Widening access will inevitably mean opening courses to students with poorer qualifications and less expectation of higher education - those most at risk of failure.
The problem sometimes is that students entering college take on huge amounts of debt to fund increasingly expensive college tuition costs with the expectation that their salaries after graduation will be able to cover the loan payments.
"We have now thoroughly examined the case that we have and we are convinced of the merits of our case, and the expectation that we will have a success to get the outcome we want - which is a regrade for students, " he said.