Poor students’ ‘cognitive gain’ may play role in TEF

Ok then, when's this TEF coming in? The Budget says it will be in effect in 2017/18. That's ages away, surely. Well no. If the fees are to be varied by universities who have 'passed' the TEF, then its outcomes are going to have to be known pretty early in 2016/17. Remember the requirements of the CMA - how could we have a situation with students applying unable to tell what the fee would be? Data crunching takes a while - even in a big data world. You'd have to have the data in from 2015/16. That's next year. Whatever data they think they're going to use, it's going to have to already be in existence in 2015/16. Take a look at the length of time it takes to shift HESA data collection - that would take at least 2 years to get in place. So anything in the TEF has got to use data that we are already planning to collect in 2015/16. Even David Willett's cheerful testing notion - even if he really thinks we can assess the 'gain' in cognitive skills over a degree course, that data won't be available for 2017/18 - If you tested new students next year they'd still be on courses in 2017/18. (US comparisions are unhelpful - SATS & GRE lay a foundation for a more apptitude based testing regime because of the continued approach to general education in UG degrees). BIS must have a really cunning plan - they've let the Treasury use the TEF in the budget - so I really look forward to the Green paper that explains it...

"So anything in the TEF has got to use data that we are already planning to collect in 2015/16." My prediction is that one of the key 'output measures' will be based on the data on the income of graduates who studied under the variable (aka £9000) fees, whose salaries will be known in April 2016 when they start repaying the student loans. For example, this could be the percentage of graduates who earn in excess of the £21,000 threshold for commencing repaying the student loan. This has the advantage that the RAB charge for each university (and each programme within each university) can be calculated in advance.