The Covid-19 pandemic has seen an enormous spike in interest in the nursing and allied health professions.
Applications to study nursing courses increased by more than a third among eighteen year old and mature applicant cohorts alike for 2021 – inspired in large part by the pandemic, according to a January 2022 report from UCAS and Health Education England.
As any Dean of Health can attest, applicants for nursing courses have a rather different profile from the average applicant to higher education. They are more likely to be female, and more likely to be applying as a mature student – and therefore much more likely to have responsibilities outside study – and more likely to come from an area with the lowest levels of HE participation than the highest.
