The Russell Group unis where student numbers have actually gone DOWN in 2025

16 comments

1. Fair enough. Boomers have fucked it for Gen Z

   Why bother getting £50k in debt to be unemployed and living with your parents

2. No coincidence that numbers have gone down while fees have gone up.

3. Kids slowly realising that it does not matter. That going to nearby Ex-Poly and be taught by people from industry with real change of a job that exist is just simply better way to go.

4. That website is terrible. The amount of ads makes me think it’s a spam website.

5. Some of the comparisons don’t make sense, as the rise in student applications in 2023 was due to COVID deferrals. A drop the following years was clearly to be expected.

6. Entry requirements go up -> number of attendees go down. What’s the big deal?

7. Overseas students are more valuable than home students in terms of fees. Several universities are offering much more generous requirements for overseas students.

8. The University of Sheffield put their drop in numbers down to the reduction in foreign students.

   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rnp2vd717o

   But the article doesn’t even note this situation exists and the author just uses the numbers to prove her point, pretty shoddy journalism.

9. I regret my degree at 400pm and still not covering the interest. Fortunate to be in a high paid job but others got here via apprenticeships now.

   That being said. Had a lot of life lessons there.

10. This is the chickens coming home to roost from the Blair government. Forcing everybody to go to university if they want to get a good job, as a tool of social change, was mad

    Now we have generations in debt, clown universities offering clown courses for £50k+, just so grads can barely make above minimum wage

    It’s an industry that is going to need a reckoning, but the fallout will be huge

11. This is probably evidence of financial health, rather than the other way round.

12. A lot of Russell Group universities overrecruited during Coronavirus and now those cohorts of students have left.

13. They expanded until they over-filled all their facilities, realised that was a mistake and are now stabilising their numbers at a level that actually fits.

14. This is kinda silly of course numbers have fallen. There are just less college age people. It’s that “demographic cliff” academics have warned us about. Now if it was presented as percent of students at Russell group scoops compared to alternatives that’s much more compelling.

15. Don’t go to uni. Get an apprenticeship. My younger brother got one from KPMG and is smashing it career wise now. 27 years old making £72K a year + bonus tax free in Dubai.

16. Some of these are really barely decreases. Oxford is down 600 out of over 26,000 since… 2007. That sounds basically perfectly stable to me.

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