The experience of student number caps from one modern university in Scotland

This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Steve Decent, Principal and Vice-Chancellor at Glasgow Caledonian University.

As England discusses whether to reintroduce student number caps for home undergraduate education, this blog offers the perspective of the Vice-Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in terms of Scotland’s student number caps.

I support Scotland’s free tuition, and recognise that this means there has to be some level of student number controls, but the caps in Scotland provide challenges for widening access to higher education.

The total Scottish-domiciled undergraduate population across all years of study at each university is subject to a cap that is set by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), where universities must have student numbers within a range that is between 2% below and 10% above a target number, with financial penalties applied to universities that stray outside this range; applicants from outside of Scotland are not counted in these numbers.

Apart from separate caps for a small number of programmes in what are called controlled subjects (such as Mmedicine, Nursing, teacher training), Scottish students studying almost all degree programmes make up these capped numbers on non-controlled subjects. In Scotland, graduate apprenticeships, the equivalent of degree apprenticeships in England, are now also included within the existing SFC caps, meaning those universities delivering apprenticeships at scale like Glasgow Caledonian have an additional challenge to balance demand within the capped system.

UCAS data show that in 2023, Glasgow Caledonian had the largest intake of Scottish-domiciled undergraduate students amongst all Scottish universities as a result of the hard work of our wonderful staff, our high-quality degree programmes and strong graduate employment. The university also had the largest recruitment of Scottish widening access undergraduate students, measured in Scotland using SIMD20 which are the applicants from the 20% most deprived areas of the nation as per the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Glasgow Caledonian was allocated an additional 220 non-controlled funded places by the SFC for 2024-25, the only Scottish university to be allocated additional funded places for this year, and the additional funding will enable us to invest in staff and facilities in the academic disciplines which have the highest demand from applicants. We could have taken many more places. I welcome this as the start of an approach by the SFC to annually review the distribution of funded places across Scottish universities to ensure that the allocation of funded places meets student demand and the needs of the employers of Scotland’s graduates, and I hope that they can continue to allocate additional funded places to Glasgow Caledonian for next year and future years.

Excluding Scotland’s world-class small specialist institutions, this summer only two Scottish universities did not go into clearing for non-controlled undergraduate programmes. Glasgow Caledonian was the first university in Scotland to come out of clearing amongst those universities that went into clearing for non-controlled subjects, doing so on day 2 of clearing in Scotland on 7^th August because of the cap, quickly followed by another Scottish university in that first week following SQA results day. At the end of August, all the other universities in Scotland were still in clearing for Scottish-domiciled undergraduate applicants to non-controlled degrees.

Student number caps limit widening access. If we had a much larger cap, then our university would have been able to stay in clearing all summer, like most other universities in Scotland, and we expect that we would have been able to recruit many additional students from SIMD20 areas. Glasgow Caledonian recruited about 200 students in clearing from SIMD20 areas last summer, the largest of any SIMD quintile.  

There is a risk that the widening access students that we have not recruited could be lost to higher education. The undergraduate students that we recruit tell us that the reasons they come to us are because of our location in the centre of Glasgow and ease of travel to our campus, the degree programmes we offer and our high graduate employment figures. Students whom we decline might find it very difficult to enter higher education if they are also unable to get into the other two universities in Glasgow, since most of our students live at home in the city throughout their studies, and the barriers to travelling further to access higher education will be especially challenging for students from widening access backgrounds.

Student number caps in Scotland appear to me to be limiting student choice and this is the price to pay for the financial predictability that student caps offer to some universities. Caps especially disadvantage widening access students who are less able to travel to access places away from home.

The absence of caps does not imply unlimited growth for universities, but enables universities to set their own recruitment targets more flexibly based on their demand and capacity. Many of the UK’s modern universities that have a strong focus on widening access, such as Glasgow Caledonian, are thriving with high-quality degree programmes and strong graduate employment.

Limiting student recruitment at universities comes at the cost of student choice, and students from the poorest backgrounds will be most disadvantaged. For this reason, and based on my experience in Scotland, I would caution against the reintroduction of student number caps in the English higher education sector, or if they are reintroduced into England, then like in Scotland there needs to be a constant vigilance to annually review those caps and shift student numbers to meet demand.

If the aim of reintroducing student number caps in England is to protect modern universities from the Russell Group on the back of the highly competitive recruitment cycle this summer, then I would say that this is the wrong driver. The UK and Scotland have wonderful high-quality Russell Group universities, but also benefit from a rich diversity of institutions including successful modern universities like Glasgow Caledonian which provide high-quality degree programmes with strong graduate employment figures. Our students deserve the breadth of choice and opportunity that our sector has the potential to offer.