fall).  Growth of 17.7%, 13.5% and 9.7% was seen at the universities of Teesside, Exeter and Central Lancashire respectively.

Average growth of the 12 non-Russell Group institutions has been 6.6% since 2021.  Over the longer term since 2018, Lincoln is up 24.1%, Teesside is up 23.6%, and UWE up 19.3%.  This puts into some perspective the UCE summary of the cuts:

  • Lincoln – “looking to make 220 redundancies” has added 403 FTE since 2018
  • Central Lancashire – “looking to cut 165 posts” has added 280 FTE since 2021
  • Teesside – looking to open a Voluntary Severance Scheme ‘to review how we deliver our business’ probably needs to review after adding 322 new roles (up 17.7%) in just two years since 2021.

For the three Russell Group universities in the group the overall outlook is skewed by Exeter which has increased FTE staff numbers every year since 2017/18.  Newcastle’s growth has been below the average of the 15 modelled and Cardiff were slightly above the average.  UCU tell us that Exeter has ‘opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme’ and that Newcastle ‘has a voluntary severance scheme across all faculties without targets or numbers.’  Cardiff is ‘planning to cut Ancient Languages’.

  

The overall employment data has not been disaggregated for Academic v Non-Academic but there is no doubt that in some institutions growth of administrative staff has significantly outpaced that on the academic side.  That is not a judgement on whether administrative jobs are more or less important than academic roles but the lack of insight on what is happening across the sector is one reason that the lack of HESA data is so infuriating.  The sector really lets itself down when it can’t even be bothered to say how it is adding to employment.

Solving the Right Problem

It is unclear whether the highly publicized cutbacks in the sector are doing much more than correcting course after adding staff to meet a short term windfall that is now likely to disappear.  In some cases, the correction appears to be significantly less than the growth in employment evident in recent years.  Again, this is not to minimize how difficult that can be for those concerned but one may have to ask whether senior management really thought the bonanza was sustainable when they started hiring.

As identified in another blog there also seem to be some universities that are in a state of almost perpetual crisis because of an inability to recruit domestic students and the short-term bonus of international students was gratefully grasped.  It also seems likely that some courses have deteriorated in popularity to an extent where the sector, the government or another body may need to determine how to sustain research and learning through combined action.  Fundamental questions around the value of universities to local economies and the preservation of some academic disciplines may be better placed in the context of levelling up and cultural heritage than graduate visas. 

NOTES

  1. Those who would point me to the 385,500 FTE claimed by London Economics in their August 2023 report for Universities UK might care to go and re-read the basis for it. In the methodology section London Economics confirm that only 217 of 303 institutions reported data to HESA in 2021/22. The London Economics estimate is based on the 20`18/19 ratio of academic to non-academic. May or may not be right and it would be better to have certainty and a decent time series.
  2. There is an argument that because the reporting of these numbers changed after 2018/19 the subsequent numbers do not compare like with like. That is true but all that reaffirms is that the record is inadequate. As we see above, London Economics seems content to use 2018/19 as a solid starting point. As more institutions decline to provide details on non-academic staff the gap between reality and return gets wider and even the post 2019/20 record gets sketchier.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

From A Blip To A Trend

One of the problems with the delay in HESA data is that it is difficult to tell whether blips are becoming trends. Domestic and international recruitment are changing quickly but if information is two years out of date it’s like trying to drive full speed on a motorway while looking in the rear-view mirror. My advice is not to try it.

There are some universities that have driven up international numbers in the short-term while presiding over declining domestic enrolments for several years. If any of the universities have chosen to follow a path of fewer domestic students and more international it would be reasonable for them to be explicit about how far they intended to go if Government policy had not changed. Being opportunistic and following the money to make ends meet is not quite the same as having a strategy.

A closer look at some universities also indicates a pattern of longer term restructuring, redundancies and cutbacks which suggests more fundamental problems. This should be the cause for discussion about the funding issues of individual universities rather than an appeal for a taxpayer underwritten handout to the whole sector. It may be that changes in attitudes to higher education, emerging workforce issues and developing global competition requires widespread restructuring.

In the following analysis the University of Hull’s enrolment figures from its annual report are used for consistency while the University of Kent and University of South Wales enrolment to 2021/22 are taken from HESA data with the fee income figure in the 2022/23 university annual report indicating the 2022/23 enrollment1.

Abundance from (over) the sea2

As noted in previous blogs the University of Hull’s performance in recruitment from Nigeria in 2021/22 delivered an uplift from 70 to 915 students year on year. It would be a surprise if the fall in visa applications for study driven by a decline in the naira and the loss of dependent visas for PGT students isn’t causing some alarm bells to ring. The university’s Annual Report and Statement of Accounts offers an insight suggesting the international enrolment bandwagon rolled on into 2022/23 although whether there was diversification of country of origin is not clear.

Full time International Tuition fee income grew by over £12m from 2020/21 to 2021/22 and then by a further £8m to 2022/23. The University’s figures indicate that it had 4,080 fewer “standard provision” domestic students in 2022/23 than 2017/18 – a fall of 30.8%. Domestic student enrollments appear to have fallen by 1,196 (11.6%) from 2021/22 to 2022/23 alone.

If domestic students are rejecting the University of Hull there seems to be a much more fundamental question to ask about its strategy, focus and future. This question should not be obscured simply because it can remain viable by recruiting international students whose main motivation is to secure post-study work.

Source: University of Hull Annual Report and Statement of Accounts

Since 2018/19 the university has had a “fundamental restructuring staff costs” line itemized in its expenditure and has spent £15.8m on this across the five years. Back in 2019 the university was suggesting that “One of the areas identified where we can be leaner and make efficiency savings, is in our professional services areas (i.e. non-academic areas such as support staff and back office functions).

The Staff by Major Category notes in the annual report show that the restructurings resulted in 239 fewer staff over five years with 132 lost from academic departments and 52 from central student services, while Central Admin has grown by 14. There may be a categorization issue but Academic Departments are down a net 96 on central admin and student services. If the growth in staff numbers in 2022/23 was driven by servicing growing numbers of international students, it is not surprising that there may be redundancies if numbers decline.

Source: University of Hull Annual Report and Statement of Accounts

Unconquered (yet)3

There is a similar but less financially successful story at the University of Kent which has recently joined the long list of institutions announcing redundancies. This is despite a five-year history of restructuring costs costing £25m and ending up, in total, with just seven fewer staff in 2022/23 than in 2018/19. The graph shows the relative movement of Academic, Research and Academic Related staff – down a net 56 when aggregated – while clerical are up 44. Back in July 2020 the University of Kent was reported to be considering cutting “almost 150 full-time jobs” but given its trajectory this seems to have been unsuccessful.

Source: University of Kent Financial Statements

Meanwhile, there has been an ongoing decline in domestic students stretching back over most of the period with a belated and modestly successful bid to increase international student fee income in the past two years. While the University does not give an update on its recruitment in the 2022/23 Annual Report and Financial Statements it does note circumstances “..resulting in an unexpected downturn in the number of students returning to complete their studies after the Summer 2022 break.” The direction of travel on the 2022/23 Full-time home tuition fees would suggest that things have not improved.

Sources: HESA for student numbers and University of Kent Financial Statements for fee income

Almost plaintively the 2022/23 Annual Report notes, “The University acknowledges that it can’t continue operating in a deficit position..” this is after four underlying deficits, of £12m (2022/23), £15.3m (2021/22), £12m (2019/20), and £7.9m (2018/19), in the last five years. The report goes on to say that the forecast for 2023/24 “… is that we will again make a deficit, of approximately £31m..”. There must surely be fundamental questions about the university’s long-term viability or at the very least whether the management team is capable of bringing it back to sustainability.4

Success through endeavour (and international recruitment)5

The University of South Wales was formed in 2013 from the University of Glamorgan and the University of Wales, Newport. Over the past five years the number of full-time UK students has fallen at an accelerating rate from 13,405 to 12,915 according to HESA data. The Home/EU tuition fee income posted for 2022/23 suggests that the story will continue the same trend.

However, since 2019/20 the University has increased its full-time international student population from 1445 to 3625. Again, the income in 2022/23 indicates that the trend will have continued. One of the key questions is whether international student recruitment is simply being used to paper over fundamental issues about the University’s attraction to home students, its purpose and its future.

Sources: HESA for student numbers and University of South Wales Financial Statements for tuition income

When the University of South Wales announced redundancies in 2024 the reasoning suggested by vice-chancellor Dr Ben Calvert was that it’s “…due to a significant rise in non-returning students and running costs.” Digging deeper suggests that the university may have more deep-rooted problems. Back in 2022 the issue was the same, with Dr Calvert saying, “We have seen a 6.1% decrease in our returning students compared to last year.” It is claimed elsewhere that the Newport campus has faced a 75% drop in students since 2010 with suggestions that 10,000 has become 2,500.

Back in 2017 the university announced that 137 redundancies were required “..as it [the university] tried to balance rising costs with an expected drop in students” but the number of redundancies became 57 after negotiation. This came after the opening, in 2014 and then closure in 2015, of a London campus that failed to recruit any students but received investment despite, it is claimed, the Carleon campus in Wales being closed with 145 jobs at risk. This feels like an institution that has long-term, fundamental issues requiring attention.

Finding Ways Forward

There may be good reasons, at each university, for every decision but the histories here reinforce that the UK higher education sector is a patchwork of individual institutions who have specific histories. geographies and problems. There seems enough evidence, in some institutions, of management travelling hopefully or being ill-equipped to be effective and there are questions as to whether the governance role of University councils is adequate. It certainly seems unlikely that there are a sufficient number of high-quality decision makers available to lead more than 150 institutions working in complex and volatile markets.

A blank cheque underwritten by the taxpayer is unlikely to solve some of the structural problems in the sector. It certainly wouldn’t resolve problems caused by poor management decisions, overly optimistic forecasting, or deep-seated domestic student enrolment problems. Neither would it solve any problems caused by declining student demand for higher education or for specific universities and what they offer.

If the answer to the financial issues in the sector is international recruitment then there should probably be a dialogue about the type of recruitment and the work-force implications. Given the national implications this should not be left to the wit or aspirations of individual institutions. There may be a rational decision for Government to make that means international students are explicitly and openly encouraged so that agreed numbers of domestic students can be recruited at an acceptable cost to taxpayers.

Allocating capped international numbers against specific universities should not be too difficult a task and could consider the local economy’s ability to sustain and house them. It is no secret that some parts of the UK job-market would struggle without international graduates taking roles but it seems reasonable that they are not used as a means of depressing wages. There might even be merit in following the Australian example of extended post-study work for international students working in specific localities.

NOTES

  1. The assumption is that as the domestic fee for domestic undergraduates has not changed between years and domestic PG numbers are relatively small, any significant decline in domestic fee income is aligned with a decline in domestic enrollments. It seems to work for years up to 2022/23 and the HESA data, if it ever arrives, will give us a fuller picture.
  2. Hull History Centre tells us that the city of Kingston upon Hull (usually referred to as Hull) does not have a motto. A heraldry enthusiast offered both in 1946 with the Latin, Mare Copia (Abundance from the Sea). A tweak seems appropriate in the context of international student recruitment.
  3. The motto of the county of Kent is the Latin, Invicta (Unconquered). Recent performance – both financial and in recruitment terms – might mean that the university cannot claim the same.
  4. The University of Kent President and vice-chancellor, Professor Karen Cox, resigned this month after being in the role since 2017. Views on her tenure can be read on Kent Online.
  5. Success through Endeavour is the motto of the University of South Wales. It seems appropriate to note that the Welsh translation offered by Googe Translate is Llwyddiant trwy ymdrech.

As always, the blog attempts to understand, interpret and offer an honest opinion on the data available in the context of broader issues in higher education. In the event that there are any errors of fact or interpretation a correction will be made if an authoritative response is provided to the author.

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

In The Doldrums

The doldrums were a miserable place for sailors in the age of sail because it was an area where the trade winds converged but a lack of surface winds meant they might be becalmed for weeks in hot, muggy weather. It’s not a bad metaphor for the higher education sector as it awaits the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) review on 14 May and reviews of pathway courses commissioned by Universities UK and the Government after the Sunday Times “cash for courses” reporting. All of this while the signs of recovery from the pandemic are patchy and international applications have foundered after changes to visas for dependents.

For pathway operators almost entirely reliant on international students the outcomes might make it feel more like the “horse latitudes”1 where it was suggested survival was about knowing what to keep what to keep and what to throw overboard. Rumours of delayed investments and potential sales are also swirling around the sector as the uncertainty makes the future even more opaque than usual. There are few guarantees of future growth.

The past month has seen a degree of information about some UK pathway performance in 2022/23 emerge as annual accounts have been published at Companies House. While the financial years of the main pathway operators are not consistent some of the major players and their operating subsidiaries2 do have similar year ends. This blog focuses on operations where figures for 2022/23 are available.

Navitas

Overall, Navitas had a strong year in 2023 (year ending 30 June 2023) with its overall financial statement indicating a rise from 7,605 to 10,869 student enrolments.

Source: Navitas UK Holdings Limited Annual Reports

However, Navitas has lost two universities from its portfolio for Autumn 2024 enrolments with the University of Leicester and University of Northampton both terminating their pathway college contracts. On the face of it the Leicester decision was surprising given that the Global Study Centre appeared to have a student enrolment driven turnover growth of over 50% from 2021/22 to 2022/23. Northampton’s figures are still pending.

At a more granular level there are still a number of operational reports at individual college level to come for 2022/23 but up until 2021/22 Brunel and Hertfordshire had shown consistent growth in turnover (generally confirmed as being largely due to student enrolment growth) since 2019 while the ventures at Portsmouth, Swansea and Cambridge Ruskin appeared to be struggling. The scale of Northampton and Leicester is relatively small by this comparison and it may be that enrolment numbers have not met expectations.

Source: Individual Annual Reports

During 2023 Navitas appeared to be the likely winner of the contract tender for the proposed Manchester Metropolitan Embedded International Study Centre. The £150m contract was due to start in November 2023 which was the point at which Navitas changed the name of an existing company (Navitas UK College Limited) to Manchester Met IC. Not a peep since then but it has been amusing to see INTO University Partnerships posting on LinkedIn about its relationship with Manchester Metropolitan University in recent days. Perhaps a reminder to the university’s leadership that there are options.

Navitas has also been among those at the forefront of the charge to introduce the International Year One pathways that have been of particular concern to some commentators because there is no comparable option for domestic students. It remains unclear if any of the reviews will specifically consider this route but any restrictions would be damaging for future recruitment. Having acquired Study Group’s interests in Australia last year it may be that the business will look for a similar boost in the UK.

INTO University Partnerships (INTO)

With all of INTO’s UK joint venture partnerships except UEA having reported on 2022/23 it seems that enrolments from continuing UK operations have not even returned to 2018 levels let alone 2019. The problems at UEA have been discussed at length and it seems possible that a more aggressive recruitment strategy from the university might begin to pay dividends. With joint ventures struggling there is a bright spot at the wholly owned INTO Manchester which saw a second year of strong growth and enrolments up at a record 1112.

Source: Joint Venture Annual Reports (INTO UEA 2023 enrolment is an indicative figure pitched just below the 2020 enrolment figure which would represent an increase of 61% on 2022). INTO Newcastle is 51% owned by INTO.

At a corporate level INTO’s adjusted turnover3 was up from £141m to £160m year on year in 2022/23. Although the portfolio is global there has been little evidence of accelerating growth in US partners, even for direct recruitment, and the shadow of the court-case with University of South Florida seems to lengthen in terms of time before resolution. The INTO annual report indicates that what were historically shown as joint venture debtors are now shown as loans to joint ventures with almost all at higher levels than in 2019.

INTO’s early USP of 30-year deeply embedded joint venture partnerships with universities appears to have lost out to third-party, shorter-term contracts in both the UK and US. Winning Lancaster University in 2023 must have boosted morale, even though it’s not a joint venture, but geographical location, high entry standards and lack of Russell Group glitz made the university a notoriously hard sell for previous pathway providers Study Group, so the jury is still out. In the absence of a differentiated offer, several partnerships already shuttered and no real sign of a return to the boom days it is not easy to see how the company reinvents and reinvigorates itself.

Rumours of a sale earlier in the year seem to have quietened down which is no surprise given the uncertainties facing the UK. However, a number of sources have indicated that Navitas were a suitor before the pandemic and a trade sale would at least offer the benefit of consolidation in the sector and significant overhead savings. The current trading outlook and sector uncertainties do not seem strong or certain enough to attract a premium price but if the future looks no brighter there may be little point in waiting.

Kaplan

Kaplan’s corporate year end is December so we won’t get that update until later in 2024 but their joint venture international college with the University of York has a financial year aligned with the INTO operations. The 2022/23 results make stark reading and underpin that even for Russell Group universities the path is not smooth. The University’s overall recruitment problems have made the headlines and the Kaplan machine seems to be having an equal struggle at pathway level. While specific student enrolment numbers are not published the turnover and operating profit figures suggest a continuing and serious decline.

Source: University of York International College Annual Reports

As a point of contrast, INTO’s joint venture with Exeter, another Russell Group university, has shown growth post pandemic. It is twice the size of the Kaplan joint venture and Exeter is probably a stronger international brand than York. The likelihood is that both will be affected even more as global competition bites and if recruitment from China does not pick up.

Sources: INTO Exeter Annual Reports

None of this is to suggest that Kaplan’s overall performance can be extrapolated from the situation at the University of York but coterminous financial year end dates at two Russell Group universities offer a reasonable point of comparison.

When Zones Converge

The doldrums is known more properly as the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone and while people are always keen to talk about “perfect storms” affecting the higher education sector it seems to me that the forces currently converging may be more like a deep freeze. Feynman argued that even at absolute zero atoms still have some motion but it is fair to say that movement could become the exception rather than the rule. It is not an attractive outcome.

NOTES

  1. The “horse latitudes” are about 30 degrees north and south of the equator. They are under a high-pressure ridge which creates a dry environment (unlike the doldrums which have moist air). The name derives from stories that ships that became becalmed had to throw horses overboard in order to conserve water. Alternatively, it is suggested horse effigies were thrown into the sea to celebrate working off what was known as “dead horse” debt. A third explanation suggests the use of the term “horsed” for when a sail ship uses a strong current rather than wind to progress.
  2. As a general guide, most universities finish their financial year on 31 July each year, INTO has aligned its corporate and joint ventures with that and Navitas seems to have settled on 30 June in the UK. Kaplan International Colleges UK Limited and Study Group Holdings UK Limited are both 31 December year end but the Kaplan joint venture with University of York has a 31 July year end.
  3. Three of INTO University Partnerships’ “Key Performance Indicators” have adjustments which mean caution should be exercised in interpreting them. Adjusted turnover removes discontinued operations of which there have been at least ten since 2015.

Image by 851878 from Pixabay

All For One and Each to Their Own

The notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is long established but often misguided and can create a false sense of shared interest, power dynamics and underlying realities.  UK universities appear to be united in defending themselves against perceived threats from Government action, media criticism and public opinion/apathy.  But loose coalitions of convenience and an unspoken agreement not to criticize each other publicly are unlikely to be enough to either win the day or manage the important business of shaping the sector for the future.

It is equally clear that the financial circumstances faced by individual institutions cannot simply be conflated as a problem driven by visa policy, domestic student fees or Government rhetoric.  A first step towards the future is to accept that some institutions face serious problems in even attracting sufficient numbers of students, and may need radical solutions.  Another might be to acknowledge that some university management doesn’t understand forecasting, the markets, competition and/or travelled too hopefully for too long, as the University of East Anglia appears to have done when acknowledging “for the third year running we fell short of our student recruitment targets in the home undergraduate student market”.

It would be sensible to look at what has happened to the money injected because of the benevolent international student environment announced in 2019 and whether the pace of recruitment was appropriate in terms of student experience, local services and public opinion.  Some universities appear to have built a significant cash pile which may help ameliorate any short-term falls in recruitment and others have chosen to invest the bounty in other ways.  Whether those investments were wise, sustainable or designed to maintain/increase domestic student recruitment through, say, a financial subsidy from increased international student recruitment requires a more detailed study.

This blog takes a relatively narrow look at two universities that might appear to have similar opportunities as part of a mission group of “world class research intensive universities”.  Using data that reflect 2022/23 international recruitment and tuition fee data rather than waiting for HESA to catch up, it suggests that one has problems pre-dating recent changes to the visa regime.  The differential performance in international recruitment demonstrates that even when recruitment conditions are benevolent the market makes choices to the benefit of some universities and the detriment of others.       

Hold Your Friends Close..

The current unity of the sector is shallow and self-interested and the UniversitiesUK claim of “142 universities One voice” is wide of the mark.  We have the Russell Group, University Alliance, MillionPlus, GuildHE, and Cathedrals Group, but saw the 1994 Group disband in 2013, shortly after several of its number jumped ship to the Russell Group. Any solutions to the sector’s funding problems needs to be even more granular and consider specific issues.

Even though the Russell Group has become the de facto face of higher education for the media and many politicians it is far from a unified and equal group of partners.  Colleagues are familiar with my description of a meeting of its 24 members as having the sophisticated six acting cool and sipping martinis in the corner while the regional city types lumber around drinking craft beer and showing off.  Members from outside England hang around the fringes trying to attract attention by channeling a moody, Celtic-fringe vibe and the remaining half a dozen wonder why they paid the cab fare to attend when nobody really wants to talk to them.

…And Your Enemies Closer

HESA data delays mean it is difficult to get a full picture of the most recent enrollment success or otherwise of Russell Group universities.  What was clear in the immediate period after changes to post-study work visas and up to 2020/21, was that there was a strong focus on Chinese students but with some notable names failing to keep pace.  At the recent PIE Live Europe event a University of Glasgow spokesperson indicated that the most recent intake (presumably 2023/24) was “last year we had one of our strongest undergraduate performing years” despite it being the first time in a decade the university had not hit or exceeded its targets    

Sympathy should be tempered, for a number of reasons.  Firstly, universities have something of a habit of inflating enrollment targets in the good times so missing them might simply be a result of hubris in setting objectives.  More importantly, the University’s “Overseas Students” income rose by 10 % (£27.6m) to £303.8m from 2021/22 to 2022/23 and is up a whopping £166.5m since 2019.  While conscious that finance can be a tricky business the measures on operating surplus and net cash seem to support the Director of Finance’s view that they can “continue to develop,
invest and deliver on our strategic plans enabled by strong financial results.”

 Source: University of Glasgow Reports and Financial Statement 

But, as a reminder that the Russell Group university experience is very mixed, the University of York, reported in January 2024 a £24m deficit partly because “International student numbers decreased in the year following high recruitment after the Covid pandemic and reflecting changed geopolitical circumstances.”  It might be equally plausible that the moody, Celtic-fringe types from Glasgow, along with other Russell Group members, stole genteel York’s lunch money by competing more effectively for Chinese and other students. 

We will know more when the long-awaited HESA 2022/23 data emerges but the UCAS end of cycle data does give a sector wide insight into what happened at undergraduate intake level in 2022/23 and we can see that the fortunes of the two differed dramatically.  Glasgow has consistently grown non UK/EU applicants since 2018/19 and after a sharp hike in 2019/2020 has maintained the number of applicants accepted.  York saw a small decline in applicants and a much larger decline in applicants accepted from 2021/22 to 2022/23.  It may simply be that faced with Russell Group options international students are choosing the biggest name, best ranked or most competitively marketed.

This hypothesis might be supported by the fact that the University of York appears to have been forced to take more non-mainstream international applicants to even reach a declining total of acceptances.  The University of Glasgow has been able do exactly the opposite and secure increasing numbers of students through the mainstream route. Mainstream applicants apply through UCAS before the main deadline of 30 June and can nominate up to five institutions to consider their application.  

One interesting feature that does combine the two universities is that Kaplan is the operator of the International College for both.  In this respect the University of Glasgow annual report for 2022/23 notes that its “excellent..financial results” were achieved despite “..a decrease of £3.7m in partnership income from Glasgow International College Kaplan” and the annual report of the University of York International Pathway College LLP shows a that Operating Profit declined from £2m to £900k in the year to July 2022/23.  The University of Glasgow Pathway College entity has a different financial year end so it is not possible to provide a direct comparison.

The University of Glasgow appears to be slightly more expensive than the University of York for international students and the entry grades seem reasonably equivalent.  The apparent inability of York to compete effectively for international students despite this may be one reason for the January 2024 report that the University of York was “lowering admission requirements for some international students in light of “financial challenges.”  They may still find that the market votes with its feet.

Winter Is Coming

Sometimes the higher education sector can seem like a retread of Game of Thrones including “..several noble houses..a complicated, multiparty war…shifting conflicts, alliances, and betrayals.”  Driven by expediency many of the protagonists join together in a final battle to defeat the Night King and the White Walkers but in the end the Iron Throne is melted and the system governing Westeros is radically altered.  The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) review may be the sector’s Drogon or simply signal that winter is coming.

What will remain true is that the sector is not a monolithic entity and it is unhelpful to position it as such.  The main beneficiaries of the recent years of the graduate route are characterized by MAC’s Annual Report 2023 as universities “..that charge the lowest fees” and is “..strongest at the less selective universities.”   The report also highlights the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Glasgow as having the largest increase in international student numbers between 2018/19 and 2021/22 but it is clear that their success was for different reasons in different markets.

There is more to be said on the patchwork nature of the university sector as well as on the emerging evidence of slow recovery for commercial pathway operators.  That will be the subject of a follow up blog when time allows. 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Up To Data

In the blog International Enrolments Unchained from February 2023 the UK universities with the most growth from India, Nigeria and Pakistan between 2020/21 and 2021/22 were shown. In the continuing absence of anything from HESA telling us what happened next and after the rather jaded retreading of old enrollment numbers by IHEC it seemed worth having a look at what happened to one of those players and also taking a look at one of the universities bemoaning its failure to keep up.


It’s good old-fashioned grunt work but lots of the data is there if you are prepared to put in the effort. It’s also revealing about the way some institutions have chosen to stash the cash and shown interesting movements in recruitment of domestic students. The picture is not comprehensive but it’s a sight better and more useful than sitting back and reporting on numbers from the middle of the pandemic.

This blog focuses on two institutions with quite different backgrounds and fortunes. The good news is that they give some real insights into what happened to their international student numbers in 2022/23. As these are formal Annual/Strategic Reports and Financial Statements it is difficult to see why that information cannot be entered into a common database and published within months of the financial year end or, on a preliminary basis, even earlier. Higher education may not like being accused of being outdated but the melting glaciers are beginning to outpace its rate of change – which is sad all round.

University of Hertfordshire

University of Hertfordshire (UoH) international student growth from 2020/21 to 2021/22 was pretty startling and they are not shy about highlighting their continued reaping of the Graduate Visa harvest. Overall, the UoH international community grew to 15,730 (45.4%) of a student body of 34,670. The numbers from India, Nigeria and Pakistan grew by 73.5%, 192.8% and 151.9% respectively although it is interesting to see the tailing off of numbers from Pakistan.

Source: University of Hertfordshire Strategic Reports and Financial Statements

The impact on UoH finances has been startling. Total full-time tuition fees have risen by 55.4% in the four years since 2019/20 with full time international tuition fees rising by 285.9% over the period. Despite the international fee bounty the University appears to have reduced its home student intake in 2021/22 and 2022/23 – this is implied because the domestic fee hasn’t changed but the amount collected is down. If one of the reasons for supporting greater international fee income is that it genuinely protects home student places this is probably worth a more detailed look.

Source: University of Hertfordshire Strategic Reports and Financial Statements

Rather than investing in home student recruitment it appears that UoH has been stashing most of the money away for largely unspecified purposes and spending it on largely unexplained “other operating expenses”. While staff costs rose by £20.5m between 2019/20 and 2022/23 the Other Operating Expenses (which do not have any accompanying note in the financial statement) rose £62.6m. There may be good reasons but it would be a comfort to have them spelt out.


Staff costs and numbers reported suggest investment in Academic and Research staff with their numbers growing over the period by 146 compared to all other staff growing by only 41. This is not always the case when universities find themselves flush with cash and it will be interesting to see how UoH deals with any decline in international student revenue.

Source: University of Hertfordshire Strategic Reports and Financial Statements

The Annual Report shows that the main impact of the financial windfall is that Cash reserves have gone from around £100m in 2019/20 to about £170m in 2022/23. The Operating Surplus has increased from about £2m to £20m and borrowings have declined. It looks as if UoH may have been preparing itself for a less certain future and may be reasonable well set to weather any headwinds.

Source: University of Hertfordshire Strategic Reports and Financial Statements

In that respect and just as a thought experiment it is worth considering that if UoH lost 50% of its international student income gained from 2021/22 to 2022/23 this would amount to around £22m. Even at this level the overall fee income is very considerably higher than 2019/20 and there is a substantial cash buffer to manage changes to a smaller scale operation. One suspects that their approach to management will see trimming of budgets and caution rather than them travelling hopefully on recruitment.


University of York


The University of York (UoY) has had a quite different experience. In January 2024 it was reported as “lowering admission requirements for some international students in light of “financial challenges.”” A reported £24m deficit was, they indicated, partly because, “International student numbers decreased in the year following high recruitment after the Covid pandemic and reflecting changed geopolitical circumstances.” It seems more likely that they had their lunch eaten by Russell Group competitors.


Their summary of student enrollments over the four years from 2019/20 to 2022/23 show a sharp spike with 59% growth in enrollments then a fall of 15.6% in 2022/23. They are not quite as forthcoming on the origin of their international students as UoH so we need to look at HESA’s slightly more dated data to get some insight into what might have happened.

Source: University of York Annual Report and Financial Statements

The HESA data (which gives slightly different numbers to those from the UoY reports but are close enough to be relevant) shows us that the growth from 2019/20 to 2021/22 was driven almost entirely by Chinese PGT students with a healthy boost from Chinese UG between 2019/20 and 2020/21. It is notable that UoY also managed a decent upward bump in students from India in 2021/22 which made up for a small decline in Chinese PGT enrollment that year.


The point is that their growth relied almost entirely on Chinese students. We know from HESA that between 2020/21 and 2021/22 the total number of enrolled FT Chinese students in the UK actually rose – from 140,445 to 148,760 – and that the FT PGT number grew from 72,555 to 77,135. It seems likely that UoY simply couldn’t compete against others in the Russell Group (the International Enrolments Unchained blog also looks at this issue) and it will be interesting to see if the 2022/23 numbers from HESA due to be published in April 2024 support this notion.

Source: HESA

The financial impact of the changes is clear. International FT student fee income rose by 67.5% over two years to 2021/22 (home student FT fees rose 10.6%) and dipped back slightly in 2022/23 (with home FT fees stable). The graphs show a relatively stable picture on staff costs (with USS movements excluded) until a spike in 2022/23.

Source: University of York Annual Report and Financial Statements

The staffing picture is notable for the relative suppression of Support Staff FTE during the pandemic but a significant leap in 2022/23. Over the four years the number of Support Staff has increased by 333 compared to Academic Staff up by 285 over the same period.

Source: University of York Annual Report and Financial Statements

Summary

A number of thoughts come to mind:

  1. While the change in visa regime will have an impact it seems likely that some UK institutions are significantly financially better off because of the extent to which they took advantage of the changes in post-study work. It is plausible that even a 50% reduction on the financial gains from 2021/22 to 2022/23 is far from catastrophic and particularly so if the institution is nimble enough to cut back to reflect changing circumstances.
  2. While universities like UoH who exploited these markets effectively can seem vulnerable to large declines in application volumes it is also likely that their on the ground operations will be more effective in taking larger share of declining markets.
  3. Universities that were unwilling or unable to capitalise on student markets that grew strongly because of changes to post-study work are likely to have been vulnerable to more powerful competition taking greater market share in China. Maybe some of the larger Russell Group universities have a secret persona as playground toughs who rough up less famous peers and take their lunch money.
  4. It will be interesting to see how the pathway operations involved have fared over these years. UoY’s relationship with Kaplan is likely to have supported them in the earlier years reviewed but may not have been able to overcome the lure of the bigger brand names.
  5. It would be sensible for an incoming Government to get more granular with the way different institutions are responding to changing market conditions. There is a certain logic to allowing the most dynamic and strongest to thrive, as long as academic standards and appropriate visa handling is in place, rather than introducing arbitrary caps on numbers.
  6. If international student fee income is, as has been argued, a protection for maintaining or growing domestic student places there needs to be some consideration of how direct the correlation is. From the UoH example above it appears that the university has been effective in securing significant increases in international income but has reduced enrollment of domestic students.

Image by Micha from Pixabay

Northern Star Sheds Light on International Recruitment

Universities and their mouthpieces might be drawing a collective sigh of relief and thinking that some of the heat has gone out of the discussion around the inequity of International Year One (IYO).  We certainly haven’t seen any of the private providers, the main beneficiaries of this route, stepping forward with authoritative data about this route.  But the Northern Consortium1 UK (NCUK) do give us traces of performance over the past decade or so.

Nothing in the NCUK numbers gives any relief to the core point that IYO is a route which, in many cases, allows international students to start the first year of a degree on without the necessary grades for direct entry.  The scale of the NCUK operation is used to demonstrate that IYO is not a niche activity and so deserves full attention from the Quality Assurance Agency and Department of Education reviews.

Of fundamental interest is the suggestion that NCUK has a long-term annual Progression Analysis that “considers the performance of all NCUK students at member universities and associates”.  This could be the gold standard of analysis reflecting everything from enrolment through attrition to degree outcomes.  At a single stroke NCUK might be able to answer many questions about the efficacy of pathway programmes albeit that its courses are not on campus.

In that respect there appears to have been an NCUK Report “Evidencing Success” from May 2018 launched at the NAFSA:Association of International Educators Conference in Philadelphia, which tracked ten years of NCUK student performance.  The snippet from it in the 2017/18 Annual Report indicates that 80% of NCUK students receive a first- or second-class degree but that IYO students “have a higher-than-average pass rate when progressing to the second year of their degree at university”.  It goes on to say that “over 90% of students meeting or getting higher than the required grades go on to pass their first year” and for “students who have been offered places with lower than the advertised entry requirements, the pass rate remains high at 88%.”

It seems reasonable to suggest that domestic students who miss their offer grade by one level and are rejected might do even better if allowed to start a degree, with extra academic support, on campus alongside direct entrants.  They just don’t get the chance.  Even more regrettable is that the Report is no longer available on its website – makes one wonder2.

The Trail Begins

The NCUK annual report and accounts for 2015/16 show that “International Diploma (Int Diploma-equivalent to 1st year degree level)” was offered as an “established pathway” programme.  It was “renamed as the International Year One” that year.  The report noted an upcoming triennial review in 2016/17 which might imply it had been first introduced in 2013/14 after the closure of post-study work options for international students in 2012.

As a small aside and for those that believe in history being cyclical it is worth noting that the Annual Report also notes NCUK had unconditional offers for 1,205 students.  It was an increase from 1,119 the previous year.  There was, however, a note of caution on eventual enrolment because of “…Nigeria where the economic circumstances are posing challenges for students and their families.  

Getting To Scale

The chart below reflects the data made available in NCUK Annual Reports and Reviews from 2016/17.  Not all of the information is provided for each year but we are able to see the following:

  • Students placed at UK university partners (all years)
  • Students “continuing onto the NCUK International Year One or moving to degree completion programmes at The Sino-British College in Shanghai” (2016/17 to 2018/19)
  • Students admitted to non-partner UK universities or to universities outside the UK (2016/17 to 2018/19)
  • The total number of students progressing to university or continuing on an NCUK qualification (all years)
  • The overall number of students on NCUK courses (2020/21 and 2021/22)

The final number is important in considering the IYO volume because NCUK also offer a percentage breakdown of the numbers on each of International Foundation Year, International Year One (IYO) and Masters Preparation.  For 2020/21 and 2021/22, where those overall enrolments are available, the percentage doing IYO was shown as 16% and 12% respectively.  The maths suggests that 507 and 452 were doing IYO courses in those two years.

Source: NCUK Annual Reports and Reviews

How Big Is International Year One for Private Providers?

A glimpse into the scale of IYO also comes from the only NCUK provider delivering it in the UK – INTO Manchester.  We can know for sure from a Quality Assurance Agency report in 2014 that in that year, of the 822 students, there were 99 on the NCUK “International Diploma” (later renamed International Year One) course.  That’s 12% which seems in keeping, if a little low, with the broader percentages shown by NCUK in later years. 

It is reasonable to add that in the May 2019 QAA Report 77% of students (82 out of 106) at INTO Manchester were reported as being “on a Level 4 International Year One (IYO) course” which might suggest a signficant upward movement in the course.  As pathway providers have come under increasing pressure to perform they have accelerated their provision of the most attractive offers to international students.  Universities who are equally keen to increase international numbers have become complicit in allowing those courses and the progression degrees available.

The other point is that INTO Manchester is not on a university campus so it is reasonable to suggest that the IYO here is more akin to the potential for domestic students who fail to get their grade offers to university to go and do an HNC at a local college.  All that really means is that the attraction of a course on a university campus, often sitting with direct entry first year students and taught by the same lecturers is likely to be immensely more attractive.  It seems reasonable to suggest that the likely IYO percentage in on-campus pathways is much higher.

As noted in a previous blog the growth of IYO and the propensity of universities to allow them has grown rapidly over the years.  More than half the partners of the six main pathway operators have IYO options leading to over 1,000 degree options.  Each partner usually has two to five IYO options.

 UK University PartnersUniversities offering IYOIYO linked degrees
Navitas127430
INTO74102
CEG8581
Kaplan157219
Study Group1411219
Oxford International5*451
Total61381,102

*Only partners where an International Foundation or International Year Zero is offered

A 2023 British Council report into “Pathways and recruitment channels to undergraduate study in the UK” reflected the paucity of information on the number of students coming through pathways into universities3.  However, my own research from public sources indicated that there were likely to be at least 20,000 students in pathways in 2018 and there have been additional partnerships announced since then.  Even staying with 20,000, a count of 12% of them being on international year one reaches 2,400 international students on campuses sitting the first year of an undergraduate degree in a way that is not available to domestic students.

As previously established these students have been accepted on significantly lower grades and often at lower language capability than even direct entrants from their own country.  A domestic student who missed a university offer by one grade could be rejected by that institution and IYO is even offered below contextual grades of domestic students from educationally challenged backgrounds.  It is very difficult to see how that is equitable.

How Do International Year One Student Perform?

The NCUK data is interesting but the gaps in it suggest a number of avenues for further consideration.  Of particular interest is the relative performance of IYO students compared to students progressing from Foundation Courses.  In this respect it’s worth noting that most pathway statistics about degree success tend only to reflect those that made it to the exam so dropout rates are hard to come by.    

A blog in The PIE in May 2018, by Georgina Jones, NCUK Market Development Director, indicates that 80% of NCUK students graduated with a first or second class degree but “around 50%” getting a 2:1 or higher.  On lower admissions criteria she notes, “…students who are admitted with below the published admission criteria, 88% go on to pass their first year, compared to 92% and 95% for those who met or exceed the criteria.”

In the 2018/19 Annual Report NCUK state that 59% of International Foundation Year students graduated with a 1st or 2:1 but that International Year One saw 74% of students achieving a 1st or 2:1.  89% of the International Foundation students secured a 2:2 or better compared to 96% of International Year One students.  There is a hiatus, presumably COVID-related before the story picks up again in the 2021/2 Annual Review, which indicates the 2:1 and above success rates were 69% (International Foundation Year) and 91% (International Year One).

It seems to tell a story that International Year One candidates may be more likely to drop out or fail in the first year but then go on to secure better success rates on completing the degree.  The comparative completion rate for domestic students is around 2.7% which might suggest that if those narrowly missing direct entry were allowed to start year one with additional academic support, more  would go on to finish and achieve academically than international students.

Summary

It is regrettable that Universities UK seems to have wilfully chosen not to explicity include International Year One in the review it has requested from the Quality Assurance Agency.  The existence of Foundation Years, which are often available to domestic students on a comparable basis, has not been questioned by most informed observers of the sector.  Notwithstanding that point, the NCUK figures bring into question the quality of study outcomes for international students who complete Foundations. The 59% with a 1st or 2:1 quoted by NCUK for 2018/19 is a very long way behind the aggregated 76.4% with a 2:1 or first shown by HESA for that year.

The fact remains that IYO is likely to be a successful proposition for commercial providers intent on boosting profitability and universities looking to protect falling international applications.  Equally true is that there is no comparable on-campus, year one of an undergraduate degree option for domestic students who miss their grades so the underlying allegation of privilege for international students is difficult to resist.  It seems that the only motivation for universities is likely to be having higher fee paying international students sitting in seats that could be filled by better qualified domestic students.

NOTES

  1. The Northern Consortium was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee (company registration number 02788226) on 9 February 1993. The Company was registered with the Charity Commission (registration number 1018979) on 23 March 1993. It had ten founder universities and describes itself as “a consortium of leading universities dedicated to giving international students guaranteed* entry to universities worldwide” The star alongside the word “guaranteed” is on the website and probably tells us all we need to know about the types of messaging that prevails.
  2. The summary of NCUK data reflects the incomplete picture across several annual reports. The Evidencing Success Report is still flagged on the website but the link leads to a 404 error page. It would be helpful if the data was available and particularly so if a comprehensive successor document could bring the material up to date.
  3. The British Council report is as polite as it can be about the fact that there are thousands of international students joining UK universities without any consistent way of determining their route to enrolment. This has been a feature of the growth of commercial providers in the international recruitment space. It is also another gap in data which makes the sector vulnerable to politically driven focus on student visas.

Image by Mario Aranda from Pixabay

From Clouseau To Cousteau

The Sunday Times articles looking at pathway programmes has been positioned by some as a political hit job on the higher education sector.  If so, it was as inept as the hapless Inspector Clouseau’s efforts to understand and bring to justice criminal elements.  A more Jacques Cousteau type of deep dive is needed to give some data on the relatively uncharted depths of International Year One.

Sector mouthpieces like Universities UK have insisted on talking about Foundation Programmes but this blog will focus on International Year One (IYO) (which is sometimes called First Year or Stage 2 by certain providers).  Most seem to be studied at NQF 4 which OnCampus at Aston University tell us “..is equivalent to the first year of an undergraduate degree in the UK” and on successful completion they give direct entry to year two of an undergraduate degree programme.  As Douglas Adams writes, “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”  

IYO is usually offered by a pathway provider, but gives the opportunity, on completion, to join year two of the student’s chosen degree programme in the university proper.  It is not available to domestic students and is offered exclusively to international students at lower grades than those required for direct entry.  A key question is whether it is an unfair, back door route for low quality international students to enter UK universities.   

This distinguishes it from a Foundation which is a pre-degree, preparatory programme that offers the opportunity on completion of progressing to year one of a degree programme.  Foundation programmes have a long history and most would agree that they serve a useful purpose for international students in developing language capability, culture assimilation and academic preparation before studying in the university.  There are also a number of comparable Foundation programmes providing pre-degree opportunities to domestic students .

Big Business and Growing

One argument that has been put forward is that the IYO element of the market is not big enough to worry about.  That disregards issues of fairness, equality and quality in admissions decisions and is also a dubious claim.  While data is fragmented and actual student number unavailable it is possible to see how IYO has become a big business.

Many consider Australian behemoth Navitas as the instigator of IYO.  Their current degree Study Options page leads to a selector which indicates that all 12 of their university partners offer IYO and that these qualifications link to 430 degree options.  As a comparison the Foundation degrees are available at all 12 partners and link to 799 degrees.

INTO offers IYO at four of its seven UK partners and the number of IYO options at them exceeds Foundation options by 36 to 21.  The wholly owned subsidiary INTO London claims to have progression agreements with 118 universities including specific arrangements relating to IYO with the University of Kent, Exeter University, University of Westminster and Surrey University.  The wholly owned subsidiary INTO Manchester claims that successful completion of IYO gives “a guaranteed offer for one of 14+ NCUK universities” – presumably in Year 2 of the degree.

Cambridge Education Group offers IYO through five of its eight OnCampus operations – those at the universities Aston, Birkbeck, Sunderland, Hull and London Southbank.  

Kaplan’s Degree Finder page indicates it offers progression through International Year One to 219 degrees at seven of its fifteen partner universities – University of Essex, UWE Bristol, Nottingham Trent University, Brighton Univesity, Bournemouth University, University of Birmingham, University of Westminster.  IYO courses are available at the first five locations and also at Kaplan International College, London.

Study Group has fourteen UK partners (not counting Huddersfield London) and offers International Year One at 11 of them.  It is here that it becomes easy to see why the Russell Group of Universities was so irritated at the assertions from the Sunday Times – none of Study Group’s Russell Group partners appear to offer International Year One. 

NCUK has 31 UK partner universities and indicates that its International Year One course is accepted at 16 of them.  Some of their partners, such as Exeter, Queen’s, Brunel and others, have arrangements with their pathway provider but do not accept the NCUK version.  It was not possible to track the number of degrees that could be progressed to from NCUK.

Table 1 – Summary of Main UK Pathway Providers and IYO Linked Degrees

 UK University PartnersUniversities offering IYOIYO linked degrees
Navitas127430
INTO74102
CEG8581
Kaplan157219
Study Group1411219
Total56341,051

Source: Pathway provider and University websites. 

It is unlikely that students progress every year to all the possible linked degrees but the availability of the option is highly desirable as it allows the student choice, life on campus, and often allows them to study alongside direct entry students for all or part of their time. Commentators who have claimed that alternatives to IYO do exist for domestic students in the form, for example, of HNCs are wide of the mark in considering these comparable options.

Silence of the Lambs

The Sunday Times clearly stated that International Year One (IYO) existed, defined the nature of the programme and had a direct quote from an INTO employee noting they were available at lower academic and language grades than direct entry.  Yet, none of the statements from organisations like Universities UK or the Russell Group of Universities  or even thought pieces from the usually impartial WonkHE even mentioned them.  The hurried “review” announced by Universities UK fails to specify that it will be looking at IYO and it seems like a collective vow of omerta has descended upon the sector.

This is despite the fact that IYO has become a significant part of pathway provider recruitment and revenue and offers a growing stream of international student fees to institutions.  The fact that student numbers are not publicly recorded makes it easy to fly under the radar in terms of volume and quality.  Ultimately though, the key claim is that it offers preferential treatment to high-fee paying international students of lower academic and language capability by allowing them a soft point of entry to degree study at a university of their choice.

There is absolutely no doubt that students starting the first year of a degree through an IYO are receiving their place with levels of academic and language achievement significantly below those of either domestic students or other international students who enter direct.  Over and above that they appear to get in with lower academic grades than are quoted as “contextual” offers for students from educationally challenged backgrounds.

Basically, IYO candidates have lower academic grades than their peers and start with lower language capability.  Even if that is not considered unfair the key question is whether an IYO can overcome those hurdles to the point where they can comfortably join and thrive on joining the second year of a degree.  It seems a big step and in the absence of good tracking data being produced by universities there must be some some scepticism.

In that context it is incorrect to believe that IYO courses are uniquely demanding in requiring a “pass” mark before a student can progress on to Year two of the degree.  As stated in this example for direct entrants from the University of York, “You must satisfy the requirements for each stage of your programme before being able to progress to the next stage. For a Bachelor degree, you need to get a credit-weighted average mark of 40 for each stage.”

The reality is that the International Year One options have grown because they are popular with international students whose performance on academic and language measures means they cannot get into their university of choice directly. This is a privilege that is not open to domestic students who might miss their university offer by just one grade.  It is difficult to see an argument that this is fair or appropriate or that the students go on to achieve well academically.

I have argued previously that the UK Higher Education sector is like a lamb lying down in the road and oblivious to the danger of being crushed by an oncoming juggernaut.  Here we have it choosing silence over mounting a data-driven assertion of the merits of International Year One.  That may be because there is no data and no defence.

Notes

Many hours have been spent scouring the web for details on International Year One. The summary here attempts to give some shape to a complex set of information in as straightforward a way as possible. The summary of articulation to degree courses is offered in good faith but any authoritative corrections will be taken seriously and noted. If anyone has data on progression from IYO and eventual degree outcomes compared to direct entry it would be good to see.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Selling England by the Pound

The Sunday Times article about differential entry grades for international students1 to Russell Group university degrees sparked the usual defensive response from the UK higher education sector.  There was plenty of obfuscation and claims that the newspaper was guilty of poor journalism but with little engagement about the core claims.  There does, however, seem to be some substance to the claim that universities are working with commercial partners in ways that are not entirely transparent and do not seem equitable in terms of academic and language standards.

Specifically, International Year One (IYO) offerings (generally through private partnerships with universities, accept international students who fail to get the academic or language requirements for direct entry to a university undergraduate programme. If they pass the IYO course they progress to the second year of the degree programme in the university proper which means the IYO is accepted as the first year of the degree. The IYO courses are not open to UK students so they do not have this opportunity if their grades are below the direct entry requirement and so they are disadvantaged.

A Trick of the Tail

The issue, is not well defined by the newspaper, but it seems clear that international students can buy their way directly onto year one of UK university degree course via an International Year One programme operated by a private partner.  The students can do this when they are not academically qualified to enter that programme directly and this opportunity is denied to UK students.  Finding evidence for this is not easy because many International Year One’s advertised are Delphic, coy or deliberately elusive about stating the requirements.

What is consistent is that pathway operators are clear about the intention of International Year One courses:

Kaplan say:

“If you don’t meet the entry requirements to go to a UK university directly, degree preparation courses like an IYO can help you reach the level needed to start a bachelor’s degree….After successfully completing an IYO, you progress straight to the second year of a bachelor’s degree, so you save time and money.”

Study Group International Study Centre – Cardiff University says:

“The International Year One is an intensive programme that leads to year two of an undergraduate degree at Cardiff University. The programme is tailor-made for international students who are not ready to apply direct to the University, but don’t want to delay their studies.”

INTO University of Exeter

“Specifically designed for international students who show academic promise but who do not meet the University’s academic and/or English language requirements for direct entry to Year 1 of an undergraduate degree.”

There seems no doubt from the pathways providers that IYO is a substitute for year one of a three-year undergraduate degree and that those enrolled do not have to have the qualifications published by the university for direct entry to that degree.  It is also true to say that this privilege is not available to UK students.  Indeed, international students who are academically strong enough and have achieved the English language levels to enter direct need not have bothered because their achievements save them neither time or money.

The Sunday Times has representatives of several pathway operators rather proudly noting that it is a “back door”, that “you don’t have to worry too much about how difficult it is” and “..British students don’t have this kind of privilege.”  One might argue that this is just sales talk but if so, it is a reminder that some commercial operators are not operating to the best standards in preserving the UK sector’s much vaunted reputation for integrity and quality.  The operators’ representatives quoted are effectively trashing the brand of the university in question by indicating that this is a privileged, easy and hidden route to their awards. 

Invisible Touch

Having established that the Sunday Times is correct about the nature of the International Year One it’s worth a look at the extent of the differential.  As noted above the university and pathway websites are less than forthcoming, perhaps because they realise that it doesn’t reflect well on quality standards for admissions.  The Sunday Times quotes its sources for a chart showing various anomalies between direct entry and International Year One requirements but they are not publicly accessible.

The Sunday Times also directly quotes pathway representative sfor INTO Exeter saying, “So your son that’s studying A-levels — to get on to the [International Year One] programme it would be two Cs and a D.” They note, “Applying through the Ucas system, the students would need AAB at A-level, she said.”

One publicly available source confirms a similar differential at another INTO partner, Queen’s University Belfast.  The university website indicates that the BSc Economics degree requires ABB at A-level:

Source: Queen’s University Belfast website (28 January, 2024)

The INTO Student Portal shows the progression possibility to the Business Economics BSc from the International Year One in Management and Finance and that the entry requirement for the International Year One in question is DD at A-level:

Source: INTO Student Portal website (28 January, 2024)

Against this background it seems incomprehensible that the Russell Group of Universities has issued a statement trying to obscure and obfuscate the situation. Queen’s offers, through its private partner INTO, an International Year One that allows “progress to Year 2 of a professionally accredited undergraduate degree at Queen’s University Belfast.” It is not available to UK students.

From Genesis to Revelation

The Sunday Times was unwise to bring the terms Foundation Programme and International Year One to the table in the same article.  It seems perfectly reasonable that there should be Foundation level, pre-degree, preparatory programmes for students who do not have the required language level or academic qualifications for direct entry and/or may not have the 13 years’ schooling expected.  There may be different things to be worried about in terms of Foundation programmes and particularly the covert nature of the agreements between university and private partner on the language and academic grades required to pass before degree entry. 

Pathway operators mentioned in the article, INTO University Partnerships, Kaplan, Study Group and Cambridge Education Group (shown as OnCampus), all cut their teeth on Foundation Programmes.  These have come under increasing pressure over time for competitive reasons and as the Chinese students who underpinned the growth of the early 2000s have declined.  The International Year One response utilizes the gap between 5.5IELTS and 6.0IELTS with the former being the lowest level allowed for a visa to start a degree in the UK and the latter being the lowest most universities will accept for direct entry.

Language testing is complex and the gap between 5.0IELTS and 6.0IELTS is suggested to be that between a “modest user” and a “competent user”.  One suspects that the UK visa regulations relating to degree study were simply chosen to reflect the Common European Framework of Reference of Languages (CEFR) which bands IELTS 5.5 to 6.5 together in the B2 category).  In practical terms, however, most universities settled on 6.0IELTS for entry because it was a level which reflected teaching and learning priorities.

Calling All Stations

It is, of course, not only Russell Group universities that do this with International Year One and given the maelstrom in which INTO, Study Group, Kaplan, and CEG found themselves thrown it seemed only fair to have a quick look at Navitas.  Of the big five the Australian giant does not work with any Russell Group universities but has built a decent UK portfolio since 2000, having been the first movers on pathway courses in Australia in the 1990s.

At Anglia Ruskin University, Navitas offer what they call a First Year Pathway (FYP) and say “Upon completion of the first year…you will seamlessly progress to the second year of your chosen degree with the University”.  The language and description is a little meandering but we can be sure agents know what they mean and what commission comes with it.  They are specific that “First Year with ARU College is only available for EU and International Students” and that it is for those who “don’t meet the entry requirements to enter university level study directly.”

Finding the entry criteria for the First Year Pathway is complex (so I would be happy to hear from ARU if I have this wrong and will correct it) but it looks as if the answer is “(EU & International nationals ONLY): 40. UCAS Tariff points at A/AS level.”  This compares to ARU’s standard entry requirement of “96 UCAS tariff point from a minimum of 2 A levels (or equivalent)”.  Basically this is the difference between AA at A-level and DE at A-level.

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

There are times when the UK higher education sector seems as aimless and innocent as a lamb deciding to take a nap on a busy thoroughfare.  There are just too many occasions when it expects to be protected from harm while placing itself in perilous situations where it might be flattened by an oncoming juggernaut.  It has allowed itself to be positioned as venal, arrogant and detached which makes it vulnerable to almost any action the Government of the day wants to take.

The Sunday Times piece comes on top of a number of reports and news items that just suggest universities are not in full control of their brand, their degrees or their finances.  The recent National Audit Office report on private education providers franchised by universities had undertones of fraud and organised crime which were disturbing.  The sense that international recruitment was allowed to spiral out of control with millions being paid to agents and reliance on international students is also strong.

There seems little doubt that all of these factors will play into the Migration Advisory Committee thinking as it reviews the graduate and student visa routes.  Everyone has already seen the commentary from the chair of the Committee concerning low-quality students enrolling more for the option to work post-study than for the education.  One might even think that the timing and placement of the Sunday Times story was intended to ensure that the terms of that Review are as tough and directive as possible.

NOTES

The title of this blog and the sub-headings are all taken from albums by Genesis.  One take on the title “Selling England by the Pound” is that the band did not want to be thought of as “selling out” to America.  But bassist Mike Rutherford has also been reported as saying it “..was partly about increasing commercialization and the sense that something was being lost in England.”  It seems apt given the increasing incursion of private entities into UK higher education.

  1. The Sunday Times appears to have access not only to taped interviews but also to “grade entry requirement documents”.  This blog does not attempt to fully replicate the work or assertions of the newspaper article or to endorse all of its assertions, graphics or quotes. 
  2. I am grateful to Susan Fang for her insight on a specific issue related to this blog. Her insight and prompt response was extremely helpful. Any text or misunderstandings are entirely mine.

Image by Catherine Stockinger from Pixabay

Universities and the Ten Percent Rule

Vice-chancellors proclaiming substantial organizational efficiencies, cuts and savings is the latest trend in the UK higher education sector and some would say it’s not before time.  Their thinly veiled threats of catastrophe have largely failed to persuade the government to change course on home student fees or constraints on international recruitment, so they are reaching for the next tool in the box.  Some would say they are likely to find a hammer and try to use it on a job where handcrafting is required but they do their best.

Meta Lessons In Making Statements

In a play direct from the Meta universe the strident tones match those from the Mark Zuckerberg book of corporate tough talk.  At the end of 2022 the Meta share price had fallen 64% in the year and he declared 2023 a “year of efficiency”.  By December 2023 the share price was up 178% as he “..responded to investor concerns about out-of-control spending.”

Costs at Meta for 2023 came down around 10% (a range of $89-95bn compared to predictions of $94-100bn).  In a curious twist of fate, cue drum roll, Coventry University has announced that it plans to reduce costs by £40m in 2023/24 which is, um, around 10% of the University’s core expenditure (£447m) in 2022/23.  It reminds me that one of the earliest lessons I was ever taught in the corporate world was that every manager should know where 10% of savings could come from in case there was a pinch in profitability at year end. 

Over at the University of East Anglia (UEA), as noted in a previous blog, the organization seemed to be facing financial meltdown and possible “compulsory redundancies” in March 2023.  The Annual Report and Financial statement from the year close on July 2023, just three months later, notes “..all the necessary £30.1m cost savings have been achieved” and all that with no compulsory redundancies.  As if by coincidence staff and other operating expenses (excluding depreciation, amortization and other finance costs) was £294m which suggests a saving of, um, about 10%.

Moving to the south coast we see the University of Brighton making £17.9m in savings which, given normal operating expenditure (excluding financial expenditure) of £197m is, let me see, just under 10%.  It is interesting to see assertions that the number of compulsory redundancies, 22, was not reduced “dozens of staff resigning to take up posts elsewhere”.  Perhaps the University management decided to take the further savings windfall when it became available – or perhaps that’s just too cynical to contemplate.

Up the Amazon  

It seems plausible that institutions are making a lot of noise to establish a negotiating position that will minimize resistance when they cut costs and 10% feels manageable.  They might be better off considering something from the beginners guide to negotiation which can be summarized as “always open unreasonably in the eyes of the other side.”  Perhaps a stretch target of 20% in cost-saving might make a substantial difference that allows room for genuine restructuring and reinvestment.

It would be particularly helpful if they saw cost control as an ongoing and positive step towards a better future rather than a defensive measure to cover poor forecasting and poorly judged investment. An example of the positive approach is that in 2001 Jeff Bezos, who penned an annual letter to shareholders for over 20 years,  noted, “Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth.”  Another common theme from Bezos is that failure is important and necessary but it’s unlikely that he would have welcomed significant errors in forecasting revenue and costs in the core business.  

This distinction is important because another common theme emerging from university annual reports is that some in the sector have acknowledged that they have been predicting badly and spending beyond their means for a while.  As UEA notes, “Student recruitment numbers for 2022/23 were significantly lower than originally planned. This is on top of an accumulated 3,000 fewer students than planned throughout the Covid years, as experienced by many others in the Higher Education sector.”  Coventry University’s 2022/23 Annual Report says, “The operating deficit has occurred as a result of costs growing faster than income.”

An Apple A Day

Since the start of the century international student recruitment has become a critical factor in most calculations about finances.  The problem is that when the government or an external market provides an opportunity to gorge on international student mobility it can lead to over-indulgence.  While one apple a day can be good for you and easy to digest, the outcome of eating too many too quickly is likely to be bloating and gas which seems apt given the growth in non-academic staff and some of the hot air from the sector.

Those with longer memories will recall that the late, sometimes lamented, Higher Education Funding Council for England noted in 2016 that predictions of increases in international student fee income, “…may be based on overly optimistic forecasting of international student growth.  Plus ca change and all that because it is reasonably clear that this pattern has continued.  However, the responsibility for this lies with individual institutions to plan, implement and review their activities rather than the hapless Office for Students to tell them what to do. 

In that respect it is entirely appropriate for universities to consider taking a hatchet to costs if government policy has taken an axe to the tree of international student flows.  It seems reasonable to believe that in years of plenty there is a likelihood of institutional bloat and almost inevitably there is a need for corrective action at some point.  The real question is whether university management, having miscalculated trends in the first place, can be trusted to make the right cuts.

Alphabet Soup for Data

Which leads to thinking what the new business model might look like as the dependent visa issue bites and if the Migration Advisory Committee review of international student visa leads to further action reducing the competitiveness of UK higher education.  Professor Tim Dunne, Provost and Senior Vice-President at the University of Surrey since 2022, had a go at this in a recent blog and made an interesting observation that “Many large post-1992 universities, such as Manchester Met, Liverpool Hope, and Leeds Beckett, have less than around 5% of their students paying overseas fees.”  This suggested a way forward in the search for a new model,

A big problem with this notion is that MMU’s 2022/23 Annual Report notes that international students were 12% of the student population and international student fee income (excluding EU because MMU don’t separate it) is 17% of total full time student fee income. MMU has already beaten its 2026 international student recruitment target of 2,500 by 20%, in having 3,017 full-time, international, on-campus, new entrants last year.  Times move quickly and this situation reflects what has happened in a number of institutions.

The real issue is that the sector is constantly referring to enrollment data that is at least 18 months old and which doesn’t take into account the likely impact of current year activity.  It is really shambolic at a point when most universities seem to take pride in completing and publishing their financial statements within five months of the year end.  The data is available and should be shared promptly to give external decision makers, students and the public timely information about the state of the sector.

Micro Talent Management, Soft Landing?

One helpful case study that some universities might like to study as an alternative to macho talk about cutbacks is that of Apple.  The strategy seems to be to prioritize hiring quality over quantity in the first place, take an holistic view of talent, and always look to the long term needs of the organization.  The company is not immune to the pressures of the market but CEO, Tim Cook, seems to run a business that reflects his suggestion that layoffs are “a last resort”.

As the sector becomes increasingly disrupted by alternative options, generational changes and other competitive pressures it seems likely that universities could and probably should be run more like businesses.  This is a subject for a different blog but it is important to reflect that some of the best corporates take good care of their employees and see errors in forecasting or cost control as a management failing.   

NOTES

It is ironical that Mister Ten Per Cent is the title of a British comedy film from 1967 where the inimitable Charlie Drake plays an amateur playwright whose earnest drama becomes a comedy success.  In his ignorance he has also signed away 10% of the proceeds from the play to so many people that he owes 110% of the revenue.  A salutary tale.     

The sub-headings are inspired by the names of the Big Five tech companies.  Crunchbase indicates that in 2022 “more than 93,000 jobs were slashed from public and private tech companies in the US” with more than 191,000 being cut in 2023.  In 2023, Amazon cut 16,080 roles, Alphabet cut 12,000 and Meta cut 10,000.  As noted, Apple seems to have a different approach to hiring and investment and has been much better able to withstand mass layoffs.  This may offer some food (sic) for thought.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay