The number toward the end of November stood at 158,387 student applicants - representing a decline of a whopping 23,427 at the same time last November.
The data, published by the higher education administration service UCAS, comes following the steep rise in tuition fees to upwards of £9,000. Students looking to enrol in the next academic year can expect to be paying almost three times the amount than that of previous years.
Speaking on the concerning statistics is Liam Burns, president of the National Union of Students.
“Ministers need to take responsibility for their disastrous education reforms and admit that regardless of the final application numbers, the behaviour of prospective students will be affected by the huge rise in fees.”
“The significant reduction in applications from mature students continues to be very concerning and Government needs to respond quickly to ensure older learners are not putt off for good.”
The president went on to add: “Ministers must stop tinkering around the edges of their shambolic reforms, listen to students, teachers and universities and completely overhaul their white paper before temporary chaos turns into permanent damage to our education system.”
Evidently there is a huge amount of concern from people looking at these damaging figures. However, the application service, UCAS, has suggested that the figures don’t necessarily tell the final story at this early stage.
James Woodward, a press officer for UCAS, told us that: “It remains too early in the cycle to make predictions about eventual demand for entry to higher education in 2012. The majority of courses and universities have a 15 January deadline - application patterns this far ahead of that date are historically unreliable indicators of the eventual year-on-year change.”
Looking at courses where applications had already had their deadline, he went on to say: “For those universities and courses where the 15 October deadline applied like medicine and veterinary courses, and we can therefore take a meaningful view, the reduction in applicants was less than one per cent.”
Clearly the figures don’t show the final story in what is always a hard one to judge. With countless protests and campaign groups full of would-be students declaring they can’t afford fees, it’s natural to expect a decline; particularly with last year being a record-breaker for applications as many people rushed in to avoid the rise.
According to the UCAS chief executive, Mary Cook, we can expect applications to increase. “Recent changes in HE funding mean that application patterns this year may be different to previous years and we are gearing up for a possible late surge close to the 15 January deadline where applicants have taken more time to research their applications.”
With UCAS expecting applications to increase, and many concerning questions about higher education still unanswered, we can only wait and see what the figures reveal in the coming months.
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