32 Comments

• Chris 24th Jul '13 - 10:31am

  I suppose it’s not surprising that you omitted all mention of the analysis for older applicants, which tells a quite different story. See Figure 17 of the report, for example:
  http://www.ucas.com/system/files/ucas_demand_report_2013.pdf

• Jack 24th Jul '13 - 10:32am

  Well, it’s a relief that terrible policy hasn’t impacted application rates overly much. It was rather tiresome last year as the unwinding effect of the pre-rise bump was reported as a devastating fall in university application numbers. Context, journalists, it’s not just a useful word in scrabble! Still figures from part time and mature students remain depressed which is a concern.

• Jack 24th Jul '13 - 10:33am

  Also, not having broken long term trends in university applications is hardly an achievement, is it?

• Chris 24th Jul '13 - 10:35am

  Coincidentally, Mark Pack does exactly the same thing in his own bit of propaganda:
  http://www.markpack.org.uk/44502/once-again-the-data-shows-everyone-was-wrong-about-tuition-fees/

  The trouble with presenting this kind of slanted, selective version of news is that in the long run people tend to distrust whatever you say.

• AlanPlatypus 24th Jul '13 - 10:40am

  I’m with you on this Stephen but you’ll never convince the naysayers.

• David 24th Jul '13 - 10:54am

  Yes, wouldn’t it be a tragedy if young people were deterred by the prospect of paying £27,000 to study for a degree in Applied Manure at the Uni(versity) of Steeple Bumpstead so that they can come out with a 2.2 and expect a ‘graduate job’ which isn’t there due to every bright young soul in the EU, India, the US etc etc. etc coming over to the UK to compete for jobs – not to mention the ‘bed blocking’by 70-somethings who refuse to retire because they”so enjoy their work” (and fancy a third holiday home).

  Ah, the benefits of: doubling participation in ‘university’ education; the free movement of people; overseas student visas with work add-ons and encouraging work beyond 65. It’s all working so well.

• Prue Bray 24th Jul '13 - 11:14am

  So David, your answer is what?

• John Dunn 24th Jul '13 - 12:01pm

  I think David’s comment gives a good starting point to the fallacy, and the insane notion that we can ‘have it all’, and even create more and more exponential growth for all, ….forever and ever on a finite planet.
  The answers will come, but only when we acknowledge this madness and re-calibrate our thinking to reality. It will be painful.

• Steve 24th Jul '13 - 12:13pm

  Keep attacking that Straw Man. I can’t actually remember anybody saying anything about kids from disadvantaged backgrounds being put off going to university – if they did then it was certainly no the main concern about fees. The main concern was always about the debt burden being placed on future generations and its distribution between graduates/non-graduates and those on different graduate incomes after they left university. My objection to the dreadful system is that it places too great a burden on graduates and that is disproportionately hits people one middle incomes whilst allowing those on higher graduate incomes to pay less. Tuition fees are strictly regressive in the fiscal sense – high earning graduates will contribute a smaller proportion of their lifetime earnings compared with graduates on lower incomes. This is the complete opposite of Lib Dem policy on HE funding for many years, which was based on progressive taxation.

  As for Martin Lewis’s ‘analysis’ – it makes the same crass simplification of financial advice that his entire career has been built on. He looks at the monthly rate without looking at how much it’s going to impact the graduate over their lifetime. It’s the same with all his other stuff – quite how he’s managed to make so many millions out of telling people to shop around for the lowest interest rate I simply don’t know, but he never looks at financial planning – how much money is it going to cost over the decades, how much is it going to reduce the purchasing power of graduates and their ability to save for retirement, etc.

• Ian Eiloart 24th Jul '13 - 12:14pm

  “analysis for older applicants, which tells a quite different story.” Yes, it does. It shows a consistent downward trend since 2010, for all groups aged 22+.

  But increasing attendance rates 20 years ago would be expected to reduce application rates among 40-60 year olds. So that graph doesn’t show bad news today, it shows good news 20 years ago. But, whatever the reasons, there’s no visible impact of tuition fee increases – no pre-rise bump in applications, and no post-rise change in the trend.

• g 24th Jul '13 - 12:20pm

  Ahh, if only the income from fees was sufficient to pay the costs of HE.

  It’s not.

  At some point a future government is going to have to either chuck a massive slab of cash at the HE sector, or increase the interest rates on fees, decrease payment threshold, or all of these, to cover the costs of this disastrously ill-thought out policy.

  People won’t forget that this will have been brought about by lib dems going against a pledge to the electorate.

• Chris 24th Jul '13 - 12:59pm

  “But increasing attendance rates 20 years ago would be expected to reduce application rates among 40-60 year olds. So that graph doesn’t show bad news today, it shows good news 20 years ago.”

  That interpretation seems quite inconsistent with the data. For one thing the trends are similar for applicants of all ages from 21 upwards, not just for those who would have been of university age 20 years ago. For another, during the 1990s the percentage of non-graduates decreased, starting at about 80%, by only about 1% per year. That rate of annual decrease is obviously nothing like enough to explain the drop in the number of 40-60 years olds applying to university over the last 2 or 3 years.
  http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04252.pdf

  But really my point is that – whatever arguments can be made about the significance of the figures, and whatever one might think about the merits (or otherwise) of increasing participation in higher education – it doesn’t help if people simply suppress inconvenient information for the sake of conveying a positive political message.

• Richard Shaw 24th Jul '13 - 1:25pm

  @ g

  “People won’t forget that this will have been brought about by lib dems going against a pledge to the electorate.”

  Would that be the same electorate where 70%+ didn’t vote Lib Dem and voted for parties committed to raising fees anyway? Oh, right.

• g 24th Jul '13 - 1:44pm

  Richard Shaw, the liberal democrats pledged they would vote against any rise in tuition fees.

  I really don’t see how the views of other parties affect this.

  Anyway, this is irrelevant to the real, and growing gap between the money needed by the HE sector and the money given to the HE sector that the coalition’s funding policy is exacerbating.

• Chris 24th Jul '13 - 2:08pm

  “Would that be the same electorate where 70%+ didn’t vote Lib Dem and voted for parties committed to raising fees anyway?”

  Your point being what, exactly?

• Steve 24th Jul '13 - 2:42pm

  @Richard Shaw
  “Would that be the same electorate where 70%+ didn’t vote Lib Dem and voted for parties committed to raising fees anyway? Oh, right.”

  The other parties were not committed to raising fees, but both did effectively opt-out of having a manifesto commitment on the issue by deferring to the outcome of the Browne report. A common complaint of the electorate is there is nothing to differentiate between the three parties. On tuition fees, the Lib Dems had a very clearly different policy and commitment, which is partly why so many Lib Dem voters are so annoyed by the u-turn. Are you trying to argue that the number of people put off voting Lib Dem by the u-turn are insignificant compared to the hoards of new voters that will be enticed to voting Lib Dem now they have the same policy as everyone else?

• David 24th Jul '13 - 2:50pm

  My point, Prue, is that it is a cruel deception to ask young people to spend almost £30,000 on a value-less qualification from a worthless institution which will in no way advantage them in the world of work (and please don’t give me a load of guff about the value of ‘learning for its own sake’ about Joint Honours in Refuse Management and Bulgarian Dance at the ‘Uni’ of Northampton). Like it or not, we and young people will – or should – now assess degrees and institutions on their merits as a career proposition. Law at Cambridge; Medicine at Bristol: yes. Noddy courses at numpty former polys, mostly no. Much more vocational and technical training; more practical management courses, yes, so that our young people can have viable futures in useful jobs which their degree makes therm think they are too good for while not qualifying them for in any way shape or form. .

• Peter Watson 24th Jul '13 - 8:27pm

  I do wonder whether the requirement from 2013 for nursing to require a university degree may be a significant factor here. In terms of applications, nursing is now the most popular degree course and numbers have increased hugely over the last few years as diploma courses are phased out. Additionally, since 2010 scottish nursing applications have been handled by UCAS . In the data provided by UCAS, it appears that nursing applications have been explicitly excluded from time-series analysis of application rates by age because of the effect it has on the results, but not excluded from the data about social background and other factors.
  Obviously there is no reason to assume that student nurses come from a more disadvantaged background than other groups (or to assume that they do not), but if the fee and bursary structure for nursing is different then this might also have an effect because of the size of that new group. I would certainly want to be assured that the time-series data being presented here is genuinely comparing like with like, and other factors are excluded or highlighted, before I would have any confidence in some of the conclusions being drawn about the effect (or lack of one) of increased tuition fees on application rates for different social backgrounds.

• DAVEN 24th Jul '13 - 8:34pm

  I admit to being very very unimpressed. There are currently just below three times more University applicants from students of ‘wealthy’ family backgrounds compared to students from ‘average’ or ‘low’ income backgrounds. This is a disgraceful situation that the LibDems bear much of the blame for. We cannot, as a nation, afford to ‘waste’ gifted students because to their financial background. I am still waiting for a Tory or a LibDem to explain how on earth tripling the University tuition fees was ever going to help students from modest financial backgrounds into higher education. I find the above article totally unconvincing, and just empty words. On this issue, as on many others, the LibDems have completely lost the plot post 2010.

  Ah well……… so the easy way out is simply to not publish this piece!

• Peter Watson 24th Jul '13 - 8:38pm

  @Stephen “It would be a tragedy if young people end up being deterred through unfounded fears they’ll have to pay university fees up-front, instead of paying them back gradually only once they are earning more than £21,000.”
  Though Martin Lewis does point out (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/should-i-get-student-loan) that the high earning children of parents wealthy enough to pay up front can save a lot of money by doing so.
  I also have to ask why, when there is apparently no link between the fees charged by a university and the repayments made by a graduate, why did Lib Dem MPs believe that £9000 fees would be the exception or that universities would compete on the basis of price. I suspect that young people were not the only ones who did not understand the system.

• Peter Watson 24th Jul '13 - 8:52pm

  @Richard Shaw “Would that be the same electorate where 70%+ didn’t vote Lib Dem and voted for parties committed to raising fees anyway?”
  Setting aside the inconvenient truth that Labour and Conservatives were only committed to waiting to see what Lord Browne recommended and the public reaction to it, and that as Lib Dems we accused them during the election campaign of planning to increase fees while we pledged to vote against any such thing (as well as criticising Labour for its own previous betrayals on this issue), and that many of those 70%+ voted for parties in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland who did not increase tuition fees, then surely it is still very important to consider the 25%+ who trusted us and may no longer do so.

• Alex Baldwin 25th Jul '13 - 3:05pm

  @DAVEN: “There are currently just below three times more University applicants from students of ‘wealthy’ family backgrounds compared to students from ‘average’ or ‘low’ income backgrounds. This is a disgraceful situation that the LibDems bear much of the blame for.”

  How on Earth did you manage to come to the conclusion that the LibDems are responsible for a gap that has been present for the past nine years? Personally, I am actually a bit suspicious of how perfectly parallel (if you consider relative changes) the five lines on that graph are.

• Edward Russell 25th Jul '13 - 8:02pm

  When Ian Eiloart said ” there’s no visible impact of tuition fee increases”, does nobody else feel that that is just blatantly untrue? Is it not apparent that there is a very notable dip on almost every graph in 2012. The major exception is the line representing applications from Scotland. I wonder why!?

• Jim 25th Jul '13 - 10:16pm

  I think taxing the future and putting debt in their hands instead of means testing wealthy pensioners from the golden baby boomer age is definitely the way to go. (Not) The lib seems should ashamed this happened it is against their policy and they should’ve dug their heels in, they were the party of the young, now they are splintered. It also annoys me that they quote £27,000 as the cost of a degree. Maybe for rich toffs whose parents can pay the rest. What about accommodate? Food? Fun dare I say it? They’ll leave with £45,000 debt and George and Barbara can keep their state pension to go on their yearly cruise!

• Peter Watson 26th Jul '13 - 12:17am

  @Jim “It also annoys me that they quote £27,000 as the cost of a degree.”
  They also overlook the fact that our MPs mistakenly (or misleadingly) expected very few universities to charge £9000 per year in the first place.
  Another feature I have noticed (in the maths and physics courses that my son is looking at but the pattern might be repeated in other subjects) is an increasing number of 4 year undergraduate masters courses. The loan repayment system might mean that these £36000 courses are no more expensive to the graduate than a 3 year course (so who is picking up the bill?). This could also adversely affect the availability of postgraduate masters study (making it harder for mature graduates to return to university). The trend started long before tuition fees (I studied a 4 year MEng in the 80s), but it appears to have been exacerbated by the new system under which students are encouraged to seek funding for a 4 year course rather than try to authorise the extra year later.

• Matthew Huntbach 26th Jul '13 - 11:11pm

  In today’s Guardian it is reported as “good news” that house prices have risen by 1.9%.

  Why is it regarded as a terrible thing that young people have to take on so much debt to get a degree, but “good news” that they have to take on more debt to get a house? How much did house prices rise under the last Labour government? So how much more debt did this mean young people had to take on to get a house? On average, I think, a lot more than £27,000. Why does no-one seem bothered by that?

• nuclear cockroach 26th Jul '13 - 11:47pm

  @MH

  Because:
  a) it was a Tory press release to the Mail
  b) newpapers just recycle “News” by copying each other, rather than doing any original research
  c) the Guardian and the Mail have strikingly similar aging middle class readerships, both assuming that their readers are delighted by an “I’m alright, Jack, feck you,” rise in property prices

  Would that fit?

• Matthew Huntbach 27th Jul '13 - 11:47pm

  @nuclear cockroach

  OK, but this was hardly the first time that the Guardian reported a rise in house prices as “good news”, so I’d put c) as the real answer. Here’s some more:

  d) Trendy lefty types tend to have parents with big houses, which is why though you’ll find them striking many poses, such as opposing student tuition fees, you won’t find them opposing the way the housing and inheritance system so benefits people like them.

  e) Poor people have been fed a constant stream of anti-democratic propaganda about how politics is all bad, not for the likes of them, something they should completely ignore, so you won’t find them getting together to put the case for measures to reduce house prices, and for the general idea that house prices rising beyond their reach is a bad thing.

  f) Given that poor people have been persuaded that politics isn’t for the likes of them, so they shouldn’t vote, there’s no point in politicians doing anything to try and get their votes, like putting forward policies that are in their favour, especially when those policies disfavour those most likely to vote.

  g) The political far left in this country is run by people who still act as if they are paid by Moscow gold – so to them, being left means obsessing about foreign policy issues i.e. find out whatever the USA is doing and who they are supporting and oppose it. It doesn’t mean putting forward policies which appeal to poor people, or which might get poor people thinking and politically active. Currently it mostly means making an alliance with the right-wing of Islam.

  h) The rest of the political left in this country is run by people who think being left means being socially liberal rather than fighting for the poor.

  i) Those most badly affected by rising house prices are working class southerners, and no-one gives a toss for them.

• Chris 28th Jul '13 - 12:38am

  “On average, I think, a lot more than £27,000. Why does no-one seem bothered by that?”

  At least when they buy a house they get somewhere to live.

  In many cases, all they get in return for the university fees debt is three years taken out of their lives and deferred permission finally to enter the employment market.

• Matthew Huntbach 28th Jul '13 - 6:16pm

  Chris
  
  In many cases, all they get in return for the university fees debt is three years taken out of their lives and deferred permission finally to enter the employment market.
  
  The material I teach at university gets people jobs, it is skills that are in big demand. I know this because of the feedback I get from previous students like “What you taught me got me my job” and “Now I’m working in the industry, I can see how relevant were all the points you were making” and “Your course was the foundation of my career”. The material I teach in my module alone would cost about £9,000 in a course in the private sector, and the private sector course would teach it in a shallow way and not give a proper assessment.

  The biggest problem I face is that half the students on my module can’t be bothered to put in the work required to learn the material. I.e. they don’t turn up to lectures and labs, don’t do the exercises, don’t read the notes, give up when it becomes a little stretching.

• Kiron Reid 13th Aug '13 - 11:05am

  Why is this good?

  Yes I see it is good for the Liberal Democrats in Government to show that the top ups fees payment model is fairer than had been proposed and has not put off a generation of students from poorer and middle class backgrounds from studying. But more students is not something to celebrate. Just as with the credit and housing bubble crises, the expansion of student numbers was obviously unsustainable by 2005. Encouraging more graduates is just setting up more students with, for many, unachievable aspirations and with unrealistic expectations of a high ‘graduate’ salary that many will not get. In my experience widening participation opportunities have decreased over the last decade because that applicant from a ‘non-traditional’ background is now competing against ten times the number of people rather than maybe four times in the past. It was easier to stand out and be outstanding, or get a break. Now you have to stand out and be outstanding and get a break to get the chance to be an unpaid office junior in a dodgy claims firm in any small Northern town – not what the graduates aspire to.

  Worse, the harrowing stories of mass youth unemployment are the same across most of Western and Eastern Europe, in Canada, in Malaysia and Singapore, and even in China. The same unrealistic expectations in Malaysia, and Singapore, and Canada combined with excessive numbers of graduates, and in the Asian countries significant closed shops or in China, as in Eastern and South Eastern Europe, the lack of meritocracy in appointments to even starting positions. In China the same huge output of highly educated young people with limited opportunities, and restrictions in the State model, made far worse by our economic crisis that we have inflicted on them. It is good that students are not being put off but terrible that such a huge number of people who would clearly be better doing other things than degrees are being fed through the sausage factory of degree and postgraduate degree. The leftist / paternalist solution of stopping unpaid internships will simply restrict opportunity for many; while continuing excessive output will mean the disastrous ripples from West to East will continue. No one who has the ability should be put off doing a degree to better themselves intellectually, and in terms of skills and the beneficial experience that the University life should bring, but many people should honestly be told that a degree is not a good option for them.

  On the youth unemployment crisis:
  BBC Radio Merseyside ‘Orient Express’ report on the Chinese economy by Martin Patience, Beijing correspondent 7pm, Sunday 11 August 2013.
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01d6g7r 46 minutes in.

  ‘No work, no confidence: plight of Europe’s ‘lost generation’’ Jon Henley, the Guardian, 2 July 2013, p. 1, 16-17; a harrowing article with a few glimmers of hope, published online as ‘Young, qualified and jobless: plight of Europe’s best-educated generation’, 1 July 2013:
  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/01/jobless-europe-young-qualified

• Jim Clark 24th Aug '13 - 7:11am

  Is it not a concern that the gap between various groups (e.g., most and least advantaged) has not decreased in the slightest over the 10 year period?