Clearing Advice

Hopefully you won't need this but, just in case, it's a good idea to be prepared if you need to enter the UCAS 'Clearing' process on August 14th...

First things first, don't panic:  act quickly but act wisely and seek out advice from the experts at school and beyond.

These websites are a good place to begin:

Click here for the 'WHICH University' results day advice site. There's lots of answers to FAQs as well as a 'What to expect on Results Day page'.

Click here for UCAS' own guide to the Clearing process.  It even has a useful video to explain what to do!

You might not have thought this far but accessing universities through Clearing can affect your Student Loan process.  For specific advice about this, from the Student Loans Company, click here.

Last year, over 57 000 students found their university places through Clearing so don't worry if this year, you're joining them.  If you're still unsure, here's a case study from WHICH University. 

Good Luck!

Climb the 'Student Ladder'

Student Ladder is an excellent, free website.  As well as the typical advice about course choices and university applications you can get from sites of this type, it also has details of a range of Work Placements, Internships and Graduate Schemes available across the UK.  There are opportunities listed for anyone between the ages of 16 and 24, including first and second degree students.  This site doesn't just tell you how to write a CV or UCAS Personal Statement, it provides you with the opportunities and experiences to make yours stand out!

Analysis of student finances

A National Union of Students survey of 3,654 students has found that 11% of undergraduates used credit cards to pay for living costs; 28% had a bank overdraft and nearly half said they had to rely on financial support from their family. In addition, 2% said they had used the service of pay-day loan companies. However, 28% said they had managed not to have any debt at all.

Too many universities?

Sir Roderick Floud, the former president of Universities UK, has said that the UK has “too many universities” and institutions in cities such as London, Leeds, Oxford and Sheffield should be closed or merged. He said that the existing system of higher education was “unnecessary and inefficient”. He also said that Oxford and Cambridge should focus on research and stop recruiting undergraduates altogether. In his article in the Times Higher Education Supplement he said, “We don’t need two or more universities in each of our major cities, glowering at each other and competing to attract the attentions of businesses and local authorities. Why does Leeds or Sheffield or Oxford, for example, need two vice-chancellors, registrars or groups of governors? In London, the situation is even more bizarre, with some 40 universities within the M25 and more arriving by the day. The Higher Education Funding Council for England has remained supine in the face of evidence that all this is unnecessary and inefficient.”

He also criticised universities for attempting to “do too many things at once”, such as research, organising conferences, catering, offering careers advice, investing in the stock market, maintaining historic buildings, financing start-up companies, developing science parks, promoting sport and even running bus services. He said that there was a “strong argument for specialisation”, and that some universities “could concentrate entirely on postgraduate education”, saying that the top universities needed to make “better use of the best researchers who are already, in many places, concentrating on master’s and PhD students and leaving undergraduate teaching to junior staff”.

UK needs to" get creative"...

The government’s Creative Industries Advisory Group has expressed concern about a skills shortage in the creative sector after 2020 because fewer British students are graduating from art schools and music colleges. They say by contrast, Chinese students are coming in record numbers to study design, music, fashion and film, with the number enrolling in creative programmes tripling over the past five years. There are also 7,000 undergraduates enrolled in the China Academy of Art as Beijing pursues a strategy of turning “Made in China” into “Created in China”. Sir Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, said, “We went too far in the 70s and 80s in being child-centred but now it is all swinging too far back the other way towards regurgitation of mechanistic imposition. It’s no good getting Grade-8 piano if you can’t feel the music. Education shouldn’t just be about exam success but also creating good citizens. If there is not also a cultural, creative, moral, spiritual and personal dimension you are going to be drab.”

I.C.T. skills gap

The CBI has called for businesses and the government to boost digital skills, saying that there were too few graduates with digital skills, such as web design or computer programming, for the jobs available. However, a survey of 2,000 parents by the technology company O2 found that 23% of parents thought skills such as coding were "irrelevant". O2 said that this showed a "disturbing disconnect" between skills in demand from employers and those valued by parents. They said that 750,000 digitally skilled workers will be needed by 2017 to satisfy Britain's "digital potential". Twice the number of UK students took up degrees in Medicine compared with Computer Science between 2012 and 2013