The Lifelong Loan Entitlement: Insights from the Higher Education Short Courses Trial

Dr Mandy Duncan, Deputy Head of the Institute of Education at the University of Worcester, shares insights from the Higher Education Short Course Trial following the government’s response to the Lifelong Loan Entitlement consultation.

In August 2021, the Office for Students launched the Higher Education Short Course Trial to test demand for short courses and trial the Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE), part of the government’s ambitious reforms to post-18 education.

Funding was awarded to 22 higher education providers to develop 104 standalone short courses from existing qualifications. Courses were developed in consultation with industry partners to address local and national skills needs.

However, applications to the courses have been low across providers making them non-viable in some cases with others running at a loss. The total number of courses actually running is far lower than those initially developed as part of the trial and only a small number of participants have taken a student loan.

This month, following consultation with the public, the government announced its intention to go ahead with a phased introduction of the LLE beginning in 2025. The LLE will provide individuals with an entitlement to the equivalent of four years of higher education study which they can use flexibly over their lifetime for full courses or modular study, allowing them to upskill and retrain as their careers evolve.

At first glance, the LLE offers a genuine choice in how, what and when learners choose to study. It reduces financial barriers to participating in higher education and recognises that people have different experiences, needs, and aspirations at different times in their lives. The ambition of the LLE has been broadly welcomed, but with the sector about to undergo a sea change in the way it delivers higher education, the short course trial seems to have raised more questions than it was designed to resolve.

Who is demanding loan funded short courses?

As part of the trial, which is ongoing until 2025, we developed sixteen short courses within the priority area of education. The courses were designed to address local skills shortages and the government’s levelling up project.

The trial encouraged providers to focus recruitment primarily on mature learners with no previous experience of HE. Hence our target market has been members of the children’s workforce who do not have a degree, such as teaching assistants. We have also targeted wider school communities including stay-at-home parents who might be thinking about returning to work; individuals who are perhaps not sure whether higher education is for them but might be encouraged to ‘dip their toe in the water’ and try it without committing to a full degree. The broader rationale being that success on a short course might lead to development of a higher education learner identity and encourage progression onto a full degree programme.

It is too early to know whether there is real demand for short courses among this group of learners and, like the other providers in the trial, we have very low numbers to work with. A significant minority of our short course applicants and participants are mature workers whose highest prior qualifications are at levels 2 and 3 so this is perhaps a positive indicator.

However, we have found that the majority of applicants to our short courses already have an undergraduate or postgraduate degree and many are qualified teachers. It is perhaps not surprising that the short courses appear to be attractive in terms of continuing professional development (CPD) given that a clear focus of the trial was on addressing local skills needs through partnership with employers who also had a key role in promoting courses within their organisations.

Who should foot the bill for CPD?

The government’s decision to remove the current restrictions on gaining funding for equivalent or lower qualifications (ELQ) may have been driven by this to some extent (the short course trial has not yet been fully evaluated but a number of the providers responded to the consultation). The decision is likely to be of particular value to career changers, gig workers and those looking for CPD opportunities to upskill in their current employment.

However, the consultation also announced that modules must be 30 credits (or a bundle of 30 credits) to attract funding and at current rates this costs £2,312. This is expensive CPD and whilst there is nothing to prevent the employer paying the course fees, there has been criticism that the availability of the LLE encourages employers to disinvest in the professional development of their staff and move the financial burden for CPD from the employer to the individual. Whether this is the case remains to be seen, however, early indications are that less than half of short course participants have taken out a student loan indicating that employers may be funding at least some of this learning.

Credit where credit's due

The traditional three-year degree has long been the unchallenged gold standard of undergraduate education. Most HE providers do not currently have regulatory frameworks that allow students to ‘cash in’ a collection of smaller credit bearing courses for a full degree, particularly if the courses are in unrelated subjects and taken at different institutions. In such a case, who would be responsible for awarding the degree and what degree would be awarded?

Most institutions have a process where students can apply for recognition of prior learning (RPL) but there is no automatic right of credit transfer and there are limitations around currency and the maximum credit that can be transferred. This left some providers in the trial with ethical dilemmas around marketing courses where there were particular credit transfer issues.

For example, the regulations at my institution allow for a maximum of two thirds credit transfer onto an Honours degree. This means that holders of Foundation degrees can transfer their 240 credits and top-up to a full 360 credit Honours degree. However, if a Foundation degree holder then adds a level 6 30-credit short course to their portfolio, this cannot be recognised because it exceeds the two thirds limit.

It became clear to those in the trial from very early on that developing internal regulation capability and a more flexible national credit transfer framework would be vital if the original vision for fully flexible, stackable, transferable credentials is to be realised.

Parental responsibility

The government has announced in its consultation response that LLE funded modules from 2025 will be required to be part of a designated ‘parent’ course so that modules can be stacked towards existing full qualifications.

However, there are a number of issues with this, not least in relation to the stated ambition of the LLE to allow learners to train, retrain and upskill. Under these rules they will now be largely confined by the need to take modules that are part of an existing course to allow stacking. How does that support career changers to flexibly meet the needs of the economy, for example?

Answers might be found by looking at precedents within the sector. The Open University, for example, has around 250 modules that learners can mix and match to create their own multidisciplinary course that they can eventually cash in for an open Honours degree with the opportunity to pick up various milestone qualifications along the way.

However, many providers’ regulatory frameworks are a long way off being able to support something like this and there will almost certainly need to be some level of agreement among providers to support the transferability of LLE funded credit. If this does not happen, the LLE could simply turn out to be a different way to recruit to courses that exist already.

What about the student experience?

Another potential issue with the idea of studying single modules on an existing degree programme is that these modules would have been designed as part of a larger programme. Some of them might assume knowledge and skills that have already been covered in a different module on the course. Lots of questions are raised around teaching, learning and the student experience when some students on a course are studying a full degree and some are studying just one module. This will almost certainly mean revalidation of existing courses to ensure that individual modules are suitable to be studied as standalone courses.

Much thought needs to be given to the wider student experience for those studying a single module. For example, induction, support for digital and study skills and access to other services enjoyed by full degree students, such as the Students’ Union, accommodation and careers advice. These additional experiences can help foster a sense of belonging and support student wellbeing. We need to consider what learners on short courses want, need and expect from their study experience, beyond just an academic qualification.

All of these things need thinking through very carefully if modular learning is to become part of the higher education landscape. This is where learning from the short course trial might make a valuable contribution as these are all issues that we have had to work through.

About the author

Dr Mandy Duncan joined the University of Worcester in 2019 as Head of Department for Children and Families. She is currently Deputy Head of the School of Education with responsibility for research, knowledge exchange and collaborative partnerships. Prior to joining the University, Mandy worked as Senior Lecturer in Education at Staffordshire University. She has led and developed a range of undergraduate and postgraduate early childhood and education programmes and has extensive experience of supervising research students on BA (Hons), Masters, EdDoc and PhD programmes. Her main teaching areas and research interests include sociological and global perspectives of childhood, children’s rights, child protection, child development and research methods.

Mandy has a deep commitment to early years having begun her career in this sector as a nursery nurse and then going on to teach early years practitioners and teachers for many years. She has also worked with young people in a variety of capacities including running summer camps and teaching 14-19 year olds in college.

Mandy gained a PhD at the University of Gloucestershire in 2016 for a thesis entitled ‘A critical examination of children’s participation in child protection interventions’.