UCAS figures show troubling fall in full-time student admissions
There are some welcome trends captured in last week’s UCAS End of Cycle report 2012 – notably the 10% rise in 18 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds going to elite universities and the increase in students going to their first-choice institution – but the overall picture is of a worrying fall in full-time student admissions for this academic cycle.
As demand for higher education seems to have been broadly maintained among 18 year olds the signs are that there has been a substantial decline in numbers from other groups, particularly mature students, starting HE courses. Early indicators are that figures for part-time admissions (which are not processed by UCAS) are also likely to show a sharp drop. All in all, these indications do not bode well for the government’s ambitions to open higher education up to a broader range of students and should set alarm bells ringing in government.
UCAS reports that 54,000 fewer full-time students took up places at UK universities (464,900 in total) compared with 2011-12, representing an 11% fall. About half of the drop can be explained by lower deferral rates in 2011-12, UCAS says, but the remaining fall in admissions still represents a 6% drop in students entering higher education in the 2012-13 cycle (around 27,000 fewer than in 2011-12). The figures are not broken down by age group.
In England, where tuition fees have trebled, there was a 6.6% drop in people taking up full-time places. Numbers of people from Wales who accepted places around the UK rose 5% while those from Northern Ireland fell 3.7% and those from Scotland were slightly up (0.3%).
UCAS figures for admissions in 2013-14 also show an 8% drop compared to the same stage last year.
UCAS tells us that these figures give us the most complete picture yet of the take-up of higher education places under the new tuition fee policies, though they have little to say explicitly about demand from mature students. They are, however, consistent with the trend in applications, which saw a substantial drop in mature applicants to HEIs, but relatively minor fluctuations in demand from 18 year olds. And it is likely that this trend will be further borne out in a drop in part-time admissions when figures are available early next year. Without wishing to pre-empt the final data, there are already concerns in the sector, particularly among institutions which traditionally attract large numbers of part-time students, that the drop will be sharp – and deeply damaging to efforts to create a sector characterised by diversity in terms of both student type and mode of delivery.
The UCAS report shows that there are a number of factors at work behind these figures and suggests that the drop in 18 year olds applying and taking up offers can, in large part, be explained by gap-year choices and other, demographic, factors. Changes in offer behaviour have also been pointed to as a possible factor. Taking these factors into consideration, actual entry rates for young people are, as UCAS Chief Executive Mary Curnock Cook remarked, ‘close to trend’. The really concerning change is the fall in mature applications and admissions. This is an unhappy trend, particularly for those of us who see higher education as part of lifelong framework of educational opportunity and not just about the provision of three-year residential degrees for 18 year olds. It is frustrating that, although part-timers make up over a third of the total student population, they remain marginalised in terms of both policy debate and its coverage in the mainstream media.
It is critical that government and institutions think hard about how they communicate their offer, particularly to mature and part-time students who often apply direct to institutions and frequently do not have access to the kind of institutional support and guidance available to 18-year-old applicants in schools and colleges. More needs to be done to promote the benefits of higher education to mature applicants, to explain the new tuition fee and loan regime, and to communicate the kinds of support that are on offer – as well as to ensure the level of choice and support available is both adequate and appropriate. Failure to do this will, in the long term, hold us back, not only as an economy but also as a society with genuine ambitions to offer educational opportunity to all, however and whenever it is needed.
