Website of the UK government

University and higher education

Key measures of the Higher Ambitions strategy include:

• encouraging more competition between universities, giving greater priority to programmes that meet the need for high-level skills
• getting business to fund and design programmes and sponsor students and work placements
• creating more part-time, work-based and foundation degrees to make it easier for adults to go to universities, with routes from apprenticeships through to foundation degrees and other vocational programmes
• encouraging universities to consider more data in their admissions systems
• ensuring universities set out clearly what students can expect from the courses offered
• concentrating research funding where needed to maintain world-class research
• encouraging collaboration between universities on world-class research, especially in high-cost science

Wider study opportunities

Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, said: "The challenge for the next decade is to offer a wider range of new study opportunities - part-time, work-based, foundation degrees and studying whilst at home - to a greater range of people.

"All students must continue to enter higher education on their merit. But I believe this means taking account of a student's academic attainment, their aptitude and their potential. Many universities are already developing their use of contextual data in admissions and we hope that all universities will look at their examples and consider incorporating such data in their admissions processes."

Further information

Information on Higher Ambitions can be found online on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website.

• Higher Ambitions - the future of universities Opens new window