UCAS – Full time application figures

7th August 2017

UCAS has published it’s undergraduate full time application figures from January 2017 and they have dropped to 564,190 applications. This is around 5% down on last years figures. 

Across the UK, the number applying to higher education has fallen: from England by 6%, from Northern Ireland by 5%, from Scotland by 2% and from Wales by 7%.

The figures show that the largest decreases are for older applicants from England and Wales. In England the number of 19 year old applicants has fallen by 9%, 20 year olds by 9%, 21-24 by 15%, and 25 and over by 23%.

The number of first time applicants has decreased by 4%, whilst the total re-applying to higher education has decreased by 10%. 

So how will this affect the student market? We are seeing caps on the university places become more relaxed although the caps on HMO regulations becoming stricter year on year. Brighton especially appears to have saturated the available limit for new HMO’s with refusals on new HMO applications becoming frequent in most areas due to change of use planning.

With new luxury student accommodation being built around the Vogue Gyratory on Lewes Road nearly complete and more planned closer to the universities, landlords can be forgiven for being a little nervous that they will struggle to fill their property. 

Following discussions with Harry Hillary of Brighton University Accommodation department, they’ve been asked to house more tenants for the next academic year than ever before.  In spite of the national figures being down on university applications Brighton attracts a wealth of Students for a wide variety of reasons and usually fall outside of the national averages.  

Both Brighton and Sussex universities attract huge numbers of international students which is not taken into account with these figures. MTM have been invited once again to attend Brighton house hunting events at Brighton University to help house the hundreds of students who are booking on to attend so we’re not worried about our ability to help landlords find the right tenants.

Furthermore UCAS have published that demand is ever increasing for 18 year old applicants and they expect there are likely to be around 10,000 more applicants for the 2017 cycle of education before September.