The Guardian is reporting that the number of students in England who were going on to university after high school in 2011-2012 has risen close to 50% for the first time. This is a record level of participation rate in the country and has long been a policy goal by both Tory and Labour governments.

At least part of the hike, however, can be attributed to a spike from students who skipped the traditional gap year in order to take advantage of the last year of low university tuition. Those who enrolled in 2012 were subject to fees that could be as much as 300% higher, ranging from £3,290 to the maximum of £9,000.

Statistics published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills show that 49.3% of young people in England entered higher education in the last academic year, the highest rate on record and just a shade below the 50% mark that successive governments have vowed to reach. But the rise in numbers was artificially driven up by the decision of thousands of school-leavers to go straight on to higher or further education, rather than defer their entry by a year or more, in order to beat the increase in tuition fees from £3,290 to a maximum of £9,000 a year from 2012-13.

The university entrance administrator Ucas said that the number of students choosing to defer admission in 2011 dropped by more than 50% from what is considered the yearly average. Fewer than 10,000 decided to put off university for another year compared to the more than 23,000 in 2010. Already, Ucas data shows that the number of deferments this year is back up to the 2010 levels.

More than 340,000 students enrolled in a university program for the first time for the 2011-12 academic year, a year-to-year increase of more than 17,000. The higher education initial participation rate spiked to 49% after holding steady at roughly 46% in the previous years.

The HEIPR measure – which counts 17-to-30-year-olds from England studying at UK institution for the first time – was used by the Labour government to judge progress towards its goal of a 50% participation rate. In 2006-07, the first year that HEIPR records were calculated, the rate was 42.5%. Meanwhile, a new survey by the Institute of Education has found that the number of jobs in the UK requiring a degree has overtaken the number not requiring any qualifications. More than one in four jobs are now only available to those with degrees, the skills and employment survey found.

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Margaret Thatcher, who died of a stroke earlier this week, made higher education reform a priority both during her time as the Secretary of State for Education and later on as Prime Minister. From her own experience, she believed that university education was failing students in Britain because of its overly protected position and its insulation from the market.

She set out to address these problems with vigor and her policies were continued not only by the current Tory-led administration but even by Tony Blair — the Prime Minister representing the opposing Labour Party through the 1990s.

According to Terence Kealey in The Daily Telegraph, Thatcher introduced the market to British universities by instituting for the first time fees for international students. Prior to 1981, students coming to British universities from abroad got what was in effect a free education. University leaders opposed the change, predicting that the fees would insure that no international students ever applied to British universities again – a prediction that proved spectacularly wrong.

The leadership of British universities often being wrong on important issues, it was no surprise that Mrs Thatcher’s policy was a success. After a transient dip in international student numbers, they have soared ever since, to provide a vast influx of funding and the beginnings of a market to British universities.

Margaret Thatcher’s next step was to cut infrastructural support monies for research to the university sector: she felt that some universities were not using their research monies well. When the cuts were introduced, they were denounced by the leadership of the British universities which, with one voice, predicted that they would be a disaster from which the British economy in general and British universities in particular, would never recover.

There too her opponents proved to be on the wrong side. The move reinvigorated research in Britain and pushed it behind only the US on all international assessment tables that rank the quality of scientific research in the world.

The true success of Thatcher’s policies can be seen by the fact that their spirit has guided the reforms pursued by both Tony Blair and the current Prime Minister David Cameron. Her drive for privatization was reflected by the introduction of top-up fees for local students – something that likewise was predicted to be the end of higher education in British universities.

The leadership of British universities often being wrong on important issues, it was no surprise that fees have been a success. The later fee hikes having been so recently introduced, we are currently witnessing a dip in some numbers, but on past form they will recover, to leave the universities better funded and more receptive to student needs than before.

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George Osborne is looking for new ways to reduce government spending, and according to Peter Scott writing for The Guardian he might find higher education funding to be a good place for cuts. Yet even though currently universities around Britain have healthy treasuries, drastic funding reductions could lead to decline in educational quality that will have an impact on the country’s economic future down the line.

Although the Chancellor hasn’t yet announced where the new rounds of cuts will come from, higher ed seems a logical choice in light of the fact that many other social programs have already been gutted, and he has made a commitment to keep the money going towards health, defense and elementary and secondary education at the same level.

The universities’ temporary affluence is due to the poor implementation of the fees scheme which had even sub-par schools charging the maximum allowed tuition and reaping the windfall. Scott does not expect this to continue indefinitely, as £9,000 per year of college is not sustainable in the long term based on the citizenry’s mean income.

It is not their fault that, to ease Liberal Democrat consciences, the repayment regime is so loose that up to half of graduates will never pay back their loans in full – although the effect, of course, is to push up real (as opposed to nominal) public expenditure and bust the Treasury’s model. But a coalition government scrabbling for votes from beer drinkers and petrol-heads is not going to offend another constituency by tightening up that repayment regime. So, according to its blinkered neo-liberal logic, there is no alternative to cutting direct public support for higher education still further.

Scott doesn’t expect a reduction in funding for two of the government’s pet higher education initiatives: research and growth of the “strategically important and vulnerable” subjects like science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

But there might be open season on everything else, including expanding access to students from background typically underrepresented on university campuses.

In short, cutting higher education spending would amount to slashing and burning our future – unless, of course, we want to continue to rely on a bloated and corrupt financial services sector and property/high street spending bubbles. Not so long ago there was talk of rebasing our economy on high-tech high-value exports. Goodbye to all that. In any case, the truth is that the “prosperity” of higher education, which a predatory and desperate Treasury is now eyeing, is largely an illusion. In practice higher education is in turmoil as institutions struggle to make sense of the insane combination of a “command” economy and a highly volatile student “market”.

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Ucas, the body that keeps enrollment information about UK universities, is refusing to release application numbers to the public because of fears that it might introduce instability to the higher education market. The figures were originally supposed to be released after January 15th when the final admissions decisions had been made, but says that it declined to do so because “of potential volatility in supply and demand.”

However, some are saying that the real reason for the move is to protect universities that have suffered a fall in applications from embarrassment and to keep more students from fleeing. Vice Chancellors of a number of universities claim that the body is under a lot of pressure from some university officials to keep the embarrassing information private.

The vice-chancellor of one university explains: “If you were down 15% last year and the same this year, you’re in really serious danger. The understandable fear is that it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it gets out, will parents let their kids go to you?”

Figures on last year’s enrollments, released by Ucas in January, revealed shocking declines at some institutions, leading experts to warn that a university could go to the wall. London Metropolitan University was hit the hardest with a drop of 43% in 2012-13 compared with the previous year. Other notable casualties included the University of Bolton, which was down 25%, the University of Greenwich, down 23%, Leeds Metropolitan University, down 23%, and the University of East London, down 20.4%.

Head of Ucas Mary Curock Cook as much as confirmed this assertion when she said that the information is subject to over-interpretation by schools and students, and could lead everyone to the wrong conclusions about the health of the university in question. There’s so much concern over the issue that even university administrators have been unable to get a look at the data, on a school-by-school level. Ministers have also not been allowed to see the numbers, and many report being upset because that leaves them in the dark as to the health of the entire sector.

Legal experts say that Ucas may be worried about litigation if it releases negative applications data which is claimed to defame a university. However, David Palfreyman, the bursar at New College Oxford, who has written widely on higher education law, warns that students or parents may also seek to sue if they feel they have been kept in the dark. “There is a serious question of what the government’s consumer protection duty is here,” he says. “Shouldn’t kids and parents be able to hear that a place is heading into trouble, where undergraduate education may be disrupted by wind-down or even closure?”

However, lack of disclosure could become an issue for students who, according to a higher education law expert Dr. Dennis Farrington,  need to know if the university they’re choosing could be in trouble. With the cost of a college degree now as high as £27,000, attending a “failing” institution could lay down a substantial life-time hit.

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According to a leading expert in higher education, UK’s middle-tier universities are under threat of extinction as early as next decade, The Guardian reports. With the growth of technology in the higher education sector, non-established schools could be facing pressure from online university courses as well as for-profit schools delivering similar quality academics at a lower price.

The prediction was made by Sir Michael Barber, who is the chief adviser on education for the ed publishing firm Pearson. He went on to add that even the universities making up the prestigious Russell Group were bound to feel the competitive pressure.

In a report for the Institute for Public Policy Research, a centre-left thinktank, Barber urges British universities to “mark themselves out of the crowd” to stop an “avalanche of change” sweeping them away.

“The traditional multipurpose university with a combination of a range of degrees and a modestly effective research programme has had its day,” he writes in his report, An Avalanche Is Coming.

Barber, who was previously a part of the Tony Blair administration, said that schools should be looking overseas for the location from which the threat comes — specifically, American for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix and DeVry. At one time, UP enrolled as many as 600,000 students although it mainly focuses on students from the U.S. Another for-profit Laureate, however, now attracts applicants from 29 countries around the world.

The 2008 financial collapse and the election of Democrat Barack Obama that same year might have given British universities some breathing room. Obama leads an administration that is generally unfriendly to the for-profit education sector and the fall in the fortunes of prospective students has sent the entire for-profit university industry on the decline.

However, that still does nothing for the threat of free online open courses such as one offered by the education platform Coursera and by the edX consortium, a join project on Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a few [universities] that could go under, given that this avalanche is coming,” Barber said. “I think within a decade or so that is possible.”

He said universities needed to move away from the traditional lecture model and embrace one of five models: the elite institution, the mass university, the niche institute, the local university or the institution that specialises in educating mature students.

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With tuition fees hiked for the 2012-2013 school year, many universities in the United Kingdom experienced lower enrollment. But The Telegraph reports that for applications for next fall are up again in spite of predictions that the higher fees would permanently dampen enrollment. Graeme Paton explains that the increase in applications seems mostly driven by interest from students who might not usually have applied to British universities.

Applications turned in by the mid-January deadline show a 10% increase over last year. Among British students, applications rose among the poorer households who can seek financial assistance. Applications among the top 20% of British households did not increase over last year.

But it’s the poorer nations in the world that have really opened the taps on applications. Malaysia, for example, sent significantly more applications, as did China and Hong Kong.

This fact has surprised many observers, since at the same time, visa and immigration rules were tightened to prevent abuse of university application as a way to enter the country. Mark Harper, the UK’s Immigration Minister, cheered the positive development, citing it as evidence that UK education continues to exert a strong attraction for world students:

“We have tackled abuse of the student route head on — without affecting genuine students. By protecting the reputation of the British education system we will be able to compete in a global race.”

Raising fees in the university system was a controversial step, with some predicting that universities would go empty. Compared to 2010, before the fee increase, last year’s applications did run lower by 4.8%. Although still lower than that past rate, applications from British students still increased by 2.8% (13,080 applicants) over last year.

University and government officials had always predicted that after adjusting to the fee increase, enrollment would stabilize again. Business Secretary Vince Cable views this year’s rates as support for their optimism:

“These encouraging figures confound the critics and pessimists who were predicting that the new system of student financing would deter young people from applying. What is especially striking is that students from poorer backgrounds are not put off from applying. Today’s figures – an all time high – clearly show they are not.”

Many are still worried that the government coalition’s decision to move the burden of paying for university onto students and their families, away from taxpayers, will have a negative impact. The National Union of Students warned that it’s still too early to tell, and that viewing the increase in enrollment as a victory for the government’s decision was unwarranted.

Some British students who have been discouraged from applying to nearby universities by the higher tuition were tempted to attend schools much farther away but more willing to give them assistance. New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi was most aggressive, offering large scholarships and free transportation to the Middle East. Campuses on the continental US could not be as generous, but the American tradition of offering need-based and merit-based scholarships tempted some British students to alter their plans. Every year, more British students choose to take American college-application tests like the ACT and SAT, direct evidence of growing openness to the idea of pursuing higher education abroad.

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The University of Cambridge, one of the most highly-regarded universities in the world, has announced that it will bring back exams for admissions in all degree fields — much to the chagrin of applicants hoping to be awarded a place at the school based solely on the merits of their overall application.

The British government is planning to end a national exam, the AS-level, that provided mid-year scores for sixth-form students. But as Nick Collins reports in The Telegraph, Cambridge University foresees that removing this benchmark will complicate their application process.

Oxford and Cambridge Universities used to require their own entrance examinations, which applicants took in December prior to acceptance for enrollment the following October. These exams were phased out, since they discouraged some students from applying. The universal AS-level exam filled the void by providing scores before students had taken the final A-level exams. But without these scores, Cambridge says it will have a much harder time evaluating applicants.

Dr. Mike Sewell, Director of Admissions at Cambridge, said that they are still concerned about discouraging applicants by making the process more complicated.

“What we are concerned about is that any of the alternatives run the risk of putting good students off, doing the opposite of what A-levels do which is to encourage people who secure good grades half way through their A-levels to apply,” he said.

Students of mathematics have a mid-year exam called STEP, and this could be a model for Cambridge to follow. Whatever test Cambridge ends up with, Sewell said that:

“… it would have to be a very different examination to the one that was dropped in the 1980s.”

The shift comes at a time when higher education in the United Kingdom is facing serious challenges. Government policy regarding tuition has been controversial since Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition began, as a move that now allows universities to charge up to three times more than in the past has changed the higher education landscape in the country. Many universities have moved to charge the maximum allowed, including lesser-quality schools who fear that charging less will be a public admission of their status.

The number of students pursuing higher education in the UK has dropped this year, with some arguing that tuition policy is to blame.

Grade inflation has also plagued the country, as the number of ‘first’ degrees — the designation that signifies the highest level of academic achievement — has tripled over the last decade.

The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world.

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Although the number of non-EU international students attending British universities rose by 2% last year, the number of students from India fell by nearly a quarter after the introduction of more stringent visa rules by the Home Office. According to The Daily Telegraph, roughly 40,000 students from India were enrolled in universities around the country prior to last year. That number dropped to less than 30,000 in the last year for which data is available.

The data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency shows a substantial drop among students from Pakistan as well. Year-to-year, 13.4% fewer Pakistanis enrolled in British universities.

The drop was especially surprising in light of the fact that the number of non-EU students actually rose last year by more than 5,000 to 302,680. Most of the increase is accounted for by students from countries like China, Indonesia and Singapore.

Universities have warned that recent changes to student visa rules mean they face losing bright students from countries like India to rival colleges in the United States and Australia. Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK, said: “The drop in numbers of international students from certain countries during this period is a real cause for concern.

“This slowdown follows years of growth and comes as international demand for higher education has been on the rise. Competitor countries do not seem to be experiencing such stagnation.”

Criticism of the new, tougher visa policy has come from more than just university heads. Mayor of London Boris Johnson called on lawmakers to stop including students in their immigration target figures and to allow them more flexibility in staying on in Britain past graduation. Previously, international students who graduated from British universities were allowed to stay on and work for an additional two years. Recent policy changes lengthened that period to three years, but added a condition that this time might only be utilized by those who found a graduate-level job that paid at least £20,000 per annum.

Thanks to the new rules, India dropped from the first to second place for the number of students it sends to British universities. Taking over the top slot is China with 78,715 students, representing a nearly 17% increase over the year prior. In contrast, last year India sent fewer than half as many students to British schools, and families there are now more likely to consider universities in the United States or elsewhere.

Rounding out the top 5 is Nigeria, the only African country on the list, followed by the U.S, Germany and Ireland.

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If a First Class degree from a British university is a mark of high achievement, this achievement is not as difficult to attain as it used to be, writes Graeme Paton, the education editor of The Daily Telegraph. According to data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, there are now three times as many university students graduating with a First as there were 12 years ago.

In just the last 12 months, the number of graduates leaving with a First grew by 16%, and a full two-thirds of students who received their degree in 2012 got at least a 2:1. The 2:1, or “Second,” as it is more commonly known, is considered the minimum result required to qualify for most post-graduation jobs.

The data is only the latest sign that the system of honors used by the universities in Britain has now outgrown its usefulness and that the system of Firsts, Seconds, and Thirds is a poor one for differentiating and highlighting real student achievement.

Some universities are already taking steps to remedy this. For many students who are set to begin their university study this year, their final diploma will come not only with a degree class, but also a complete breakdown of their university achievements. The additional information will be provided to make it easier for employers to distinguish graduates from each other.

It is thought that existing degree classifications could eventually be axed altogether. According to HESA, 17 per cent of students – 61,605 – gained a first last summer. This was up from 15.5 per cent – 53,215 – a year earlier.

Numbers have tripled since 1999 when just 20,700 graduates were awarded first-class degrees. The increase in top degrees has been partially put down to a sharp rise in the undergraduate population, although the latest figures show that the hike in firsts has dramatically outstripped overall student numbers.

The growth in the number of firsts has – almost inevitably – led to the decrease in value for any other class of degree. According to Paton, there are a number of employers who are now refusing to consider any candidate that failed to earn the top degree. The Association of Graduate Recruitment published a report last summer that warned that employers now routinely “screen out” applicants with 2:2 degrees or worse.

But the study found that some companies were “considering increasing their requirement to a minimum of a first degree classification due to the high volume of their graduates who actually achieve this”. Commenting on the latest figures, Carl Gilleard, AGR chief executive, said: “We have seen the 200-year-old degree classification system become used more and more frequently by employers as an automatic cut-off point.

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It is described as Apprentice-like, but the stakes for this TV show are in some ways even higher. Called The Ghana Challenge – or simply The Challenge – and airing on Ghana’s GHOne and GTV, the television program brings together 12 college graduates from the African country to compete against each other in a number of business-related tasks. The reward for the winner is entrance to a fully paid-for post-grad degree from Scotland’s Robert Gordon University.

The show, currently in its fourth season, is now down to the last six contestants who are this week geared up for the last round of challenges prior to the final elimination round before the season finale. This time around, the judges looked at their debating skills as each finalist offered their own solutions to the issues facing Ghana, including education, healthcare, and tourism.

The debate on arts and culture was an interesting one, some of the contestants were of the view that arts and culture has not been clearly defined so when voted into office would define arts and culture to know exactly what it entails in order to give it maximum attention. One of the contestants said currently a research is on going to know exactly how much art and culture contributes to the Ghanaian economy and with the results from this research; he would make sure to make the arts and culture industry attractive enough to ensure high patronage by both local and foreign patrons.

All the topics covered on the program were fundamentally about boosting Ghana’s economy and assuring its success in the future. To that end, contestants praised the investment made by the late President Mills in growing the country’s music industry. Contestants also thought that further investment should be made to market the country is an attractive tourist destination to encourage a larger number of foreign visitors to consider Ghana for their next trip abroad.

Since its inception, the program has been sponsored by the British Council, and the participants weren’t the only ones to have benefited from the publicity. RGU, which will provide a number of judges for the season finale, saw the number of applicants from Ghana “skyrocket” since it took part in The Challenge last year.

Over 4.5million people tune in for the live final of the show, which is organised and run by the British Council.

During the show, the contestants battle it out for the top prize on seven key tasks including a sales and business task, charity task and a product pitch. The scholarship board conducts weekly interviews and assesses the tasks to decide who is hired and fired before a public vote.

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