Recruitment crisis hits new universities
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Your support makes all the difference.Students are turning their backs on former polytechnics, with 8,000 places at new universities unfilled this year, according to the latest assessment from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
Meanwhile, the popularity of the old universities has continued to rise, the study, expected to be published this autumn, will reveal.
Universities blamed increasing student debt for the recruitment crisis in new universities and warned that it could force some to merge. The Government would struggle to meet its target of giving 50 per cent of young people the chance to go to university by the end of the decade unless it reviewed student funding, they warned.
Applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, part-time and mature students were most likely to be driven out of education by fear of debt, vice-chancellors believe. The universities that had the greatest reliance on such students were most likely to struggle to recruit, the report concluded.
The University of Luton missed its student quota by 22.6 per cent last year, South Bank University under-recruited by 11 per cent and Sunderland University by 10 per cent.
Tim Boatswain, pro-vice- chancellor of Luton University, said that the university had to recognise it could not compete with old universities in some traditional subjects.
"We are planning to restructure to develop new subject areas where competition with the old universities is not so fierce. The issue of student fees and the fact that student grants have now gone means that the average student graduates with a debt of around £10,000. That is obviously going to put some students off going to university."
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