recruitment patterns and the geography of opportunity
The Office for Students published its latest financial sustainability update last month, and buried within the headline figures about sector-wide deficits lies a pattern that warrants closer examination. The OfS categorises providers into typology groups for analytical purposes, and the divergence between them is striking. Larger research-intensive providers saw UK undergraduate recruitment rise by 9.9 per cent, far exceeding their forecast of a 1.7 per cent decline. Meanwhile, larger teaching-intensive providers saw acceptances fall by 1.2 per cent despite forecasting 4.7 per cent growth. Smaller providers fell by 2.1 per cent against a forecast of 2 per cent growth. Specialist providers declined by 7.2 per cent against forecasts of 20.7 per cent growth.
The OfS itself describes this as “a growing polarisation in recruitment outcomes, with larger research-intensive providers capturing a greater share of UK undergraduate demand, while other groups, particularly smaller and specialist providers, face more challenging conditions.” It is worth noting, as the regulator does, that this surge in UK undergraduate recruitment at research-intensive providers may partly reflect mitigation strategy: these institutions experienced a 7 per cent decrease in postgraduate international student recruitment, driven substantially by an 11.6 per cent reduction in students from China. Domestic undergraduate growth may have offset some of that loss.
This is interesting in its own right as sector dynamics. But it intersects uncomfortably with a separate body of evidence about geographic inequality in higher education access.
Research published earlier this year by the Ruskin Institute for Social Equity (RISE) found that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are five times less likely to progress to higher education in the local authority areas with the lowest participation rates than in those with the highest. The regional disparities are stark: in inner London, over half of pupils eligible for free school meals progress to higher education; in the South West, fewer than one in five do so. Coastal areas show an 11 percentage point gap compared with inland areas. The participation gap between predominantly urban and predominantly rural areas has widened rather than narrowed over the past decade.
Professor Graeme Atherton, head of RISE, argues that the pendulum of widening participation policy has swung too far toward what individual institutions do, and away from place-based collaborative approaches. His research notes that in 2022-23, six of the ten areas with the lowest higher education participation did not have a university campus within them.
The question this raises and I frame it as a question rather than an assertion, is whether there is a relationship between the types of providers experiencing recruitment difficulties and the communities they serve. We know from HESA data that the proportion of students drawn from local regions varies substantially by institution type. Times Higher Education reported earlier this year that the English university with the highest proportion of local students was the University of Wolverhampton (85 per cent from the West Midlands), followed by the University of Bradford (82 per cent from Yorkshire and the Humber). Russell Group institutions averaged 31 per cent local students, down from 34 per cent the previous year. A Scottish analysis found that almost 40 per cent of students from the most deprived areas attended just two institutions: Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of the West of Scotland.
This does not prove that the providers now struggling with recruitment are precisely those serving cold spot communities. That would require more granular analysis than I have undertaken. But it suggests a hypothesis worth examining: that the institutions with the strongest local and regional recruitment patterns, those most likely to draw students who might not otherwise travel far for higher education, may overlap substantially with those now facing the sharpest pressures.
The Post-16 Education and Skills white paper commits the government to “develop options to address cold spots in under-served regions.” It promises reformed Access and Participation Plan regulation, moving toward a risk-based approach with greater accountability for providers lagging behind on inequality measures. These are reasonable policy intentions. The sector already invests approximately £1 billion annually on widening participation activity.
Yet there is a tension here that policy does not yet appear to have resolved. If the providers most likely to be serving cold spot communities are also those most likely to be facing deficits, missed recruitment targets, and institutional anxiety, what happens to their capacity for the sustained, long-term widening participation work that evidence suggests is most effective?
From my own work on Access and Participation Plans, I know what effective widening participation requires: sustained investment in school and college partnerships, long-term relationship-building with communities unfamiliar with higher education, dedicated staffing for outreach and student support, and institutional patience to see returns measured in years rather than recruitment cycles. These are precisely the activities that come under pressure when budgets tighten. Outreach teams shrink. Partnership work becomes harder to sustain. The slow, careful work of building progression routes loses ground to more urgent financial imperatives.
The risk-based approach to APP regulation may compound this. Suppose regulatory scrutiny focuses on providers with the weakest performance on access measures. In that case, it may inadvertently add pressure to institutions already struggling, whilst research-intensive universities successfully recruiting from an expanding pool of applicants face lighter-touch oversight. The logic is understandable. I think the consequences should be considered.
None of this suggests that research-intensive universities are doing anything wrong. They are responding to market signals and student choices in ways that make institutional sense. The OfS analysis indicates they may have increased domestic recruitment partly to offset international losses – a rational response to financial pressure. The question is whether the cumulative effect of individual rational decisions produces a system-level outcome at odds with stated policy objectives.
I am cautious about prescriptions here. The relationship between provider type, geographic service area and widening participation outcomes is genuinely complicated. But several questions seem worth asking.
What do we actually know about which providers serve which communities? The data exists in various forms, but it is rarely assembled in ways that illuminate the geographic distribution of opportunity. If recruitment patterns shift toward research-intensive providers, what happens to local progression routes in areas without such institutions nearby?
What would genuinely place-based approaches to widening participation require? Professor Atherton argues that collaboration alone will not produce additional provision in rural and coastal areas, or the funding to support it. If that assessment is correct, what would a more structural response look like?
And perhaps most fundamentally: is the current bifurcation a temporary market adjustment or the beginning of a more permanent stratification? The OfS notes that the growth seen this year “may not continue in subsequent years” and that “volatility” remains a feature of the recruitment environment. But if larger research-intensive providers have demonstrated they can grow domestic recruitment when they choose to and if student choices increasingly favour these institutions, the competitive dynamics may have shifted in ways that are difficult to reverse.
These are not comfortable questions and they do not have easy answers. But as governing bodies and senior leadership teams consider institutional positioning in an increasingly divergent sector, they may be questions worth asking; not just about recruitment strategy, but about their institution’s role in the broader ecosystem of educational opportunity. The tide is going out. It matters where it leaves who stranded.