Aggregate Offshore record (AOR) review
We have relaunched the review of the Aggregate Offshore (AOR) record to ensure that the UK’s Transnational Higher Education (TNE) data is fit for purpose. There continues to be significant interest across the HE sector in improvements to the TNE data collected by HESA.
Project mandate
Our project mandate document provides the background and requirements for the major review to the collection:
HESA review of transnational higher education data: Project Mandate (pdf)
Background to AOR
The Aggregate Offshore record is the official data collection for students studying wholly outside the UK, while registered at UK HE providers or registered on their programmes. Information about the UK’s TNE has been collected by HESA since 2007/08 and it identifies, by HE provider, a headcount of students studying wholly overseas, by level, type of provision, and country. From 2019/20, providers in England and Wales have submitted separate headcounts to capture the numbers of students in active study, dormant, successfully completed, and withdrawn from study, also by level, type of provision, and country.
What needs to change?
Increasingly the AOR offers an insufficiently rich picture of TNE. For example, we need to know more about the financial value of TNE, the subjects and disciplines taught, the nature of the provision, its relationship to the host institution or system, and the outcomes graduates achieve.
Also, since the AOR is not an individualised student record, the data is high-level and tabular, which limits its extensibility and analysis. If increased data collection were justified, consideration should also be given to an individualised record to rectify these limitations.
Regulatory requirements
In the decade since the UK’s HE sector started collecting data on TNE, the regulatory focus has also changed. In England, the Office for Students has indicated that it will “regulate such overseas activity on the basis that the obligations of the registered provider extend to students for whom it is the awarding body wherever and however they study” (Regulatory framework, paragraph 88, pg 40). The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the General Medical Council have also demonstrated a regulatory interest in more detailed data on TNE.
This review aims to address these gaps in our understanding of the rapid evolution and growth of TNE.