Management of London Met acted 'blindly', audit says

Times Higher Education Supplement, 6 August 2009
By Melanie Newman

London Metropolitan University was "operating blindly", with key decisions being made by managers and governors in the absence of solid facts, according to an independent auditor's report into incorrect student-data returns at the institution.

The auditor's conclusions are disputed by London Met, which says its senior management team was fully aware of the facts and denies any suggestion of recklessness.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England commissioned BDO Stoy Hayward last year to review London Met's approach to student records after inaccuracies were discovered in its student-data completions.

The institution is repaying £36.5 million after Hefce found that its student non-completion rate was 30 per cent, rather than the 3 per cent or so it had reported. A further £15 million has also been held back from London Met's recurrent teaching funding.

The university admitted including in its data returns students who did not fit Hefce's definition of completion, but said that it had "deliberately and consciously applied a certain interpretation of (Hefce's) rules on (reporting student non-completions), which it had signalled to Hefce in advance of its application and had been encouraged by Hefce to pursue".

Hefce said it never approved the university's interpretation of its non-completion rules, and added that it raised problems with completions data during two audits.

BDO was asked to audit the university's data returns for 2006-07 and to assess the extent to which the findings of two Hefce audits for 2003-04 and 2004-05 had been acted upon. The BDO auditors, who reported in January this year, found that the university's processes for compiling, reviewing and authorising data returns were ineffective....

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