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University access: Dumbing up?

20 February 2012 - John Springford

Some are unhappy about the prospect of OFFA, the equal access body for higher education, making universities accept more state school students. Why? Because they argue universities will be made to take poorer quality students. So this will lead to ‘levelling down’, with more equal intakes but poorer overall outcomes.

Levelling down would indeed be a concern. But their fears are unfounded, as we can see from the chart below. It shows the proportion of university students who got a 2:1 or first by the grades they got at A-Level. State educated pupils do a lot better given their A-level result – the gap in the proportion getting good degrees is between 3 and 10%, depending on what A-levels the students achieved.

So OFFA can make top universities take many more state school students without damaging performance. In fact it might improve it. Even if a university still mandated that successful applicants had to have, say, three A’s at A-level, it could take a greater proportion of state school students and achieve better results.

Lower down the university rankings, even bigger gains could be made. If a university took all its private school applicants at BCC, and all its state school students at CCD, it would achieve the same results on average.

Source: Higher Education Funding Council for England, ‘Schooling effects on higher education achievement’, July 2003.

The data underlying this chart may exaggerate the gap between state and private school students’ performance at degree level. State school students may disproportionately take easier degrees than private school students. But it seems unlikely that this bias is so large that it drowns out all of the difference.

So OFFA should get universities to take more state school students. But two questions spring immediately to mind. Why don’t universities favour the state educated already, if they tend to do better? And why do state school kids do better?

Universities find it difficult to appraise quality on admission – predicted A-level grades loom large. Academics have less and less time to run a thorough application process. The more resources the application process uses, the less cash they have for other priorities. The Research Assessment Exercise encourages them to focus on research, rather than undergraduate administration. And they don’t suffer any financial penalty if their degree outcomes are poor – although they do suffer reputational damage. For this reason it is rational for them to focus on A-levels.

But why don’t privately educated children do better? Private schools are notoriously good at getting children into university. Exam results are better on average. They offer interview practice and more help with applications. But once at university, this help disappears, so private school students revert to their inherent ability. The gap that opened up between state and privately educated students in secondary education closes at university.

It is rational for universities to choose on this basis, given that they have limited information. But this suggests OFFA might be doing them a favour by making them choose more state-educated applicants.

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