The first year of the government’s new fees and funding regime is expected to cost some post-1992 universities almost 13 per cent of their undergraduate intake and up to 46 per cent of their direct grant, John Morgan writes here.
Libby Hackett, director of the University Alliance, said its members were “the squeezed middle in this environment”.
Given that the group’s universities were “doing all the things the government asked of them” in terms of high graduate employment rates and links with industry, it was “very frustrating” for them to have their places cut, she said.
Ms Hackett reiterated calls for AAB to be extended downwards to lower grades to create a more open market; for the size of the margin of contestable places to be reduced; and for the £7,500 threshold on bids for margin places to be removed.
