From 2017 there will be a new award system for Universities designed to measure teaching quality called the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). It measures a whole host of university data, including scores from the National Student Survey and the percentage of students who graduate into highly-skilled jobs. Universities will be given a Bronze, Silver or Gold badge – whichever badge universities achieve will determine how much they can raise fees by. If a university gets Gold or Silver they can raise their fees by the rate of inflation. In 2017, this would be £250, meaning a normal undergraduate course could cost £9,250 a year.

Universities will be expected to do more to make themselves accessible to a wider range of students. Currently, universities like Lancaster write Access Agreements, which outline the work they do to support non-traditional or disadvantaged students, like bursaries, scholarships and working with secondary schools. Universities now have to add extra targets to their Access Agreements, including plans to support for ethnic minorities and working class students into university. The Government has outlined this and put a lot of pressure on Institutions but it comes after 7 years of cuts to government funded activity with this aim including the cut of Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), Disabled Students' Allowances (DSA), free school meals, and many more.

The seven Research Councils, which have responsibility for distributing research funding to universities, will be replaced with one Council called UK Research and Innovation. UKRI centralises funding, making it easier to access grants for multidisciplinary research. However, MPs are currently debating what controls there would be to ensure fair allocation of resource to different subject types.

There will be a new Office for Students, which oversees funding for universities, checks teaching quality, and supports universities to support social mobility and their access work. At the moment, all of this work is undertaken by a number of bodies and departments. This move to centralise has been quite controversial as there is currently no plan for a student representative to sit on it. UPDATE: The Government listed to student feedback and announced an amendment to the Bill on November 15, requiring student representation in the Office for Students. 

Setting up new universities and earning the right to award degrees will be deregulated and sped up, increasing competition in league tables and graduate jobs, while also promoting the role of private and not-for-profit providers.