According to reports from QS World University Rankings, British universities are slipping down in the world league table and some experts are blaming this decline on the pressure for institutions to admit more disadvantaged students into their classes.
Cambridge University for example, which was for many years ranked the best in the world, has slipped down to fifth place and fallen behind American Universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Standford University and Harvard.
51 of the UK’s 76 institutions have dropped in rank since last year and whilst there are many variables that could have contributed to this, Professor Alan Smithers, who is head of the centre for education and employment at the University of Buckingham, has said that this was in part due to the fact that ‘universities are no longer free to take their own decisions and recruit the most talented students which would ensure top positions in league tables’.
He also added that many institutions are now made to comply with new requirements ‘in terms of the ethnic mix, the levels of income of the students and whether they come from low-income areas’.
Smithers then made a very strange analogy and said that ‘if the premier league made all sorts of requirements about recruiting left footed and right footed players, the teams wouldn’t be quite as successful’.
Under this current fee system, any English universities that want to charge tuition fees of £6,000 or more must have an access agreement that has been approved by OFFA. This agreement is intended to outline what a university proposes to do to in order to recruit students who may not be able to study for a degree, due to financial or socioeconomic reasons, or may not have planned on attending university.
However, Smithers is claiming here is that universities should solely focus on admitting students that have been identified as particularly gifted, and whilst this of course should be a primary consideration when admitting students, it would be ignorant to ignore the multitude of factors that can determine whether a student is gifted or if they’ve even had the opportunity to be identified as gifted.
For example, an individual’s access to world quality teaching materials and the educational environment in which they have grown up with can all be factors that influence whether or not they are identified as ‘gifted’.
Les Ebdon, director of OFFA, has refuted Smithers claim and said that arguments such as this ‘just don’t hold water’, and further criticised the Russell Group for suggesting that there is a limit to the number of disadvantaged students that they can recruit.
And secondly, it ignores other very real reasons for the slip in British university rankings - low funding and a strain on resources.
This idea is reinforced by from Ben Sowter, head of research at QS, who suggest that these league table results are largely due to low funding and how continued strain on university resources impact upon an institution's ability to deliver world class teaching. He added, ‘of greater significance than Brexit is the simple and unavoidable truth that these rankings are a relative exercise, and the rest of the world is becoming increasingly competitive’
In contrast to a lot of international universities which are increasing their levels of funding, the UK is seeing falling levels of research funding and fewer numbers of highly qualified staff being employed. Jack Moran, a ranking auditor for QS, has said ‘put simply, this year’s results indicate that the UK’s universities are becoming less competitive as research-driven institutions’.
Further comments from Tim Bradshaw, the Russell Group’s acting director, state that ‘for a number of years, funding for teaching has been squeezed. The position is particularly acute in engineering and some of the sciences, where the need for specialist facilities, equipment and technical support adds to the cost of teaching'.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.