If you’ve seen a lot of level 3 results days then maybe it’s all looking very familiar – but this year’s batch of articles about school and college leavers making it to university feels especially laden with gloom.
In no particular order in the lead up to results day we’ve seen anxiety about international students crowding out home students, universities being unable to guarantee accommodation to first-year students, high profile reassurances/nudges that technical or apprenticeship routes could be just as rewarding as going to university, and concerns about students’ and young people’s mental health.
Read below the fold in most cases and you’ll find a bit more nuance – for example, universities explaining that until they have the actual results in hand and know what their likely incoming cohort is they can’t always make firm offers of courses or accommodation to UK students, but that picture will change as Clearing progresses.
And it’s rarely acknowledged that degree apprenticeships aren’t really an “alternative” to university. If anything they are merely a different way of gaining a university qualification – and tend to be much trickier for a school or college leaver to secure than a place on a traditional university course at that.
