Growing numbers of disadvantaged students could be rejected by all the universities they apply to as competition for UK degree courses grows, Ucas has warned.
The admissions service is predicting that there could be 1 million applications for undergraduate courses in the country each year by the end of the decade, a 30 per cent increase on today.
Ucas modelling suggests that the gap in the application rate between the most and the least advantaged students could narrow over that period. It suggests that the application rate for the least privileged students could reach 35 per cent by 2030, up from 29.4 per cent in 2022, while the proportion of their more affluent peers applying could hit 65 per cent, up from 60.1 per cent.
But lower attainment levels among disadvantaged students mean that they could be increasingly likely to be left disappointed at the end of the university application process.
