What’s in a Name? The Effect of Brand on the Level of English Universities’ Fees

TY - UNPB

T1 - What’s in a Name? The Effect of Brand on the Level of English Universities’ Fees

AU - Jenkins, Andrew

AU - Wolf, Alison

PY - 2016/9/15

Y1 - 2016/9/15

N2 - Higher education is increasingly competitive and international in its recruitment of bothstudents and faculty, and international ‘league tables’ are increasingly publicised anddiscussed. In many jurisdictions, universities also now have freedom to set fees for at leastsome students, and those with a high reputation are well placed to charge large amounts.England has a university sector which is highly differentiated in reputational terms, and a feeregime which allows universities to set fees for a large proportion of their students. It istherefore possible, using administrative and income data, to examine how far commonlyrecognised measures of reputation explain universities’ teaching income per student, aftercontrolling for a wide range of other factors. The results confirm that reputation, or ‘brand’,appears to have a very large impact on fee and teaching income, and that it is thereforeentirely rational for English universities to prioritise activities which raise their internationalvisibility and reputation.

AB - Higher education is increasingly competitive and international in its recruitment of bothstudents and faculty, and international ‘league tables’ are increasingly publicised anddiscussed. In many jurisdictions, universities also now have freedom to set fees for at leastsome students, and those with a high reputation are well placed to charge large amounts.England has a university sector which is highly differentiated in reputational terms, and a feeregime which allows universities to set fees for a large proportion of their students. It istherefore possible, using administrative and income data, to examine how far commonlyrecognised measures of reputation explain universities’ teaching income per student, aftercontrolling for a wide range of other factors. The results confirm that reputation, or ‘brand’,appears to have a very large impact on fee and teaching income, and that it is thereforeentirely rational for English universities to prioritise activities which raise their internationalvisibility and reputation.

M3 - Working paper

T3 - Department of Quantitative Social Science (DoQSS) Working Papers

SP - 1

EP - 49

BT - What’s in a Name? The Effect of Brand on the Level of English Universities’ Fees

PB - UCL Institute of Education

ER -