THERE was a 17% fall in the number of first-year undergraduates at UK universities in the first year of higher tuition fees, the latest figures show.
This ‘first year’ was 2012-13 when universities were allowed to treble their yearly fees to £9,000.
The Office For Fair Access says it is also ‘concerned’ about a 19% fall in part-time undergraduate students who are more likely to come from poor backgrounds.
‘They’re also more likely to be mature students already in work, “up-skilling” to improve their current and future employability,’ it said.
‘Any downturn in their numbers is therefore likely to have serious repercussions on the competitiveness of our economy.’
The National Union of Students (NUS) also commented on the figures released on Thursday from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). As well as the 17% decline in the number of 1st-year undergraduates, it showed a 26% drop in part-time student enrolments in the 2012-13 academic year, and ‘for the first time ever the total number of international students has also dropped’.
Rachel Wenstone, NUS vice-president (Higher Education), said: ‘HESA’s figures confirm a huge and extremely worrying fall in the numbers of undergraduate part-time students. This is on top of a 40% decrease over the last two years. It is time for this ongoing decline in part-time education to be acknowledged as a crisis.
‘The figures also reveal a potential problem with enrolment onto public service-related courses in healthcare and teaching which, if continued, could see the supply of nurses and teachers strangled for the next generation. These courses have suffered through incredibly damaging NHS cuts and changes to teacher training.’
She added: ‘For the first time ever, the total number of international students has dropped. We can only imagine what will happen to those figures once the government introduce more unfriendly policies, like NHS charges, later this year.
‘The government’s claim that the new fees regime hasn’t been damaging to access to education is a lie. They must stop sweeping this crisis in part-time education under the carpet and start to incentivise part-time recruitment and offer real financial support to those students.’
In Scotland, where the government still pays for the tuition of Scottish students studying within the country, there was a 2% rise in the number of students taking up places on full-time undergraduate courses.
The academics’ union, UCU, commented that the overall decline was a direct consequence of the rise in tuition fees.
The union’s general secretary, Sally Hunt, said it was ‘no great surprise that the number of students going to university fell off considerably’.
She added: ‘Only the government seemed to think the policy was progressive and, while we have seen a recovery in the number of people applying to university, the fear remains that some may never fulfil their potential because of the new funding regime.’
The Hesa figures also show a 1% decline in non-EU students coming to the UK to study.
A rise in the numbers of students from China and Hong Kong was off-set by a 25% fall in Indian students.
It has already been suggested they are being put off from the expense of study in the UK by a fall in the price of the rupee.
The truth of the matter is that after the Blair and Brown Labour governments brought in tuition fees, the floodgates have been opened.
Now the major universities are demanding that they should be allowed to set upto £30,000-a-year fees, while carrying out a massive privatisation of university staff and services. Meanwhile, the student loan debt is already being sold off to the debt collectors by the government.
The fall in international students makes it clear that only the very rich of the planet can afford a UK university education.
There is only one solution to the deepening crisis in higher education, and that is for the NUS and workers to unite to make the trade unions call a general strike to bring down the Tory-led coalition and bring in a workers’ government that will abolish tuition fees, and restore free state education, and all of the other cuts.
