Take a number: applications to study rise 23%

I think the problem is that we are trying to suggest that all students apply to university and those that don't but are in the sixth form are made to feel a failure if they choose other opitons. I am the Principal of a buisness college in Oxford and 40% of my intake for this year have dropped out of university in the first year. They applied because they felt they should and everyone else was - surely this needs to be addressed. We are creating false expectations that all graduates get a job when infact this is not the case.

I could talk for ever on this topic so please do feel free to contact me.

I think that universities should become more privately funded and become great institutions like the ones you would find in the US.

You can tell we're in trouble if social work has become a high demand discipline.

I agree with you Andrea. Attending university has become the default position for most school-leavers, and as class sizes get bigger the one-on-one attention some student require is simply not possible. There are numerous other institutions that turn out work-ready candidates. Smaller private institutions can prove ideal, or polytechnics with connections to industry, there are so many opportunities for higher education that simply do not get the attention from school-leavers that they deserve.

this is great.. more premiums for me!

Send the extra students our way - we'll have 'em. Staff at our institution lost their jobs because of poor recruitment figures last year....at least that's what management said

Let the so called post-92 and new universities revert back to their poly status when they were offering good practically-oriented courses which were job-focused and very successful.

And here come the anti-poly rants... Do people out there seriously believe that when polys became unis they suddenly stopped teaching, say, Surveying and started forcing people to learn Ancient Greek? This not just a stupid argument, it is a stupid, ignorant argument. Post-92 Unis teach vocationally, and academically - sometimes [gasp!] both in the same course. And a lot of them do it quite well.

@Dave. It's all about expectations. The old uni/poly divide enabled those leaving 6th Form to realistically assess their position and to set their expectations accordingly (or if they genuinley believed that their A level grades were not reflective of their true ability to seek to do something about it - perhaps a poly degree followed by a PG degree at a uni). Now we have so many unis and so many league tables measuring different things that many student have little chance to properly assess what they are paying for, and so set their expectations unrealistically. For example, I live near to one of the newest unis (Chichester) which sells itself as being close to the top of the national student survey league table. How many students, ignorant of the old divides, will be sucked into studying there believing that they are getting a world beating education with career opportunities to match? Most will be sadly disappointed, in a way that they wouldn't a few years ago if they had signed up to the Institute of HE - which better described what Chichester does. The polys still do offer a quality education, they just refuse to properly describe what they do by means of more appropriate titles.

Honestly, Clive, you do not give much credit to young people, do you? I think almost every student knows the type of university they attend, and only foreign students will struggle to read between the lines. However, the example you cite was actually something the Sunday Times University Guide said not the university: Chichester is one of 'the top modern universities in the country' for overall student satisfaction, ranking joint eighth; the universities' website explicitly states that it has ranked 59th for two-years running in the same guide too. Why, then, should the university not be proud of clearly punching well above its overall ranking, especially when it distinguishes itself so clearly from older universities?

@Richard Armstrong. Not my experience, Im afraid. Whilst students in line for Oxbridge, LSE or the like may be well informed many others rely on the university title and whatever random collection of league table data they happen to have come across. So, in my field (a traditional profession) there is heavy prejudice in favour of a small group of traditional universities and students who can't access this group should engage in a careful cost-benefit analysis before signing up for large sclae debt. Sadly, many don't and then bemoan the fact that they end up with a non-graduate job, or no job at all. I don't seek to defend this position but students should be aware of it. So, for example, Chichester students may have a wonderful time and rate their teaching highly in the NSS but this doesn't change the fact that it will be many years before employers forget that it was an HE college (WiSIHE) and in reputational terms came a poor third behind its nearest neighbours Sussex Uni, Portsmouth Uni(poly) and Brighton Uni(poly). The Chichester online prospectus also focuses on statements such as 'The University of Chichester can trace its origins back to 1839, which marks it out as one of the older institutions of higher education in the country.' Only much later (and with less prominance) is it made clear that it has only actually been a university since 2005.

@Clive. I am a 3rd a student at Chichester University. I applied there because it was a smaller University- smaller classes and a community vibe.
I was not 'sucked in' nor were any of my friends, there are taster days and you tend you know what to expect before you join.

You spoke of career opportunities after being at Chichester Uni, I believe the current data from last year states the 94.6% of graduates are employed within 6 months of leaving the University (obviously not including those continuing with education).

I think you have a slightly old-fashioned view of University applications, if people did not like the education they could drop out- which they also do not do at UoC as the drop-out rate for students is hugely lower than other Universities!

I think that this story is not taking into account that the UCAS system has changed this year and Art and Design students have had to apply by 15th January rather that the usual 24th March deadline. There may be other subjects who have had to also swap deadlines?