Student numbers are at risk as UK demographics shift

Universities face a shortfall of 70,000 students by the end of the next decade, as a result of a drop in the number of young people in the UK.

On current demographic trends, the full-time undergraduate student population of UK higher education institutions will fall by 4.6 per cent by 2020, or 70,000 full-time under­graduate places, according to an analysis for Universities UK.

One of the authors of the report, The Future Size and Shape of the HE Sector in the UK, says universities will have to “seize new markets” for older, part-time, work-based and overseas students.

The report also predicts stiffer competition for students between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as demographic changes vary between regions. The report forms part of a series of seven reviews, commissioned last month by Universities Secretary John Denham, into the long-term future of higher education in Britain.

It predicts that the 2020 UK dip will have reversed by 2027, by which time total student numbers will be up by 2.1 per cent, with the biggest growth in part-time undergraduates and full-time postgraduates. But this recovery masks long-term prob-lems in Scotland, which may see full-time undergraduate numbers drop 8.4 per cent by 2027, as well as in Wales (down 4.9 per cent) and Northern Ireland (down 13.1 per cent) – compared with a 2.9 per cent rise in England.