A new Report from the Higher Education Policy Institute shows
reductions in student demand in England, which are already
affecting the higher education sector, will cause serious
problems as the number of 18-year-olds in the population declines
after 2030.
Student Demand to 2035 by Bahram Bekhradnia (HEPI Report
179) finds:
- After steadily increasing over the past two decades, the
participation rate in England – the proportion of young people
choosing to go to higher education – has gone into reverse in the
past two years.
- At the same time, after increasing between now and 2030, the
size of the young population will decline sharply and, unless the
participation rate were to resume its improvement, then overall
demand for higher education would fall by around 20% between 2030
and 2040, causing serious problems for much of the higher
education sector.
- There remains a yawning gap between male and female
participation. Given the fact that consistently 5% more boys are
born than girls, it would take a 37% increase in male
participation to match that of female. This startling fact,
though, might be thought to provide some basis for hoping that
the likely decline in student numbers may be mitigated – if males
were to begin to catch up. However, the underperformance of males
is a global phenomenon. In the OECD, the United Kingdom actually
performs better than most other countries in this respect, so
international experience does not provide any basis for
anticipating an improvement.
- Whereas 20 years ago young people from the most privileged
groups were four times more likely to go to university than the
least privileged, that gap had halved by 2022. However, in the
last two years that steady improvement has stalled. Nevertheless,
if the improvement in the performance of the least privileged
were to resume, then that could substantially mitigate the effect
of the population decline.
- The fixed student fee is only one element of the cost of
attending university. The other is the cost of living while at
university. Whereas the real-terms cost of student fees has
reduced, as fees for home students have not increased at all
since 2017, maintenance support has not kept up with the rising
cost of living, which may be having a negative impact on
potential students.
- Many universities are already suffering student number
reductions, partly as a result of the universities defined as
‘higher tariff' by UCAS (including those in the Russell Group) –
no doubt in a bid to maintain their income and compensate for the
near 40% real terms reduction in the value of the fee –
recruiting students who in the past would not have met their
academic requirements and would have gone to ‘lower or medium
tariff' universities. Between 2013 and 2024, applications to
‘higher tariff' universities increased by 40% while those to
‘lower tariff' universities declined by 13%.
The report concludes that prospects for student numbers look
highly uncertain. If there is no improvement in participation,
then demand will reduce substantially after 2030 implying a very
bleak outlook for many universities which will be exacerbated if
some mechanism is not introduced to limit the ability of others
to recruit students at their expense.
Bahram Bekhradnia, HEPI President and the author of the
report, commented:
‘The reasons for the recent reversal of the increasing desire of
young people to go to university need to be understood. It is
unlikely to be because of cost – the cost of going to university
has actually reduced in the past decade. It may be because of the
increasing hostile environment fomented by the last Government
and by some of the press. Or it may be a residual impact of
COVID. Whatever the reasons, unless there is an increase in the
desire of young people to go to university then the future looks
very bleak for many institutions.
‘It may already be too late for some, but universities are an
essential part of the national infrastructure, and for the sake
of the country and for the sector as a whole, we need a body to
safeguard the national interest. The Office for Students has
shown no interest in peforming this role – indeed, that was not
part of its remit when it was created purely to be a guardian of
student interests – and it needs to be replaced or radically
realigned. Some form of student number controls is required in
order to ensure that perfectly good universities do not go to the
wall because of the predatory – if understandable – behaviour of
others.'
