London unis top drop-out league

Official statistics released today cast fresh doubt on the Government's plans to expand higher education still further.

The data shows that London's new universities - former polytechnics - head the list for the worst student drop-out rates in the country.

Across the UK, more than one in six students - 16 per cent - are expected to fail to complete their courses, according to the latest figures from the Higher Education Funding Council for England. But among London's newer universities, drop-out rates rise as high as one in three.

At one, the University of North London, a staggering 41 per cent of students who started in the academic year 1998-99 are not expected to complete their course or transfer to another - the worst rate in the UK.

The university's only comment on the figure today was that the statistics were "not an accurate representation of the problem or a helpful contribution to the necessary discussion".

Ministers are looking to the former polytechnics, which became universities in 1992, to provide many of the new student places they want to see over the next decade. They have pledged that by 2010, half of all those under 30 will be participating in higher education.

To achieve that goal, universities must recruit more students with poorer academic qualifications and more from less well-off families with no history of sending children to university.

Professor Roderick Floud, Provost of the London Guildhall University - projected drop-out rate 28 per cent - warned ministers today that without extra Government support, many of these students would struggle to complete courses.

Universities get five per cent extra cash for each student from disadvantaged areas, to help fund bursaries and study-support schemes. MPs on the House of Commons education select committee said that should be increased to 20 per cent.

Today's drop-out figures are published by HEFCE as part of a range of performance indicators for UK universities. They are projections based on statistics dating back to 1998.

Each university is also given a benchmark figure, the drop-out rate which would be expected if all universities took students with the same qualifications.

The six worst London universities all have projected drop-out rates worse than their benchmark, suggesting that even with their student intakes, non-completion is worse than it should be. North London's benchmark is 25 per cent; London Guildhall's 24 per cent.

The UK's worst 20 also include the South Bank University (33 per cent), the University of East London (26 per cent), Middlesex University (26 per cent) and the University of Greenwich (25 per cent).

By contrast, several former London polytechnics - including the University of Westminster and Kingston University - have projected drop-out rates (22 per cent and 18 per cent) better than their benchmarks.

Professor Floud today questioned whether HEFCE's benchmark figures fully reflected all the factors affecting students at institutions like his own, eight out of 10 of whom had to work during term time to support themselves in college. Its noncompletion rate was "not as good as we would like it to be", but still good by international standards, he said.

"It is generally accepted that we are not as a country spending enough to support the students the Government now wants to see in higher education."

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills pointed out that the UK non-completion rate had remained the same for the past decade, and was one of the lowest in the world.

"We do not accept that widening access necessarily leads to more drop-out," said a spokesman.