Opening up access to grants

I have a new piece on wonkhe responding to Hefce’s new model for quality assurance and how it prepares to open up teaching, capital and research grants to alternative providers.

In preparing the piece, I was struck by how that fact is obscured in Hefce’s document and how the connections with the recent Green Paper are left to the reader to work out. In particular, Hefce has dropped reference to a ‘publicly funded’ HE sector since it opened its consultation on quality assurance last year. One could read Hefce’s guidance and not realise that the gateway being discussed is a gateway to grant funding or that assurance about teaching quality was easing access to research and capital grants.

Decisions about ‘Hefce designation’ lie with Sajid Javid, secretary of state for Business, and there is no bar on for-profit organisations applying.