‘Bleak outlook’ as falling demand quashes enrolment growth hopes

An unforeseen drop in demand for higher education in England could prove to be a “nightmare” for universities, with predictions of enrolment growth in the rest of the decade looking optimistic and a demographic dip looming.

A report written by Higher Education Policy Institute president Bahram Bekhradnia finds that previous estimates of 350,000 more students by 2035 are now unrealistic after recent drops in the participation rate, casting doubt on institutions’ ability to grow their way out of their current financial troubles.

While the country’s 18-year-old population has swelled since 2020 and is projected to reach its highest point this century in 2030, this has not yet translated into a big increase in student numbers, the paper highlights.

Instead, 2023 and 2024 saw the first declines in the Ucas application rate for 18-year-olds after steady increases since 2012 as interest in attending university stagnated among young people, which, the paper suggests, is “largely unprecedented in the past three decades”.

“The main uncertainty in looking forward now concerns whether the reversal of the increasing participation that has been seen over the last generation (or more) has halted, or whether the present reversal proves to be a temporary blip and previous trends will be resumed,” concludes the paper, published on 24 October.

Increases in the number of 18-year-olds in England will start to reverse after 2030 and, if the rate of participation continues to decline, this is a “potential nightmare” for universities, Mr Bekhradnia told Times Higher Education. He said there was a need for the sector to better understand why there has been such a turnaround.

If there are no changes in the current participation rate, the report says, applications from school-leavers should rise by about 8 per cent, or 25,000, between 2024 and 2030, but then fall by 20,000 between 2030 and 2035, leaving only a small net rise over the next decade.

The report considers several reasons for the declining demand: cost, declines in school attainment, the state of the economy, the impact of the pandemic and the “hostile environment” created by the last government.

Mr Bekhradnia said it was this last factor that he felt had been the most significant, because the real-terms cost of going to university had been reduced by the freeze in tuition fees. “If you have a prime minister talking about ‘rip-off degrees’ and that is the general tenor of what’s being said by the most senior people in the country and the press, it will create an environment,” he said.

“It remains to be seen if the reversal of this rhetoric by the present government will reverse the effects of this. I wouldn’t rule it out, but it cannot be taken for granted.”

Two groups whose participation lags well behind their peers – young men and those from disadvantaged backgrounds – could be key to unlocking more demand.

While it would take a huge 37 per cent increase in male participation to bring them to parity with women, even a halving of the participation gap would introduce 20,000 more students and reverse enrolment declines post-2030. But Mr Bekhradnia said the reasons behind the trend were little understood and it was far from certain that it would be reversed in the years ahead.

While disadvantaged students are now more likely to go to university than they were a decade ago, these improvements also seem to have stagnated in recent years, the report says, and it is generally believed that widening participation occurs only when the whole system grows.

“Every university in the country is making plans to increase its student numbers, but there are nationwide issues with participation and there needs to be a nationwide effort to try to understand and reverse the recent declines,” Mr Bekhradnia said.

“Universities are cushioned for the next five years by the fact that at least the population is increasing. But if there are universities in trouble now, my goodness they are going to be in greater trouble after 2030 unless something changes.”

This “bleak outlook” for universities will be exacerbated without the reintroduction of some form of student number controls, Mr Bekhradnia argued. “If some universities are suffering because others are weakening them by taking students that would otherwise have gone to them, and who they need in order to stay afloat, then we have to address that, and I can’t think of anything other than university-specific student number controls that could do that.”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com