Record number aiming for university

12 April 2012

Record numbers of young people are aiming to go to university, research has found.

Almost eight in 10 pupils (77%) say they are likely to go on to higher education, according to a Sutton Trust poll of more than 2,400 students.

This is an increase of five percentage points on last year, and the highest percentage since the survey began seven years ago.

It comes despite poor graduate prospects in the current economic climate, and a squeeze on places this year, because more students are applying to university.

The poll also revealed an increase in the numbers of pupils who say their parents cannot afford to send them to university - 13% up from 7% last year.

Just one in 10 (10%) said they are not likely to go on to higher education. The proportion of pupils who said they do not want to go to university because they want to start earning money has dropped drastically this year - from 53% in 2008 to 34% this year, a fall of 19%. The report authors conclude this may be due to the recession.

A third (36%) said they are unlikely to go to university because they want to do something more practical than study from books - this proportion has also dropped 19% from last year, while three in ten (30%) believe they are not clever enough to go to university, and a similar proportion (31%) said they are unlikely to choose higher education because they do not enjoy learning. Fewer pupils think they can get a well-paid job without a degree this year - 22% down from 32%.

The findings also reveal a gap between pupils from the richest and the poorest backgrounds. Eight in 10 (79%) young people from families with two working parents say they want to go to university, compared to two thirds (66%) of those from households with no parent working.

Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl said: "The survey suggests that efforts to increase participation have been buoyed by the economic crisis and the shortage of jobs, which has made further study a more attractive prospect for many young people. While this is good news in some respects, we must ensure we don't build up students' expectations early on in school only for them to be dashed at age 18.

"The ideal would be that every young person with the potential to benefit should have access to higher education, but in the current economic climate the most pressing question is who gets access to the limited number of university places available."

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