Providers must submit to regulation – and the OfS to proportionality

Big problem is the issue of outcomes. Using jobs following graduation is a very limited & blinked approach. Here ‘customer’ satisfaction is important. Also the job outcome measure is taken over too short a period after graduation, it needs to be much longer term if it is going to be meaningful at all.

"......sweep the OfS away and give the job to Ofsted. And that would make no one happy." While Ofsted has its own caseload of critics, Ofsted for Universities would help Universities offering Apprenticeship degrees less bureaucracy. A merger / closer arrangement with the Apprenticeship model would also help. Perhaps, now that the University sector is so diverse, a different structure would be more appropriate. One where the institutions involved primarily with teaching and learning of skills up to level 6 were in one sector and those with more of a focus on education / research were in the other.

There is a much more pernicious problem: grade schrinkflation. Grades stay in bounds, but expectations for the grades are reduced. Unfortunately leaguetables, monitoring of failures and downwards delegation of problems lead to academics giving in inch by inch, just to avoid being pushed.