Alarm at plan to rank universities by graduate earnings

Worried academics warn that government plans to introduce Ofsted-style rankings for universities, with courses that produce lower salaries labelled as failing, would punish institutions outside London and threaten arts and humanities courses, writes Anna Fazackerley for The Guardian.

In November the Conservative manifesto set off alarm bells in universities by promising to tackle “low-quality courses”. Now senior academics close to Westminster say the government is pressing on with this in a plan that could replicate the four Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) categories used for schools, flagging up university courses the government considers inadequate.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank, says the government is right to question whether courses are all of a good standard – but says earnings are likely to feature “more than they should” in assessing quality. “When Ofsted goes into a school it judges whether it is a good or bad school based on what is happening there,” he says. “It doesn’t say ‘we think this is a bad school because kids who have been here in the past have got bad jobs’. That is how universities will be judged.”
Full report on The Guardian UK site