Office of Strategic Governance
A weekly round-up of news and developments in the sector.
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Essay mills and immigration woes
COVID There is some frustration this week with the continuing uncertainty surrounding provision for students arriving from red list countries at the start of the coming academic year. Meanwhile, the Immigration Minister announced that the government would extend the Covid...
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Access barriers and worrying sector survey results
ACCESS, WIDENING PARTICIPATION AND INCLUSION A report by the Sutton Trust has found that access to postgraduate courses by students from working class backgrounds has improved, with the proportion of working class graduates progressing to taught masters doubling from 6%...
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Pensions, student mental health and disability, and cheating
FINANCE Universities UK (UUK) has published a brief summary of its responses to its consultation on the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension – broadly speaking universities have backed a plan to make the scheme less generous by reducing the defined...
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Increased knowledge exchange but falling employment rates
STUDENT OUTCOMES The Department for Education has published data on graduate, postgraduate and non-graduate employment rates and earnings in England. The graduate employment rate has fallen to 86.4%, with the postgraduate rate falling to 88.2%, although the median graduate salary...
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Minimum standards and learning credits
COVID A recent UPP survey has found that students want to see prioritisation of a return to in-person teaching and are missing the face-to-face elements of the wider student experience. Meanwhile, data released by the Office for National Statistics (OfS)...
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Freedom of speech, and reducing your carbon footprint
ACCESS AND PARTICIPATION Bath's SU President, Franci Masala, has a blog post on the Wonkhe website which highlights the important role students and Student Unions can play in ensuring that universities are held accountable for delivery against their Access and...
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In person teaching is back, and can you regulate free speech?
COVID On Monday, the Universities Minister wrote to universities and students confirming that remaining restrictions on in-person teaching would be lifted from 17 May. Students returning to campus will be encouraged to take a Covid test before traveling and three...
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Campus in the pandemic, pay offers and what will the Queen say about education?
COVID Although the government has not yet announced when universities will be allowed to re-open their campuses, new data from the Office for National Statistics suggests that 80% of students are now living where they go to university. Meanwhile, there...
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Complaints and EDI
ADMISSIONS AND RECRUITMENT For anyone interested in demand for HE, admissions numbers, fairness and the way that demographics and this year’s exam arrangements feed into this, there is a useful article on Wonkhe. REGULATORY OfS has published its specification...
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Refunds: Consumer action may not be the best or quickest solution.
COVID The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has responded to an open letter from 20 students’ unions calling for action to uphold student rights by saying that “consumer enforcement action may not be the best or quickest solution”. The CMA’s...