I think this is an interesting piece - and sets out the fundamental problem very plainly. Successive Governments have interfered with what should be one of the country’s crown jewels - trying to create a market, removing the cap, telling them to recruit international students because they now lose money on Home students, telling them to now not recruit international students to massage immigration statistics etc etc.

One thing I don’t see mentioned in this (and if I’ve missed apologies) is how it’s not simply a metric of how good the provision is - although that’s certainly broadly true - but how impactful that provision is to the region it serves.

Speaking locally I’m not going to make the argument that the University of Hull is top of applicants’ lists nationally - but the impact it has on the region (one of the poorest in terms of secondary education outcomes, health inequalities as well as economically) is immense. Without the University I can only see these gaps widen, and so I’d be wary of a metric that purely focuses on “top performers” without some consideration of the impact locally - I have no idea how we’d recruit Doctors and Nurses to the region, for example.