Damned Lies: Student Participation Rates and HE Funding

[nmg]

Well, the previous post inspired some interesting discussion, as did andrewducker's related poll. ahnlak asked for the source of some of the figures that I'd quoted, and this got me looking. I'd wanted to be able to give some more detailed figures initially, but was surprised (given the current funding debate) that they weren't that easy to find.

Using the data on the number of graduating students from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and population demographic data from Office of National Statistics, I put together the following table:

Graduating UK domiciled FT students (first degree) by year

Year	Students	21 year olds	% of 21 year olds
1994/1995	194,275	733,300	26.4%
1995/1996	205,805	708,100	28.9%
1996/1997	206,081	685,000	30.1%
1997/1998	206,389	659,700	31.3%
1998/1999	210,176	669,200	31.4%
1999/2000	212,340	711,800	29.8%
2000/2001	215,425	745,300	28.9%
2001/2002	216,230	749,400	28.8%
2002/2003	220,905	727,400	30.2%
2003/2004	229,250	749,800	30.6%
2004/2005	237,735	787,100	30.1%
2005/2006	241,100	826,800	29.2%
2006/2007	244,195	830,100	29.4%
2007/2008	256,830	836,100	30.6%
2008/2009	253,720	855,600	29.6%

Sources: HESA qualifications obtained, ONS population pyramid

There are several assumptions in these figures:

• I only consider full-time students graduating from their first degree. This is what people typically think of when they think of university students, and full-time students greatly outnumber part-time.
• HESA don't publish enrolment figures, only graduation, so this underestimates participation by assuming that no students drop out. That said, the drop out rate should be largely constant.
• In order to map graduate numbers onto the total population, I've assumed that students all enrol at age 18 and graduate at age 21. Given that the UK population is growing, that bachelors degrees are a minimum of three years, and that the majority of students enrol at age 18 or older, this systematically underestimates participation.

There are some interesting observations that we can make from this data (and the supporting data in the sources above):

• The number of UK part-time students is typically less than 12% of the total number of UK students each year, and the proportion remains roughly constant.
• Over the period from 1994/1995 to 2008/2009, the proportion of full-time overseas and EU students (compared to the total number of full-time students) studying for a first degree increased from 8% to 15%. This is a direct consequence of the reduction in per capita funding for UK students (see below), and is the main reason that UK universities survived the expansion of the 1980s and 1990s.
• The number of full-time UK students graduating with a first degree from a UK university increased by roughly 25% between 1997 and 2008. However, the proportion of graduating 21 year olds has stayed roughly constant at 30+/-1%

Of course, after I'd put together these figures, I then found that BIS (as DIUS) had published the data I'd wanted in a report (DIUS SFR02/2009) on a corner of the DCSF website. Not where I would have looked, and probably not where the report will be after the new lot finish obliterating all traces of the old lot. If you want to take a copy of the report (here) do it now before it disappears.

This report estimates participation differently; it takes enrolment rather than graduation (the Higher Education Initial Participation Rate), and does not make the simplifying assumptions about the ages of students that I do. Consequently, my figures systematically overestimate the population who could become students, and underestimate the population who are students (in part because I only look at FT students).

On the other hand, my intuitions about retention and drop-out are broadly correct; the drop-out rate remains static at roughly 8+/-1% over the period 1999/2000-2006/2007.

The report gives FT HEIPRs that vary as follows:

Year	FT HEIPR
1999/2000	34%
2000/2001	34%
2001/2002	35%
2002/2003	36%
2003/2004	35%
2004/2005	34%
2005/2006	37%
2006/2007	34%

Not a great deal of variation, I think you'll agree. The HEIPR for FT/PT combined - which is what New Labour wanted to rise to 50% - stayed in the 39-42% region in the same period. Hardly the increase that we're being lead to believe by our new masters, or that is being raised as a justification for cuts on certain right-of-centre on-line forums. The big increase in student numbers happened between 1980 and 1997, not under New Labour (various sources, including Gombrich and Greenaway and Haynes [mirror] - and you can just see the tail end of this expansion in the first table above).

The current debate on HE funding and the nigh-inevitability of cuts assumes that there are gross savings to be had. The problem with this is that the big expansion in the 1980s and 1990s was largely unfunded; student numbers went up and total funding stayed the same, or to put it a different way, per capita student funding went down. This post-1980 expansion was bankrolled by the increase in overseas students noted above. Greenaway and Haynes (p. F152) give a drop of 50% in real terms per capita funding during 1980-1999, while this briefing by Universities UK to the House of Lords (para 4 in the PDF) tells a similar story for 1989-2010, but then goes on to note that i) our spending on HE as a percentage of GDP is less than the OECD average (1.3% compared to an average of 1.5%) and ii) more than £1 billion had already (as of February 2010) been cut from spending on HE committed in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. The new government added an extra £200 million to that, and now we're being told to prepare for cuts of up to 25%.

If UK HE survives this, whatever is left will be unrecognisable.

Comments

[tlrmx.org (from livejournal.com)]

“If UK HE survives this, whatever is left will be unrecognisable.”

What happens if the government redirects funds to the OU? I'm assuming here that putting an 18 year old through the accelerated 3 year OU degree courses is both practical and cheaper than sending them to a conventional university, particularly for hands off subjects which don't attract many foreign students.

I see that other countries have open universities with literally millions of students.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

The OU wouldn't be cheaper on that model. Part time students get a (modest) premium in funding on a pro-rata basis - ie part time students are worth more per full-time equivalent (FTE).

It would be more efficient to run existing PT courses as FT. Some of the premium is to account for fixed per-head costs: you have to do a certain amount of admin per student per year, regardless of whether they're doing a FT year's worth of study that year or a twelfth of it, the library has to pay per enrolled student for access to electronic resources, etc.

But you'd be losing the main benefit of PT study which is that most students studying that way not only don't need a semi-subsidised loan for living expenses, but are in employment and actually substantially contributing to the Exchequer through income tax amd NI.

In actuality, the OU (and Birkbeck) were facing a funding cut in 2013 of something of the same order as Departments are being asked to spec out, as a result of the ELQ (Equivalent of Lower Qualification) funding cut. The detail is complex and still under some negotiation, but essentially from then the Govt won't pay for a student to study a degree if they already have an equivalent or higher qualification.A substantial proportion of PT students are like that. Even worse, they tend to be cheap-to-teach students: they tend to do pretty well and not need huge amounts of support, so the financial impact is potentially even larger.

On the other hand, Cameron chose to give an important speech at the OU, and said it had "a huge huge role to play" in dealing with hte current economic woes, so maybe the coalition has sonethig up its sleeve here. But maybe not - Brown gave two speeches at the OU and introduced the funding cut.

(I work for the OU. I should stress this is my personal view, not an official one.)

[tlrmx.org (from livejournal.com)]

It seems like you've answered a completely different question about converting full time students to part time and then used that as a springboard for an unrelated rant.

I will make an effort to make my question clearer:

How much does it cost the OU per (full time) student compared to at a conventional university. Does this cost scale the same for increased "class size"?

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Sorry - I was bashing out a reply on a mobile device while distracted, so I wasn't very clear. I was trying to answer your question, but I'll put my hands up to getting stuck in to a tangential rant about funding cuts. Apologies.

Taking your first question: The bottom line is that OU costs more per full-time equivalent (FTE) student than a conventional university.

I don't have the figure to hand, but from memory the Funding Council premium for part-time students is of the order of 25% more.

There's also the fees paid by students, which are different from tuition fees at conventional universities in many ways (including the fact that you can't get a loan for them and have to pay up front, but there's a more generous financial assistance scheme for low-income students). Again, I don't have the figures to hand, and it's hard to make a perfect comparison, but from memory they're about the same order of magnitude as fees at a conventional university.

And your second question: The cost would probably reduce for increased "class size", but not profoundly. We're already operating at scale (we have of the order of 150,000 undergraduates studying with us), so the cost per student isn't a long way off the marginal cost for extra students.

Unless, of course, there was a really huge expansion, and/or a substantial increase in average study density (i.e. how great a proportion of full time study each student is doing each year). We do have fixed costs per student on our books, as well as costs per module studied, so if each student is on average studying more modules in a given time, our total cost per FTE would go down.

This would happen if - hypothetically - the Government decided to get people to do OU degrees in three years instead of studying at conventional universities. Our costs would be considerably less for those students than they are now. My guess is they'd come down to a bit below those for a conventional university. Enough to make a difference to the number of students the UK system could have for a given cost, but not a huge one.

Fiscally, it would make sense to pay for more OU part-time study. One of the points I was trying to make above was that although the OU costs more per FTE to teach, the students are significantly more economically active, so the net cost to the taxpayer is considerably less than conventional education.

It's not a silver bullet though. For one thing, it's not at all clear that 18-year-olds would be able to juggle their first full-time job and part-time OU study. We do have increasing numbers of 18-21 year olds studying with us already, and their completion rates are worse than any other age segment.

I'll stop there because I'm drifting off your questions again - but I hope I've at least answered them this time! Let me know if not.

[tlrmx.org (from livejournal.com)]

“OU costs more per full-time equivalent (FTE) student”

Yes, you said this already. It's because the OU _currently_ has a huge number of part time students. Which is irrelevant. "I don't know" was an acceptable answer, the real world is more Math Olympiad (negative points for wrong answers) than GCSE multiple choice.

"Unless, of course, there was a really huge expansion"

So, the topic in hand is the case you don't consider. Brilliant.

But OK, it sounds like it wouldn't work because of the following dialog

Student: I've signed up full time
OU: Part time, yes
Student: No, full time
OU: You get the same degree, it just takes longer, part time
Student: No, full time. Three years.
OU: Part time, six years, yes
Student: ...

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

For the record, it is currently possible to do an OU degree in three years, and some students do. There are also other students who study with us at the equivalent of a full-time load for less than three years. They are a small proportion of the total, though.

The average time to get an OU degree works out longer than six years, because more students take a break in study, or study less than 1/6 of a degree a year.

[tlrmx.org (from livejournal.com)]

"For the record, it is currently possible to do an OU degree in three years"

I know that, that's sort of central to my thought, which is why it was frustrating to get FTE numbers back. I was beginning to wonder if _you_ knew that. "Full time" and "full time equivalent" are only "equivalent" under a bunch of assumptions that do not cleanly apply to the idea of adding tens of thousands of 18 year olds doing a degree in three years to the OU student population.

It is quite possible that nobody has figures for just the OU's full time students (I believe that would be those taking ~120 credits per year) but the FTE numbers are no substitute, leaving us with "I don't know". If you in fact do find numbers for just full time that would still be interesting.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that he was answering your question, in as much as the OU doesn't really have FT distance learners; the comparison with the equivalent PT is relevant.

As for the cost of an OU degree, look at http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/explained/expect-to-pay.shtml This only considers fees payable by the student, however.

In 2009-2010, the OU received £183m from HEFCE for teaching (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2009/mar/05/university-funding-research-england-table). This corresponds to roughly £1200 per student (assuming total enrolment of c. 150,000). By comparison, Southampton received £56m from HEFCE for about 17,000 students, or about £3300 per student. The cost to the taxpayer (excluding the costs of student loans) is less at the OU than at somewhere like Southampton.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Of course, to do a proper comparison you need to know how many FTEs the OU teaches. From our accounts we had 78,110 FTEs in the year to 31 July 2009, comprised of 251,639 actual students. Of course, that includes postgrads and our pre-degree level programme, so it'll be a bit misleading, but should be of the right order.

The headline figures for income are £233.7m from funding bodies and £141.6m from tuition fees and education contracts, giving a total of £375m. (Ignoring research, investment/endowment and other income - about £45m.) Taking away the modest surplus (£9.6m) gives £365.7m.

That works out at about £1500 per student, or £4700 per FTE.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the correction. Not that far off the per capita for traditional universities, then.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

You're welcome - and thanks again for all this, it's very useful to have solid numbers here.

Have realised I forgot to do the taxpayer-only cost, the £4700 includes tuition fees: the taxpayer pays £233.7m/78,110 = £3000 per FTE.

(Another caveat: tuition fees at the OU includes fees paid by employers, and the NHS and Social Services Departments are major customers, so some of the 'tuition fees' chunk comes out of the public purse.)

That works out less than your figure for Southampton, which isn't what I thought. It's entirely possible our mix of subjects is different, though, which skews the figures. My impression is that Southampton has above-average STEM enrollment (including a medical school) - we have no medical school and - I would guess - slightly below-average STEM coverage. Also if we have fewer postgrads.

I'll see if I can talk to some of my colleagues who do these sort of sums for a living and dig some stuff out. It's almost certainly in the published literature and/or on our FoI site but I don't have the time to go digging myself.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Millions? Really? Even the University of Phoenix only has 400,000ish students.

[tlrmx.org (from livejournal.com)]

Supposedly (consulting Wikipedia's list of universities by size) Allama Iqbal Open University in Pakistan has three million students enrolled.

I was a little surprised not to see China prominently on the list, having a single huge university providing distance learning material in Standard Mandarin would seem very "One China". But evidently it's not a priority for the present Chinese government.