Higher Education: Student Numbers
Business, Innovation and Skills
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills with reference to the answer of 19 March 2012, Official Report, column 518W, on higher education: student numbers, for what reason he collects such data for institutions that are subject to the student numbers cap but not for those that can recruit without the constraints of a quota.
David Willetts (Minister of State (Universities and Science), Business, Innovation and Skills; Havant, Conservative)
Institutions in receipt of grant funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) are required to submit data to the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) as a condition of that funding. These arrangements have been in place since HESA was established in 1993. The condition to submit data to HESA is not placed on institutions not funded by HEFCE. It is one of the anomalies that our regulatory reforms, announced in the Higher Education White Paper “Students at the Heart of the System”, are intended to address.