The number of university places available to students through the clearing process is down on last week, with less than 24 hours to go before teenagers get their results.
One university blamed an "administrative blip" for showing more than 500 as available when they should not have been.
The availability of courses for those who do not get into their first choices was down on last week - most significantly at the University of Liverpool.
As of Wednesday morning, a PA news agency snapshot of the UK’s largest higher education providers showed there were 22,685 courses with vacancies for students living in England, down from 23,280 on Friday.
