University numbers start to fall across East Lancashire (From Lancashire Telegraph)
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University numbers start to fall across East Lancashire
10:03am Thursday 22nd November 2012 in News
By Lisa Woodhouse, Assistant picture editor
APPLICATIONS to universities have fallen by almost 16 per cent in parts of East Lancashire, which education bosses say is a result of increased tuition fees.
The data was collated by the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) and experts found there were 26,000 fewer applications from the region in 2012 compared with a year earlier, a fall of 9.4 per cent. Students in England have been put off by rising fees, with the cap on annual tuition fees trebled to £9,000, with most universities choosing to charge the maximum allowed.
In East Lancashire, Pendle saw the biggest drop in university applicants – a fall from 3,663 to 3,085 app-lications (-15.78 per cent), closely followed by the Ribble Valley which saw a decrease from 4,337 to 3,691 (-14.9 per cent).
Burnley also saw a reduction of 9.98 per cent, Blackburn 8.01 per cent and Rossendale and Darwen 7.63 per cent.
Just two of the 75 North West constituencies recorded an increase in applications to university – Rochdale and Makerfield.
Simon Jones, Lancashire secretary of the NUT, said: “Going to university is no longer an automatic choice for a teenager with good A-levels.
“It has become an investment decision that usually must be made by the family as an economic unit, and it is a decision that has significant risk.
“Young people who choose to go to university are burdening themselves with debts of more than £30,000 that will remain with them for decades if they aren’t paid off.”
- Students from Blackburn and Burnley’s University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) campuses were among the delegation which travelled to London yesterday to protest against tuition fees.
Comments(5)
shytalk
says...
12:28pm Thu 22 Nov 12
Excluded again wrote:So true excluded again. Intellegent kids that come from unemployed families or working class families just can not afford a higher education, regardless of what the politicians who do not live in the real world say. No money=no higher education.
A government policy that is clearly working as intended.
With the cutback in student numbers, there was a risk that the rising number of applications form students with a working class background would mean that there were not enough places for all the Tarquins and Jemimas.
Introduce a system that puts off kids from less well-off homes (for whom £30k of debt sounds like a lot of money, rather than a fraction of the your mortgage) and preserve the privileges at the top. The policy has been signed, sealed and delivered and is working exactly as planned.
shytalk
says...
12:28pm Thu 22 Nov 12
Excluded again wrote:So true excluded again. Intellegent kids that come from unemployed families or working class families just can not afford a higher education, regardless of what the politicians who do not live in the real world say. No money=no higher education.
A government policy that is clearly working as intended.
With the cutback in student numbers, there was a risk that the rising number of applications form students with a working class background would mean that there were not enough places for all the Tarquins and Jemimas.
Introduce a system that puts off kids from less well-off homes (for whom £30k of debt sounds like a lot of money, rather than a fraction of the your mortgage) and preserve the privileges at the top. The policy has been signed, sealed and delivered and is working exactly as planned.
Alex Turner
says...
4:55pm Thu 22 Nov 12
Check out the figures for each constituency, and the full data set, at www.ambitiousminds.c
o.uk/how-university-
applications-have-fa
llen-in-2012/
DEO VOLENTE
says...
9:52pm Thu 22 Nov 12
Deus Vobiscum
Excluded again says...
10:39am Thu 22 Nov 12
With the cutback in student numbers, there was a risk that the rising number of applications form students with a working class background would mean that there were not enough places for all the Tarquins and Jemimas.
Introduce a system that puts off kids from less well-off homes (for whom £30k of debt sounds like a lot of money, rather than a fraction of the your mortgage) and preserve the privileges at the top. The policy has been signed, sealed and delivered and is working exactly as planned.