HEFCE announces new industry initiatives
Hefce recently announced a strategy placing working students and employers at the heart of its agenda for the higher education sector. If you don’t already know, Hefce is the Higher Education Funding Council for England. It signalled a shift towards co-funded delivery of learning, whereby employers will be expected to contribute 50% of student fees.
What is behind the Hefce approach?
The strategy is in response to growing demand for courses that give credit to a degree for “prior or experiential learning”. It is a recognition that what you learn in the workplace can go towards getting an accredited degree.
The Government is encouraging universities to work with employers to design new degree courses for their workforce. The desire is for 10,000 students in 2009/10 to be on courses that are co-funded by employers.
What about small businesses?
Co-funding is a considerable barrier to engagement for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). For that reason, Hefce have allocated £50 million to develop degree courses in partnership with business that will meet their specific requirements.
Hefce and De Montfort University
De Montfort University (DMU) has already established strong relationships with the region’s business community. DMU provides contract research, knowledge transfer, short courses and consultancy. In recognition of this success, they have received £4.3 million to develop the mechanisms needed to deliver co-funded courses to small businesses. This represents the second largest single award.
The programme of work that this funding will support sits well alongside their existing activities. It has the potential to complement and add value to their work with SMEs in areas such as: design innovation, process improvement and access to capital-intensive facilities.
DMU seek to make higher-level education and training opportunities accessible to all regional employers, especially those running smaller businesses. That includes those employed full time who want to pursue such opportunities while remaining in the workforce.
Why are we talking about this?
Optima Training is proud to have been selected by DMU to provide valuable support. We will help to establish the processes, mechanisms and delivery teams that will ensure this programme is a success. Optima will provide interim project management services to ensure a rapid response. We will then facilitate effective handover to the final project delivery team.