Are too many students going to university this year?

Illustration of pigeons wearing graduation mortar boards crowding a statue of Socrates

Almost a third of all 18-year-olds in England are going to university this year but 'if school leavers had more appealing options, they might take them'

(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Getty Images)

By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK

published 15 August 2024

More than three-quarters of English 18-year-old applicants have been accepted into their first-choice university as more young people achieved top A level grades than last year.

According to government figures, 32.1% of all English 18-year-olds have been accepted into university, with 75.7% securing a spot at their preferred institution, up from 71.6% in 2023 and 74.5% in 2019.

"University hopefuls trepidatiously opening their official A level emails this morning will on the whole be happier than last year," said Andrew Tettenborn in The Spectator. This year, students are more likely to secure a university place, especially at their first-choice institution, due to two "serendipitous" factors: the fading of the Covid-induced enrolment bubble that left universities overfilled, and a decline in foreign applications.

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There are notable "downsides" to these efforts to keep university lecture halls full. "Unless you believe the somewhat unconvincing notion that UK school students have been getting steadily smarter, more sophisticated, and better educated each year, quality will decline, and entry standards will fall," said Tettenborn in The Spectator. "This in turn will feed into more demands for remedial teaching and for already demoralised university teachers to spend yet more time instilling the basics into large and sometimes not very interested classes rather than encouraging students to think for themselves."

Today's A level results could also "encourage complacency about the way we approach higher education". Many already argue that the UK's tertiary education system is "too skewed towards universities". Simply put, "this suggests that we have too many university students with skills people don't need, too few apprentices and on-the-job trainees, and (whisper it quietly) possibly too many universities".

"If school leavers had more appealing options, they might take them," said City A.M. "There is something disingenuous about the school-to-university pipeline as it is presented to pupils, and something distinctly un-university-like about many university experiences," where "smoking weed and clubbing" define "too much of many degree-takers' lived experience". While there "may be nothing wrong with either", it "shouldn’t be necessary to pay £9,000 a year to party".

"A radical experiment expanding post-sixth form options could help find a new equilibrium," said the news site. "A skilled workforce is necessary, but a media degree is not." For many students, "a course in coding could be far more useful and cost-effective." What young people need is "more choice outside the university bracket, more guidance in making decisions at 18, and greater honesty about what is required to undertake a bachelor's degree".

Although universities are often praised as "engines of social mobility", said Paul Wiltshire in Times Higher Education, a university education shouldn't be "the de facto method for identifying and rewarding hard-working and academically able young adults from poor backgrounds". On-the-job training and apprenticeships should be recognised as equally effective preparation for employment, as they once were, "before the glut of graduates made employers see non-graduates as the 'dregs'".

But, of course, going to university can be about much more than employability and future earnings. "It is a chance to broaden your horizons, gain independence, meet a range of new people with different backgrounds and views (some of whom may become lifelong friends), throw yourself into a subject you love and immerse yourself in different experiences", said Nicola Woolcock, education editor at The Times.

With many UK universities facing severe financial challenges, where students choose to go to university could be a "make-or-break point" for several institutions, said The Guardian. David Maguire, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, told the paper last week that "an awful lot of institutions are placing extremely large bets on this recruitment round". But, he added: "I don’t think there are enough students to go around."

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Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.