Universities in England that provide courses with low employment prospects and high student dropout rates will face stronger regulatory oversight under plans announced by Rishi Sunak on Monday.
The government will direct the Office for Students, England’s higher education regulator, to do more to limit the number of students that universities can admit to specific courses.
Gillian Keegan, the prime minister’s education secretary, will announce a crackdown on “rip-off degree courses” that leave graduates with low pay and hefty debts.
According to OFS data, about 30% of students do not proceed into highly skilled professions or additional study 15 months after graduating.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, also estimates one in five graduates would be better off financially if they had not gone to university.
Sunak said: “Too many young people are being sold a false dream and end up doing a poor-quality course at the taxpayers’ expense that doesn’t offer the prospect of a decent job at the end of it.”
The OFS announced last year it would investigate and potentially fine universities offering courses where fewer than 60 per cent of students achieve “positive outcomes” such as professional work or future study within 15 months of graduating.
It also said it could fine universities where fewer than 80 per cent of students make it into the second year of study or under 75 per cent complete their qualification.
Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK which represents more than 140 universities, said the OFS had found that only between 1 and 3 per cent of university courses were failing to meet the regulator’s quality criteria.
She added: “We should have a system that identifies courses that are falling below expectations, but it needs to be sophisticated. “What the government is announcing is already in the regulatory framework and this is trying to spin something that is already there as an appropriate backstop.”
According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the UK has 2.8 million students enrolled in around 30,000 courses. Sunak will announce that the maximum fee that universities can charge for classroom-based foundation year programmes would be reduced from £9,250 to £5,760.
Foundation year courses typically prepare students for high-level degrees such as medicine or veterinary sciences.
The government, on the other hand, argues that too many young people are being urged to take needless foundation courses in disciplines such as business.