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MarginCore – the binary divide

Margin places have been allocated to institutions based on on “criteria of quality, demand and cost – only those institutions with average tuition fees in 2012-13 of £7,500 or less (net of fee waivers) were eligible to bid. HEFCE received bids from 203 institutions for 36,000 places. Final allocations were made on a pro rata basis” (the “pro-rata” being that everyone’s allocation was reduced to meet the total fit below the 20,000 places HEFCE could allocate.)
This article is more than 12 years old

David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe

Very few words from me – just one big picture. This is the allocation of “margin” student places to HEIs plotted against institutional QR (quality-linked research) funding.

 

 

Margin places have been allocated to institutions based on on “criteria of quality, demand and cost – only those institutions with average tuition fees in 2012-13 of £7,500 or less (net of fee waivers) were eligible to bid. HEFCE received bids from 203 institutions for 36,000 places. Final allocations were made on a pro rata basis” (the “pro-rata” being that everyone’s allocation was reduced to meet the total fit below the 20,000 places HEFCE could allocate.)

I’d expected a positive correlation for widening participation funding, hypothesising that institutions with a focus on WP would be good at delivering efficient, effective and popular HE courses. But – of course – delivering HE to non-traditional learners is expensive, so this would play against such institutions having fees of £7,500 or less – and there’s no sense having extra places that mean you are running a course at more of a loss.

But just look at the graph! I’ve never seen a clearer example of a teaching/research binary divide. I’d be interested to come back to this data when we get the AAB numbers.

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