National cap may force York to turn away home undergraduates
THE UNIVERSITY of York may be forced into turning away undergraduate home students in favour of international and graduate applicants over the next two years to meet expansion goals following a Government ruling on student numbers.
A national ban on increasing the number of home students in higher education for the next two years is likely to force admission officers to look elsewhere for students to fill the £500 million Heslington East expansion project in the immediate future.
The University has admitted that postgraduate and international students will make up “a substantial proportion” of the increases required to populate the new site.
Under a strict ruling from John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, a rise in the recruitment of home students in 2009-10 is highly unlikely. In addition, there are no plans for this cap to be lifted in 2010-11.
Denham had already instructed the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which regulates funding for students and universities to “bear down on over-recruitment” before demanding that institutions “preferably eliminate” increased recruitment in a letter last month.
A subsequent HEFCE letter to all Vice-Chancellors stated: “We will be making no further allocations of Addional Student Numbers (ASNs) for 2009-10, beyond those already approved or under consideration. In addition, we will make no further allocations of ASNs for 2010-11 at this stage.”
The University have defended the viability of their expansion plans, claiming that as the constraints apply “only to home undergraduate student growth”, plans to fill Heslington East will be “unaffected by the Secretary of State’s announcement.”
University Press Officer David Garner said: “In the context of the Heslington East expansion, the undergraduate home market is only part of the picture. A substantial proportion of the increase in students associated with the development will be of postgraduate and international students.”
According to the most recent figures available, international and EU citizens currently make up 11% of undergraduate students, while post-graduates account for just over 24% of the total student population.
Goodricke College, which moves to the new site this October, will see the number of beds swell to 600 from the current 350. In line with the HEFCE announcement, it is expected that the extra students required to meet the increased capacity will not be home undergraduates.
The new expansion-based departments of Law and Theatre, Film and Television will also begin accepting students in October.
“We have growth in student numbers already factored into plans and funded for 2009/10 and 2010/11,” said Garner. “Demand for study at universities in general, and at this university in particular, is still extremely strong,” he added.
To enforce the ruling, HEFCE has warned that increased admissions would result in severe penalties, threatening “further measures that we may consider could include constraining student numbers through changes to the operation of our funding method”.
In previous years, institutions were allowed to overshoot figures without facing serious punishment.
The uncompromising line on recruitment quotas is being seen as an admission by the Government that it cannot provide for any increases in student loan and grant numbers following mistakes that left a £200m shortfall in the higher education budget.
Denham admitted that “the number of students receiving full or partial grants was exceeding projections,” and informed HEFCE that he was “reducing the funding to [universities] for the coming year by £19m compared with the indicative figure shown in last year’s grant letter.”
“Any over-recruitment in the coming year could result in a transfer of HEFCE grant back to this department in that or future years, in order to meet the consequent unanticipated student support costs,” Denham’s letter said.
Wes Streeting, President of the National Union of Students, stated that he was “concerned that the welcome expansion of higher education through additional student numbers (ASNs) has been curtailed this year and that decisions about additional places in future years have been put on hold”.
Home students can claim £3,145 from the government for tuition fees, and up to £6,475 in loans for living costs.
Figures provided by the university application service UCAS show that the number applicants accepted on to full-time undergraduate courses in the UK increased 7% between 2007 and 2008 to 442,443.
Between 2006 and 2007, the number rose 5.8%.
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We mandarins in Heslington Hall (you know, the faceless bunch you never see) were delighted to see Nouse lead with a real story. There has indeed been a measure of incompetence in government circles – the announcement about the cap on Additional Student Numbers (ASNs) comes as a result of some hapless civil servant getting their sums wrong and the government is forced to admit that there are more students chasing the money in the student loans pot than they have cash to support. Whoops. You might think that an obvious answer, in a recession when jobs are scarce, is to keep people inside the universities and pay for them there rather than idling about on the dole in the outside world. And our view in Hes Hall is that the politicians will tumble to that sooner rather than later, especially as election fever hots up, and they’ll row back from this rather incoherent position. Or maybe we’re being optimistic to think that politicians will unpick a silly policy anytime soon…
Whatever, we thought we’d just let you know that we’re not panicking at York. The government has cut ASNs for 2009-10 from 15,000 to 10,000 but our planned expansion is safely within the 10,000 so no immediate anxieties there on the part of Law and TFTV, our new boys on the block. Furthermore, our recruitment figures which we monitor weekly, are looking just fine – in all categories (undergrad, taught postgrad, research postgrad, home and international) we’re close to or above the numbers this time last year. And as for filling Hes East – well, I notice that you’re also running a story on evil landlords. Students shouldn’t forget that many of the bedspaces in the new Goodricke are for returning second and third years, and that one of the University’s policies is to take the pressure off the private rental market in years to come by providing more accommodation for all years on campus.
We’re in a very strong competitive position at York, especially after the RAE results of last term. We are now firmly established as ‘Ivy League’. As I’ve said before, that’s no cause for complacency, but it certainly helps in tough times.