Which are the 23 universities singled out for unconditionals?And...

[Miljah]

...are most in financial trouble?

If you get time, listen to Jeremy Vine BBC Radio 2 today at 12-2pm and there was a discussion on this with phone in comments. Interesting!

The universities being written to are: Roehampton; Loughborough College; Kingston; Sheffield Hallam; Brighton; Birmingham City; Nottingham Trent; Bournemouth; Staffordshire; Lincoln; Hertfordshire; Royal Holloway; Oxford Brookes; Lancaster; Birmingham; Middlesex; Derby; West London; City; Keele; Kent; Aston; and Surrey.

Not all on the list are in financial trouble. Some were using conditional unconditionals to attract high achievers rather than bums on seats pay the bills.

Uni of Nottingham not on list because they had already announced they would not be issuing unconditional offers going forward.

Unconditional offers are now 34.4% of all offers according to The Guardian. This sounds ludicrously high. The percentage of unconditional 5 years ago was 1.1%.

The government, rightly, is concerned about pressure selling, students dropping predicted grades and the position of our universities in the world market place. If students come from families where no one has been to university it’s seen as a great achievement and people don’t recognise it as a marketing tool. It is all about attracting the better students but it locks them in to making decisions that may not be in their best interests.

Finance might be an issue but the reputations of Birmingham, Surrey and Lancaster, for example, are hardly enhanced by this practice. If there are too many mid division universities, as the list suggests, they need to amalgamate or reduce the number of courses.

Not all on the list are in financial trouble. Some were using conditional unconditionals to attract high achievers rather than bums on seats pay the bills.

But shouldn't Unis attract students with good teaching/reputation/ranking instead?

Not sure how relevant it is - but dd had an offer from NTU, a high offer. When she joined the Facebook group of offer holders she was the only one who hadn't had an unconditional. Before they made her the high offer, they sent her the wrong offer - it was an unconditinoal for an overseas student plus a request for 4k to reserve their place.

Obviously she has no idea of the calibre of the other students but it made her feel crap and she's firmed and insured at two unis NOT on the list!

They cannot all attract the best students though by standard methods and reputation. There are simply not enough to go round. The universities that recruit with CCC still give out lots of firsts. Employers know the students are not the same calibre as those at the top universities with A*s and As so inevitably these universities won’t be popular with most high achieving students so they have to use other tactics to lure the students in by making it easy for them and then give a higher percentage of firsts! Taken as a strategy, it devalues the degrees and students are clearly not choosing based on teaching, reputation and ranking. They choose based on not having to push themselves.

There is pressure on Universities to stop giving out lots of firsts with the threat of being downgraded. This seems to coincide with some odd offers this year to attract a more "diverse" intake.

There are plenty of unis that will take CCC that weren't on that list Bubbles. Birmingham, Lancaster, Nottingham are all well-regarded.

There was an article in the Times on this yesterday if anyone's interested

Universities shamed for ‘unethical’ offers

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/universities-shamed-for-snaring-students-with-unethical-offers-mmqfm0hqd?shareToken=1a08cc077f8459b591f10b02319af6cd

And a leader

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-universities-wrong-course-rk8mxnj6f?shareToken=b04e61ba5dd6eccaf9fa8298aec81512

Yes, I do realise that more than the listed universities take CCC but they don’t offer the same number of unconditional offers. You could argue they are transparent about their offers and might only give unconditionals to students who already have the grades or the highest calibre applicants.

The additional problem is that the universities won’t be highly regarded if they cannot compete on a level playing field. Nottingham is ceasing this practice and the better universities on the list should cease too. At least that would stop young people being persuaded that a certain university is better than another one, which it might not be, for all sorts of reasons.

There must be a minimum standard, maybe the equivalent of 3 D's 🙄; surely you shouldn't be able to take a degree with less than that!

There must be a minimum standard, maybe the equivalent of 3 D's 🙄; surely you shouldn't be able to take a degree with less than that!
The problem is it's not a one size fits all HE system. For example, Conservatoires often make offers of EE at A level for their degree programmes as musical potential trumps academic achievement. A similar ethos applies at many Art Schools. That's not to say a music degree from a Conservatoire is less worthy than one from, say, Oxbridge, it's just different.

@Boyskeepswinging Royal B'ham Conservatoire comes under the Birmingham City bracket so I would assume a lot of their unconditional offers would be for their courses as you say.

Yes, but you could easily remove these specialist colleges from the stats. My DDs offer was CC from LCF but she had an interview and submitted a portfolio. They are totally different. However, on these courses there is no pressure on the student to firm them to get the low offer. They can choose from all 5 offers if they have them.

Yes it's the UIF which are a problem. So glad dd didn't accept her uif from OB! She was tired and stressed and it seemed like a lovely short cut at the time. But she's just got to work her socks off for Bath instead!!

Mine, after months of procrastinating, has just accepted his UiF. He did badly in his mocks and has a track record of underachieving/ overachieving ( think a D in Geog at GCSE against a prediction of B vs full marks in another GCSE) so predicting his grades is hard. he actually wanted to go to NTU but , for a range of reasons, isn't. Their offer was not a UiF, so they by no means handed them out like sweeties : NTU's UiFs seem to be mainly on their highly specialised design type courses after students have submitted portfolios.

I don't like them but it has now taken stress off. The media focus on this is - as ever- unhelpful to students. My DS now thinks his place is undeserved and that his uni is 'desperate'. He still had to make a choice between two UiFs if he wanted to go that route.

Robust research has not and cannot be done into the effect of UiFs on achievement. It's anecdotal because no one knows how likely those students were to meet their PGs, anyway . A couple of years ago , all the media attention was on how unreliable teachers' UCAS predictions are- and suddenly they are now being treated as statements of fact. My DS has been predicted BBC. This enabled him to apply to certain unis and get that offer (or lower). I don't think he was ever very likely to actually get BBC, so if he he gets - say BCC or lower - 'researchers' will say it is because of the UiF. Remain sceptical about that.

Hardly any unis have standard offers of CCC for university courses (unless we are talking about Foundation Years). DS's lowest offer was CCD , after sitting an entrance exam, reduced from an already contextual BBC. It'd be great if more unis adopted the reduced offer after proving yourself approach but I can understand many might not find that practicable. Yesterday , I found one uni in the CCC kind of ballpark for applicants and it is not on the UiF list.

Oh dont get me wrong. If dd had got an Uif from any of her top three she probably would have gone there!! Congrats Piggy you are done! Envious of you being able to plan!!

Plan? With my DS??

😂

I’m grateful DS didn’t get any UIF offers because had he got one, he’d have stopped going to classes all together. It would’ve destroyed any last bit of motivation, so thank goodness!

It’s not just been the media banging on about UIF and the sheer scale of these offers, it’s been the Government most recently and for the reasons outlined in the article. They are correct to try and stop it.

I can see why lower tariff universities exist (although I believe they should revert to colleges of HE) and many of them offered local part time courses, which was a good thing. Participation on these degrees has fallen off a cliff. Some universities can get enough DC by offering CCC or lower, and don’t worry about league tables it would appear, but if you want to maintain status or build status (eg Lincoln) there is a shift towards UIF offers. Clearly the list doesn’t list every university. Just the worst offenders.

I tend to think that it doesn’t get easier at university for DC who find A levels a challenge. Dealing with pressure is not going to reduce and there won’t be any further ‘get out of gaol cards’
handed out when DC is there. The current practice has rightly been called out. They should go back to the original system so only the exceptional applicant gets an unconditional offer. Some universities won’t see many of these and that’s how it should be!

Well it's a joke. The government has caused this by neoliberalising He and turning it into a marketplace by badly funding universities and now is shaming universities for trying to survive.

I agree. Universities are now businesses and will do what they have to do.