Every August, the school calendar is dominated by A level results day. Thousands of 18-year-olds wait to see if they have the grades they need for the university place they have been offered. If they get better or worse results, they will have to go into the ‘clearing’ negotiations, which have become a big part of the admissions process. But this year the stress will be greater for schools and universities too
Results matter to schools and teachers. However good a school is at other things, the exam performance of their pupils is usually treated as the most important measure of their status. Schools with good results get more applicants, and can choose those most likely to succeed (and perhaps the most interesting to teach).
But, this year, anxiety levels are high in universities too. They are caught in a financial trap. More than half their income comes from student fees. But fees for UK students have been frozen for a decade, meaning that a university now loses money on every UK student they recruit. But if it fails to fill all its places, its income falls. When that happens, courses close and staff face redundancy.
A successful export industry falls foul of immigration anxiety
So, to make up the shortfall, most universities have expanded their overseas student numbers, since those students pay much higher fees, typically twice the UK rate. There are now 25 universities where more than a third of students come from outside the UK. This has been possible because of the high international reputation of UK higher education. And this has made UK higher education one of Britain’s biggest ‘export’ industries, contributing £42 billion to the UK economy. And the international mix undoubtedly offers a wider experience to UK students.
But this success falls foul of the last government’s obsession with immigration. They count university students as ‘immigrants’ and in order to reduce immigration, they have introduced a series of restrictions. These include limits on the number of student visas, and raised the cost of those visas to £490, plus a health surcharge of around £2,000 for a three-year degree. They have also banned overseas students bringing partners or children with them, and restricted the ability of new overseas graduates to stay in the UK after graduation. All these make the UK less attractive, and the number of overseas student visa applications has fallen by 15% this year. And this hits the universities outside the elite ‘Russell Group’ of 24 universities particularly hard.
Universities on the brink
But these two factors are combining to put all universities under severe pressure. The Office for Students, which regulates the sector, predicts that two thirds of universities will be in deficit within two years, and it is rumoured that some are on the brink of bankruptcy. This is one of the six issues on ‘Sue Gray’s shit list’ of major challenges facing the new government.
No university has ever gone bankrupt, and nobody knows what would happen. The average university in the East of England may have 20,000 students who have been promised three or more years of teaching and examination, and degree certificates which will be recognised internationally. Universities also have research contracts which may run for several years, and massive investments in specialist research facilities. The Education Secretary has been careful not to promise that the government will somehow bail them out, but merging institutions, or transferring student and research work to other universities would be hugely complicated and expensive.
‘Clearing’
So, results day this year is particularly anxious for both students and universities. And a critical part of the process is ‘clearing’, which began on Thursday morning as students received their results. Thousands of students will have accepted offers of places, based on their expected A-level grades, and this year, over 80% have achieved those. But some will fail to achieve those, while others will do better than expected. So for a frantic few weeks in August, universities have teams of staff on call to negotiate deals with potential students.
With competition for students fiercer than usual, individual universities will be putting huge resources into the clearing process.
An example is the University of East Anglia (UEA), which is regularly listed in the top 30 universities in the published league tables, but is not a member of the Russell Group. They are especially keen to find people who have outperformed expectations and are looking to ‘trade up’ to more attractive courses. They will have 250 staff manning phones as the A-level results come out.
They are mounting a programme of campus visits immediately after results day to give people a chance to see the campus and what it has to offer. But they are also keen to recruit locally, as part of a broader outreach strategy to make the university more relevant to its region. For the first time, they are sending clearing staff to a partner school, the East Norfolk Sixth Form College in Great Yarmouth, a town with traditionally low levels of higher education participation.
In the past, clearing has sometimes been seen as a second-best option, where those who have not got the grades they needed get slotted into vacant places on unpopular courses. But increasingly it is a mainstream route.
Clearing: not a second best
As UEA student Lydiah Malova said after the first year of her UEA Computer Science course, “when I got lower grades than expected, it was a whirlwind of emotions – nervousness, excitement and extreme uncertainty. But remember that clearing is an opportunity, not a setback. It’s a great opportunity to find a course that suits you. Take a deep breath and start making calls to universities offering courses you’re interested in”.
Futures on a knife edge
For students, the opportunities this year are probably greater than ever. With the number of applicants falling, and a growing number of universities in financial difficulties, there are more options open for students than in past years. Within a week or two most will have settled their plans for the next three years.
But the nail biting will go on longer in universities. It will be late September before they can add up the numbers and plan for the future. And for the government this is yet another major headache inherited from their predecessors.
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