So what could this mean for you and other students? We thought we’d explain more now:

Affordable Education

Within the Higher Education Bill it is proposed that the TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) will increase the already extortionate fees that students are paying.

Universities that score highly in the TEF and are thus considered ‘good universities’ will be able to increase their fees more than universities that don’t score so well. The Government are therefore asking students to pay more money for a better education and are thus driving a divide in society between poorer and wealthier students.

That means in 4 years’ time, fees for each year of university study at a ‘good university’ could be £10,000, in 8 years’ time, £11,000 and so on upwards. 

Student Representation on a National Level

Within the Higher Education Bill it has been proposed that there will be a new Office for Students. This Office will oversee the implementation of the Teaching Excellence Framework which will ultimately put up fees in many institutions. This has been ironically named however as this Office will have NO STUDENT REPRESENTATION on it.

Access to education for students from underrepresented groups

The Higher Education Bill claims to have a plan to widen participation in university level education for students, such as poorer students or those from underrepresented groups, who traditionally have not been able to access this before. With maintenance grants already gone and NHS bursaries being cut too, it’s only going to get harder for these students to access education.

Genuine Quality Teaching

One of the metrics for measuring a universities success in the TEF will be a universities National Student Survey score.

This means that not only will students be paying more for education that they are satisfied with but also that universities could become more preoccupied with their NSS score and actually not with their quality of teaching! 

Collaborative learning and teaching across universities 

The overarching aim of the Higher Education Bill is to marketise higher education and to embed the nature of students as customers across the whole sector. The competitive nature of all changes the HE bill proposes will pit universities against one another in competition for funding and student recruitment. This is likely to make universities too focused on being on top of the market to do collaborative research and enrich the education of students on a sector wide level.