Record number of students miss out on university, says UCAS
An increase in demand means that more applicants than ever are missing out on university
After record numbers of applicants to university this year, figures released by UCAS have shown that a staggering 30.4% of students have not managed to secure a place.
A total of 688,310 people applied, whereas only 479,057 have been accepted, leaving 209,253 people who have missed out. Of these, 188,697 were eligible for clearing but received no offers, 18,081 have withdrawn their application, and the final 2,475 applicants are still waiting for a decision.
The increase in demand for places was partly due to the recession, with many workers opting to return to education to avoid the job cuts or to improve employability. There were also around 60,000 re-applicants from 2009, which is just under 10% of total applications, pushing the amount and level of competition even higher.
This "flux" of application numbers also happened in 2005 because of the proposed introduction of top up fees in 2006, but the major difference between then and now is that there now exists a government-imposed cap on the number of UK and EU students a university can take, which was introduced by the previous government in 2008-2009. Universities which "break" the cap have to pay a hefty fine of £3700 for every student taken over the limit.
These recent figures from UCAS will make universities even more cautious with their offers in the coming year, not eager to splash out money on fines when resources are already stretched, perhaps one of many reasons why entrance requirements have increased dramatically for next year. A noticeable example at Imperial is mathematics, which has seen a standard offer of AAA with A's in all maths modules grow to an offer of AAA, within the space of one year.
The statistics reflect a growing level of competition for university places, and with the coalition government's plans to increase the tuition cap or to remove it entirely, and potentially around 190,000 applicants from this year reapplying, next year's cohort could be in for a particularly rough ride.
