What does the End of Cycle data say about franchising?

What’s the UCAS main scheme? It’s fairly straightforward: if you apply via UCAS in the usual way, with your (up to) five courses before the 30 June application deadline you are in the main scheme.

If you apply to UCAS after 30 June (and go straight into clearing) you are not in the main scheme. Likewise, if you apply directly to the provider in question, you are not in the main scheme. What it isn’t is “main scheme clearing”: as the name implies, this is people who applied in the normal way, didn’t get a place, and then got somewhere after results day.

It’s a group of placed applicants (for fairly obvious reasons we don’t get offers or application data) that tend to be mature, and tend to be quite specific in the kinds of subjects they take and student experiences they expect. And it is a surprisingly large group: about 22,000 arrived via direct entry to clearing, and 65,000 via a record of prior acceptance (a direct application to a provider, which for various historical reasons is not a complete record of all non-UCAS undergraduate admissions but will suffice for these purposes).

Business and management (32,905) dominates as a subject, with subjects allied to medicine (11,115 – primarily nursing or healthcare) a distant second. Students tend not to apply with level 3 qualifications.

There are four providers that absolutely dominate this corner of the market: Canterbury Christ Church University, Oxford Brookes University, Bath Spa University, and the University of Wolverhampton. The first two are seeing numbers decline over last year (substantially for CCCU), while the latter two are growing.

[Full screen]

By this point I’m sure pretty much everyone is yelling “franchise” at the screen. Within UCAS data, if a college delivers a course on behalf of a university – and that course is featured in the UCAS catalogue – the numbers show up attached to the university in question.

• Wolverhampton has partnerships with a range of FE colleges, a local NHS trust, and private providers like the London College of Business Studies and the UK Management College.
• Bath Spa works with the Elizabeth School of London, Fairfield School of Business, alongside the Global Banking School – and various FE and specialist arts colleges.
• Oxford Brookes also has a partnership with the Global Banking School and various FE colleges.
• Canterbury Christ Church works with the Global Banking School, Elizabeth School of London, the London School of Commerce, the UK Management College, and ABDO College (a specialist optometry provider) again alongside a number of FE providers.

The policy headwind is very much away from franchise and partnership arrangements outside of the more traditional links to further education colleges and specialist providers. Large providers without their own degree awarding powers will be required to register with the Office for Students, the people who award the degrees will have additional regulatory and reporting requirements placed on them, and such provision will no longer be eligible for OfS funding.

Not all franchising activity is on UCAS, of course, and we cannot readily filter out the kinds of local partnerships (FE colleges, NHS trusts, school centred initial teacher training) that are currently finding political favour. But charts like this will be a very interesting early warning around the way universities are reacting to the increasingly strong signals that will redefine the non-traditional student experience.