Universities told to set tougher low-income student intake targets

A government watchdog has been privately warning universities that unless they set tougher targets for how many low-income students they admit, they will not be allowed to charge higher fees. Every university and university college in England intends to charge more than £6,000 in annual tuition fees when fees rise to up to £9,000 next year. But to do so, they must have their proposals on how they will widen access to disadvantaged students approved by the Office for Fair Access (Offa). Offa will officially announce next month whether it has accepted each university's plans. However, universities have told the Guardian that the watchdog has already privately come back to them demanding that they set themselves tougher targets. Some universities have warned that Offa's expectations are unreasonably high. One highly-ranked university, which did not want to be named, was told by Offa that it was not enough for the institution simply to measure itself against its rivals. "Our aim is to improve the performance of the sector as a whole and we therefore need you to improve your absolute performance … as well as measure how you are doing compared to others," the watchdog wrote. "Please consider this issue as soon as possible and make any amendments you think appropriate." The university's head of widening participation said the watchdog was pushing it too far: "Offa asked us to revisit our targets so that they were more 'ambitious'. Even though we already perform well relative to the sector, Offa wished to see further progress. We felt somewhat penalised for starting from an existing high base." Writing in Education Guardian, Professor Debra Humphris, pro vice-chancellor at the University of Southampton, said Offa had been in touch with her institution this week to ask for targets to be "nudged up". "Universities are doing more than ever to finance and support widening participation," Humphris writes. "Why is it, then, just one month before the announcement of access agreements from Offa, we are being asked to raise our access targets again? Over the last decade, the sector has made real improvements in access for students from under-represented groups. However, for all the nudging of the figures by Offa, and institutional change implemented by universities, the reality is that the impact of government changes to the funding of higher education will be a live experiment with young people's futures." A spokeswoman for Offa said that the public should expect the watchdog to be "in negotiations with universities either where we are not happy with the amount that universities are proposing to invest [in widening access] or where we feel their targets [to widen access] are not suitably challenging". The disclosure comes as the government's white paper on higher education was about to be published. MPs voted in December to raise tuition fees for full-time undergraduates from £3,350 a year to £6,000 in 2012 and up to £9,000 in "exceptional cases". But new and old universities have announced plans to charge £9,000 . In the last few days Bradford, Bristol and Hull universities have said they want to charge the maximum. Oxford Brookes and University of East London – neither of which are in the top 40 universities according to the Guardian's university league table – intend to charge a flat-rate of £9,000. A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said universities were being asked to work "much harder" to recruit students from disadvantaged backgrounds. "Each university wanting to charge more than £6,000 will need to show how they meet the tough new conditions set out by the director for fair access."