The Office for National Statistics last updated my favourite demographic projections in 2020.
Starting with a 2018 baseline, the data extrapolates a number of trends – birth rates, migration, immigration – to come up with a number. Or, more accurately, a whole range of numbers – broken down by five year age groups, and areas of England, for every year until 2043.
Since 2020, it has been the best place to look if you want to know how many young people (use the 15-19 bucket) might be around in any given area (from England down) that might want to apply to university.
The peak – something that generated a great deal of excitement at the time, was 2030. After this (which generated rather less interest) numbers gradually tail away. By 2043, the number of people in England aged 15-19 is projected to be around the same as it was in 2022.
This does not, however, suggest that the number of people applying to or placed on undergraduate first degree qualifications will be the same as this year.
If we’ve learned one thing about higher education entry over the years it is that entry rates do not move in proportion to demographics. The entry rate (a standard calculation of the proportion of the 18 year old population entering higher education that year) grew steadily through the demographic trough of the noughties and teens.
Policy doesn’t often make much of a difference either. Indeed, undergraduate full-time recruitment in England grew by 28.8 per cent in the decade preceding the abolition of number controls (2001-02 to 2011-12), as compared to 19.8 per cent in the decade afterwards (2011-12 to 2021-22). I guess the state is better at growing the sector than the untrammelled free market. Who knew?
The number of placed students and the number of applicants are two other useful metrics when we are considering the capacity and popularity of higher education. There had been concern that the entry rate fell for two years in a row from a 2021 peak – this worry had been amplified by a fall in application numbers between 2022 and 2023.
However, the recently completed 2024 cycle brought rather better news. The entry rate rose (from 35.6 per cent last year to 36.2 per cent this year) – and the number of accepted UK 18 year olds was the highest on record.
The course of the pandemic restrictions, when plotted like this, looks like an out of trend peak – the declines of the previous two years look very like a return to this trend. We’ll need another few years of data to be sure, but it appears as if those who called the last two years as a new phenomenon (be it cost based or the scourge of wokery) may have been a little premature.
A new report out from HEPI this morning makes the beginnings of a mea culpa, but in a somewhat unexpected direction.
Previous reports – not only by HEPI, but by others as well – were predicated upon continuation of the increasing desire of young people to go to university. The student number projections that were produced as a result now look as if they may be too high
The headline level HEPI analysis appears not to fully factor in the 2024 cycle UCAS data, and – while noting the direction if not the quantum of the post 2030 demographic change, uses the previous predictions of a decline in entry rates and applications as a basis for reconsidering the continued attractiveness of university study.
Now – people have been predicting the decline of traditional university study ever since the beginnings of the mass system in the late nineties. We’ve had the concerns about the quality of “polytechnics” (which, as it turns out, are excellent universities), the disruptive force of technology (the online course boom of the early noughties, the MOOC wars of 2012, the metaverse of 2020, and somehow blockchain), the cultural critiques of the last years of the previous government, and the constant drumbeat of skills, apprenticeships, sub-degree qualifications (remember foundation degrees?) and broadsheet thinkpieces.
The three year full time undergraduate degree has endured. It may not be the best offer for all 18 year olds, and it would be a bit silly to imagine we have somehow stumbled across the idea delivery mechanism, but that the bachelor’s degree has retained significant popularity through all kinds of pressures is notable. Come the apocalypse and the demise of civilisation, all that is left will be cockroaches. And they will be studying three year full time undergraduate bachelor’s degrees. With honours.
The HEPI report is notable in that it calls for a more managed approach to undergraduate recruitment:
If there are to be student number controls they will need to be carefully constructed, but some form of control is required to ensure that the sector as a whole is able to thrive.
Wonkhe readers will be no strangers to the cases for (and against) number controls – indeed the higher education itself argued for their voluntary imposition during the uncertainties of the pandemic. Bekhradnia’s argument is that some measure of control could work as a counterbalance to the more expansionist ambitions of some of what we used to call the “higher tariff” providers.
It’s easier to see what is going on if we look at acceptances by tariff group and age:
Over the last decade, acceptances have risen sharply among UK 18 year olds, while older student placements have declined steadily. Larger high-tariff providers have always done well with 18 year olds, and have expanded in line with this wider trend – low tariff providers (almost by definition) tend to recruit mature students and have shrunk along with that end of the market.
In other words, we can pin a fair chunk of the impetus of this change on the way the post-2012 regime has dissuaded mature student applications among UK (and specifically English) nationals. High tariff providers historically dominate international undergraduate recruitment (again, largely among 18 year olds) while other providers have struggled to maintain a steady state – topping up (at an undergraduate level at least) with harder-to-place mature international students, where (again) numbers have at best stagnated.
“Russell Group greed” is a good headline, but analyses like these hide the way that the undergraduate market is skewing relentlessly younger and better qualified. Although 2024 and 2025 are likely to be outliers (concern about university finances is reaching into some unusually prestigious areas of the sector) the underlying trend is what is doing the damage.
But if the tastes of the young tend quasi-Oxbridge, who is the government to intervene? Is there a case for allowing unpopular (as opposed to poor quality or mismanaged) universities to fail?
Originally, the Office for Students would have been fully signed up to this idea. Concerns about the overall stability of the sector arose during the pandemic, and this interest became a key policy priority with the publication of the Behan Report. And the three key questions it now has to face are about financials, capacity, and control.
In terms of demographics we are still looking at a peak of demand in 2030, and – importantly – a gradual tailing off that still leaves the number of young people in England at 2023 levels in 2043. And this ignores any potential increase in demand for university (something that everyone from Skills England to OECD are predicting) And if you think the sector (and associated accommodation services) has sufficient capacity for the students it has right now I have a bridge to sell you. If the role of the government is to invest in innovation and skills infrastructure (hitting a number of missions on the way) then it absolutely has the right to decide where and how to invest. A bigger Russell Group may be one way – there are others.
