Provost's Update No. 8 (January 2018)

2018 Applications

The UCAS deadline is getting closer and the current position on applications for 2018 entry is as follows

(a) Applications

(b) Competitor Group

Our competitor group (ie those Universities with whom we share the largest number of applications is changing as we can see below)

Student Recruitment Strategy Group has been reviewing feedback from open day visitors. This feedback will support the central team as they look to enhance and develop the open day offer. In addition, they have been able to gather specific feedback for individual Departments and this will shortly be shared with you.

You might also wish to be aware that the University is developing a new digital platform to engage offer holders and to support conversion activity. This platform will support the provision of a range of different forms of content, including the work of our student bloggers. It is not a platform to support University level messaging but rather an opportunity for peer engagement – by students and for students. It is hoped that this will be available early in the new year.

OfS Consultation

The University will shortly be submitting its response to a series of consultations on the regulatory framework for the Office for Students (which will be formally established in January of 2018). HEFCE will work alongside OfS until April when HEFCE will be formally disestablished. The consultation document is lengthy and deals with a number of important issues including:

• Proposed requirements for initial registration of a high education provider (including governance, quality and standards; financial sustainability; widening participation; CMA compliance, transparency and information provision).
• A proposed change in approach to oversight of teaching and learning, setting out the expectation that continuous improvement will no longer be monitored through review processes, but instead will be achieved through competition.
• The proposal to monitor providers through indicators, reportable events and other intelligence such as complaints as well as randomly sampling a small proportion of providers to check they are still meeting the conditions of registration.
• The OfS proposes to engage students through a student panel and a student representative on the Board. However, the student panel is likened to a consumer advisory panel rather than engaging students as collaborators!

A new risk-based approach to allowing new providers to enter the market is being proposed which will make it easier to become a provider and is intended to reduce burden where risks are deemed to be low. Accelerated degrees will also be promoted.

HESA benchmarking for international recruitment

Student Recruitment Strategy Group has been looking at international recruitment targets and benchmarking our position against others in the Russell Group. A copy of the data is attached and you might find this helpful as we move into the process of setting future intake targets. It does suggest that there are areas where we might have scope to expand our international recruitment in the medium term.

Financial statements

For 2016-17, the University recorded a surplus for the year of £41.5m (7% of income). Whilst this result was lower than the previous year’s surplus of £54.2m it is a positive outcome and ahead of budget. This surplus hasenabled additional investment to be made during the University’s 2017 planning (particularly in ARC) round in priority activities, such as supporting work to enhance the quality of the University's teaching and learning provision, increased scholarships, bursaries and awards, additional welfare and mental health support and investment to further strengthen our research quality.

The cash generated from our surpluses provides much of our available funding for investment in buildings and infrastructure, such as the Mathematical Sciences Building and the new Sports Hub which are both currently under construction and the recently-approved plans for a new Faculty of Arts Building.

For the current financial year, the first quarter results suggest that we are slightly behind budget; Tuition fee income is slightly ahead of budget, research income slightly behind budget and costs are forecast to be over budget – most notably in the non-pay area.

ARC Autumn Review

The ARC Autumn Review took place on December 13^th and we’ll shortly share feedback with you. As we’ve moved to a system in which every department has the same type of planning meeting, there was no need for us to undertake any categorisation. We did discuss progress on the revised approach to budgeting and planning and some work that has been done to model target margin/contribution. I hope to be able to share an update on this early in the new year.

Adam Waddingham : 07 Jan 2018 23:01 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem