Universities "bribing" student

[Troutius183]

"Does anybody else feel that it is wrong for universities to offer a monetary "kickstart" as an incentive for joining it through clearing. I bring this up because I received a private message through The Student Room from a certain university offering me £500.
Should someone not join a university purely for academic reasons. I would understand if this was a relatively well respected university, and this "bribe" was likely to help me choose this university over another, but the university was not well known or well respected..."
Just a discussion that I found on the student room, wondered what you guys thought about this.

Market forces but if they have to pay you they probably aren't a good one!

I think the odd thing here is that you were approached via TSR. Those are rather desperate tactics for a university to be adopting, and would certainly incline me to steer well clear.

I don't think their is anything odd or unusual about Unis offering bribes. Didn't Euan Blair get a £50k bribe scholarship to go to Yale even though he only had a 2:1

TSR pms are a bit pushy but I imagine everyone gets them. I think you can turn PMs off on TSR.

There is lots of competition between universities.

Lots of unis do this in one form or another (discounted accommodation, free iPads, etc). Good ones as well. Haven't heard of cash bribe before.