Mapping SHAPE provision in UK higher education

Our cold spots mapping is part of our ongoing work monitoring the health of SHAPE disciplines, as part of the Academy’s SHAPE Observatory. We want to understand how students access our disciplines and where there may be barriers to the study of SHAPE subjects.

The concept of mapping education provision is not new. Regional inequalities and levels of deprivation, particularly in rural and coastal areas, have impacted student access to higher education across all subjects for decades (Source: Lipsett, 2008; Leach, 2014). Research by HEAT has mapped outreach coverage across the UK, while a study by the University of Exeter into rates of higher education participation in regional and coastal areas found the South West England to be a ‘regional cold spot for HE’ (Source: Playford et al, 2023). A 2021 report by the University Council of Foreign Languages (UCFL) and the British Academy identified a need ‘for ongoing watchfulness at a national level, to identify such ‘cold spots’ if and when they begin to emerge’ (Source: UCFL and The British Academy, 2021). Recent coverage has suggested this phenomenon may go beyond languages, warning the UK may see the emergence of ‘cold spots’ in SHAPE disciplines more broadly (Source: Times Higher Education, February 2024). These maps therefore help us explore the changing landscape of provision across all SHAPE subjects to build a clearer picture of what students can study and where.

These maps display provision within a commutable distance of 60km. Attempts to calculate commutable distance is an important and established approach to showing provision and access to educational opportunities. Nevertheless, ‘commutable distance’ is an imperfect measure of provision with no standard definition in the higher education sector. Some research calculates commutability by journey time driving (Source: Homeward Bound: Defining, understanding and aiding ‘commuter students’, HEPI, 2018), while other definitions use distance (Commuter students, Office for Students, 2024). Research by the Sutton Trust has defined commutable distance as up to 90km (Source: Home and Away, Sutton Trust, 2018). More recent research by Professor Becky Muradás-Taylor, which mapped language provision to degree level in higher education in England, took a cold spot to mean anything further than 60km from a higher education provider and used incrementally coloured bands every 10km past 60km up to 90km (Source: Muradás-Taylor, 2023), while suggesting that ‘many students commute much less than 91 kilometres’. Data from the Office of National Statistics suggests only around 1.4% of the population commute more than 60km to work (Source: ONS, 2022). While more research is needed to understand patterns of student mobility, we decided to limit commutable distance to 60km for this set of maps.

This approach to commutable distance does not take into account many factors which impact the nature of provision, such as course capacity, staffing levels, or institutional resources, student travel time, availability of public transport in a given area, devolved nation boundaries, or individual circumstances and/or accessibility. We also acknowledge that for some students a distance far below 60km may be prohibitive. As a result, the cold spots maps may not give a complete picture of student access to SHAPE subjects. While we hope these maps will be indicative at this stage, further research is needed to better contextualise patterns of regional provision according to real-world conditions of student access and provider resource.

Cold spots in SHAPE provision are an access issue. Regional disparities in provision affect what students can study and where they can study it. This is especially true given:

• Many UK home students attend higher education in their local area. Lots of students in the UK move across around or outside of the country to access higher education - but many others do not. Important research by the Sutton Trust in 2018 using UCAS data showed that more than half of young people in the UK attended a higher education institution less than 55 miles/91 km away from their registered home address. State school students in particular were 2.6 times more likely to stay at home and study locally than students who attended private schools. (Source: Home and Away, Sutton Trust, 2018). While we do not yet have data on the impact on students studying close to home of COVID-19 disruption or the cost of living crisis, we hope that these maps act as a prompt for future investigation into students’ participation in higher education in their local area.
• Geographical distance has a strong impact on students’ institutional choices in higher education. This is especially true for students from low income and ethnic minority groups. (Source: Gibbons and Vignoles, 2012).
• Students from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education are much more likely to study close to home and therefore be adversely affected by subject cold spots. For instance, Sutton Trust research in 2018 showed that 80% of students from the least-privileged socio-economic backgrounds (NS-SEC 7 and 8) attended a university close to home, with nearly 90% of British Bangladeshi and British Pakistani students living at home and commuting to an institution nearby to access higher education (Source: Home and Away, Sutton Trust, 2018). Cold spots in provision therefore risk impacting some students more than others.

Regional disparities in provision are also a skills issue. Cold spots limit the skills that young people can develop in their local area and the ability of universities to advance the regional skills agenda and contribute to a dynamic local knowledge economy. We know that studying SHAPE subjects provides students with the valuable skills on which the future of the UK’s economic growth depends (Source: The Right Skills, The British Academy, 2017; Qualified for the Future, The British Academy, 2020). Universities have an important role to play in developing these skills, as well as sustaining social and cultural infrastructure and contributing to the knowledge economy in their local areas (Source: Universities as social and cultural infrastructure: Summary of roundtable discussion, The British Academy, 2023). Strong disciplinary coverage and breadth in local areas diversifies infrastructure and knowledge bases to deliver better business, social, economic and civic outcomes (Source: Staying local: understanding the value of graduate retention for social equality, The Bridge Group and the UPP Foundation, 2021). Understanding where SHAPE subjects are on offer can therefore help us understand the kinds of skills that young people can develop and the knowledge bases universities can sustain in local areas.

The UCAS tariff is a means of allocating points to pre-higher education qualifications used for entry to higher education. The tariff system assigns a numerical value to a student’s qualifications at Level 3, based on qualification type and student attainment. The majority of post-16 qualifications count towards the UCAS tariff, though not all. In Scotland, for instance, a higher proportion of students enter higher education with non-tariffable qualifications, such as students who access higher education as articulating students through further education providers (see below). For more information on tariffs and a list of tariffable qualifications, please see information from HESA here.

Disparities in provision at different tariff levels are an important aspect of mapping subject cold spots. Recent research has shown how widely provision of SHAPE subjects can vary at different tariff levels. For example, in her study of languages provision in England, Muradás-Taylor found lower-tariff higher education institutions are less likely to offer languages to degree level. These institutions are also much more likely to recruit students from less-privileged socioeconomic backgrounds (Source: Muradás-Taylor, 2023). By allowing users to filter by below-average tariff, therefore, these maps allow us to see if other SHAPE subjects show reductions in provision at a lower-tariff point, impacting students’ access to those subjects. It also allows us to see how any reductions in provision may affect disadvantaged students more than others.

To create our tariff filter, we calculated the average tariff of all students studying a subject in a given year across the UK aged 21 or under. Then we calculated the average tariff of students studying the same subject at each individual provider in the same year. ‘Below-average UCAS tariff’ therefore refers to provision where the average tariff of students studying a subject in a given year was lower than the average tariff of students studying that subject across the UK in the same year. By selecting ‘Below-average UCAS tariff’, the maps isolate providers whose students have an average tariff that is below the average of all students studying that subject across the UK in that year.

Due to differences in tariff calculations in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, we have used an adapted methodology for calculating below-average tariff in the Scottish case (see below).

There are a significant number of students in Scotland who enter university with ‘non-tariffable qualifications’. These are qualifications which do not count towards the UCAS tariff. Often, these qualifications are held by students who enter higher education through further education providers through a system of articulation. At some Scottish providers, these students can make up the majority of students on a given course. The Commission for Widening Access (CoWA) describes articulation as an important way to help widen access, as students experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage are more likely than other students to enter higher education through a system of articulation (Source: CoWA, 2024).

In order to provide a more accurate picture of provision - particularly for students with lower prior attainment and/or from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds - we decided that, where Scottish institutions had a higher than average number of students with non-tariffable qualifications in a subject in a given year, we would count that provision as ‘below-average tariff’ provision on the maps. This means that, when filtering provision by tariff, provision which appears as ‘below-average tariff’ in Scotland may include articulating students and other students who did not enter higher education with a UCAS tariff score, but who nonetheless share many characteristics with students accessing below-average tariff provision across the rest of the UK.

There are several reasons why provision shown on the maps may not exactly reflect the provision of a subject in a given area. These include:

• Subject coding. A change in HESA subject coding in 2019 saw the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) replace the Joint Accounting Coding System (JACS), with the Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) groupings also introduced with the aim of providing standard categories across HECoS and JACS. However, these coding systems do not provide continuity as some disciplines like CAH code (20-01-02) History of art, architecture and design (which we have allocated to Historical Studies) do not have a clear equivalent in the JACS system.
• Multi-campus sites/satellite campuses. The maps depict provision at the location of higher education institutions as this appears in HESA data. In some cases, where universities have multiple or satellite campuses, provision of specific subjects in a given area may not be wholly accurate. For providers in rural and/or remote areas with multiple campuses, such as the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) in Scotland, provision will be displayed at the provider’s main registered campus (in the case of UHI, this will be Inverness).
• Higher education provision at further education colleges. Although HESA data does include some higher education provision delivered by further education (FE) institutions, it may not depict all provision of this type. There may be some FE-based provision that is not shown on the maps as a result.
• Changes in provision since 2022/2023. Currently, the maps use HESA provider data up to the academic year 2022/23. It is possible some of the provider data may now be out of date. We plan to update these maps with HESA data from 2023/24 when the data is released in 2025. Please note that while students are welcome to use these maps, they should not be used as a source of information about providers’ current course-offerings. Prospective students looking for up-to-date course information should refer to the UCAS website.