15th February 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
There has been a lot of discussion about university offers over the last few months, after it emerged that nearly a quarter of all offers in 2018 were unconditional. This figure has grown from 1% in 5 years, so there must have been something affecting the practice during that time, and the most obvious change in the university system during that time is the introduction of maximum tuition fees. This has led to universities looking for new ways to compete with each other as students become more selective about whether their degree will justify the debt accrued during their university life.
From a tutoring point of view, the immediate response to an unconditional offer is that it has to be a bad thing. Every tutor will tell you that their workload has always rocketed in April and May; students want to ensure they get the grades needed to get into university and request more and longer lessons. Whereas we don’t want to unnecessarily encourage families spending more money on tuition, it is objectively true that, in general, students have always worked harder close to their exams.
A guaranteed university place removes the desire for a student to do well in their exams. This is great when we think about the avoidance of stress and anxiety, but there is an obvious benefit to studying, and not working hard in those final few months just leaves us with an undergraduate intake who are less prepared than in previous years.
Looking deeper into the problem does make some universities look a little sinister. Students complete their UCAS forms with an idea of their preferred place to study. Of course this may change in those 9 months while they learn more about each institution, and the offers given by universities has always influenced someone’s first and second choices; no one wants to be over ambitious and left with the dreaded prospect of clearing on results day. However, unconditional offers seem to have become a way to dissuade students from choosing what’s genuinely best for them, and has created a hard sell approach; if you don’t accept an unconditional offer then your future is at risk.
Until tuition fees unconditional offers were rare. Such a high proportion of school leavers wanted to attend university. Any university. Any subject. This meant that many lower standard universities knew that they would get a lot of applications through clearing and meet their quotas for that year. At the moment universities are using offers to ensure high undergraduate numbers, regardless of the quality, and this has to be opposed to everything we’re trying to create in our further education system.