Tag: UCAS

  • Podcast: AI and jobs, provider closure, UCAS figures

    Podcast: AI and jobs, provider closure, UCAS figures

    This week on our final podcast before the summer break, we unpack the mounting panic about graduate jobs – is AI really to blame, or are today’s students simply paying the price for a sluggish economy, a stalling skills strategy, and shifting recruitment practices?

    Plus we discuss new figures from UCAS that show a record number of 18-year-olds applying to university, and we look at a major new report on how provider closures are affecting students, and what the sector should do next to avoid chaos when courses collapse.

    With Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, Head of Public Affairs at Jisc, Hugh Jones, independent consultant and higher education postcard maestro, Michael Salmon, News Editor at Wonkhe, and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.

    UCAS applications and offer making by June deadline, 2025

    Student protection through market exit is not a compliance exercise

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  • UCAS applications and offer making by June deadline, 2025

    UCAS applications and offer making by June deadline, 2025

    The UCAS 30 June application deadline is the last point an applicant can apply outside of clearing.

    Though most applications (particularly from UK 18 year olds) happen by the January deadline, the June figures allow for a complete analysis of application behaviour in the UCAS main scheme.

    The number of 18 year old UK applicants has reached a record high of 328,390 (up 2.2 per cent on last year) – with the total number of applicants at 665,070 (up 1.3 per cent on last year).

    Application rates

    As always it is salutary to compare the often-pushed narrative that young people are being tempted away from expensive/poor-value/woke (delete as per your personal preference) higher education with the actuality that numbers are rising. You could even be tempted to imagine what the application rates might be like in a sector with a realistic student maintenance offer.

    I mention application rates because this is what declinist commentators will seize on. For UK domiciled 18 year old applicants, the application rate is 41.20 – down from 41.80 per cent last year. This fall is visible across most measures of deprivation: in England, for example, every IMD quintile but quintile 5 (the least disadvantaged) sees a falling application rate.

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    In part, this could be a function of another year where the dominance of higher tariff providers in driving applications has increased: higher tariff providers disproportionately inspire applications from (and recruit) better off young people.

    This chart shows the number of applications to each of three tariff groups. For UK 18 year olds the default is fast becoming an application to a high tariff provider. We don’t (unfortunately) get application numbers by deprivation and tariff group.

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    These number of placed students is likely to rise too: UCAS and Ofqual have suggested that there are 28,000 places available in Clearing this year.

    Offer rates

    One innovation in this year’s release is information on offer rates – the proportion of applications that result in an offer being made. We get three years of data, which demonstrate that offer rates are rising across the sector – and that (as you may expect) high tariff providers are less likely to make offers than lower tariff providers. The growth among high tariff providers is driven both by rising application numbers and a rising offer rate.

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    For believers of the other recruitment myth (that universities load up on international students and are less keen to take even very able home students) we get a timely corrective. It turns out that 98.5 per cent of UK 18 year old applicants have an offer, compared with 89.7 per cent of international students.

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    Subjects

    Finally, it’s always fascinating to look at applications by subject area – a plot by CAH1 groups shows a sharp rise in the popularity of business, subjects allied to medicine, engineering, and law: with an intriguing drop in applications to computing subjects. There may be a generative AI effect on computing applications – the rise of “vibe coding” and other uses of agents in software development may mean that the attraction of learning to programme computers properly may be waning.

    That’s the best explanation I have – and it is curious that law (a domain where predictions of AI tools eating entry level roles are ten a penny) doesn’t appear to be experiencing a similar phenomenon.

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  • Reflections on the demand for higher education – and what UCAS data reveal ahead of Results Day 2025

    Reflections on the demand for higher education – and what UCAS data reveal ahead of Results Day 2025


    This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Maggie Smart, UCAS Director of Data and Analysis

    As we pass the 30 June deadline for this year’s undergraduate admissions cycle, UCAS’ data offers an early view of applicant and provider behaviour as we head into Confirmation and Clearing. It also marks a personal milestone for me, as it’s my first deadline release since rejoining UCAS. I wanted to take a deeper look at the data to reflect on how much things have changed since I worked here 10 years ago.

    Applicant demand has always been shaped by two key elements: the size of the potential applicant pool, and their propensity to apply. Since I last worked at UCAS in 2016, these two factors have continuously interchanged over the better part of the past decade – sometimes increasing or decreasing independently but often counterbalancing each other. Let’s take a look at how things are shaping up this year.

    Overall, by the 30 June there have been 665,070 applicants (all ages, all domiciles) this year, compared to 656,760 (+1.3%) in 2024. This is an increase in applicants of over 64,000 since UCAS last reported in January, although the profile of these additional applicants is very different. At the January Equal Consideration Deadline (ECD), over half of the total number of applicants were UK 18-year olds, who are the most likely group to have applied by that stage in the cycle. They represent just 8% of the additional applicants since January, among a much larger proportion of UK mature and international students.

    As we saw at January, the differences in demand for places between young people from the most advantaged (POLAR4 Quintile 5) and most disadvantaged (POLAR4 Quintile 1) areas at June remain broadly the same as last year – with the most advantaged 2.15 times more likely to apply to HE than those from the least advantaged backgrounds, compared to 2.17 last year.

    UK 18-year-old demand

    Demand for UK higher education (HE) has long been shaped by the 18-year-old population – the largest pool of applicants. Despite the well-known challenges facing the HE sector at present, at the 30 June deadline we see record numbers of UK 18-year-old applicants, with 328,390 applicants this year – up from 321,410 (+2%) in 2024. This trend was almost entirely locked in by the January deadline, given the vast majority of UK 18-year-old applicants have applied at this stage in the cycle.

    During my previous tenure at UCAS, the size of the UK 18-year-old population had been falling year on year but from 2020, it began to increase. This continued growth drives the increase in UK 18-year-old applicant numbers we have observed in recent cycles. But when we look at their overall application rate to understand the strength of demand among this group, the data shows a marginal decline again this year – down to 41.2% from 41.9% in 2024. The historically strong growth in the propensity of UK 18-year-olds to apply for HE, which we’ve observed across the last decade, has clearly plateaued.

    This could be due to a range of factors, such as young people choosing to take up work or an apprenticeship, or financial barriers. We know that cost of living is increasingly influencing young people’s decisions this year, with pre-applicants telling us that financial support – such as scholarships or bursaries – ranks as the second most important consideration for them (46%), followed closely by universities’ specific cost-of-living support (34%).

    Interesting to note is the number of UK 19-year-old applicants. When separating the data to distinguish 19-year-olds applying for the first time (as opposed to those reapplying), there has been a decent increase – from 46,680 last year to 48,890 this year (+4.7%). For many years, the number of first-time UK 19-year-old applicants had been falling year on year, but since 2023 this trend has started to reverse. This suggests that demand among young people may be holding up as they decide to take a year out before applying to university or college.

    Mature students

    For UK mature students (aged 21+), the picture looks very different. The number of mature students applying to university or college ebbs and flows depending on the strength of the job market, so since I was last at UCAS, we have typically seen applications decrease when employment opportunities are strong and vice versa. Alongside fluctuations linked to the employment market, rising participation at age 18 means there is a smaller pool of potential older applicants who have not already entered HE. The falling demand from mature students continues in 2025, although in recent years there have been small but significant increases in the volume of mature applicants applying after the 30 June deadline and directly into Clearing. 

    As of this year’s 30 June deadline there have been 86,310 UK mature (21+) applicants, compared to 89,690 (-3.8%) in 2024, meaning a fall in demand compared to the previous year at this point in the cycle for the fourth year in a row. However, whereas at the January deadline mature applicants were down 6.4% compared to the same point last year, at June the figure is only 3.8% down showing some recovery in the numbers. This is another indication that mature students are applying later in the cycle. While it remains too early to say whether we will see continued growth in mature direct to Clearing applicants in 2025, last year 9,390 UK mature students who applied direct to Clearing were accepted at university or college, an increase of 7.4% on 2023 and 22.7% higher than 2022.

    International students

    When looking at the UCAS data through the lens of international students, the landscape has changed significantly since 2016. Brexit led to a sharp decline in EU applicants, offset by strong growth elsewhere, the pandemic caused disruption to international student mobility, and we’ve seen intensified global competition, shifting market dynamics and geopolitics which are increasingly influencing where they choose to study. This year we’re seeing growth once more, with 138,460 international applicants compared to 135,460 in 2024 (+2.2%) – although this stood at +2.7% at January. It should be noted that UCAS does only see a partial view of undergraduate international admissions (we tend to get a more complete picture by the end of the cycle) and we don’t capture data on postgraduate taught and research pathways.

    Interest among Chinese students in UK education has held firm since my time at UCAS, and this year we’re seeing a record number of applicants from China – 33,870, up from 30,860 (+10%) in 2024. This year’s data also shows increases in applicants from Ireland (6,060 applicants, +15%), Nigeria (3,170 applicants, +23%) and the USA (7,930 applicants, +14%). 

    Offer-making

    We are releasing a separate report on offer-making this year, alongside the usual data dashboard for applications. This additional data covers offers and offer rates over the past three years, from the perspective of applicants according to their age and where they live, and from the perspective of providers by UK nation and tariff group.

    What we’re seeing as the natural consequence of increased applications this year is an uplift in offers. Universities have made more offers than ever before this year, with 2.0 million main scheme offers to January deadline applicants overall, largely driven by the rise in UK 18-year-olds applicants (who are the most likely to use their full five choices while applying). This record high surpasses the previous peak of 1.9 million offers set last year (+3.8%).

    While the main scheme offer rate has increased across all provider tariff groups, the most notable uplift is for higher tariff providers – up 3.2 percentage points to 64.4% this year.  Despite the increase in offer rates, higher tariffs do still remain the lowest, partly due to being the most selective institutions. Offer rates by medium and lower tariff providers have also increased, by 0.9 percentage points to 77.0% among medium tariff providers, and by 1.5 percentage points to 81.7% among lower tariff providers. This means that, among those who applied by the Equal Consideration Deadline in January, 72.5% of main scheme applications received an offer this year, also a record high, and 1.8 percentage points higher than in 2024.

    It’s worth noting that we’ll be updating our provider tariff groupings in time for the 2026 cycle, to reflect changes in the higher education landscape.

    Looking ahead

    For students who are intent on going to university or college, it makes this a very good year, with more opportunities than ever before. A record 94.5% of students who applied by the January deadline will be approaching the critical summer period having received at least one offer. High levels of offer-making by universities and colleges typically translates into more acceptances, which should give applicants plenty of confidence heading into results day. 

    I’m delighted to be back at UCAS, and my team will continue to dig further into the data as Confirmation and Clearing draws nearer to see how demand translates into accepted places come results day.

    UCAS

    UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, is an independent charity, and the UK’s shared admissions service for higher education.

    UCAS’ services support young people making post-18 choices, as well as mature learners, by providing information, advice, and guidance to inspire and facilitate educational progression to university, college, or an apprenticeship.

    UCAS manages almost three million applications, from around 700,000 people each year, for full-time undergraduate courses at over 380 universities and colleges across the UK.

    UCAS is committed to delivering a first-class service to all our beneficiaries — they’re at the heart of everything we do.

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  • Teachers need support to understand what’s needed in the UCAS personal statement

    Teachers need support to understand what’s needed in the UCAS personal statement

    Our recent paper found substantial misalignment between state-school teachers and university admissions staff on what makes a high-quality UCAS personal statement.

    In our study, 409 state school teachers were presented with ten paragraphs from UCAS personal statements and asked to select between two pieces of feedback. One ‘correct’ feedback was provided by an admissions tutor, and the one ‘incorrect’ feedback was supplied by another teacher. These paragraphs and feedback were all real-world examples derived from Steven Jones’ (2016) study, used as part of Causeway Education’s pre-training programme for state school teachers.

    We found:

    • There was significant misalignment between teachers and admissions staff. In only 56.5% of cases did teachers select the ‘correct’ feedback response.
    • There are a number of pervasive myths regarding the UCAS personal statement. Teachers had a dual tendency to:
    1. Advise for the incorporation of personal content that aimed to demonstrate a holistic view of the student rather than course-related competencies; and
    2. Suggest reducing content that demonstrated course-related knowledge and skills.

    To give one example, teachers were presented with the paragraph below and asked to choose between two pieces of feedback: (1) Strong reasons backed up by detailed examples; and (2) Too much detail; doesn’t give a sense of the student as an individual. The first of these is from an admissions tutor and the second from a teacher in Jones’ (2016) work.

    My main reason for wanting to study Japanese is because I enjoy studying complex grammar rules to see how languages come together. This is why I chose to undertake Latin at A-Level as I enjoy translating pieces of complex texts. Analysing writers techniques in presenting ideas and characters is also interesting, in particular how Tacitus in Annals I, presents Tiberius as an unsuitable emperor by often comparing him to his father Augustus, an emperor who was deemed ‘an upholder of moral justice’.

    In 58.4% of cases teachers selected the first ‘correct’ answer, and 41.6% selected the ‘incorrect’ second answer.

    These findings should not be interpreted as a criticism of teachers. In the context of studies finding a considerable lack of transparency on how universities use the UCAS personal statement (Fryer et al., 2024), the burden of responsibility for misalignment falls primarily on universities. Without clear and transparent guidance, this misalignment between teachers and admissions staff is inevitable.

    There is an important opportunity to address this situation, as many universities will currently be in the process of updating their public-facing guidance in response to the upcoming UCAS personal statement reform. The shift to three short questions for the 2025-26 application cycle and the corresponding need to update guidance present universities with an opportunity to address and counter the misalignments noted in our paper.

    To support this goal, our paper contains a table of key implications (Table 5, pp.14-15), which can be downloaded directly from this link.

    We hope this is of practical use to admissions staff in updating and developing guidance on the UCAS personal statement. We contend that this new guidance, alongside transparent explanations of how the personal statement is used in selection decisions, is crucial to enable UCAS’s reform to widen participation and address inequalities.

    This blog is based on a paper ‘Investigating the alignment of teachers and admissions professionals on UCAS personal statements’ by Tom Fryer, Anna Burchfiel, Matt Griffin, Sam Holmes and Steven Jones. Due to its time-sensitive nature, the paper has been published as a preprint, and therefore has not yet been subject to peer-review.    

    The table summarising the implications for public-facing guidance is available for download here.  

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  • UCAS End of Cycle provider data, 2024

    UCAS End of Cycle provider data, 2024

    Chat to anyone involved in sector admissions and you will hear a similar story.

    And the story appears to be true.

    It is now clear “high tariff” providers have been lowering their entry tariff (often substantially) in order to grow recruitment – meaning students with less-than-stellar grades have been ending up in prestigious institutions, and the kinds of places students like this would more usually attend have been struggling to recruit as a result.

    In other words, the 2024 looks a lot like a lockdown cycle (without the examnishambles and Zoom pub quizzes).

    Any major dude will tell you

    We noted, at a sector level, the rise in the number of offers made by high-tariff providers – it was the highest number on record. There was no parallel rise in A level attainment, which suggests a strategic decision, made early on, to widen access.

    Today’s release of UCAS End of Cycle data for 2024 at provider level illustrates that this picture is a generalisation. Some high-tariff providers have acted in the way described above, others have pursued alternative strategies. And other providers have hit on other ways to drive undergraduate recruitment.

    Starting with my favourite chart, we can think about these individual strategies in more detail. This scatter plot shows the year-on-year change in the number of applications along the horizontal axis and the year-on-year change in acceptances on the vertical. There’s filters for gender, domicile, age group and subject group (at the top level) – and I’ve provided a choice of comparator years if you want to look at changes over a longer term. The size of the dots represents the total recruitment by that provider in 2024, given the parameters we can see.

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    In essence this illustrates popularity (among applicants) and selectivity. What we can see here for 2024 (defaulting to UK 18 year olds applying to all subjects compared to 2023) is that pretty much the entire Russell group has made significant (c500 or above) increases in recruitment, whether or not they saw a corresponding growth in applications.

    It’s not the full story – the picture for other pre-92 and post-92 providers is more mixed, with some providers able to leverage popularity (or desperation) to find growth.

    My old school

    We can’t look directly at provider behaviour by tariff, but we can examine what qualifications students placed at the provider have – here a key indicator might be an increase in the number of students entering without A levels (a group that tends to have lower tariffs overall).

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    The trouble is, A level entry rates have also increased – pretty much anyone who wants to and can do A levels is now doing A levels. With the decline in BTEC popularity, and the still uncertain interest in T levels, this is to be expected. All this means most providers have seen an increase or steady state in the number of students entering with A levels (when you include that A level plus project options). In Scotland – and recall we don’t get the complete picture of Scottish applications from UCAS because of a wonderful little thing called intercalation – it’s SQA pretty much all the way.

    Everything you did

    If you are wondering whether a change in age groups placed as undergraduates could also have an impact on recruitment patterns, it looks as if the pattern of low and slowly falling mature recruitment continues for most providers. For larger universities most of the action is around 18 year old home recruitment – and specialist providers that focus on mature students (often via part-time or flexible study) tend to struggle.

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    The other key factor is domicile – the changes to visa arrangements this time last year had a huge impact on international applications (particularly from countries like India and Nigeria that have become important for lower tariff providers) and coupled with some of the changes described above this has resulted in some providers seeing undergraduate international admissions fall off a cliff.

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    As always, undergraduate isn’t the full story – we’ve still no reliable way of understanding postgraduate recruitment in the round until we get the HESA data long after the academic year in question has finished. I just hope that regulators with new duties to understand the financial stability of the sector have more of a clue.

    Any world that I’m welcome to

    With some providers stuffed to the seams and beyond with students they wouldn’t usually accept – many with support needs it is unclear whether they are able to meet – it is unclear who exactly benefits from this new state of affairs. The claim we regularly hear is that universities lose money on educating home students, and that these must be cross subsidised by international recruitment.

    The corollary of this is that in times where international student recruitment is restricted you would expect to see the number of home students at providers reliant on this income fall – after all, if you lose money on every home student the more you recruit the more money you lose. Though measures to widen access and participation are important (and indeed, we see welcome evidence of contextual admissions at selective providers in the chart below) the fact of it is that you need to spend money to support students without the cultural capital to succeed.

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    The rather painful conclusion I reach is that the only way to make this year’s sums add up is a reduction in spend per student – and, thus, most likely, the quality of the student experience among precisely the students who would have been overjoyed to get a place at a famous university. We should keep a close eye on continuation metrics and the national student survey this year.

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