02 Nov The effects of Rapid increase in unconditional offers in UK
The number of unconditional offers being given to A-level and Btech students in UK has increased by more than 20 times over the past 5 years .
According to UCAS – Universities and Colleges Admissions Service-the number of unconditional offers made to 18 year old students from England , Northern Ireland , and Wales has gone up from 2,985 offers in 2013 to 67,915 in 2018. This has lead many to question the effects this will have on the work ethic of students , hoping to apply to universities. Sam Gyimah – Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation thinks there is a broader issue too , in a tweet he mentioned that Universities risk ‘undermining their own success and long term reputation by using unconditional offers as a recruitment tool to gets bums on seats- this cannot be in the long term interests of students.’
This year nearly a quarter (23%) of applicants have received an unconditional offer and Craig Fergus is one of them.He is a first year journalism student at London Southbank University , he says ‘ I didn’t care about the coursework that i was doing, because i knew that i had a university place , so i left all of the coursework till the last minute’.
Michael Kosmides – a lecturer from London South Bank University – that has also interviewed Craig and gave him the unconditional offer , explains on what criteria he relies in deciding whether the candidate deserves to get that offer to study journalism at LSBU .
‘ I want to make sure that he or she wants to be a journalist ‘, ‘I’m looking for people who i believe will be able to be a part of the team and produce newsprogrammes for the news days , as it is a very demanding programme.’ He also mentions that unconditional offers ‘can be bad depending on why they are given , if there given purely because the university wants to fill places, then they are obviosly bad. If they are given because the lecturers and the university feels that the people who have applied can actually progress through the whole programme they’ve got – i think its perfectly fine – theres no reason to keep students waiting if you know that they can make it through the course and you actually want them to be in that course.
With such a rise in offers , many think that students take their feet off the gas and stop striving for excellence as their places have already been secured. However there is a slow change occuring , for instance after aknowledging the figures of the unconditionals given out , St Mary’s University in Twickenham has decided to stop giving unconditional offers , and encourage other institutions to do the same. ‘ It was clear to us that a number of students who enrolled with us after an unconditional offer was made didn’t meet the grades they expected and this didn’t merit the investment we made into that particular part of our recruitment programme.’
As part of the same process , in January ,Ucas will begin naming institutions that make the most unconditional offers , in order to encourge universities to review their admission procedures.
