Live up to your promises or pay students back, universities told

UNIVERSITIES could be forced to give refunds to students “short-changed” on their courses under plans announced by Gavin Williamson today.

The Education Secretary wants universities to agree contracts with students which could set out the minimum hours of contact time that lecturers will be required to offer.

Other minimum standards could be added into the contracts, with universities forced to compensate students who lose out due to poor teaching.

Mr Williamson will write this week to the Office for Students to ask it to draw up proposals for how the new “student contracts” will work.

One source close to Mr Williamson has complained that consumers buying a £500 washing machine have more rights than students spending an average of £50,000 on a degree course.

Experts warned as long ago as 2013 that universities were failing to provide enough teaching, with the average undergraduate in the UK receiving just 14 hours a week in contact time.

Mr Williamson’s initiative comes on the weekend when hundreds of thousands of students are starting courses.

Writing for today’s Sunday Telegraph, he says he wants universities and colleges to live up to the promises of their marketing material.

“Universities promote themselves and their courses in prospectuses and online in the most glowing terms. This is fine unless what is promised falls short of the reality,” he writes.

“If you were spending tens of thousands of pounds on anything else … you’d rightly expect to have recourse. So should our young people at university.”

A source at the Department for Education said: “If you were buying a £500 washing machine you’d have more protection than you do currently when you’re spending 100 times that and spending three years doing a degree.

“That needs to change and taxpayers also need to know, as we make a conscious decision to support higher education, that courses are providing value for money and that students are working towards something that benefits Britain.”

Mr Williamson is also writing to the Office for Students to urge it to take action on universities who unfairly lock in students with unchallenging “conditional unconditional”’ offers before they have taken their A-levels. SOME people know from an early age that they want to go to university. It’s part of their plan for life, a given.

Our universities are among the best in the world. The quality and reputation we offer is one of the principal reasons people work so hard to get accepted on a degree course here.

Part of my job is to make sure this is protected and enhanced. When you are entrusted with that kind of responsibility you don’t want anyone to come back in 10 or 20 years saying it went south on your watch.

That’s why I simply can’t ignore some of the troubling things that people are saying about recruitment practices and students not getting their money’s worth from courses – particularly when they make such a big financial commitment.

Taxpayers fund universities to the same level as students, via financial support, student loan write-off, grants and more. I want to ensure that taxpayers get value for their investment in our country’s future too.

I am already taking on universities who use “conditional unconditional” offers and tomorrow I will also be writing to the Office for Students expressing my concern about how these