Applicant experience is top of the agenda for FE HE admissions

Further and higher education must work more closely together to provide the best possible applicant experience, in a year of unprecedented demand for higher education. That was the conclusion of a gathering of employees from further education colleges and universities from the south central region, at a conference designed to address issues surrounding admissions processes for higher education courses in further education colleges.

Mary Curnock Cook, the new Chief Executive of UCAS was the first of two keynote speakers at ‘Professionalising Admission to Higher Education in Further Education’; she spoke about the very unusual context in which admissions professionals are currently working. With over 630,000 applicants to higher education and a cap on student numbers, the challenges and opportunities for admissions professionals are extraordinary.

Mary Curnock Cook said: “UCAS’ overall aim is to make sure the right choices are made for the right reasons and have the right outcomes. With cuts to funding for higher education having been announced, a review of fees underway, and the prospect of a new government part-way through the application cycle, this is an uncertain year in many ways.

”Nevertheless, there has been a 43.5% rise in applications for higher education courses at further education colleges, more than double the increase seen in the sector as a whole. This presents a real opportunity for FE colleges and the higher education institutions that validate their higher education courses.”   

The second keynote speaker, Janet Graham, Director of SPA (Supporting Professionalism in Admissions) said: “Working together in a meaningful and strategic way is now critically important for further and higher education. This conference brought together practitioners from the whole of the Progress South Central Lifelong Learning Network area, with national input from SPA and UCAS. This type of engagement and discussion has never before been focused on admissions, and we hope that the model may be rolled out to other Lifelong Learning Networks.”

Janet also raised a number of issues for higher and further education, saying: ”If higher education shrinks, will HEIs’ partnerships with FE colleges be reconsidered and even cease, and how will this affect the experiences of applicants? Strong partnerships are the way forward, and institutions need to ensure their relationships with their partners are robust and of benefit to all involved.”

In a poll of conference participants from FE colleges, the majority of respondents said that students in FE colleges were at least as well-informed as school students, but that they would benefit from more information about higher education and information that was more targeted to them. FE colleges also felt that they should either be involved in higher education institutions’ applicant strategies or be consulted about them. 

This interactive session was led by Dan Shaffer, Senior Project Officer at SPA, who also advised participants to focus effort on interaction between parts of the organisation involved in the applicant experience, from pre-applicant stage (widening participation, marketing and schools liaison), through admissions to student-facing services, such as teaching and learning – advice that has already been implemented at Buckinghamshire New University with the creation of a new Student Experience Directorate, which brings together all the student-facing activities for the first time.

‘Professionalising Admission to Higher Education in Further Education’ took place at Buckinghamshire New University’s Missenden Abbey Conference Centre on 2 March 2010. It was organised by Progress South Central, the Lifelong Learning Network for Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey, and delivered in partnership with Buckinghamshire New University, Oxford Brookes University, the University of Reading, and the University of Surrey. The conference was opened by Prof Ruth Farwell, Vice Chancellor of Buckinghamshire New University and Chair of GuildHE.