Assessing higher education outcomes in the UK

Increasing the focus on outcomes assessment in UK higher education has been controversial. Nevertheless, a variety of new strategies are rolling out through a number of institutions now and in the coming year. Elizabeth Redden summarizes these initiatives, one of which will be (2017) the first full implementation of the Teaching Excellence Framework. TEF "will be benchmarked to take into account different institutions' student characteristics and subject mixtures: 1) data on satisfaction in teaching drawn from the National Student Survey, 2) retention rates and 3) rates of employment or continuing study six months after graduation drawn from the national Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey." The increased focus on documenting outcomes has emerged as UK institutions have shifted from government support to private pay; the implication of achieving high performance outcomes is that the government may tie an institution's ability to raise tuition to its performance.