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The Government needs to ensure stability in the Higher Education system to protect student choice and specialist provision, Ï㽶ÊÓƵ’s Vice-Chancellor has said.

Professor Ken Sloan – who is also the Chair of industry representative body GuildHE, which represents specialist and small higher education institutions -was speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He appeared alongside Lord Johnson, former Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation this morning after concerns were raised about in the sector over the weekend.

Professor Sloan told presenter Justin Webb: “I'm not sure that caps are the right response. We need a long-term sustainable system. We've had a decade of frozen tuition fees, and that has led to different institutions being in very different financial positions.

“I know that when Lord Johnson brought in the reforms, he wanted a diversity of institution, and that is something that the UK has got.

“What we need to do is make sure that the funding model and the regulatory model supports that diversity of institutions and ensures that students have genuine choice of where they can go.”

Looking at how current changes in the sector were affecting the pattern of applications to Harper Adams this year, Professor Sloan said: “What we have seen is that the students who applied to us and accepted us as their first choice have come through.

“So we've had highly qualified students who've come through, and that's been absolutely fine.

“What we are also seeing, though, is that a number of students would also have us as an insurance choice -  which means that they would have accepted another institution as their first choice, and they would have then, if they didn't achieve the grades, have come to us.

“We have seen a reduction in the number of [those] students who have come through on their insurance choice, and we've also seen a reduction in the number of students overall who are coming through to institutions like this in clearing.

“So it is clear that other parts of the system are taking more students.

“And as the representative body, and also in an institution which offers specialist education for industry and for different sectors, I think it's really, really important that we make sure that the funding and regulatory model enables different high-quality institutions to survive -and it shouldn't just be based on scale.”

When asked how he would want to see the Government support the sector,  Professor Sloan added: “We have institutions which are in financial difficulty now.

“So I think the current Government could recognise that by bringing in some form of Stabilisation Fund to make sure that institutions that serve local communities - which are high-quality - actually get through this period and get onto a financially sustainable footing.

“I have just come back recently from Australia, where, over 30 years, you have seen the number of institutions in local areas, and the number of specialist institutions, reduce significantly.

“We have diversity of institutions, we have outstanding institutions, and what we should do is make sure the financial model enables students to have a real choice, so yes – go to the choice of the first university they want to go to, but let’s make sure there’s a diversity of institutions for them to choose from.”

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