Big drop in University Applications - the fees or what?

Anyone who read the papers today will have noticed the headlines of the 'shocking' reduction in the number of applications to universities: applicants from within the UK has fallen by 11.9% and applicants from within the EU has dropped by 9.3%. They go on to quote even more stats such as

Mature students have been particularly deterred by the higher fees, the figures show. The proportion of applicants aged 40 or older has fallen by 27.8%, while those aged between 30 and 39 has dropped by 22.7%.

It seems funny to me that the same paper seems to have forgotten what they were reporting this time last year: UK applicants are up 22.1%, while overseas applicants have risen 28.7%.

Applications from the over-25s jumped 63.4%, while those from 21- to 24-year-olds rose 44.8%. There was also a 45.5% increase in people reapplying.

So what did they put it down to back then?

Part of the increase in demand for university places may be due to the recession.

And what happened with all these additional applications?

Professor David Green, vice-chancellor of the University of Worcester - where applications are up 35% on last year - said many other universities would be happy to take on additional students… and "many will do so, even if we receive no additional government funding for these additional students"

So are these figures a worry for the government? Well there are also other stats to take into account:

The proportion of applicants from outside the EU has grown by 8.8%.

Some universities, including the London School of Economics, Queen Mary and Bath, are seeing rises in applications, according to the report.

So lets get this straight. Last year there was a rise in applications of 22% (compared to 2009) and this year there has been a drop in applications of 12% (compared to 2010). Which is still significantly more applications than in 2009 which were reported as record numbers at the time and Universities were being fined for accepting too many students. So there are many reasons for this figure, which could be a reversion to the norm or more unlikely but pointed out by the Guardian (instead of comparing yearly figures) is this:

Demographic factors could also be behind a slump in applications. The number of 18-year-olds in the UK is projected to decline over the rest of this decade by about 11%.

This is an articel by Matthew Gibson taken from the Soution Focused Politics website