How Will Professional Services be Affected by the LLE?
The introduction of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE) in 2025 is set to revolutionise the higher education sector in the UK.
While there are still many questions the government is yet to answer about how exactly this new funding model might work, there has been plenty of discussion regarding how the change will impact core aspects of the student experience. For example, the growth of modular teaching and learning delivery has been a key focus of the conversation around the LLE, along with an expected increase in mature and part-time learners with a focus on re-skilling or upskilling to plug skills gaps in local economies.
However, it’s not just students and academic staff who will be impacted by the introduction of the LLE. The new approach to student finance will also have significant implications for professional service staff.
In this blog article, we summarise the key areas we expected to be impacted by the LLE and some of the changes or adaptations service leaders and practitioners might expect. We take a look at some of our principal areas of focus here on HE Professional, including:
1. Widening Access and Participation
2. Higher and Degree Apprenticeships
3. Graduate Employability and Outcomes
4. Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions
Widening Access and Participation
There is great hope that the LLE will widen access and participation for underrepresented groups in HE. Many professionals across the sector have highlighted the importance of the government’s commitment to providing clear and helpful Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) to ensure wider society are aware of the change and how it provides access to HE.
Those within the sector have also commented on the need for an accessible application format, which takes into account those with limited digital literacy.
We can expect access points and the wider student experience to be a key focus for widening participation practitioners. Some core questions to be considered could include:
How do we provide sufficient information and guidance that supports non-traditional student groups in their enquiry and application process?
What kind of outreach activities will appeal to the groups that the LLE is seeking to support?
What skills and experiences will these students bring to their learning experience?
What extra support, provisions or structures might these students require to achieve success?
How can we achieve a sense of inclusion and belonging for these students if they are spending less time at university than a traditional 3-year undergraduate degree requires?
How do the characteristics of students that the LLE is seeking to engage and of WP students more broadly intersect to create more complex barriers to effective inclusion, and how might we unlock those barriers?
How do we encourage WP students, who may be more time poor or have multiple commitments, to engage with student services that can enhance their experience and skills, such as employability and wellbeing support?
Of course, these questions are many and responding to them will require a dynamic approach. To address some of the challenges, we’ve outlined 3 action points for practitioners below:
Focus on breaking down silos. Colleagues working on supporting students with study skills, for example, might be able to bolster the integration of widening participation and lifelong learning efforts by providing necessary support to students from non-traditional backgrounds.
Use data. Student characteristics can help you to understand the needs of students who are accessing lifelong learning opportunities within your institutions and identify any extra support or guidance they may require. This will be crucial for strategic planning.
Look at your existing provision and identify what can be improved. It’s likely that your institution is also offering some kinds of lifelong learning opportunities that are being accessed by students from WP backgrounds. Figuring out what’s working – and what isn’t – can help you to tailor new programmes in the future.
Overall, the LLE presents many opportunities to further the WP agenda across the HE sector. A key focus for practitioners will be ensuring that the students who come through the door also have equal access of opportunity throughout their learning journey.
For further inspiration, see how the University of Leeds’ Lifelong Learning Centre is working towards delivering an integrated service design in a widening participation context.
Higher and Degree Apprenticeships
The prioritisation of higher and degree apprenticeships in government communications and policy around HE speaks to an overarching concern with upskilling, reskilling and plugging local skills gaps – all of which are integral to efforts to provide lifelong learning opportunities in higher education.
However, the rollout of apprenticeships in the HE space has not been without challenges and there is much to be learned from this for professionals working on lifelong learning strategies. Apprenticeship programmes are proving difficult to manage for universities, with confusion over regulation and reporting, as well as concerns as to how they might fit into business models. Despite this, research consistently shows that there is growing appetite for degree apprenticeships among school leavers, with UCAS reporting that more than half of applicants for the academic year 2023/24 have considered an apprenticeship.
The appetite for apprenticeships might very well offer some key learnings for professionals working towards the introduction of the LLE; namely, that more information, guidance and support for prospective students is necessary to deliver these programmes successfully. The relatively low take-up of the short course trials across the sector seems to suggest as much.
However, it’s not only one way. Evaluation of the LLE Short Courses Trial might suggest how apprenticeships might be affected by the LLE. As HEPI noted in May 2023, the initial range of modules selected for the trial are part of a new range of Higher Technical Qualifications. As such, the learnings from these trials could be used to enhance apprenticeship programmes, meaning professionals working within the apprenticeships space will be instrumental in the development of lifelong learning strategies.
Graduate Employability and Outcomes
The LLE makes employability and outcomes a clear focus. With the aim to plug skills gaps in the economy through a process of reskilling and upskilling, offering provision and support that will help students to develop employable skills and attributes will be key to success.
This renewed focus on graduate employability also aligns generally with student decision-making patterns, with research showing that prospects are increasingly discerning about their choice of provider with a keen interest in how a particular course or institution will enhance their career opportunities.
When the LLE is introduced, providers will be expected to work with employers and learners to help them understand how modules add up to a qualification that indicates specific skills and attributes.
So, what does this mean for careers service leaders and professionals? Increasing student engagement with this provision among students who are time poor has often proved challenging. The profile of the LLE learner – a mature student, perhaps studying part-time, who has multiple other commitments such as dependents or paid employment – may suggest limited opportunities to engage with employability services. So, some delivery challenges and questions arising for employability services might include:
What role will integrated employability within the curriculum play within modules designed to enhance employability and work-related skills?
How can students who spend smaller and more infrequent amounts of time on campus and within the institution be effectively signposted to employability services?
How will services need to adapt to respond to the needs of students who already may have extensive work and industry experience? How can services benefit from this existing knowledge?
How can support be delivered and respond to the changing needs of students who access multiple modules across their lifetime?
As such, employability professionals can expect to continue the work that is already being rolled out across the sector to integrate careers education into the curriculum. The hope is that, by providing equal access to careers advice for all students, providers can work to mitigate some of the inequalities of the graduate labour market.
Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions
With a relatively low take-up across a variety of providers, the LLE short course pilot scheme has so far shown that demand for this kind of provision is lower than previously imagined. Commentators across the sector have pointed to a lack of awareness of these opportunities.
From this, it’s clear that marketing professionals across the sector can expect to run campaigns that are oriented around providing clear IAG that highlights the potential benefits of pursuing higher education to groups beyond the traditional school leavers. It’s hoped that this will be backed up by an equally powerful and persuasive campaign from the government itself.
This will surely demand marketers to embrace innovation, finding new channels to reach prospective students and creating content that responds to their needs. After all, students who enter into HE via the LLE may not necessarily be tied to one place or ‘brand’, undertaking multiple modules at multiple institutions across their lifetime. Therefore, branding and marketing efforts must be tethered around the opportunities provided by individual modules and academic experiences. This might lead marketers down different routes, such as engaging with employers, who may be the first port of call for encouraging individuals to undertake further training.
Marketing efforts may also become more granular. For example, campaigns might be especially focused on recruiting students from local areas or within particular industries specific to an institution’s regions, true to the LLE’s ambitions.
It might also require a rethink of the strategies that have been used thus far to promote the short courses and the entitlement altogether. Initial research has shown that the term ‘loan’ has been off putting for older demographics, who are more cautious regarding the idea of taking on student debt. They will also need extra encouragement to assure them that pursuing HE will enhance their career opportunities and outcomes.
A Sector in Flux
In this article, we’ve looked at some of the ways service delivery across the higher education sector might be impacted by the introduction of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement. While we await the government’s response to the 2023 consultation to provide greater clarity on what this new system might look like, it’s clear that there is plenty of opportunity for innovation in these fields, as well as some potential challenges.
In the meantime, HE Professional has plenty of content that can support you in your preparation for the LLE, including learnings from Worcester’s short course trials, guidance from Staffordshire and the Open University on microcredential provision, and insights on service delivery from Leeds’ Lifelong Learning Centre.
