Call to bar universities from admitting students who miss grades

UK universities should be banned from admitting students who have not achieved their course’s entry requirements, a thinktank says.

Under the plans put forward by EDSK, universities would be required to publish a “standard qualification requirement” for all undergraduate degrees every year and only let in students who meet the advertised grades.

The thinktank outlines how this would reduce the amount of “mismatch” that goes on between student attainment at school and the courses they study in its response to the Westminster government’s consultation on changing admissions.

Universities regularly accept students with lower grades than advertised and this lack of transparency is a “significant issue”, according to the consultation response. It is particularly a problem for disadvantaged students who are more likely to only apply for courses that advertise the grades they believe they are on target to achieve.  

To ensure that universities stick to the rules, EDSK proposes refusing to provide student loan funding for any student who does not meet the advertised entry requirement for a course.

The government’s proposals do include forcing universities to publish their historic entry grades, but EDSK says that this would not tell students what grades they need to achieve in their current application cycle, and therefore would not fix the problem.

The paper’s suggestions also include applying a standardised formula to the required grades to calculate official lower grades for disadvantaged applicants, such as care leavers or those who live in particularly deprived areas. This would tackle the “inconsistent and opaque” use of contextual offers, which take a student’s background into account when deciding admissions criteria in the current system, and make contextual offers simpler and more transparent, EDSK says.

Universities should also be required to publish the maximum number of students they can accept on to each degree course. This would allow students to understand how competitive each course is and also understand how large their course would be.

EDSK also rejects the post-qualification admissions system outlined by the Westminster government, which proponents believe would be fairer on disadvantaged students whose teachers are more likely to “under-predict” their grades.

A post-qualification offers system, also backed by admissions service Ucas and Universities UK, would be better, EDSK says.

The thinktank’s proposals would see students create a list of their 10 preferred degree courses in rank order as part of their Ucas application form, including courses with requirements above the applicant’s projected performance, as well as courses that match or are below their predictions.

On results day, places would be allocated automatically by lottery among all the applicants who meet the required entry grades for each degree based on their ranked list of preferences, EDSK says.

The consultation response also suggests scrapping interviews, except for a very limited number of degrees, as well as personal statements and academic references because these all advantage the most privileged applicants.

This would create “an admissions system based on students choosing universities, not universities choosing students”, according to the consultation response.

Tom Richmond, director of EDSK, said it was “clear that universities can no longer be trusted to act responsibly when attracting and selecting applicants, as demonstrated by the staggering and unjustified rise in ‘unconditional offers’ as well as the refusal of many universities to be open and honest with students about the grades they need to be accepted on to each degree course”.

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com