Entry rate fall creates ‘strategic uncertainty’ in English sector

This year’s admissions round, bringing a second successive fall in entry rates, is raising the prospect of strategic uncertainty for English universities that have based their growth models on ever-increasing student demand, according to experts.

The entry rate for English 18-year-old students, showing the numbers accepting places in higher education as a proportion of all 18-year-olds in the population, stood at 35.6 per cent, according to Ucas figures published six days after results were released, taking account of the start of clearing. That was down from 37.2 per cent at the same point in 2022 and 38.1 per cent in 2021.

The number of UK students accepted on to courses by UK universities stood at 411,000, down from 427,310 at the same point the previous year after the number of top grades was deflated back to pre-pandemic levels. 

Mark Corver, co-founder of the dataHE consultancy and a former director of analysis and research at Ucas, said the figures to date indicated the sector was “on track for the largest fall ever in the entry rate” for English students, though this could be moderated by the end of the cycle.

Dr Corver highlighted that the proportion of English applicants gaining their firm choice of university had fallen to a level (63 per cent) not seen since 2011, before student number controls were abolished.

England’s higher-tariff universities were “not going back to anywhere near the levels [of students] they were taking in 2020 or 2021”, he noted.

With funding levels in England declining as a result of the ongoing freeze of the £9,250 tuition fee cap, there have been suggestions that higher-tariff institutions in particular will find it unattractive to recruit further bumper crops of loss-making home students.

Meanwhile, the fall in the overall entry rate came “first and foremost because the application rate was down,” said Dr Corver. Though clearing this year was at its busiest ever, that had “still not been enough” to close the gap caused by a lower application rate, he said.

In addition, “a certain proportion” of students with the grades to enter higher education “are choosing not to go”, with the rate of unplaced students at levels “not seen for a decade”, he added.

The Ucas figures suggested medium-tariff universities had been “the beneficiaries of higher-tariff still being reluctant to recruit and lower-tariff still being too distant from elevated expectations and aspirations from applicants”.

Mary Curnock Cook, a former Ucas chief executive, said the falling entry rate could be down to “a clustering of applications to higher-tariff and Russell Group universities”, which still have large cohorts admitted during the pandemic and might also be “balancing their international and domestic intakes for financial reasons”.

“It's easy for commentators to lay this cycle’s challenges at the feet of the lower A-level grades, but, with the exception of a few hyper-selective universities, there are plenty of places to go round,” Ms Curnock Cook continued. “It’s about the distribution of demand rather than the grades.”

Worryingly for the sector, these trends come despite a growing population of 18-year-olds, which had been projected to boost numbers.

Dr Corver said the sector’s projections for growth were based in “major part” on a “continuation of decades-long trends of a greater and greater share of young people going to university each year”. So the latest entry rate figures, on top of the previous year’s decline and “driven by a mix of supply and demand factors”, brought “strategic uncertainty”, he added.

The January 2024 application figures would be “absolutely key”, Dr Corver continued. If those showed another fall, “evidence would be mounting we’re in a kind of ex-growth period for young people wanting to go to higher education, which is something the sector has never seen before”, he said.

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com