Evaluating the impact of number controls, choice and competition : an analysis of the student profile and the student learning environment in the new higher education landscape

The context for this research is the introduction of several reforms designed to change the ways that higher education institutions operate. The government white paper Students at the heart of the system (BIS 2011) set out a new context for improving the student experience in English higher education based on consumer pressure on institutional behaviours, practices and, ultimately, systems. The following analysis of how institutions responded to student number controls (SNCs), choice and competition in relation to the student profile and the student learning environment draws on data from two sources, a national survey and a representative set of interviews with senior institutional managers. Together, data from these two sources provide the sector with the first comprehensive analysis of the strategic changes in approach and the rationales behind them. The research took place in a context of a volatile policy environment and the paper highlights the complex effects of two concurrent and linked processes: one, the ongoing effects of marketisation and how institutional decision-making processes were inflected by the daily realities of a system based on choice and competition; and two, the traceable effects of the specific 'core and margin' policy in operation after 2012-13. The analysis provides valuable insights into ways in which institutions may act after student number controls are removed altogether from 2015-16.