EDUCATION IN BRITAIN MORE UNIVERSITIES BUT LESS CHANCE OF GETTING A PLACE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31655, 16 April 1968, Page 14

EDUCATION IN BRITAIN MORE UNIVERSITIES BUT LESS CHANCE OF GETTING A PLACE

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WILLEM VAN DER EYKEN,

Educational Corretpondent 0/ the "Financial Timet". London)

(Reprinted from the "Financial Times’* by arrangement >

This month, Britain’s newest university, at Stirling, installed its own Chancellor. In many ways the ceremonies connected with this occasion marked the end of the most dramatic growth in universities Britain has ever seen. Just after the war there were 24 universities throughout Britain today there are, including Stirling, 45 institutions of that kind.

But this month, too, sees the start in many schools of the Easter holidays, the last breathing spell for the 100,000 sixth-formers before they reach their Becher’s Brook—the General Council of Education “A” level examinations. These will decide whether they can get into these universities. The irony is that, in spite of the dramatic increase in buildings, staff and student places, their chances will be rather worse than they would have been ten years ago. More and more children getting G.C.E. “A” levels; more and more children staying on at school past statutory leaving age of 15; more and more children wanting to go to university; more and more children coming out of the educational system and looking for the promised land of degree status. The result has been that, in spite of great increases in the number of places made available, the demand is far greater than the supply. Which Subjects? Well, what then are the chances of a boy or girl getting to university this coming year? Asked like that, the question cannot be answered. First things first. What kind of subjects is the sixth-former studying: science, or arts, or social science, or a mixture of each? Secondly, how many “A” levels is he or she likely to get? Then again, what kind of “A” levels—three or four “A” levels at “C” or “D” standard may not be nearly as compelling as two really good “A’s” or “B’s.” And, finally, what is it you are after —three years of residence at a university, or a university degree, which can also be taken at a number of other colleges, often on a part-time basis? Let us take the universities first. Granted there is some value in a student spending three years on a residential undergraduate course; this is obviously what one would like. What are the chances in this area? Assuming that the boy or girl does achieve the minimum of two or more “A” levels, which is the ground level accepted by the Robbins Report on Higher Education, in 1963, then over all, the chances are no more than one in two, or slightly better. But this is misleading. It all depends what the sixth-former wants to study. It is now a common-place that there is a swing away from the study of the pure sciences towards, not so much of the arts as the social sciences and the fashionable subjects like poli-

tices, government and sociology. One way to find out what the order of difficulty is in getting into a university department is to compare the number of applications put into the Universities Central Council on Admissions (U.C-C.Ai) with the number who actually were accepted. English Courses Last year, for example, 4849 students put their names down for university English courses. Only 2178 got in, so that the order of difficulty was approaching two and a half to one. But one of the very worst cases is in medicine. Here, last year, 7361 students applied for the general medical courses, and only 2290 got places; a ratio of well over three to one. A word of caution is necessary here. It is all very well to take the number of people who apply for courses, but one must remember that these applications go in long before the candidates have actually sat their exams, and many fall by the wayside because they simply do not reach the standard required. Last year, about 20,000 (or a fifth of the 1101,600 who applied for I places) could not get over the first hurdle. Again, there are some subjects—like medicine and law —which attract a large number of overseas candidates. In medicine last year, 5722 applications came from Britain, but another 1639 came from abroad, to make up the total of 7361. If we look at who was accepted, we find that 2170 home applicants got in, whereas the medical schools took only 120 of the overseas candidates. So it is the overseas students who have the greatest difficulty In getting a course in Britain. This proviso does not work out in a subject like English, however, because most overseas universities have English departments of their own. Chances With Science What is the position in science? From what has been said about the swing away from it, there ought to be much more chance of getting in there. The point about specialising in science is that it is not a last-minute affair. The Dainton Report suggested that it might be as early as the age of 12 or 13 that the decision is made to specialise in science. Certainly the choice of G.C.E. “O” levels is crucial, and after that the decision to go on with mathematics to “A” level standard. By this time, when the student is faced with “A” levels, the question of whether or not he or she “goes in for” science is already long past. But given that the sixth-for-mer is already in the predicament of specialising for the sciences, then the chances of getting a place are good. In biology, which attracts a lot of girls, 766 students were accepted out of a total application for Britain alone of 1321—and, interestingly, it was the men, not the women, who were rejected. Nearly all the girls got in. In mathematics, 3927 sixthformers applied from Britain and 2901 got a place. And in chemistry the chances are even better. Of the 3668 who asked for a place, 2922 got one. Some Exotic Fruits Are these the best chances one has of getting into a university? Or are there even better bets? The very best chance, on the face of it, is to go in for Classics. Nearly all the universities have Classics departments,. because it is one of the-traditional subjects. Last year, 678 men and women i applied, and 608 were accepted. Here we are coming near a situation where—once you have the minimal qualifications—you can reasonably expect to go on to university. But there are other, exotic fruits on the university tree. If you can get through the “A” levels, Chinese language and studies is a good bet: 22 out of 29 candidates got a place last year. There are the little-known Slavonic and East European languages and studies. Qualify for those and you’re in with a very good chance. What is the most difficult subject to get a place for? I would warn anybody who thinks he is going to be a veterinary surgeon to think again. Last year 862 British candidates applied, but only 223 got in—a ratio of nearly one in four. The Colleges From ail this it seems that there are still not nearly enough university places, in spite of all the increases in universities. But haven't the numbers in higher education shot up dramatically? Where are they all? This is where we have to make a clear distinction between universities, and that much broader term, Higher Education, which involves not only the Colleges of Education. but also those in Colleges of Technology. Over-all, the rise in numbers is dramatic. In 1963, when the Robbins Report came out, there were 217,000 in full-time higher education courses in Britain. Four years later

there were 337,000 ... and the number is rising all the time. But the Colleges of Education (the old teacher training colleges) and the C alleges of Technology have done much to boost these figures'. For example, there are now very nearly 100,000 students doing three-year courses in the Colleges of Education, and there are more than 60,000 doing full-time courses in the Colleges of Technology. So if my child does badly in the G.C.E., that is where I ought to look, is it? If your child is young enough, there is probably no better place for him or her than in the sixth-form, and many sixth-formers go back to do an extra year at school to improve their G.C.E. results. But, equally, they can transfer to a local college or a college of technology and do “A” level work there. It is not a good idea to think of teacher training as a sort of “second best” way of getting higher education. As It is, there is an enormous problem of “wastage" from these colleges, with young people doing teacher training, but having no Intention of making teaching a long-term career. In many ways we are training an army of deserters in this respect. The C.N.A.A. What are these opportunities, and why do they seem to get labelled as secondary alternatives? It is one of the tragedies of our divisive society that parents—and teachers, too—refuse to look at the tremendous work being done by the colleges, through the C.N.A.A. system. The C.N.A.A. stands for the Council for National Academic Awards, and its job is to give degree status to a large number of courses which are run in colleges ; that are not themselves universities, but that are doing work of university standing. If you like, you can think of the C.N.A.A. as a university itself, not having any buildings or staff of its own, but using those of the colleges while running courses up and down the country—all leading to degrees offered by other universities like London, or their own. C.N.A.A. degree courses are growing at a tremendous rate. Last year there were 10,687 students on these courses. If you were to put all these students into one university, you would have a campus the size of Cambridge, or twice the size of Birmingham or Bristol. Fascinating Courses What is the particular merit of these courses? If they are full-time, is there any difference at all between them and a university residential course? Most of the courses are fulltime, but many others can be done on a part-time basis, or even as “sandwich” courses involving a spell of work in industry. They lack, obviously, the close-knit communal life of a residential campus, but they make up for it with flexibility. You can, for example, do some fascinating courses. There are ceramics studies, food science courses, studies in photographic technology, polymer science, nautical studies, textile 1 technology and the physics and technology of electronics. Many of these courses simply cannot be studied at all in the universities, although, of course, much of the ground is covered in the more traditional fields. Oxbridge 0r... What about all these vacancies one keeps hearing about? These occur for many of these courses, very often because people do not know about them, or because they take the attitude that if the boy or girl cannot make Orford or Cambridge, that is the end of the story. The point that parents ought to understand about higher education is that, by and large, standards do not fluctuate all that much. It is true that certain university departments are very goodrsociology at the London School of Economics, for example—but, on the whole, what is important is not so much which university one goes to, but the fact that one remains a student. This is particularly so because most sixth-formers have little or no idea what they want to do with their lives, and one of the great virtues of higher education is that it enables them to make a better choice. It gives them time, the opportunity to see something of a subject, and —in the event that they really dislike it—a chance to switch to something else, withou'. injuring their career pattern.