Targets, sort of, from Simon Hughes. But universities will still be able to take fewer students from poor families

Simon Hughes' diagnosis of the problem with the current regime of the Office for Fair Access is acute. It allows universities, he said at a press conference yesterday, to "aspire and fail".

So long as they have sincerely tried to help potential students who are poor or disadvantaged in other ways, universities will not be punished by OFFA even if the number of students they actually admit from these groups goes down.

The remedy proposed by the government's "Access Advocate" in his report to the Prime Minister is to shift the focus from inputs to outputs:

"OFFA should ... assess HEIs' annual progress on access and widening participation by measuring results against objective benchmarks rather than by statements of future intent," he argues.

The "bit of a stick", as Hughes put it, could be fnancial penalties for failure to achieve results. His report goes on, "The 2004 Higher Education Act would need to be amended if financial penalties were to be imposed on the failure to meet more objective criteria."

If implemented, Hughes' proposals would certainly mark a tightening of the OFFA regime. But it woud not quite be a move to targets for students from poor families.

First, Hughes has not actually used the word "targets", leaving some wiggle room.

Second, Hughes has not said anything about what kind of "results" he wants to see. Even if universities meet the objectives for admissions that they have set themselves for admissions in their new access agreements with OFFA it is not clear that the number of poor students will go up. Even if Hughes' scheme is implemented, OFFA could continue to demand "results" which don't include more students from poor families.

On this point, it was disappointing to hear Hughes repeating the line that identifying students from poor families is complicated. In fact, nothing could be simpler. Anyone remotely capable of being counted in these stats will fill out a student loan form, which teases out in excruciating detail precisely the income of their family.

Third, Hughes has not quite said that the regime should be changed to allow financial penalties for poor results. That point is left ambiguous in his report.

So - despite a genuinely tougher regime for universities and more help for kids at school - it seems universities could still happily admit fewer students from poor families even if Hughes's proposals were implemented, though he said this is something that would need to be kept under review.

As I warned last week, Hughes is pushing for these reforms to come through in the legislation implementing the white paper. But who will carry the work through remains a mystery as his role as Access Advocate is now coming to an end. He was enigmatic about this issue at the press conference.

The report in total is over 50 pages long and includes 33 recommendations, most of which are focused on schools. By the time you read this, it should be available online.

The AAB+ Battlefield - definitive list of how many AAB+ students there are at English universities

Here it is. The authoritative list of who has how many AAB+ students, based on data released by HEFCE this afternoon. Let battle commence.

AAB+ column - number of entrants in 2009-10 with grades AAB or above from UK and EU

UK% column - percentage of UK entrants with known grades reaching AAB or above.

See below for a table ranked by percentage

See below that for notes

	Ranked by size	AAB+	UK %
1	University of Manchester	2776	50.5%
2	University of Durham	2581	84.7%
3	University of Oxford	2568	99.4%
4	University of Cambridge	2554	99.1%
5	University of Nottingham	2505	56.8%
6	University of Leeds	2376	46.5%
7	University of Exeter	2368	74.3%
8	University of Bristol	2199	84.6%
9	University of Warwick	2068	81.0%
10	University of Birmingham	1883	47.7%
11	University of Sheffield	1846	49.4%
12	University of Southampton	1686	54.3%
13	University College London	1648	82.4%
14	University of York	1538	53.0%
15	University of Bath	1496	69.0%
16	University of Newcastle	1332	42.5%
17	King's College	1238	67.9%
18	Imperial College London	1094	95.7%
19	Loughborough University	1042	37.7%
20	University of Liverpool	886	31.7%
21	Lancaster University	740	32.4%
22	Queen Mary, University of London	702	29.4%
23	London School of Economics	686	92.5%
24	University of Sussex	630	29.2%
25	Royal Holloway, University of London	589	32.2%
26	University of Leicester	578	30.1%
27	University of East Anglia	538	24.5%
28	University of Kent	480	10.2%
29	University of Reading	455	19.4%
30	University of Surrey	433	23.4%
31	University of the Arts London	430	11.0%
32	Aston University	429	25.1%
33	City University	414	30.7%
34	Nottingham Trent University	357	5.9%
35	School of Oriental and African Studies	353	57.0%
36	Sheffield Hallam University	340	6.0%
37	Brunel University	325	12.1%
38	Manchester Metropolitan University	290	4.8%
39	University of Northumbria	283	6.6%
40	Kingston University	280	5.5%
41	University of Plymouth	278	6.6%
42	Coventry University	262	7.4%
43	Southampton Solent University	254	7.8%
44	University of the West of England	238	5.4%
45	London Metropolitan University	237	4.7%
46	University of Westminster	235	5.4%
47	De Montfort University	232	4.8%
48	University of Lincoln	232	7.7%
49	University of Hull	228	5.8%
50	Bournemouth University	227	7.3%
51	University of Brighton	215	6.7%
52	University of Huddersfield	214	5.6%
53	Liverpool John Moores University	213	4.7%
54	Oxford Brookes University	213	7.2%
55	University of Essex	200	8.3%
56	University of Teesside	197	8.0%
57	Royal Veterinary College	195	59.9%
58	Goldsmiths College	180	16.5%
59	University of Greenwich	178	3.2%
60	Birmingham City University	170	6.2%
61	University of Central Lancashire	168	4.3%
62	London South Bank University	165	6.5%
63	University of Bedfordshire	163	7.2%
64	University of East London	157	7.2%
65	Anglia Ruskin University	156	6.0%
66	University of Portsmouth	152	3.1%
67	Bath Spa University	144	9.2%
68	University of Worcester	142	7.7%
69	University for the Creative Arts	136	7.8%
70	University of Derby	133	5.3%
71	Middlesex University	126	4.5%
72	University of Chichester	114	12.8%
73	University of Bradford	112	5.0%
74	Leeds Metropolitan University	111	2.5%
75	University of Northampton	110	6.1%
76	University of Cumbria	105	10.1%
77	University of Chester	100	5.7%
78	Keele University	99	5.8%
79	Edge Hill University	97	6.8%
80	Liverpool Hope University	97	7.6%
81	Staffordshire University	91	1.7%
82	University of Hertfordshire	85	1.9%
83	University of Sunderland	79	4.1%
84	University College Falmouth	78	11.3%
85	University of Wolverhampton	76	2.3%
86	Conservatoire for Dance and Drama	71	59.2%
87	Thames Valley University	68	4.9%
88	University of Salford	67	2.5%
89	Arts University College at Bournemouth	67	9.3%
90	University of Gloucestershire	65	3.9%
91	School of Pharmacy	59	37.3%
92	University of Bolton	55	5.3%
93	Blackpool and the Fylde College	52	24.3%
94	Roehampton University	51	4.2%
95	Blackburn College	51	22.3%

Only about 70 per cent of students arrive with known entry grades, and the proportion varies significantly from institution to institution. However, adjusting for the not knowns does not affect the ranking position much.

 

The second column in this table shows the position of the institution when ranked by size.

		Ranked by percentage	AAB+	UK %
1	3	University of Oxford	2568	99
2	4	University of Cambridge	2554	99
3	18	Imperial College London	1094	96
4	23	London School of Economics	686	93
5	2	University of Durham	2581	85
6	8	University of Bristol	2199	85
7	13	University College London	1648	82
8	9	University of Warwick	2068	81
9	7	University of Exeter	2368	74
10	15	University of Bath	1496	69
11	17	King's College	1238	68
12	57	Royal Veterinary College	195	60
13	86	Conservatoire for Dance & D	71	59
14	35	SOAS	353	57
15	5	University of Nottingham	2505	57
16	12	University of Southampton	1686	54
17	14	University of York	1538	53
18	1	University of Manchester	2776	51
19	11	University of Sheffield	1846	49
20	10	University of Birmingham	1883	48
21	6	University of Leeds	2376	47
22	16	University of Newcastle	1332	43
23	19	Loughborough University	1042	38
24	91	School of Pharmacy	59	37
25	21	Lancaster University	740	32
26	25	Royal Holloway, London	589	32
27	20	University of Liverpool	886	32
28	33	City University	414	31
29	26	University of Leicester	578	30
30	22	Queen Mary	702	29
31	24	University of Sussex	630	29
32	32	Aston University	429	25
33	27	University of East Anglia	538	25
34	93	Blackpool and the Fylde	52	24
35	30	University of Surrey	433	23
36	95	Blackburn College	51	22
37	29	University of Reading	455	19
38	58	Goldsmiths College	180	17
39	72	University of Chichester	114	13
40	37	Brunel University	325	12
41	84	University College Falmouth	78	11
42	31	University of the Arts London	430	11
43	28	University of Kent	480	10
44	76	University of Cumbria	105	10
45	89	Arts UC at Bournemouth	67	9
46	67	Bath Spa University	144	9
47	55	University of Essex	200	8
48	56	University of Teesside	197	8
49	43	Southampton Solent	254	8
50	69	University Creative Arts	136	8
51	48	University of Lincoln	232	8
52	68	University of Worcester	142	8
53	80	Liverpool Hope University	97	8
54	42	Coventry University	262	7
55	50	Bournemouth University	227	7
56	54	Oxford Brookes University	213	7
57	63	University of Bedfordshire	163	7
58	64	University of East London	157	7
59	79	Edge Hill University	97	7
60	51	University of Brighton	215	7
61	39	University of Northumbria	283	7
62	41	University of Plymouth	278	7
63	62	London South Bank	165	7
64	60	Birmingham City University	170	6
65	75	University of Northampton	110	6
66	36	Sheffield Hallam University	340	6
67	65	Anglia Ruskin University	156	6
68	34	Nottingham Trent University	357	6
69	49	University of Hull	228	6
70	78	Keele University	99	6
71	77	University of Chester	100	6
72	52	University of Huddersfield	214	6
73	40	Kingston University	280	6
74	44	University West of England	238	5
75	46	University of Westminster	235	5
76	70	University of Derby	133	5
77	92	University of Bolton	55	5
78	73	University of Bradford	112	5
79	87	Thames Valley University	68	5
80	38	Manchester Metropolitan	290	5
81	47	De Montfort University	232	5
82	45	London Metropolitan	237	5
83	53	Liverpool John Moores	213	5
84	71	Middlesex University	126	5
85	61	Central Lancashire	168	4
86	94	Roehampton University	51	4
87	83	University of Sunderland	79	4
88	90	University of Gloucestershire	65	4
89	59	University of Greenwich	178	3
90	66	University of Portsmouth	152	3
91	74	Leeds Metropolitan	111	3
92	88	University of Salford	67	3
93	85	University of Wolverhampton	76	2
94	82	University of Hertfordshire	85	2
95	81	Staffordshire University	91	2

Source: Annex D, Teaching funding and student number controls , Consultation on changes to be implemented in 2012-13

I'm wary of over-interpreting the percentage figures. I'm not sure how much can be inferred without a subject-by-subject breakdown. For example, Southampton Solent has 254 AAB+ students. Is that because it has some outstanding departments or because it is in the right place for those students? On the answer to that hangs its vulnerability to AAB+ competition.

To take Cambridge as an example of the data provided, the key student data provided by HEFCE is:

UK-domiciled AAB+: 2433

EU-domiciled AAB+: 121

UK-domiciled unknown: 108

EU-domiciled unknown: 144

Total subject to HEFCE student number controls: 3147

Percentage of known UK-domiciled with AAB+: 99%

Percentage of known EU-domiciled with AAB+: 78%.

It ain't over. How the Lib Dems are going to rewrite the higher education white paper

And what of the Liberal Democrats, without whom no higher education bill can pass through the House of Commons?

The release today by the Office for Fair Access of university plans to aid social mobility has put the spotlight back on the Lib Dems' failure to keep fees low or deliver the protection for poor students that they have promised.

One possible response to the unfolding nightmare of tuition fees is for the Lib Dems to shy away. We've all done it when hurt, and to some extent we know this has happened. In recent months, universities report that the work on the white paper has gone through David Willetts and his special adviser, Nick Hillman. Vince Cable and his team have hardly been seen. It can't have helped that the party HQ has been shaking out staff after losing state funding (only available to opposition parties).

So Aaron Porter's diagnosis of Lib Dem abdication on reading the white paper last month was no surprise. The now ex-leader of the National Union of Students argued: "Rather than seizing the white paper as a chance to repair the Lib Dem's damaged reputation on higher education, Cable went walkabouts."

Reading the white paper, I completely agree that it lacks the yellow touch. The place we should find that, if nowehere else, is in chapter 5 on social mobility. Cable promised MPs in the crunch tuition fees debate in the House of Commons that, "any university that wants to go beyond £6,000 will have to satisfy very demanding tests of access for low-income families". But look in chapter 5 and you will struggle to find any substance. In essence, the existing regime is being retained unchanged, including, unaltered by one comma, the objectives of the Office for Fair Access.

This is surprising because the evidence on social mobility by the time we get to the next election could look grim. Remember, all the promises of "improved access" do not mean that more students from poor families will be admitted to university, let alone the prestigious ones - even if universities fulfil their new OFFA access agreements.

And we know from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that putting fees up deters potential students, even if you provide equal amounts of grants and loans.

And in its final analysis of the new system, the IFS also said, “By decile of parental income, graduates from the poorest 30 per cent of households would pay back ... more than under the current system.”

And the effect of the two market reforms that were in the white paper are unclear. The AAB move at the top could be bad for access (which is why Steve Smith of Universities UK is pleading for the government to allow contextual data to be used to soften the boundary). The expansion in cheap places at the bottom could be good. But no one is yet sure.

So if Porter is right, I would bet real money that by the election the evidence will show the Coalition to have presided over a decline in the number of poor students going to university, a decline in the number going to top unis and red numbers for a whole bunch of other "hard" social mobility stats recording outcomes as opposed to "soft" ones on spending, outreach and other inputs. Helpfully, OFFA will be publishing figures every year (though the data will be very messy).

But I'm convinced that this is not the end of the story. After talking with some Lib Dems, I think there is an appetite in the party to go further, faster on social mobility. This is the kind of noise coming from people close to Simon Hughes, the government's Access Advocate, who is due to publish proposals for improvements soon. Note also that Tim Leunig, the influential head of the Lib Dem CentreForum think tank, has called today for OFFA to be scrapped.

So what we can expect is a distinctly Lib Dem strand of HE policy to emerge in the coming months. This will probably be focused on social mobility but could - the nightmare for universities - spread wider. These proposals will then have to be married with those in the white paper to create a bill than can command a majority in the House of Commons. 

This approach makes a lot of sense for Clegg. There's plenty of time to do this - no legislation until next year. It fits the revised Clegg strategy of distinguishing the Lib Dems more sharply from the Conservatives. It allows Clegg maximum scope to smooth over inevitable problems with the party grassroots on this issue at the Lib Dem conference in September. It also makes sense of the non-chapter on access. And done right, this doesn't have to be the car crash we saw after the NHS white paper.

In this case, there are problems facing the Lib Dems in actually coming up with policies that improve social mobility. A large chunk of the party is wedded to the idea of free higher education with a zeal that baffles Clegg's allies. They may be unwilling to countenance comparatively minor tweaks to the actual policy since that would imply a kind of acceptance of the rises in tuition fees (although this problem will be eased by the fact that a new HE policy is not due to be ratified by the party conference until September 2012). Also, the party is going to have find some sensible people to help it make policy if it wants to overcome the amateur image it has acquired in the sector. 

A while back there were rumours that Hughes could recommend Texan-style quotas for top universities to admit the top X per cent from each type of school. This would detonate a gigantic row not only with universities jealously guarding their right to control admissions but also with private schools who would see a large part of their raison d'etre going up in smoke. And unlike the NHS reforms backed by the Lib Dems at their spring conference, a Texan plan would not be popular with many Conservative MPs, which would make it a politically explosive choice, too. I've not found any trace of Texan proposals recently but it shows how dramatic the debate could become. And of course, there would be something curious about Conservatives trying to argue that a policy adopted in the famously Republican home of George Bush was some sort of lefty lunacy.

Whatever's in it, Hughes' plan could be the platform for an attempt by Clegg to win back some trust from his party on higher education, followed by voters in time for the next elections. That would inevitably mean new, important and - preferably from Clegg's point of view - contentious policy from the Lib Dems.

What OFFA's focus on "outcomes and targets" is doing for students from poor families

With tuition fees shooting up to £9,000 a year, there have been growing worries that potential students from poor families will be put off going to university.

Back in December, Simon Hughes put this fear to Vince Cable in the crunch debate on tuition fees. The Business Secretary promised him then that, “any university that wants to go beyond £6,000 will have to satisfy very demanding tests of access for low-income families”.

Today the Office for Fair Access publishes the "access agreements" Cable was referring to. It has promised "a greater focus on outcomes and targets". So at the press conference yesterday morning I asked the obvious question: "Will there be more students from poor families going to university in future?" It took me all day to get an answer.

The first reply from Graeme Davies, OFFA's chief executive, was, "That is the expectation."

Why then, I asked, in the reams of data being pushed at us is there no statement of the number of poor students that universities are promising to take? And how that compares with the past? I wanted to publish a table of past admissions versus promises of future admissions.

That produced a longer answer, including the words, "It's complicated." Indeed, as I discovered, it is.

OFFA's instructions to universities say that they must tackle access from "under-represented groups". It says, "Primarily, these are lower income students", further subdivided with a category of lowest income. For 2012-13, when the new fees regime kicks in, lower income is defined as students from families with an income of less than £42,600, and the lowest threshold is £25,000.

However, universities are not required to set a target for admissions from lower income groups.

What???

That's right. Students from poor families are the obvious worry in pubs up and down the country. They are the politicians' top priority. They are also OFFA's top priority. And OFFA does require universities to set targets. Yet OFFA does not actually require universities to set a target for admissions of these students.

Unpicking the knot of reasoning that has led to this state of affairs is no simple business. OFFA have made a number of points to me.

• Income is flawed as an indicator of poverty. You can, for example, have a wealthy but low income family.
• There are a range of alternative indicators, including neighbourhoods with historically low participation in higher education, the social class of the student and the kind of school attended. But these are all flawed, too.
• Universities cannot identify families with low income when developing their outreach programmes.

I've simply bullet pointed this list because I still don't understand how these facts combine into a rationale for the current policy. Which is this.

There is no set format for the access agreements. Universities can specify targets using any of the four indicators listed above - or none of them. For example, they could instead base their agreement on admissions from certain tough schools in their locality. And, by the way, none of the data on this that is being published in the access agreements tomorrow has been tabulated.

Now, I can sympathise with the practical problems universities have in developing a strategy that matches their situation, and all the definitional problems and scope for false incentives. But OFFA has promised "a greater focus on outcomes and targets". If the primary target is lower income students, then why not make the number of those students a, er, target? Especially since every student who might qualify will have to fill out and sign a detailed questionnaire for their student loan that covers their family income.

More, I wanted to know how Graeme Davies could sound so confident about the number of students from poor families going up. If the commitments of universities are so fluid and un-tabulatable, how does he know?

It turns out that his answer is not based on any targets the universities have set for admissions. It is based on the general idea that universities are spending more money on the problem and their access agreements are consequently promising a lot more activity. Perhaps - and I'm reaching here because no one actually said this to me - OFFA's staff have gained an informal impression from the access agreements that somehow when you put all the different indicators together the picture for poor students looks better.  It is certainly not based on any systematic assessment of the commitments on admissions that the universities have made in their agreements.

But fees are shooting up to £9,000 a year. Isn't it possible that that tsunami of revulsion will overwhelm all the efforts of universities, however strenuous?

"Of course," OFFA eventually told me, "all this is dependent on students not being put off. They are all contingent on that."

So much for the "greater focus on outcomes". 

See also my interview with Davies' predecessor, Martin Harris.

Stratification

This article is by Roger Brown

The underlying aim of the government’s new white paper on higher education is clear - to make student education in England as much of a market as the control of public expenditure will allow. But its strange combination of policy mechanisms means the chief effects are likely to be less efficient and less equitable than that sounds, leading to a system with unwelcome echoes of Japan.

Higher Education: Putting Students at the Heart of the System speaks of the need to meet three challenges: putting higher education on a sustainable footing, improving the student experience, and increasing social mobility.

Sustainability is to be provided by switching the funding of teaching from the present mixture of student fees and institutional grants to a system where nearly all teaching will be funded through tuition fees.

A better student experience will be achieved through greater competition between institutions, lowering the entry barriers for providers, increasing information for students and potential students, and shifting the role of the Higher Education Funding Council for England away from institutional funding and into being a “consumer champion for students and promoter of a competitive system”.

Social mobility work will involve enhanced resources, and possibly powers, for the Office for Fair Access, and better financial support for low income students.

Most attention is likely to focus on the moves to increase competition, heavily trailed in ministerial speeches and departmental leaks since the Browne Committee reported at the beginning of November.

The present institutional number controls will be lifted for the approximately 65,000 applicants who score the equivalent of AAB or above at A-level. A further 20,000 places will be made available in the same way for bids from institutions charging £7,500 or below after waivers. In future years, the core is intended to diminish and the margin increase.

What is unclear in both cases - and critical to the finances of all institutions - is exactly where the places will be taken from.

At the same time, the barriers to market entry will be reduced. The current requirement that new providers wanting to offer their own degrees should have at least four years’ track record of providing degrees will be modified. New legislation will allow organisations that do not teach to award degrees. Organisations already with degree awarding powers but fewer than 4,000 FTE students will be able to receive a university title. If they meet the same conditions as HEFCE-regulated ones, private organisations and their students may attract public funding on the same terms.

Next, there will be much greater information for students. As well as the Key Information Set already unveiled (with 17 pieces of data for each course), institutions will be encouraged to publish anonymised information about the teaching qualifications, fellowships and expertise of their staff at all levels (this is the only reference to staff in the entire document). The official website, Unistats, will be improved so that prospective students can make “useful comparisons” between subjects (i.e., courses) at different institutions.

The government will ask the main organisations holding student data to make detailed data available publicly so that it can be analysed and presented in various formats. UCAS and institutions will make available new data showing the actual qualifications of successful applicants for each course. Universities will be expected to publish summary reports of their student evaluation surveys (on top of their National Student Survey results, which will be extended to postgraduate courses). Finally, all institutions will be expected to have student charters.

How far will these proposals meet the Government’s three challenges?

It is too soon to say whether the White Paper will deliver sustainability. The problem that has dogged successive governments at least since the early 1980s is how to fund a mass system of HE within perceived public expenditure constraints without loss of quality. The white paper speaks of institutions having ten per cent more cash at the end of the current funding period, 2014-5 (in itself a considerable real terms reduction) - but there are no figures for projected spending per student.

No one knows what the market response to increased fees will be. Which way will potential students jump? So the jury has to remain out on sustainability, although the continuing heavy cost of the student support regime with its difficult-to-predict loan repayments, suggests that we may be back at this again before very long.

It is possible to be less equivocal about the other two challenges, improving the student experience and social mobility.

British universities and colleges are already in fierce competition for students and income not only with one another but with more and more institutions overseas. They face considerable claims on their budgets from pensions and other staff costs, utility prices and carbon reduction commitments. They are also efficient, with high student/staff ratios but also high retention and graduation rates. The unit of funding per student is still lower in real terms than it was twenty years ago.

The new information requirements will add to the costs faced by universities without any commensurate benefits. So far from improving the experience of most students, the core plus margin methodology will create, as it is intended to, a much more sharply differentiated sector with far greater disparities in institutional resourcing and esteem than anything we have hitherto seen, and without any educational justification or rationale.

The first effect will be to create a small group of elite research institutions with privileged funding, a Russell Group Plus. This echoes the approach of the Japanese government prior to the Second World War, when it set up nine Imperial Universities. Their privileged position, and the lack of resources made available to other public universities, led to the development of a strong private sector of universities that persists in Japan today.

Below this will sit the increasingly pressed remains of the higher education sector, trying to provide an adequate education for the mass of the population but without having the necessary resources to do so. Within this, we will see increased divisions so that the overall picture will be of an increasingly stratified sector.

Since institutional status correlates broadly with the social class of its students, the new hierarchy will also reduce social mobility. There is already evidence that some working class students are put off going to university because they see their local universities as too low in status. The new arrangements will reinforce this.

Given the number of other policies which will also harm participation (the ending of Aim Higher, the abolition of Educational Maintenance Allowances, the reduction of entitlement funding for colleges, and many more), the government’s commitment to social mobility has to be seen as the hypocrisy it is.

The white paper is an unconvincing mixture of ideology and pragmatism. If implemented as the government intends it will leave us with a sector that is much more heavily stratified without any compensating gains in quality or equity. This may be good news for some of the Russell Group institutions with their dreams of “world-class” status, and their students. It is bad news for virtually everyone else, universities and students alike.

*****

Roger Brown is Professor of Higher Education Policy at Liverpool Hope University. He was previously Vice Chancellor of Southampton Solent University, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Quality Council, Chief Executive of the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics, and Secretary of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council. Before that he was a senior civil servant and a local government officer. He has served on many national committees and boards. He is the author of two books, Quality Assurance in Higher Education: The UK Experience since 1992 (2004) and Higher Education and the Market (2010).

Oxford 2, Cambridge 2 - One way England's universities might use their AAB options

How might England's universities use the government's offer of unlimited student loans to finance students with AAB grades at A-level to best effect? Here is one of what ministers must hope will be many ideas for expansion by leading universities.

Despite some defects, Oxford and Cambridge remain national treasures. The intellectual intensity, the research prowess, the prestige, the brands, the alumnae, the penumbra of hi-tech firms and capital, the high quality teaching. Quite apart from all the other stuff, their economic value to the country is immense.

But it has to be said, their success is built in large part on public money. The huge sums of research funding, in particular, flowing into the universities from taxpayers are essential in allowing them to continue to recruit the brightest and produce the best work. So it is reasonable to ask, is the taxpayer getting the best bang for its buck?

The answer is no. It's not that Oxford and Cambridge don't do their current job well. It's just that they - we - are not exploiting the huge opportunity that their strengths offer.

There is a global contest for intellectual talent, invention, expertise, capital and the kind of hi-tech, hi-knowledge intensity business that emerges from that heady mix. Oxford and Cambridge are our two biggest cards in that game, and we are not making the most of them. We can't afford to keep on neglecting two of our most valuable assets.

So I make the following modest suggestion.

Look forward a decade. Why not have universities of Oxford and Cambridge that are both twice the size they are today?

Oxford and Cambridge already cover most disciplines. So what I am suggesting is new campuses that largely covered the same range of disciplines as they already have. But they would allow the universities to develop additional sub-disciplines that they don't currently have much expertise in.

Here's a map of Oxford. The red rings show a handful of locations around the city where a new campus, additional to the existing facilities, could be built on largely greenfield sites.

It is striking how close much of this space is to the city centre.

In Cambridge, which is smaller, the nearest opportunities seem in fact to be slightly further out.

Clearly, it is possible to build a new campus in an attractive location in both cases. In addition, there is surely enough wealth in the colleges that - combined with cheap private investment in what must be one of the surest bets in history - the new campuses could be built without any public money. Once built, both campuses could be confident of a large stream of income from tuition fees under the AAB regime now introduced by the higher education white paper. So long as they could also keep up the quality of staff and postdocs, they could also expect substantial research income. Overseas students would provide a helpful safety net for the new investment.

And of course, it's been done before. From a historical perspective, these campuses would be not such much Oxford and Cambridge 2 but Oxford 3 and 4.

Now there is no doubt that a new campus would - to some extent - alter the ambience of the universities. There is an idea in Oxford and Cambridge that everything has to be compact, that students and academics should always be able to shuffle around between classes in a few minutes. That is certainly an attractive feature for a university. But is it really essential? On the Shanghai Jiao Tong campus, I am told students use bikes simply to get from one end of the engineering faculty to the other.

And as regards facilities, consider the library. A new campus would not mean a lengthy trip for half the students and faculty to reach the library. It would mean a second, large library, with some overlap, but also with an extended range of material reflecting the interests of the sub-disciplines established on the new campus. Yes, sometimes you would have to go further. But other times, you would be able to get what you needed in 30 minutes instead of 30 days.

A new campus would not be like tacking on a large new facility at the edge of town - always a disappointing prospect. It would create a new destination, with its own attractions and, perhaps, new colleges seeded from the existing ones.

Consider the huge benefits that would flow to England if these expansions were done right.

First, the universities themselves would be strengthened. It hardly needs saying that having twice as many fellows, professors, postdocs and students would increase the intellectual firepower of the universities and create new opportunities for cross-fertilisation within and between disciplines. They would also leap unambiguously to the top of the various world league tables, burnishing their brands.

Second, the economic pull of the universities would be strengthened. The surrounding areas would attract more hi-tech investment, more venture capital interest.

Third, there would be increased cluster effects, speeding the extraction of economic value from the public investment flowing into the universities. The network effects mean that if we ended up spending twice as much public money on them, we should expect to get back substantially more than twice the economic impact.

Fourth, there would be increased income from overseas students.

And fifth, there would be twice as many places available at Oxford and Cambridge for AAB students from within the UK. The social elite would suddenly be a lot bigger, with increased scope for social mobility. Put the right policies in place and we can ensure that all these new places are not swallowed up by the wealthy and privately-educated.

Of course, this idea raises issues from a planning point of view. It is not just new campuses that would be required but additional housing and suppoort services, and expanded commercial and industrial space in nearby areas. Indeed, if planning restrictions were lifted now, these cities could already exploit the economic potential of the universities much better. If the universities and the government want a new campus, the city councils are going to have to explain why their city should continue to receive so much public money if they are determined to stand in the way of economic develoopment.

To those who would champion the retention of the (nice, valuable) green fields in these areas, I point to the rise in tuition fees and the strikes over public sector pensions yesterday. We are in an age of austerity. How much longer can we afford to go on squandering our best opportunities? Why is your field more valuable than my pension/education/job/healthcare?

A second objection comes from a regional point of view. The ongoing investment of research and teaching finance in Oxford and Cambridge would inevitably come at the cost of other regions. Why continue to pour money into the South East with its overheating property market and crowded land when it should instead be going North or West?

To me, this is a serious problem. (Though of course this government does not have a regional policy; to the current crop of ministers, this is presumably a non-issue). Again, one answer is because we can get a bigger economic bang for our buck in the Golden Triangle. A second answer is that we should use other mechanisms to support the rest of the country, for example by moving the seat of government to the North.

A third answer is to consider an even more radical proposal, that the new campuses should be located far from home. Why shouldn't Cambridge or Oxford expand to somewhere near Birmingham, for example? This would lose some of the network benefits but leave intact many of the others listed above. It would also of course be harder to pull off. But, hey, these are the smartest people in the country. They can do it.