What on earth is going on in Clearing?
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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If you look at placed UK 18 year old applicants by tariff group of providers, you’d think we’d slipped back three years.
Whatever presumptions we made about the capacity of high tariff providers in 2021 – the stories of students sitting on the floor at the back of large lecture halls, the decline in contact hours, the ridiculous pressure on accommodation that saw students living a motorway junction away from where they are studying – we at least could see that the “mutant algorithm” and the provisions of law meant that the providers in question didn’t really have a choice (though this would have been scant comfort to the students involved).
The number of UK 18 year old applicants placed at high tariff providers is currently above 2021 levels – and far in excess of the two years after. This still holds if you add in international students and look at all ages, put the “more spaces for our kids” signs down.
And it is still climbing. In 2021 you could see a hard capacity limit kick in at around JCQ+5 – just 10 additional students were placed between day four and day five. For 2024, the comparator is just under 1,000. It feels a lot like a deliberate decision by certain popular providers to expand UK student numbers (we won’t know which providers made this decision until we get the end of cycle provider level data in early January 2025).
Elsewhere in the sector, while there are more UK applicants of all ages placed at low tariff providers than at high tariff providers, this represents the continuation of a long pattern of real term drops in low tariff numbers – and the first time on record that there will be more UK students at middle tariff providers than low tariff providers.
Is this a change in the kind of background people applying to university have? Yes, marginally, but perhaps not in the direction you might expect. Since 2015 the proportion of placed 18 year old applicants by Clearing day five from TUNDRA quintile 5 (most advantaged) has hovered around 31 per cent. In 2024 it is below 30 per cent – at 29.8 per cent it is the lowest proportion on record. A lot of the new growth is in quintiles 1 and 2.
You mean more disadvantaged students are achieving their aspiration and being accepted by high tariff universities?
It would appear so. Whether the higher tariff providers are set up to provide a quality student experience to that number of students is an open question.
No noticeable drop in international students at an undergraduate level either. Which means the drop is likely to be significant at master’s level. I guess this makes sense as undergraduate students could never bring dependents anyway, so are unaffected by the restrictions.
Yeah, PGT is the one to watch.
You are right DK that PGT is an important one to watch but without a UCAS equivalent we rely on delayed data. This is why things need to change at this level.
Quite clearly a conscious decision to increase places to compensate for the loss of international student tuition income, and an example of how badly the zero sum game of ‘market for students recruitment’ can play out for institutions unable to throw their prestigious weight around in this manner. I’ll be reading stories about completely awful conditions and massive cohorts in overflow rooms in about 4 weeks time.
The other kicker is that high tariff providers generally lose money on each home student when you factor in the cost of teaching.
Really? why recruit so many new UG home then? that’s urban myth as a general position, sure some lab costs will cost more, but lecture based, it’s just a lie, higher tariff have recruited 12,000 more new UG FT home to compensate for the drop in international, it’s that simple, all other theories are just a nonsense
It’s an urban myth backed up with a great deal of data.
Also there are more international UG with places at high tariff providers this year than last year.