Kingston University  is set to lose £500,000 of government funding after failing to declare hundreds of students who failed to complete their courses.

The university reported a 6.4 per cent non-completion rate in 2007-08, but an independent audit of 180 students revealed a higher figure of 8.6 per cent.  A later examination of 9,000 student records showed the true rate that could be as high as 14.5 per cent.

Third year computer science student Alfa Sow said: “It sounds like a joke. To the outside it looks like bad management. I think that is bad at the time of the recession. There is so much you could do with that money.”

In 2008/9 the university received a £67.5m grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), partly based on student numbers.  University Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Scott met Professor David Eastwood, chief executive of HEFCE, before Christmas, who agreed to use the lower figure of 8.6 per cent, avoiding a potential loss of up to £2 million.

A Kingston university spokesperson said: “Successful recruitment and retention means that the University is now back within its HEFCE contract range and will suffer no further losses. Kingston made a surplus of £8 million in the last year, and no jobs will be lost or investment delayed.”

Kingston is not the only university to be affected.  Protests erupted at London Metropolitan University last month after a £50 million overpayment forced governors to cut up to 400 jobs.

Prof Scott defended the university: “Like many other universities Kingston has been under-reporting ‘non-completions’ or rather reporting them on the wrong basis. This came about because we had an audit in the summer. Almost every other university that has been audited has had the same problem.”

In a report to the university Board of Governors, the vice-chancellor blamed the problems on confusion over the definition of “non-completion”, failure to record student withdrawals promptly and shortcomings in the university’s student record system.

Prof Scott also attacked the use of non-completions to decide university grants. He said: “‘Non-completions are not the same as students who drop out. They are students who do not take all the required assessments for all the modules on which they are registered ‘at the first instance’, i.e. in June. If they pass resits, they are – technically – ‘non-completions’. So students who progress academically must also be counted as ‘non-completions’ – which is nonsense.”