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British universities are taking extreme measures to guarantee a supply of recruits for the upcoming academic year, and some are accused of operating secret waiting lists to encourage school dropouts to accept their offers amid uncertainty over the results of the level A.
With many admissions offices poised for a second year of results confusion and grade inflation, experts predict a record number of applications for college places.
But colleges competing for highly-qualified candidates fear that popular colleges, including those in the Russell Group of top research institutions, may seek to profit from likely grade inflation by increasing their undergraduate recruitment for the second year in a row, leaving colleges less popular with fewer students to choose from.
A senior figure in national college admissions said that some of the most competitive colleges are handling uncertainty with informal waiting lists, in which they contact individual applicants outside of the formal admissions process to tell them they can be accepted regardless of their backgrounds. qualifications if places remain – those students less likely to accept places in other institutions.
He predicted that these waiting lists would be used more widely this year, making it harder for less prestigious universities to recruit those students.
The accusation of “secret waiting lists” was confirmed by a chancellor, who said some universities are known to have used the tactic in previous years.
The government announced last week that A-level and BTec results in England would be based on teacher evaluations rather than tests. But the decision to leave schools without firm national guidelines was denounced as “catastrophic” by a chancellor, who hopes the move will lead to higher grades and greater instability within the sector as universities struggle to accurately predict how many students they will qualify for places. .
Higher grades across the board create a dilemma for colleges that made offers to students before the grading policy change, as well as mean that more students will qualify for a wider range of courses. The deadline for most of the school’s graduates to apply was the end of January, but many had applied before the new year and the news that the exams would be canceled.
Principals reported that Russell Group colleges “stepped on the brakes” in making offers to sixth-grade students after January 6, when the government announced that this year’s exams would be scrapped and have only recently restarted bidding. .
Mark Corver, an admissions expert and founder of DataHE, said his model predicts an additional 50,000 students dropping out of school. will accept undergraduate places for the 2021-22 academic year, in addition to the record 371,000 young British students accepted last year. This is due to a variety of factors including demographic changes, grade inflation, and scarce job opportunities in the pandemic.
“Universities could well have made offers based on what the government had in mind at the beginning of the cycle, which would be test scores with a similar distribution of scores to previous years. Now the currency of those degrees has changed. It’s almost like they are bidding in pounds and now they are being asked to accept dollars, ”Corver said.
“Many universities that I speak to are thinking hard about what their maximum emergency capacity might be for 2021-22.”
Last year, many universities that traditionally require high A-level scores actively recruited more students from the UK, fearing a sharp decline in foreign students. This year, the uncertainty is about evidence of the decline in EU students after Brexit, with figures released by the Ucas admissions authority showing a 40% drop this year.
Last year, so many students accepted places at popular universities that several were forced to ask students to defer a year. The University of Cambridge has introduced an over-subscription clause this year, allowing it to withdraw offers if too many candidates qualify for places.
Bella Malins, director of admissions at University College London, said her university does not operate any waiting lists, but has been cautiously bidding after being overwhelmed by demand last year.
“Most colleges have been quite cautious about their offerings this year because of what happened in 2020,” Malins said.
“Generally, we try to estimate how many students we need based on historical data from years, such as how applications are converted to offers, acceptances and admission. We have not been able to do that because last year was very different and everything is up in the air this year ”.
Kerry O’Shea, director of admissions at the University of Bristol, said her institution generally staggers bidding, but that this year it would need even more flexibility. The university will notify eligible students later in the admissions cycle and in the case of available seats through the compensation process on the A-level results day.
Last year, the use of teacher-assessed results led to a jump in the number of superior grades issued, with 38% of all A-level entries awarded an A or A * grade in England. There were similar grade increases in Scotland and Wales.
Some colleges responded by honoring as many offers as possible, which meant that UCL’s college student admissions skyrocketed by 40%. But other universities appear to have lost students as a result, and the University of Surrey saw its annual income from undergraduate students drop by 20%.
Corver warned that this year’s A-level students will be less prepared for college as more than half of their learning time was interrupted by lockdowns and Covid, compared to 25% for the 2020 cohort.
“The government can help by providing additional support to gradually repair the damage from the pandemic over the next three years,” Corver said.
Ray Powell, an admissions tutor at the University of Greenwich, said a growing number of students who had accepted places at high-ranking universities were asking to switch to others like Greenwich. He expects the change to intensify if universities continue to recruit less qualified candidates.
“I see a lot more students transferring in their sophomore or junior year because they are not getting the results that they could have done at a different college with a support network that is used to dealing with people from less favored educational backgrounds,” Powell said. .
