Students could face tougher competition for places on some courses at leading universities this year after a “massive expansion” of applicants in the wake of the Covid pandemic, the president of Universities UK has warned.
As A-level students await their results on 17 August, Sir Steve West said places on research-intensive courses such as medicine and dentistry at Russell Group universities could be harder to secure, after student numbers jumped over the past two years.
“In the first round of Covid, what you saw happening was universities had made offers, students then achieved the offers so there was very little drop-off and therefore research-intensive universities expanded significantly their undergraduate student population,” he said.
He added: “Now that’s put pressure on their infrastructure, their staffing, and what they’re trying to do is just to rebalance that back into some sense of normality.”
The Russell Group, which represents 24 leading universities including Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics, recently warned that universities in England are having to subsidise students by an average of £2,500 a year, because of funding constraints.
Asked whether the squeeze on resources could mean greater competition than in previous years at Russell Group institutions, West said: “Possibly in some subject areas where there may be pressures on accommodation or type of teaching spaces, environments or staffing.
“Science, medicine and dentistry are the obvious ones because of workshops and laboratories. Some research-intensive universities will be limiting numbers into other areas and that’s purely and simply because of capacity in the institutions.”
