UCAS ‘No concern’ over university clearing rush

There is a “little more pressure” on UK university places this year but no cause for concern, the head of the admissions body Ucas has said.

With record applications ahead of the 2012 tuition fees rise in England, there are fears of an unprecedented scramble for remaining places.

One union leader has said she feared this year could see the most “frantic” clearing process in living memory.

Nearly 10,000 more students applied this year, but places remain static.

Some 300,000 students are due to receive A-level results on Thursday.

Those who fail to achieve the necessary grades or did not get offered a place, can request one of the remaining places through the system known as clearing.

Last year some 52,000 people entered clearing, of which 47,000 gained a place.

University Guides April 7, 2011

• Students told ‘watch out’ as email fraudsters target loan payments

  Students are being warned to be on their guard over their loan payments. The Student Loans Company has said that at this time of year when final loan instalments are due, scam emails are being sent to students asking for personal details and bank numbers.

  The number of students who have been caught by these phishing mails has more than tripled over the past year, the SLC said. It is currently working with Sheffield Hallam University to investigate a scam that affected about 50 students recently.SLC’s security manager Robert Hurt confirmed they would never request personal details by email, and said students should be vigilant -

  “We monitor this issue very closely and aim to close phishing sites down as soon as students alert us to them, to protect other students.

  “Students need to work with us to ensure their identity and financial details are protected and not compromised.”

  Main story from the BBC website

University Guides April 4, 2011

• Meet the student parents – funding and childcare are chief concerns
  Students who are also parents have always faced a whole separate set of problems – and now a new report, the first of its kind in the UK, from the National Union of Students, has been launched in Parliament to highlight their particular concerns. 

   

  Chief among them is lack of information or poor quality advice about their financial entitlements or childcare options and other support - it seems many students are currently being given incomplete or inaccurate information.
  
  Entitled ‘Meet the Parents’, the NUS report has been compiled from personal interviews, focus groups, and a survey of more than 2,000 student parents, and is the foundation for the union’s overall student parents campaign.

   

  The NUS website gives the full story, and offers useful links to student parents for accurate information about sources of funding, grants and childcare.

University Guides March 26, 2011

• University u-turn – Keele will keep its philosophers after all

  Plans to drop the study of philosophy at Keele University have been scrapped - following protests around the country that were supported by philosophers at Cambridge, Oxford and University College London, as well as at Keele itself, the university’s senate has decided that both Philosophy and Professional Ethics should continue to be offered.

  Philosophy has been a key feature at Keele since the university’s foundation in 1949 by AD Lindsay, a philosopher himself, and many distinguished philosophers have worked there, including Richard Swinburne, Anthony Flew, Jonathan Dancy, Andre Gallois, Alan Montefiore, Philip Stratton-Lake and David McNaughton.

  Since the plans were announced earlier this month a strong protest campaign, centred on a Facebook group, has been in action, with the proposed cuts being described as an ‘emblematic loss’ that would damage the institution’s credibility. When the about-turn was announced Dr James Tartaglia, of the Keele Philosophy programme, speaking on BBC Radio Stoke, called it ‘ a fantastic result’.

  The university’s plan had been intended to save around £300,000 – Keele has issued a statement saying it still needs to make savings of £1.3m in this latest phase of cuts, so will now look at alternative proposals.

  More on this story on the BBC website

University Guides March 17, 2011

• Government urged not to ‘shut the door’ on overseas students

  Universities worried about changes to the student visa system now have the support of an all-party committee of MPs – the BBC today reported that the MPs are urging the government not to go ahead, warning of ‘potentially calamitous’ consequences to an industry worth £40 bn a year.

  Immigration Minister Damian Green announced in January that ‘taking action on students is particularly important as they make up roughly two thirds of non-European economic area immigrants, and the number of student visas issued has been rising in recent years.’  Net immigration has increased, largely because many more students from outside the EU are coming to British colleges, language schools and universities.

  However, the minister also said, ‘We want to encourage all those genuine students coming here to study at our world-class academic institutions.’ This led to claims of a ‘lack of clarity’ and concern that the attempt to reduce the number of ‘bogus’ students and colleges might have very serious ‘unintended consequences’ – ie, that Britain might lose out on billions of pounds if it does not appear to be as welcoming as other countries.

  Shadow universities minister Gareth Thomas said universities were ‘hugely worried about the financial implications of a big drop in overseas student numbers’ which would help to drive up tuition fees for home students.

  As the Complete University Guide points out, the UK is the second most popular destination for students from overseas, after the USA. Here in the UK we welcome more than 350,000 international students each year, more than 20 per cent of the world’s share.  (For more information about what overseas students study and where, see the CUG dedicated pages.)

  The chairman of the all-parties committee, Keith Vaz MP, felt student numbers should not be included in the net migration figures. He explained: ‘Students are not migrants. They come from all over the world to study here, contributing to the economy both through payment of fees and wider spending. Whilst we are right to seek to eliminate bogus colleges and bogus students, we need to ensure that we continue to attract the brightest and the best… if the door is shut they will simply study elsewhere.’

  Full story on the BBC website

University Guides March 10, 2011

• Cambridge leads UK universities for global ‘reputation’

  League tables are now familiar tools by which we judge universities and schools around the world. But a new listing has for the first time ranked 200 international universities according to their reputation alone.  Phil Baty, editor of the THE World University Rankings, said: ‘In an ever more competitive global market… a university’s reputation for academic excellence is crucial.’

  A panel of 13,000 international academics was asked to vote, and came up with a list that included seven US institutions in the top ten, headed by Harvard and MIT, with just two UK universities – Cambridge at third place, and Oxford at sixth – plus Tokyo university at eighth.

  It may be subjective, but reputation is ‘not an illusion’ – it has genuine economic value for universities, commented Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

  Similarly, the president of Cambridge University students’ union, Rahul Mansigani, said,  ‘Reputation makes a huge difference. If there is a perception that somewhere is brilliant, it will get lots of good people applying whether it’s true or not.’ Factors such as a sense of history and the presence of leading academics were part of the reputation of Cambridge, he thought.  But with recent worries about university links with dubious regimes, he warned about the need to protect the ‘moral reputation’ of a university. In the wake of the LSE embarrassment over links with Libya, reputation has appeared to be a valuable but fragile commodity.

  The top ten:

  1. Harvard
  2. MIT
  3. Cambridge
  4. California, Berkeley
  5. Stanford
  6. Oxford
  7. Princeton
  8. Tokyo
  9. Yale
  10. California Institute of Technology

  Source: Times Higher Education

  More on this story from the BBC

University Guides March 1, 2011

• Funding gap leads to calls for tuition fees for Scottish universities

  An end to free higher education in Scotland is feared, after Universities Scotland, the body representing Scotland’s university principals has said students may have to pay towards the cost of their degrees.

  It says that higher education should be ‘free at the point of entry and throughout study’ but that graduates who go on to earn reasonable salaries should be asked to pay.

  The principals are worried that Scottish universities are beginning to fall behind the standards of those in England and are warning that institutions in Scotland will be left with a huge funding gap after tuition fees are raised in England – the case for a ‘fair and modest’ payment by Scottish graduates was now ‘unanswerable’ if current levels of teaching and student numbers were to be maintained.

  This has increased pressure on the next Scottish government, as English universities are preparing to charge between £6,000 and £9,000 a year in fees. But the Scottish government’s First Minister, Alex Salmond told MSPs a ‘distinctive Scottish’ solution was needed, and that the government would set out fresh options for funding before the end of the year – however he insisted that a return to tuition fees had been ruled out and said no decisions would be made until all those who have an interest, including students, the universities and staff, have offered their views.

  The country’s leading colleges are now facing strikes, laying off staff and closing departments. Glasgow is planning to shut its modern languages and anthropology departments, while staff at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh are to take industrial action.

  The National Union of Students Scotland has added its voice to the debate, demanding that free tuition should be retained in Scotland. A demo under the banner Reclaim Your Voice, to be held on 22 March in Edinburgh will seek to reinforce their views.

  More on this story from BBC Scotland and from the Scotsman newspaper online

University Guides February 23, 2011

• Student sit-in at LSE demands end to links with Libyan regime
  As the world watches the people of Libya struggling to throw off the shackles of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, students at the London School of Economics (LSE) have taken action themselves to bring the university’s longstanding association with the Libyan ruling family to an end.

   

  The LSE has issued a statement saying it is reconsidering its links with Libya ‘as a matter of urgency’, but the student demonstrators want the LSE management to agree to  ’repay’ £300,000 it has received as part of a grant from a charity wing of the regime, by creating a scholarship fund for underprivileged Libyan students.

   

  ‘It’s reprehensible that the university continues to benefit from money that was stolen from the Libyan people ’ said LSE student Ashok Kumar, who confirmed they would not vacate LSE director, Howard Davies’ offices until their demands were met.

   

  A total £1.5m grant was pledged to the university in 2009 by the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. Funds so far received have been used to develop a research programme on North Africa, focused on politics, economics and society.

   

  The protesters are also demanding that the university revoke the LSE alumni status of Col Gaddafi’s second son, Saif al-Islam, who studied at the university from 2003 to 2008, gaining both a Master of Science degree and a doctorate.

   

  They are calling for a public commitment that no grants from officials ‘of such oppressive regimes’ will be accepted in the future, as well as a public statement denouncing the recent ‘gross violations of human rights’ by the Gaddafi regime.

   

  Full story on BBC website

University Guides February 18, 2011

• ‘Super university’ for Wales gets the go-ahead

  Plans for a  new ‘super university’ in Wales have been agreed by the three higher education institutions concerned. The move will bring together the University of Wales Institute Cardiff (Uwic), Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity Saint David in Carmarthen – the new university will be known simply as the University of Wales.

  The three institutions already work closely together and students receive University of Wales degrees, but the full merger will create the country’s third largest university, behind Cardiff and Glamorgan. It could also eventually be joined by University of Wales Newport and Glyndr University, Wrexham, to form the largest university in Wales.

  The University of Wales will be led jointly by Prof Marc Clement as president/pro-chancellor, and Prof Medwin Hughes as rector/pro-chancellor.  In December, Education Minister Leighton Andrews challenged universities to ‘adapt or die’, and made reducing the number of university vice-chancellors a priority.

  Dr Geoffrey Thomas, chairman of the Governing Body of the University of Wales, Trinity St David, said the move responded ‘to the global challenges of the 21st century’.

  Full story at WalesonLine news site.

University Guides February 9, 2011

• Oxbridge on course to charge maximum fees
  Both Oxford and Cambridge are discussing plans to raise fees to the maximum of £9000, according to the latest reports by the BBC.  The universities argue that at least £8000 will be needed to make up their shortfall in funding, and if they were to incorporate waivers of up to £3,000 for the least well-off students, that would push up the necessary fee to the highest level.

  At Oxford, academics and students took part in a university meeting about what tuition fees should be from 2012. Pro-vice chancellor Tony Monaco said Oxford needed to charge at least £8,000 to make up for cuts, while students said poorer applicants would be put off. Yesterday, leaked proposals from a Cambridge working group revealed the university is considering plans to set fees at the maximum level of £9,000 a year for every subject, with poorer students being offered means-tested reductions of up to £3,000.

  Cambridge may also offer a bursary of £1,625 for students from families with an income less than £25,000.

  Their internal report, seen by the BBC News website, suggested that charging less than the maximum would be “fiscally irresponsible” and would raise doubts about the university’s “commitment to excellence”.

  But the report from the Cambridge working group also says it expects “most if not all our peers” to charge the maximum fee – a view shared by the NUS president Aaron Porter, who said that his “behind the scenes conversations” with universities suggest fees of £9,000 will be the norm.

  Decisions on the final amounts will take place over the next few weeks.