According to some estimates up to 30,000 people could be turned away at the doors of universities in the UK next september. Source.
photo credit: phoosh
So how does that effect you / us? Well first of all if you’re thinking of going to the UK, competition will be a lot tougher. Most of these new wave of applicants are mature students looking to beef up their skills whilst the rest of the economy struggles to create and keep jobs. So i’m not sure how it will effect Irish students in terms of competition / points etc… but one things for sure – if there’s extra demand for courses, it’s not good for you no matter what way you look at it.
Entry requirements go up, it becomes survival of the fittest and unless you’re a grade A+++ student or a multi-millionaire, there are no guarantees of anything.
It also suggests that we may have similar problems here (in Ireland)… as more and more people pile in to the education bandwagon, at some stage, it’s gonna collapse and the quality of education will decrease. Introducing fees may stop that, but at the end of the day, more people in classes with same number of lecturers/teachers = poorer standards.