University backs Pearson degree

4 July 2011 Last updated at 15:00 GMT Parts of the degree could be studied online, others in a local college Publishing giant Pearson has announced a partnership with Royal Holloway university that will allow it to enter the degree market.

The university is to validate a degree in business, developed by Pearson, which says it eventually wants its own degree-awarding powers.

A White Paper last week outlined government plans to allow the expansion of private degree providers.

But the lecturers' union warned of a possible focus on profitable courses.

Pearson said the degree would be available from September 2012.

It said it was in talks with further education colleges, which would teach the course.

Pearson already provides vocational courses such as BTECs and HNDs, and owns the exam board Edexcel, but it does not have degree-awarding powers.

It is to design and develop the new degree, while Royal Holloway would validate and quality-assure the qualification.

Flexibility

Although some companies, including the fast-food chain McDonalds, already offer degrees in conjunction with universities, Pearson would be the first that already has the power to award other qualifications.

President of Pearson UK, Rod Bristow, said the new degrees would create more flexibility for students.

"A Pearson degree could allow students to go somewhere near where you live for some of your tuition, do some of it online and still potentially work," he said.

He has said the company intends eventually to seek degree-awarding powers.

Currently only five privately-funded organisations in the UK, one of which is for-profit, have such powers.

But in its White Paper published last Tuesday, the government said it would "simplify" the process for obtaining degree-awarding powers, in order to "make it easier for new providers to enter the sector".

Pearson has not announced fees for the new degrees, and it is not clear whether prices would be set by the company or by the colleges that are to teach the degrees.

But the company said the aim was to provide good value, and to offer degrees at a lower cost than traditional universities.

Mr Bristow also said the company was exploring whether it would be possible to offer degrees outside the system of state-subsidised tuition fee loans.

"One of the unanswered questions is whether a model can be created that doesn't require a government-backed loan," he said.

Prof Rob Kemp, Deputy Principal of Royal Holloway, said: "Our founders, in opening colleges for women in the 19th Century, were the first to address the challenge of widening access and we are delighted to continue this tradition today by supporting Pearson in this initiative."

Last year Pearson said it intended to offer degree courses in business, engineering, IT and health and social care at "very competitive prices".

'Narrow focus'

A large proportion of universities have set their tuition fees at the maximum level of ?9,000 per year.

But in last week's White Paper, the government said it wanted to hold back 20,000 places to be allocated to institutions charging ?7,500 or less.

The document said the government wanted to make it possible for new teaching institutions to be set up to teach external degrees - and for organisations to award degrees that they do not teach themselves.

The issues will be included in a consultation be carried out between August and October on the regulation of universities.

The University and College Union has warned that an increase in profit-making providers in the higher education sector might lead to a drop in standards.

Its general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: "One of the main concerns around an increase in private provision is the narrow focus on courses likely to earn them the most money.

"Private companies are looking to make the best returns they can and we fear that approach will lead to an incremental narrowing of the curriculum and some students doing inappropriate courses at a greater cost."

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'Rate schools' on degree places

8 July 2011 Last updated at 12:09 GMT By Hannah Richardson BBC News education reporter Eyes on the prize: schools should focus on university entrance, says Ucas chief Schools should be rated on the number of pupils they get into universities, the head of the university admissions says.

Ucas chief Mary Curnock Cook says league tables have led schools to "unduly" focus on upping GCSE results.

She argues the focus should now switch to schools' higher education success to boost the number of poor pupils in universities.

The government plans to publish data on the destination of schools leavers.

Ucas chief executive Mrs Curnock Cook said: "Schools for many years have been completely focused on getting their percentage of five good GCSEs up.

"Until the government measures and tracks the destination of school leavers into higher education I don't think it will change. I think it is almost essential.

"Higher education has become mass education and more people enter higher education today than took O-levels in the early 1980s.

"The measure of performance in schools needs to shift up in the way that achievement has."

'Ambitions'

The comments come as a report for the education charity, the Sutton Trust, suggests five schools - including four top independent schools - get more pupils into Oxford and Cambridge than another 2,000 schools put together.

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Parents need as much data so they can make genuinely informed choices about which school is right for their child. ”

End Quote Department for Education Ms Curnock Cook also suggested that some schools were encouraging pupils into taking GCSE-equivalents, which will help pupils get through the five good GCSEs threshold, but which could hold them back in their university ambitions.

She said: "Some of these more applied-style qualifications are supposed to be equivalent to four to five GCSEs.

"One of the problems is that young people are advised at age 13 parents' evenings to take OCRs or BTecs, not that I have anything against these qualifications, but it is then much harder for them to transfer into the GCE (A-level) curriculum.

"Young people need to understand that more broadly based academic subjects won't close the door to anything.

"If you have a clutch of 3.5 A-levels - it gives you a broad spread of courses you can apply for," she added.

'Informed choices'

Some 73% of students who are accepted on to degree courses do so with A-levels. This rises to 90% for Russell Group universities.

A Department for Education spokesman said: "We live in an age when people expect to have access to much more information about every area of their lives, and schools should be no different.

"Parents need as much data so they can make genuinely informed choices about which school is right for their child.

"We are going to be publishing far more information about how schools do - including from next year, the proportion of students getting into Higher Education as well as into the top universities.

"This will help up standards; reduces perverse incentives to offer qualifications which universities and employers do not value; and make schools more accountable for their performance."

This week, Ucas reported a small increase of 1.4% on applications for university courses starting in 2011 compared to this time last year.

But this slight rise comes against the backdrop of a 3% dip in the number of 18-year-olds in the UK population compared to last year and a significant increase in the number of higher level apprenticeships being taken.

Some 566,000 candidates based in the UK have applied to universities so far this year. Last year some 432,524 applicants were accepted on to courses.

And there has been a significant drop, 36.7% or 17,447, in the number of applicants planning to defer their course for a year. Deferring would mean they would be paying higher tuition fees.

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