The reintroduction of student number controls in England would be ¡°perverse¡± and backfire on the ¡°self-interested¡± institutions that are calling for it, a former universities minister has warned.

Jo Johnson helped abolish caps on undergraduate recruitment during his time in government, first as director of the Number 10 Policy Unit and later as secretary of state for universities, science, research and innovation.

Speaking at a conference organised by the Centre for Global Higher Education, Johnson said this decision was instrumental in improving access and widening participation ¨C and called it the ¡°standout success¡± of the reforms the Conservatives introduced.

¡°It enabled institutions to expand their recruitment and to grow and to bring into the system people who were otherwise shut out by the quotas that were dominated by middle-class kids whose attainment in school gave them a clear edge in the system.¡±

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The higher education progression rate for disadvantaged students increased from 14 per cent in 2009-10 to 33 per cent by 2021-22.

However, with concerns that a shrinking market has?allowed elite universities to expand at the expense of lower-tariff institutions, there has been growing demand for the reintroduction of number controls?¨C from both the left and right of the political spectrum.

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Defending the policy, Johnson said these calls were coming from ¡°self-interested¡± institutions that are losing market share and risk setting back social mobility and widening participation efforts.

¡°Reimposing student number controls will throw all of that immediately into reverse, and I think that would be a very perverse thing for this government, that is making widening participation and access its number one priority in higher education, to do.¡±

Critics, such as Jo Grady, general secretary of the UCU, have said that the removal of number controls was part of that government¡¯s ¡°obsession with a marketised education system¡±,?resulting in unpredictability and harm to staff and students.

But Johnson warned that those universities calling for student number controls to shore up their finances could face unintended consequences.

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¡°You can kiss goodbye to your social sciences and your humanities departments because they will not thrive in an environment in which the Treasury is deciding which courses get funding or not.

¡°It will go to the STEM courses and a handful of strategic priorities, and your social sciences and your humanities departments will suffer inordinately. So think very carefully, before pushing that line too hard over the next few months.¡±

Reflecting on his time in government, Johnson admitted that the ¡°standout failure¡± was not putting funding on a sustainable footing, with tuition fees being frozen to ¡°disastrous effect¡±.

¡°The failure to put in place a sustainable way of ensuring universities can deal with the ongoing costs of inflation to their undergraduate tuition fee income, has been the real disappointment.

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¡°This government thankfully has indexed fees for one year only, and I hope it seizes the nettle and gets on and does the same for the rest of the parliament as soon as possible because the longer you leave those sorts of decisions in a parliament, the harder they get.¡±

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com