Council

Subject: Patterns of higher education institutions in the UK: Third report

Origin: Deputy Vice-Chancellor

1 The Report, ‘Patterns of higher education institutions in the UK: Third report’, was commissioned by the Longer Term Strategy Group of Universities UK and published in September 2003. Its analyses are based on 2000/01 data. This third Report addressed the concept of ‘differentiation’. That concept refers to the conscious identification of many higher education institutions with named ‘groups’. These are: The Coalition of Modern Universities (CMU), The 1994 Group, The Russell Group; and The Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP). There is a fifth group in the Report, the ‘non-aligned’ group. This Group has 38 members, none of whom is associated with the other groupings; it includes both pre-1992 and post-1992 universities. For the purposes of the Report, Loughborough is in the ‘non-aligned’ Group.

2 The 1994 Group consists of 17 institutions in England and Scotland. Overall

they account for 9.5% of the student FTEs in HEI and 11.5% of the income

received by the sector. The average size of 1994 group institutions is 8200

student FTEs, (ranging from 5600 to 14000) and their average annual income

is £91 million.

The Russell Group is composed of 19 universities, most of which have medical schools. Overall they account for 21% of the student FTEs in HEI and 37% of the income received by the sector. The average size of Russell Group institutions is 162000 student FTEs (ranging from 6400 to 22000) and the average annual income is £260 million.

3 The attached charts are from Part B of the Report. The comments following

consider Loughborough relative to the 1994 Group (which contains Bath,

UMIST, Surrey, Warwick, and York) – a more interesting context and set of

comparators from our perspective than the ‘non-aligned’ Group membership.

In general, the measures show that Loughborough’s performance would not be at all out of place in the 1994 Group (on the 2000/01 data).

Some specific points:

Loughborough is at the lower end of 1994 Group performance in ‘Absolute numbers of international students’, and in ‘Percentage UK entrants coming from ethnic minority groups’ (but not uncomfortably so); in penultimate place in ‘EU domiciled international students’; in the lowest position in ‘Percentage of mature f-t u-g’ (with CMU, not surprisingly, out-performing all the Groups);

lowish in ‘Percentage of young f-t first degree entrants from low participation neighbourhoods’ (but the graph is fairly flat); is Satis in ‘Average A-level points’ (but Excellent within the ‘non-aligned’); is with the highest for ‘Income from industry and commerce’ (and about mid-way in the Russell Group); has the lowest ‘Administrative costs per FTE student’ (for 1994 and Russell); is almost the lowest for ’Academic departmental costs per FTE student’ (again for both 1994 and Russell); and shows lower expenditure for ‘Premises expenditure per FTE student’ than any member of both 1994 and Russell.

4 Given the drives towards increasing, for instance, post-graduate and

international students, our general and particular positions will have changed.

The immediate next step is to consider a closer subject-based analysis using

later data.