Sunak to crack down on ‘poor quality’ university courses

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Universities in England offering courses with poor employment prospects and high student dropout rates will be subjected to stricter regulatory controls under plans to be unveiled on Monday by Rishi Sunak.

The government will order the Office for Students, the higher education regulator in England, to do more to limit the number of students that universities can recruit on to certain courses.

The prime minister and education secretary Gillian Keegan will promise a crackdown on “rip-off degree courses” which leave graduates with inadequate pay and high debts. 

Figures from the OFS show almost 30 per cent of students do not progress into highly skilled jobs or further study 15 months after graduating.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, also estimates one in five graduates would be better off financially if they had not gone to university. 

Sunak said: “Too many young people are being sold a false dream and end up doing a poor-quality course at the taxpayers’ expense that doesn’t offer the prospect of a decent job at the end of it.”

The OFS announced last year it would investigate and potentially fine universities offering courses where fewer than 60 per cent of students achieve “positive outcomes” such as professional work or future study within 15 months of graduating.

It also said it could fine universities where fewer than 80 per cent of students make it into the second year of study or under 75 per cent complete their qualification.

Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK which represents more than 140 universities, said the OFS had found that only between 1 and 3 per cent of university courses were failing to meet the regulator’s quality criteria.

She added: “We should have a system that identifies courses that are falling below expectations, but it needs to be sophisticated.

“What the government is announcing is already in the regulatory framework and this is trying to spin something that is already there as an appropriate backstop.”

One government official acknowledged the OfS’s existing powers but said the system would be tightened further: for example, ensuring that courses that fail to provide “good earnings” for graduates are subject to stricter controls for the first time.

Last year the OFS said there were 11,000 students registered at 62 universities and colleges which did not meet the 60 per cent threshold for “positive outcomes”, including University College Birmingham and Arts University Plymouth.

The UK has 2.8mn students studying about 30,000 courses, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

Philip Augar, the businessman who carried out a review of post-18 education for the government, said: “This is another strong signal for universities to control such recruitment as it is not in students’ best interests and I hope the sector responds constructively.”

But Bridget Phillipson, shadow education secretary, said the government would be putting up “fresh barriers in opportunity” in areas with fewer graduate jobs.

“This is simply an attack on the aspirations of young people and their families by a government that wants to reinforce the class ceiling, not smash it,” she said.

Sunak will announce a cut in the maximum fee that universities can charge for classroom-based foundation year courses, from £9,250 to £5,760.

Foundation year courses tend to prepare students for some degrees with high-level requirements such as medicine or veterinary sciences.

But the government believes too many youngsters are being encouraged to take unnecessary foundation courses in subjects such as business.

The prime minister will also launch a new digital platform for people and employers to search for apprenticeships, T Levels and skills boot camps in one place.