An obvious response is to cut the tuition fee, improving the ‘money’ side of the value-for-money concern. This has merits but it might not be the best answer. The data is pretty strong that students are not normally drawn to lower fees for full-time undergraduate, which they probably equate with lower quality. Besides, universities do need the cash now, and modest fee discounts would benefit the Government more than the student (most are not expected to pay off the loan in full, so reducing balances would mostly limit what governments write off rather than what students pay back).

An alternative is to recognise the legitimate student concern over a curtailed experience and act to restore a sense of fairness by increasing the ‘value’ side of the scales. One option is a £9,000 credit to use to cover the tuition cost of one year of postgraduate study with the university if students successfully complete their degree. In our analysis work with universities on offers, we have often found that similar aspiration-supporting, merit-based rewards are not seen as signals of lower quality in the same way as straightforward discounts or gifts sometimes are. Purporting to understand the minds of potential university entrants is a risky business, but it could seem fair compensation for the experience uncertainty, whilst signalling that resourcing for quality is intact, and gives a compelling reason not to defer. If your main concern is not getting the three year on-campus experience you thought you were paying for, then this restores that option, and gives you something productive to do in 2020-21.

For the university, it pushes the crisis cost out, and reduces it (since not everyone influenced by the offer would ultimately take it up). It might well be supportive of degree completion and earnings trajectories, benefitting the university’s statistics. And, if the £11,000 Master’s loan is still around in 2023, it would be a valuable experiment on the equality profile of postgraduate study if both fees and living costs were supported. Some might be worried about a Hoover-style ‘two free flights: unbelievable’ risk of being somewhat over effective, with postgraduate uptake soaring. But that risk is defined in time and cost, and even in the (unlikely) event of 2023 graduate recruitment falling to zero, teaching an entire entry cohort for four years with the income from just three – as is sometimes the case for RUK students (non-Scotland residing UK residents) in Scotland – perhaps is not the worst fate potentially in store for the sector at this point.

The accommodation issue needs a different response, one of neutralising purchase risk. Universities simply need to be clear that if restrictions render accommodation of no use then the students will not pay rent for the affected weeks. Where universities are in partnership with purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) suppliers then they need them to adopt this policy too, sharing the cost as appropriate. Refunding rent is not normally a tempting proposition for PBSA suppliers. But they will know that if fears of being trapped into paying rent for empty rooms starts to cause 2020 UK recruitment volumes to unravel then they face years of unfilled beds in their expensive assets. If the rent guarantee is not called upon, then the cost will be exactly zero. But if it is needed, then suppliers are the better home for this risk than individual customers.

Higher education policy is rich with seemingly attractive ideas that do not survive an encounter with the data. We have run some recruitment models for the 2020 entry cohort to put some broad feasibility parameters around these proposals. It is a simplified model of the sector (here taken to be universities and accommodation providers collectively), looking at UK domiciled full-time students, with data-led parameters for teaching income, undergraduate student accommodation (which we have treated at a sector level, regardless of who is providing it), completion rates and progression to postgraduate (which we assume increases in response to the postgraduate credit, by about 20 per cent). We have looked exclusively at revenue (from either fees or teaching grants, taking an approximate UK average of £9,000), effectively assuming that the costs of teaching provision are more fixed in nature than variable over the changes we are looking at.

We have created some scenarios in this model sector. The first is the one we cannot have, the 2020 entry cohort progressing as normal (we have simply copied 2019 for this). The second is a ‘do nothing’ scenario. Here universities do not do anything to address the student value perception, and the entry cohort falls by 20 per cent as a consequence. This is not an exceptional figure for changes in demand where there is a large value shock. Scotland to England demand in 2012 and Nursing demand in 2017 are both examples with an abrupt change to value which generated demand reductions at this level. This is not a forecast for 2020, but an unusually wide range of outcomes are possible this cycle and this is one of them.

We then have the main ‘respond’ scenario where universities give both the postgraduate credit and the accommodation guarantee (assumed triggered for 16 weeks). This is deemed sufficient to restore the value equation and reduce risk, so the entry cohort stays the same.

We also consider where this university response is amplified by a Government response of student number controls being lifted. Here we assume UK recruitment to be up 17 per cent. This is large, but with higher education alternatives like employment, and ‘gap year’ type travel plans, not looking particularly appealing, it is not unfeasible. There were large proportional increases in mature demand following the financial crisis, and by 18-year olds into the 2011/12 entry year and the total number of UK applicants increased by about this amount across the 2009 and 2010 cycles (combined). Such a 17 per cent increase is roughly equivalent to all of the young UK unplaced applicants in a typical year (around 80,000 aged 24 or under) being admitted. By coincidence this happens to be close to the 80,000 or so (UCAS recorded) undergraduate full-time places that EU and international students would have been expected to take up in 2020 but now may not. If these numbers are down, then it is certain the sector would have the teaching and accommodation capacity if number controls were suspended across the UK.

The results from these scenarios are summarised in Table 1 (with precision set to assist further calculations rather than convey certainty). They model UK entry covering 370,000 (-20 per cent) to 540,000 (+ 17 percent): a very wide range, but feasible probable extremes in the current conditions. There is some £5 billion variation in income across this range, underlining that securing the UK entry cohort should probably be the foremost concern for the sector.