Memorandum 122
Supplementary evidence from the Department
for Innovation, Universities and Skills following the evidence
session on 17 January
When I attended the Select Committee on 17 January
to explain the Government's policy on the redistribution of institutional
funding for students doing equivalent and lower level qualifications
(ELQs), there was some discussion about the extent of unmet demand.
There was a general discussion about the 100,000
or so prospective students who get as far as making an application
to enter Higher Education but who are not accepted. You particularly
asked about whether these students did not get in because they
were not suitably qualified. I want to respond to that but I also
want to set that in the wider question of upwards progression
to Higher Education from below level 4 which is at the heart of
our policies.
Over the last few years, around 20% of those
who apply through UCAS for entry to full-time undergraduate courses
are not accepted in any one year. The proportion has remained
fairly constant but in absolute terms, the latest data from UCAS
for entry in 2007 shows that the number of applicants exceeded
the number of those accepted by about 120,000, of which the large
majority are from the UK. Of course not all students seeking to
enter full-time undergraduate courses enter through UCAS and full-time
undergraduate students only represent about half of the total
number of students in the system.
The issue of the "missing 100,000"
has been raised with Government and other stakeholders as a matter
of concern by UCAS. Their report "Missed Opportunities?
Non-Placed Applicants (NPAs) in the UCAS Data" was published
in December. It notes that there are a number of reasons why applicants
are not accepted onto courses. We cannot quite answer the exact
question you posed. However, the proportion of applicants with
fewer than 80 tariff points, often seen as the minimum needed
to enter HE is relatively small across all categories of Non-Placed
Applicants—10% or less. But we do not have more detailed
data on the levels of qualifications within this group, adjusting
for subject, institution etc to get below this level of analysis.
We are currently considering with UCAS what further research we
can do to understand the group better and building on that what
we can do to decrease the propensity of applicants not to follow
through. UCAS's analysis does suggest that within this group there
may be disproportionate numbers of applicants who are female;
BME; and older learners but this requires further exploration.
This brings me to the wider point I want to
make about unmet demand both actual and latent. It is important
to see this 100,000 figure in context. I would like to draw the
Committee's attention to the attached data from the Labour Force
Survey (LFS). Table 1 sets out the level of highest qualification
held by people of working age in England by gender, age, ethnicity,
disability status, region, economic activity and occupation.
The key points I want to emphasise are:
(a) there are over twenty million adults
of working age who do not have higher level qualifications at
level 4 or above; and
(b) within this group, there are some five
to six million who have reached level three. It is this group
of potential entrants on whom we really need to focus. More progression
from level three to level four is critical to delivering our response
to the Leitch ambition. This will require better, deeper links
not just with schools but also with colleges and employers. The
Committee will see from the numbers in the Table that this group
covers all working ages, not just school leavers doing traditional
full-time degrees. Many of those whom we need to help to progress
from level three to level four and upwards will be older workers,
who wish to study part-time. In other words, they are likely to
have similar characteristics to those who have already got a first
HE qualification and are studying for another one at an equivalent
or lower level.
I should say that I have been surprised to hear
some suggestions from within universities that it will not be
possible to recruit new students because the demand will not be
there. Sceptics were making similar noises in previous years.
There are now over 300,000 more students in the system than there
were in 1997 and the time series in the LFS data below shows that
we have increased the proportion of those of working age with
higher level skills by over 4 percentage points over the last
five years. But we have a long, long way to go to meet the challenges
which Sandy Leitch has set us. We know that many universities
are already developing exciting and ambitious plans, and it will
be important as ever that the Funding Council manages the allocation
of new Student Numbers to maximise take-up. I remain confident
that our HE system will once again rise to the challenges ahead.
January 2008
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