Efforts to recruit top overseas students will be damaged if teaching at some UK universities is branded second-rate by the upcoming teaching excellence framework, the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford has warned.

Andrew Hamilton, who is leaving Oxford to become president of New York University in January, told ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ that he is highly concerned about the messages that the framework might send to the rest of the world.

¡°I sincerely hope in this exercise of national reflection on teaching in higher education institutions that we do not send the world any negativity about what is a highly successful sector,¡± Professor Hamilton said.

¡°Our competitors will be licking their lips that we will start declaring that some institutions are better or worse at teaching than others,¡± he added.

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Professor Hamilton said he hoped that policymakers had ¡°thought about some of the immensely damaging consequences to the sector, which is highly successful on the international stage at recruiting students¡±.

¡°It is enough of a challenge with the current immigration policy that discourages students from coming to the UK,¡± he said, adding that UK universities could be ¡°doubly disadvantaged¡±.

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The concerns raised by Professor Hamilton have been echoed by other sections of the higher education sector: last week the Million+ group of universities also warned in a report that the TEF risked ¡°undermining¡± the UK system¡¯s reputation.

Meanwhile, commenting on reports that the TEF might contain indicators on university access, Professor Hamilton said he would be concerned if this resulted in a regulatory ¡°duplication¡± given the existing role of the Office for Fair Access.

¡°We already engage in an important and complex set of discussions with Offa, so the one thing I hope the TEF will not evolve into is a new kind of administrative and regulatory burden,¡± he said.

¡°We already have the research excellence framework, and we do not talk enough about the cost of administrative and faculty time this involves ¨C I hope this exercise does not become an unnecessary duplication of the work we already do,¡± he added.

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Professor Hamilton ¨C who spoke to THE last month at the inaugural Symposium on International Liberal Education in Singapore, which was held to mark the inauguration of Yale-NUS College, a ?150 million campus project between Yale University and the National University of Singapore ¨C added that he hoped the TEF would also find a way to recognise the importance of Oxford¡¯s tutorial system, saying there should not be a ¡°one size fits all¡± approach to judging quality.

jack.grove@tesglobal.com