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Augar Review: University Funding and Spending

The Augar review has finally been published, making a whopping 53 recommendations - many of which will have a huge impact on universities. Whatuni investigates…

Michelle Roberts
by Michelle Roberts
Last Updated:
09 Jun 2019

After a year-long wait, the Augar review has finally been published. At 210 pages long, it covers both higher and further education and makes a huge 53 recommendations for change.

The most important – or to put it correctly – most ‘headline -worthy’ recommendations centred on tuition fees and what Augar likes to call the ‘student contribution’.You can read our overview of those recommendations here.

However, there were a number of other key findings and recommendations made by Augur that could have a big impact on universities and prospective students. Let’s take a look at them…

Augar Review – Key Findings

The review highlights that the replacement of teaching grants with tuition fee increases has led to over-funding for degrees that cost less to provide (humanities and social science subjects) and under-funding for degrees that cost more to run (science and engineering).

The danger here is that in order to seek a higher profit, universities will focus on providing more lower-cost degrees and less higher cost degrees – even though these degrees are vital to the governments Industrial Strategy and the UK economy.

The review also highlighted some concerns about university admissions practices, including:

Grade inflation: The has been an increase in the number of first and 2:1 awards being given and the Augar states “It is not unreasonable to assume that part of the explanation is that academic assessment has become a means of reputational enhancement, albeit how this has happened is unclear.”

Lower entry requirements: A higher number of students with lower A-Level and BTEC grades are being accepted in to university. While this may seem encouraging from a widening access point of view, the drop-out rates amongst these students is much higher (12.8%) than the average across all students.

Unconditional offers: While the review sees some benefits of offering students unconditional offers, it does highlight the need for control over these to avoid any underhand tactics or pressure selling to drive up student enrolment figures in a competitive market.

Augar Review – Recommendations

Here are some of the key recommendations made to try and fix some of the problem areas found by the Augar Review panel.

Recommendation: More control for Office for Students to cap numbers

While the review hasn’t recommended a nation-wide cap on student numbers, it has recommended giving the Office for Students more power in exceptional circumstances to limit the numbers of students specific institutions could enrol on certain courses, or put a limit on the amount of student eligible for financial support.

These capping powers will target institutions that are offering poor value for money to students by marketing courses which have “poor retention, poor graduate employability and poor long-term earnings benefits”.

Who Benefits?

Prospective students will benefit from this tighter regulation as they will be sure the courses they are applying for are good value for money.

Recommendation: Removing funding for Foundation years

The review believes that foundation years (not to be confused with foundation degrees) provide no value for money for students and are being used in underhand ways by universities. They state:

The review argues that students would be better placed at a Further Education College studying an Access Diplomas and recommend that funding for foundation years should be removed at some point in the future.

Who Benefits?

Prospective students, who will be sure that the courses they are applying to are good value for money and the right fit for them.

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