The white paper: some win, some are 'screwed'

'Places will be taken away and given to private providers'

Bahram Bekhradnia, director, Higher Education Policy Institute

I had thought that the 20,000 places a year being auctioned would increase only if the government continued to find itself over-budget. But clearly they will increase steadily as a matter of policy. What is going on is that these are the numbers that will be made available to private providers. Unless total student numbers are increased, then places are going to be taken away from public universities and given to private universities. I am in favour of private universities, but not at the expense of public.

Nevertheless, it is good that private universities will have to be subject to the same information and accountability requirements if they are to access public funds.

Students will benefit from the better information that universities are being required to provide.

However, mid-ranking Russell Group and 94 Group universities will come off worse, as will most public universities and some students.

Vulnerable institutions will be those unable to hold on to their A-grade students because of increased competition. There will be an unseemly scrap among Russell and 94 Group universities for these students, with increasingly generous inducements to students. These inducements may be worth much more than what they gain in terms of funding, but it will partly be driven by positioning. There will be losers among what are inaccurately called the "top" universities, some of which are fairly mediocre, but which attract top students because of historic reputations.

But all public universities will lose as they have numbers steadily removed from their core and they are forced either to bid for them cheaply or lose them to private universities.

And students will be losers as they will have to repay fees three times greater than at present.

'It's terribly unfair on the widening participation agenda'

Claire Callender, professor of higher education, Birkbeck and Institute of Education

The winners potentially are FE colleges. But there's a big question over the extent to which they can produce higher-quality undergraduate degrees for students. In the National Student Survey, one enormous difference between students at FE colleges and those at HE institutions is that they are far less content with things such as library facilities. Historically, higher education hasn't been the main business of FE colleges, so they aren't necessarily as well equipped as HE institutions.

Social mobility will be hit though, and students who don't understand that statistics on graduate salaries and employability can be misleading.

We have to remember that the white paper is not offering more student places; it is just re-allocating the existing places to certain types of HE institutions, and in the process it will polarise the HE sector. So some applicants still will not get a place at university, even if they are qualified. And these are most likely to be "non-traditional" students.

The white paper re-iterates the importance of the fair access agenda. But the new policy of reserved places for students with AAB grades at A-level undermines the policies used by universities to meet this agenda. Some universities offer lower A-level entry grades to bright students with potential who come from areas or schools with low higher educ ation participation. How will such students fare under this new regime?

The AAB policy also presupposes that entrants to universities come in with A-levels. In fact, the biggest growth in applications and enrolments recently has been among those with no Ucas points. It's terribly unfair on the widening participation agenda because those with qualifications not recognised for whatever reason by Ucas, or seriously bright people returning to university with professional or other experience, for example, won't get in under the AAB criteria.

It's fantastic that students are being given more information, but it is well recognised that data on employment six months after graduation is very unreliable. It takes time for graduates to get into jobs that will become their long-term careers. For example, the average salaries for graduates after six months are nearly identical at two particular universities in London – one a post-92, the other a pre-92 university. Both have completely different academic reputations, but salaries are similar because the post-92 university has a huge number of part-time students and older students who already have jobs. How is a young person going to interpret the difference in salaries unless they understand what contributes to different levels of pay on graduation? Also, there is tremendous inequality in terms of access to information between students from private and more clued-up schools, and others.

'Those who are complacent will lose out'

Carl Lygo, chief executive, BPP Holdings and principal of BPP University College of Professional Studies

Those who believe in stronger consumer rights are the winners from this white paper. There is nothing in the paper that's new, but the consumer protection angle is stronger than I thought it would be, which is welcome.

I'm pretty sure the "flexible margin" of places at universities charging an average fee of £7,500 or less will go to existing providers. I'm not entirely sure that private providers will be sucking up those numbers, and I'm certainly not planning the future of BPP around competition for these 20,000 places. If Offa is taking account of discounts in the fees that average students are going to pay, there will be a lot of universities charging close to £7,500 and a lot that can compete.

Some universities are going to expand – I don't buy this idea that so-called good universities won't want to increase in size. That's not what I've heard.

But those who are complacent, inflexible and don't see the need to change won't fare well at all.

If there is a contest for 85,000 places each year, there are going to be winners and losers. Some are going to expand and some contract, and it will depend how well they can cope with contraction. If they have an inflexible cost base and if they are complacent, they will lose out.

My overall verdict is that four out of five for a masterful piece of political manoeuvring, because there is nothing we didn't know beforehand and all of the contentious issues have been sent out for further consultation.

"There's going to be more choice for students'

Michele Sutton, principal and chief executive, Bradford College

Students, further education colleges and private providers all stand to gain from the white paper.

The biggest winners are students, because there's going to be more choice, potentially better quality of provision and more student input.

There will be opportunities for us, too, and for private providers.

Losers: institutions charging more than £7,500, but making low grade offers.

I would give the paper four out of five, but the devil is in the detail.

'It makes admissions much more complex'

Matthew Andrews, academic registrar, Oxford Brookes University and chair of Admissions Practitioner Group

Some arts and humanities courses may benefit from the measures in the paper. It potentially allows universities to increase recruitment to arts and humanities subjects on a funded basis. Those areas haven't been funded through previous allocations of additional student numbers, which have focused on science and employer-funded courses. But we aren't talking large numbers.

But clarity will be one of the losers. It makes admissions much more complex, because it will need to be placed in the context of what the different student number controls are going to be. It also looks muddled. Universities are being told they can have as many AAB students as they want, but we know that more of those students are not going to be from poorer backgrounds, so the more we take, the worse we will do on widening participation.

I think an opportunity has been lost, however, to implement real reforms. It is more about continuing previous activities, which might be a response to the reaction over increased tuition fees. That was the big change.

'Those taking widening participation students are screwed'

Roger Brown, co-director for the Centre of Higher Education Research Development at Liverpool Hope University

The Russell Group have got everything they wanted, if you look at their submission to the Browne report. They are the very clear beneficiaries. Nine thousand pounds is about the highest amount anywhere outside America that anyone spends on HE, and they are not being held to the widening participation benchmarks given to them by Hefce [the Higher Education Funding Council for England]. They are going to be very well off, and may even benefit from the crackpot idea that certain institutions will have light-touch inspection based on past track record.

Those institutions that take the most students from non-traditional backgrounds in a bid to widen access will be the losers here.

The government wants to screw down the unit of resource for teaching and that will mean the majority of institutions taking widening participation students are going to find themselves screwed, too. The whole thing is an unconvincing mixture of ideology and pragmatism. These institutions are mostly in London or in conurbations of the north-west or north-east, and those are areas suffering anyway. Now they are going to find themselves very heavily squeezed.

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