Follow the demand or preserve the breadth? Universities face an A-level dilemma

This blog was kindly authored by Professor Alan Smithers, Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham

A-levels have served universities well over the years. At first, they were school qualifications and their main benefit to universities was identifying those who merited scholarships or bursaries to help with living costs before there were automatic grants. But gradually the universities ceded their exams to A-levels, and the relationship has become so close as to be symbiotic. As the university system expanded, the percentage of top grades rose from 10 per cent in 1965 to three times that in 2010. A-level entries also boomed from three to eight hundred thousand.  There has always been a ready supply of respectably qualified applicants. But recently, with the reduced numbers from overseas, there is now an over-supply of places.

I am sure that university admissions tutors are well versed in what is happening to A-level entries and grades in their own subjects, but given that a university’s survival is dependent on applications, it is well worth taking a close look at what is happening across the piece. It is striking how students’ preferences are changing.

Maths has become much more popular, while English has fallen sharply. Twenty-five years ago, English had 87 thousand entrants to Maths’ 56 thousand, but last year while, Maths had grown to 112 thousand, English had fallen to just 58 thousand. French and German have also dropped spectacularly – declining by two-thirds and four-fifths since 1995 respectively. Spanish has bucked the trend, but has only reached an intake of eleven thousand.

In contrast, Psychology entries have quadrupled to 80 thousand, and Sociology has doubled to 40 thousand, although they have, particularly Sociology, waned somewhat recently. The Sciences have recovered well from the determined attempt on the creation of GCSEs to replace the separate subjects in Key Stage 4 with Combined Science. Physics entries, for example, fell from about 50 thousand in 1986 to 30 thousand in 2004, as the ladder was pulled away from under it. They survived thanks to the unlikely combination of independent schools, who fought the switch and won, and Gordon Brown, who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, made them part of his 2004 Science Investment Strategy. The ground was laid for recovery and by 2025 A-level entries were back above 40 thousand.

Another challenge A-levels pose for universities is that different groups consistently differ in their results. Do universities seek to balance their intakes by adjusting entrance requirements or do they admit on merit and have uneven intakes?

The best example in the A-level results that are available through the Joint Council for Qualifications is the sex difference, though the reasoning will apply to ethnicity, social background, disability and neurodiversity. Girls outperform boys at every passing grade except A*. Boys are ahead here because they are much more likely to take and do well in high top-grade awarding quantitative subjects, such as Maths, the Physical Sciences and Economics.

Admitting on merit would lead imbalances in recruitment, with girls taking most of the places in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, while boys would cluster in the quantitative. This would apply not only to the subjects themselves, but to the professional courses that have particular subject requirements, such as Medicine and Engineering.

Adjusting entry requirements to balance the sexes has a long history. Girls did much better in the 11+, so boys had a lower pass threshold. It used to be the practice in Medicine, and perhaps still is, to limit the number of places available to girls. While invariably more presented with better qualifications, it was recognised that the purpose of the expensive training was to secure the future of the health service. When it was found that women were less likely to stay active in the profession, there was some rebalancing of the intake.

The dilemma is whether to give underperformers a leg up and be unfair to those who would be denied places or commit to pursuing excellence and accepting the imbalances. The decision is complicated by the requirements of the Office for Students, which has the power to take away university status.

The shifts in entries pose an even greater dilemma for universities. Do they focus on the bottom line and close departments where recruitment is evidently going to be difficult, such as English Literature, Modern Languages and the Arts in general, or do they contrive to keep them open to maintain intellectual breadth.

At first sight, it appears to be a no-brainer, without balancing the books, there will soon be no university –  unless it has the necessary financial strength to survive through its assets and the generosity of donors. But people do not just go to university for a qualification; there is also the quality of the experience.

The logic of the bottom line is that a university will end up as a collection of silos of professional courses, like Medicine, Computing, Law and Business, each of which may in time decide that the rest of the university is an embarrassment and take off to set up independently.

The alternative is to maintain the breadth and keep a supportive environment in which students feel comfortable in pursuing their learning and staff in advancing the frontiers of their subjects. A mix of subjects with their own ‘truths’ provides a necessary check on reality, which is absorbed as the students and staff go about the campus. Left to their own devices subjects can go off in directions that are of little use and can be downright misleading.

Those are the two main issues I can see arising from the recent A-level results: What is to be done in response to the shifts in subject choices, and how are the consistently different levels of achievement between the various groups to be accommodated?

Failure to balance the books will lead to merger or bankruptcy; failure to provide a fulfilling university experience will lead to falling applications as the word gets round. Unless a university has strong and imaginative leadership to pilot a way through it, it will be either a rapid death or a slow death. It is Hobson’s choice!