QAA publishes paper on funding and quality

Today we have published the latest in our Policy Series: The Future of Quality in England. This new paper examines the relationship between quality and the current English higher education funding landscape.

While part of a series focused on the impacts of the funding situation in England, the paper also reflects sets of circumstances being experienced across all four nations of the UK.   

The paper recognises the impacts of the real terms reduction in the value of the domestic student tuition fee, which is now worth less than three-quarters of what it was when it was introduced 12 years ago, and notes that universities on average last year, subsidised the cost of teaching home undergraduates by around £2,500 per student.

It acknowledges that, although higher education institutions have made consistent efforts to focus resourcing on maintaining the quality of the learning experience at world-leading levels, recent analysis (such as that conducted this year for Universities UK by PwC) demonstrates that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in the context of ongoing inflationary pressures.

QAA therefore calls upon policymakers to work with sector representative bodies in order to develop and implement a sustainable funding solution which will afford English institutions sufficient stability to continue the maintenance and enhancement of educational quality, and thereby retain the UK’s reputation as a world-leading destination for higher education.

It also calls for appropriate resourcing to support initiatives (in such areas as lifelong learning and generative artificial intelligence) designed to maintain and enhance the internationally renowned quality of English higher education and its contribution to the national economy.

It recommends that policymakers and sector leaders work together to consider the effects of policy decisions and promote the positive impacts of the higher education sector, and proposes the introduction of regularised and internationally recognised processes to measure, monitor and report the impacts of such strategic investments on the quality of educational provision, the learner experience and student outcomes.

‘Given the levels of concern being voiced about the impacts of current sectoral funding uncertainties, we feel an organisational responsibility to underline the importance of the quality aspects of this situation at this crucial point for higher education in England and across the UK,’ says Eve Alcock, Director of Public Affairs at QAA.

 Previous policy series papers include work on the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, realigning the UK higher education system and international trust in English higher education.