Updated
The University of York has refused to confirm whether or not it will offer high-performing sixth-form or EU students lower fees to attract them to the University in next year’s application cycle.
Sir Steve Smith, outgoing President of vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK (UUK) told the Independent today that a consequence of the new system will be that “universities will ‘buy’ top students by offering them discounts.” When Vision asked the University if they would assure students and future applicants that they wouldn’t do as Sir Smith has suggested, a senior press officer responded that the University is “currently assessing the impact of the White Paper on future admissions and ha[s] not determined policy yet.”
YUSU President Tim Ellis said that “At the moment the university has given no indication that it will offer lower fees to high performing A-level students. They have however, made a very positive commitment to ensuring that York widens its intake of students from more disadvantaged backgrounds and YUSU will be working to ensure that this continues to be a priority for the university and will not support anything that threatens this.”
At the end of the summer term, Vision revealed that the University intends to charge £9,000 per year in top-up tuition fees to students from 2012, following the trend set by the majority of high-ranking institutions. The new system means that students don’t have to pay back their fees until they are earning over £21,000 though interest will still be built up on these sums. Discounts to potential students may attract them to the university, in a similar way that low-grade offers are often used by top institutions in order to ease the pressure on applicants, and tempt them into taking up a conditional offer. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) instructed all universities earlier this year that if they sought to charge more than £6,000 that they would have to meet certain guidelines for widening access to education.
On the decision to raise fees to the upper limit, a statement on the YUSU website noted after the announcement in June: “We do not endorse the University’s decision to charge £9,000, but support the commitment to ensuring that York widens its intake of students from more disadvantaged backgrounds, works to increase our retention of students in general and spends any further income on primarily the academic, as well as the wider, student experience.
“We will focus our campaigning efforts in this area; ensuring that all additional fee income goes to back to students, and that students direct those investments.”
Speaking also to the Independent, the chief executive of the University and College Admissions Service (Ucas) said that following a surge in university applications, some candidates would “have to realise their application wasn’t strong enough” to get into university, with over 200,000 students set to fail to get places this year. Mary Curnock Cook said that students should either reapply next year or seek out clearing places.
Despite this, however, the University has said that it was likely that some candidates may find their places confirmed even if they “have not quite met the conditions of their offer,” though they would have to deal with these incidences as and when they arise. This year, around 25,500 applications were received compared to a target intake of just 3,400.
The government sets a cap on the number of home students that universities can accept, though there are fewer limits on the number of international students. With non-EU students acting as a vital resource for the University both financially and academically, there are often places available for these applicants after A-Level and International Baccalaureate (IB) results are published. Last year, for example, a number of places were available for international (non-EU) applicants, but very few for those classified as ‘home’ students.
It is unclear how many clearing or adjustment places will be available on August 18th, as universities are yet to receive exam results and confirm the vast majority of conditional offers. They have said they will “scale [the] Clearing operation in relation to the number of places we have available rather than the number of students we think there may be seeking places in Clearing,” while Ucas has said it is increasing its phone lines to 150, its highest ever by far. The admissions service will be keen to avoid a repeat of last year’s debacle, when phone lines were jammed as applicants who failed to meet their expected grades sought last-minute places at institutions up and down the country.