Elite institutions will enter Clearing for the first time this August, after new admissions rules left universities with unfilled places in 2012
While many universities actively recruit students through Clearing every August, getting bums on seats hasn't typically been a problem for the 24 leading research institutes that make up the Russell Group. In fact, many have previously had few – if any – places after A-level results day.
Warwick University, which expects to have places in Clearing this year.
But new undergraduate admissions rules introduced last year, which left some Russell Group institutions with hundreds of unfilled places, have changed that. Several well known names have decided not to take any chances this year and to make places available in Clearing.
For the first time ever, the University of Sheffield is running a Clearing campaign, which starts this week and includes billboard posters (in Sheffield, Birmingham and Leicester) and digital advertising on Facebook and Twitter. Students will be able to browse courses online and pre-register their interest for Clearing places at the university 10 days before A-level results come out.
"While Clearing has been seen negatively in the past, perceptions are changing," says Sheffield's head of admissions, Alan Carlile. "There will be people who applied late, changed their minds about what they wanted to study, or achieved better grades than expected, so we can continue to look at recruiting high-quality students in August, which we think is a really good opportunity."
As well as recruiting through Clearing, the university hopes to attract additional students through "adjustment" (the process by which Ucas applicants who achieve better results than expected can "trade up" to a better course or institution).
Last year's problems stemmed from the government's decision to relax student number controls, giving universities the freedom to offer places to unlimited numbers of high-achieving candidates (defined as those achieving AAB grades or higher), while placing a cap on the number of others they could recruit.
But this coincided with the biggest drop in top A-level results for 20 years (80,000 getting AAB against a previous prediction of 85,000), meaning some universities ended up with far more places than there were qualified candidates.
It was a big wake-up call for some Russell Group universities. Sheffield, along with Birmingham and Queen Mary, University of London – which had previously offered very few places through Clearing – still had vacancies for courses at the beginning of the academic year. Southampton, which was hit particularly hard (student numbers fell by 600) withdrew from Clearing when the pool of AAB candidates dried up.
One admissions officer told Education Guardian that some Russell Group universities had resorted to calling candidates they had rejected in the first round of Ucas applications to offer them places.
A repeat of last year is unlikely – the threshold for "high-achieving" candidates has now been lowered to ABB – but Russell Group universities can't afford to be complacent, says Carlile. With many other universities offering incentives – from generous scholarships and bursaries to laptops and gym memberships – they may not be able to rely on reputation alone.
As Peter Dunn, head of communications at Warwick University, puts it: "It's not just 20 or so universities competing for the highest-achieving students any more – it's about 100. And it's not to do with what universities are doing right or wrong – it's just because the market is changing."
The University of Birmingham was the first Russell Group institution to catch on to this, offering 1,000 unconditional places to students expected to score straight As this year, which its vice-chancellor, Prof David Eastwood, said at the time was less about filling quotas "and more about attracting the best possible students to a highly selective university".
And Birmingham is still actively looking for students, says Jo Kite, its head of communications. "We are definitely putting ourselves into Clearing this year. Last year we were particularly hit by grade deflation. We want to make sure we are in the right position to attract the brightest and best students."
Warwick University is also likely to have Clearing places, says Dunn. "We're not afraid to admit we are likely to be in Clearing this year – I'll be very surprised to find many that aren't."
But some universities remain tight-lipped about their plans. Less than half the 22 Russell Group universities Education Guardian contacted responded to a request for information on their Clearing plans. Oxford and Cambridge state clearly on their websites that they will not have any places available.
Leeds, Warwick, Manchester and Southampton said they were likely to have places available, but wouldn't be drawn on estimated numbers. University College London, Queen Mary, University of London, Exeter and Bristol all said they still did not expect to be in Clearing this year.
Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, thinks it is too early to make predictions: "This is still only the second year of the new student-number controls in England and the system has changed again this year, so it is too soon to tell how admissions to our universities will be affected. One consequence of the uncertainties in the new system is that universities may have more places to offer through Clearing to well qualified students who have narrowly missed out on their first choice."
But the University and College Union president, Simon Renton, thinks there could be further problems ahead for the UK's elite universities. "This government's attempt to create a bogus market in higher education has created so much instability and uncertainty that even our most selective universities are now vulnerable to under-recruitment," he says. "The goal posts are changed every year and institutions have to jockey for position. This approach is wholly inappropriate for higher education, where courses are planned over six-year cycles and stability is a pre-condition of quality."
nnew3670ed 24 Jul, 2013
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Source: http://www.educationnews.com/2013/07/23/russell-group-universities-prepare-to-do-battle-for-top-students/
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