Those who will lose out most will be talented, disadvantaged young people

By Lisa Nandy / @lisanandy

As LabourList and so many ‘tweeters’ have rightly pointed out this week, the dominance of coverage on the royal wedding and the sheer amount of news has given the government the perfect opportunity to bury bad news. This has resulted in one particularly important report being largely overlooked. This week UCAS published an analysis of the university admissions cycle for 2009-2010. It may not sound exciting, but ‘End of Cycle’ is worthy of attention as it reveals that over 200,000 people who applied to university last year did not get a place – over 50,000 more than the year before. The statistics highlight a worrying and increasing gap between the demand for university places, and the supply.

UCAS point out that this is a complex picture and not one where conclusions can readily be drawn without further analysis as is ever the case with statistics. However it is clear that the huge changes that have been announced to university finance need to take more account of the trends in higher education participation.

There has been criticism of the previous Labour government’s attempts to increase the numbers going to university. I have seen for myself young people who were wrongly pushed into the university route and came to regret it – young people who would have fared much better in a vocational system or under an apprenticeship scheme. It was a missed opportunity not to implement the reforms proposed by Mike Tomlinson, to draw parity between vocational and ‘academic’ qualifications by uniting them in a single diploma, and the legacy of that remains.

However it is also clear that producing more skilled graduates is vital to Britain’s economy. As my colleague Rachel Reeves pointed out in last week’s debate on growth in the commons, China and India last year produced 8 million graduates. The contrast with the UK – which has reduced the university teaching grant by 80% – is stark.

With demand increasingly outstripping supply, there is also a particular risk that young people from families that have never sent anyone to university will face even greater barriers to higher education. It is why there has been such disquiet in the commons about the strong signals from government that the Aim Higher initiative may be abolished. Aim Higher focused on areas, like my Wigan constituency, where the attainment rate at GCSE is high, but the number of young people who go on to university is low. Through their efforts they have increased the proportion of young people who go on to higher education in Wigan by 40% over the last six years.

The evidence in the UCAS report makes it clear that, in line with past trends, an astonishingly high number of those who did not get a place this year, will reapply next year. In the meantime there is much talk of universities reducing the number of places available because of funding shortfalls, and it is likely a high number of applicants will opt not to take a gap year or will apply early to avoid higher fees. Those young people who try to go to university in the next two years will be at a huge disadvantage. It seems likely that those who will lose out most will be the talented, disadvantaged young people the government claims it is most trying to help. If ministers are sincere, they must get a grip on this now – and they should start by guaranteeing a future for Aim Higher.