Want to receive the latest news in your inbox?
Universities are facing their highest “occupied” paid era of all time with a record number of academics in a position to secure safe positions this year through the system.
School graduates who have had gap year plans interrupted through Covid-19 will be among those who will bypass the main application scheme in favor of seeking a course through compensation.
With less than a week for academics to get their A-level results, nearly 3 of the UK’s 4 most sensitive establishments have vacancies in their undergraduate programmes.
Clare Marchant, executive leader of the Ucas compensation framework, estimates that up to 80,000 applicants can place a compensation post, up from 73,325 last year.
More than 4,500 courses at Russell Group’s elite universities still have options for academics in the payment process, according to recent research through the PA news agency.
Marchant said it’s a “good year” for long-term academics in the UK who sought to attend college, as establishments will compete to complete their courses in a time of uncertainty.
“I think we’ll end up with significant numbers thanks to compensation. I think it will be the most active to date,” Marchant said.
Several primary universities, including Warwick, Bristol and Sheffield, have said they have already listened to applicants, which will begin in 2021 after a gap year, apply to start the course this autumn.
But Marchant added that the scenario is “exceptionally fragile” with the threat of more local closures in the coming weeks.
The analysis, conducted through PA, shows that on Friday night, for applicants living in England, there were 29,163 courses at 327 British universities and colleges.
Seventeen of the Russell Group’s 24 universities had vacancies in courses for English citizens – a total of 4509 courses among them – in the Ucas clearing before the day of effects on Thursday.
The Russell Group universities which had the most courses available were Glasgow with 608, Southampton with 378 and Liverpool with 355.
Tier A students were canceled this summer due to Covid-19. Instead, schools were asked to submit grades that they thought academics would have won if they had passed the exams.
Review committees moderated the scores, which academics get on Thursday, so that this year’s effects are not particularly higher than those of previous years and that the price of academics’ grades is not compromised.