The widening access debate: student flows to universities and associated performance indicators

The task of constructing appropriate performance indicators for universitie s is an important one, particularly in the context of political debates suc h as that associated with widening access to universities. It is argued in this paper that the proper basis for such performance indicators lies in th e construction of an appropriate model of student flows. A suitable notatio n is developed and there is a discussion of data availability. Then, in tur n, the core model and the main performance indicators are presented. This a nalysis is compared to that of the Higher Education Funding Council for Eng land. Some proposals are made for an ongoing work programme to test the mai n hypotheses of the paper.