Quality and Access: a
zero-sum game
Peter Scott
Commissioner for Fair Access
Plan of presentation
1. Introductory remarks
2. Expansion, access & quality
 Historical patterns
 Defining ‘success’
 New landscapes of ‘quality’
3. My role as Commissioner for Fair Access
4. Conclusion & reflections
Quality & standards in a mass system
• Ten-fold expansion in student numbers since 1960s
• Participation explosion (UK: < 10% - 50%, South Korea: 80%)
• A new system: more than half of UK universities established
since 1960
• Drop-out rates still low (by international standards)
• Higher proportion of ‘good’ degrees (grade inflation?)
• Rapid growth in ‘graduate’ jobs in knowledge economy – but
graduate under-employment?
Future prospects…
• Correlation between entry grades, continuation rates,
attainment levels…
• …but students on access pathways perform well (with right
support)
• Socio-economic & cultural barriers as significant as academic
‘deficits’
• Scalability of access pathways
• Fitting ‘non-standard’ students into ‘standard’ systems
Definitions of ‘success’
• CONTINUATION: low wastage rates (too low?), ‘drop-out’ >>
‘stop-out’, more flexible study patterns
• ATTAINMENT: rising proportion of ‘good’ degrees…but
dominance of ‘performance’ culture / other outcomes of HE
• EMPLOYMENT: volatility / permeability of graduate’ and ‘nongraduate’ jobs, cognitive demands & occupational hierarchies,
post-industrial (& post-professional?) workforce
Changing ‘quality’ landscapes
• Policy / practice & management shifts – but also new
intellectual landscapes
• New challenges: internal evolution of disciplines, new subjects,
growth of interdisciplinary courses…
• Going beyond the two Ps (peer review & process)
• Different paths to knowledge: academic – experiential,
limitations of ‘academic apparatus’?
Commissioner for Fair Access
• Proliferation of ‘Tsars’
• ‘Agitator’ not regulator
• Establishing a presence:
Visits
Talks
Briefings (applications, contextual admissions…)
Annual report
Contextual admissions
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Not new: universities have always varied entry requirements
Greater transparency / readability
Bolder use of adjusted offers >> access thresholds…
Developing academic rationales not just meeting access
targets
• Re-thinking continuation / attainment expectations?
Articulation - HNs >> degrees
• Half of HN students receive no credit - unfair to students,
wasteful to taxpayers
• ‘Innocent until proved guilty’ (full, i.e. 2 year, credit as starting
point)
• Differences in ‘learning cultures’ between HNs & degrees?
• Imbalance of articulation (post-1992 universities)
• Wider bias against professional / vocational higher education?
Access & outreach
• Scale up - need for increased volume (craft industry >>> mass
production?)
• Join up - improving transferability of experiences
• Evaluating effectiveness / spreading good practice [Framework
for Fair Access}
Conclusions – two lessons…
• ACCESS & QUALITY: limitations of fitting ‘non-standard’
students into ‘standard’ systems, impacts of social &
intellectual change, re-thinking ’success’ & ‘quality’
• FAIR ACCESS(1) using skills of all the people; (2) civic /
human rights; (3) preserving democracy in an age of ‘populism’
(Trump, Brexit, fundamentalism…)