Improve the quality, accuracy, consistency and presentation of the UG and PG degree finders to comply with legislation and sector-wide guidelines in order to manage significant associated risks.
CAM needs to provide the necessary platforms to deliver accurate and consistent information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in a transparent way.
Dependant on outcomes of legislation/guidelines this may include one or more of:
Improving integration with/exposure of other data sources
Increasing the use of degree finder golden copy across systems and creating opportunities to exploit this content, eg:
Improving integration with internal systems (eg DRPS, PATH, Scholarships, fees databases) to improve the transparency of available information, for example additional course costs and funding options by programme.
Improving administration systems
Developing services to support this activity by streamlining the publishing process for online materials, reducing duplication of effort across the University (Student Systems, Student Funding, CAM, SRA, Schools), increasing efficiency, accuracy, consistency and breadth of information. For example, this might include:
Improving administration systems will also provide opportunities to more easily enhance our content provision. See CAM proposal: Enhancements to UG & PG Degree Finders.
If this project is not undertaken there are a number of risks the University must accept:
Recruitment & Admissions Strategy Group (Chaired by the Senior Vice Principal) requires that CAM provides the necessary platforms to deliver accurate and consistent information in a transparent way to ensure compliance with Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) guidelines on consumer protection.
The CMA review into Consumer Protection in Higher Education is ongoing October 2015. We will need to respond in 2016/17.
We will also have to respond to changes (as yet unknown) associated with:
We are already seeing high profile commentary in the press about other institutions who are failing to meet the CMA guidelines, e.g. Which? reports reviewing the first round of CMA. It’s possible to identify where we could have similar issues, and these would need to be resolved.
We expect compliance issues to continue to surface across the sector in the next few years with an increasing legislative focus on higher education information provision.
We must be in a position to respond and manage the associated risks.
High-profile examples include:
* The Competition and Markets Authority review into Consumer Protection in Higher Education https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/higher-education-consumer-law-advice-for-providers-and-students
* The Proposed Teaching Excellence Framework
* The upcoming Higher Education Information Bill (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0021/150021.pdf)
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We must comply with changes which would otherwise potentially negatively impact our reputation:
Meeting these requirements involves coordination with multiple stakeholders across all of the Schools and Colleges in the University, and there is a high risk of providing inconsistent information on our programmes which would cause us to become non-compliant. The most efficient way to ensure consistency is to give Schools the source content directly so that quality content is used and versioned. Workarounds cannot be enforced consistently across Schools as they take different approaches.
Our developments are focused on supporting an outstanding student experience by improving systems and process that support the University’s student recruitment and admissions strategies.
Improvements to the quality, accuracy, consistency and presentation of the degree finders, and the ability to share golden copy content to school websites, will help to manage the risk of failing to comply with consumer protection legislation.
We will develop services to support this activity by streamlining the publishing process for online materials.
This will reduce duplication of effort across the University (Student Systems, Student Funding, CAM, SRA, Schools), increasing efficiency, accuracy and breadth of information.
These improvements will also better meet the changing expectations of prospective students and support the applicant experience at critical points in the university admissions process.