There is no evidence for that. The point is that, if universities have a fees case to make, they should make it. A number of universities have already said—I will say more about this shortly—that they do not wish to pursue that link. It is telling that the House of Commons Library briefing says of the impact assessment:
“The material in the assessment is nearly all qualitative. The impact of few, if any, of the policies are explicitly quantified.”
The TEF in its current format will not provide assessment by course. The equality analysis states that the
“TEF will recognise both part-time and full-time teaching quality”
but there are no details on how that will happen. Institutions such as Birkbeck and the Open University, which teach a wide range of students from more varied educational backgrounds, have concerns that they may not be dealt with in the same way as students from more traditional backgrounds.