A colleague and I have an on-going conversation about how universities in the Russell Group are going to be affected by the 20% drop in the number of 18 year olds over the next ten years. Simplifying what has been a long-running debate, he essentially argues that any fall in numbers applying at the upper end of the current spectrum of institutions will be back-filled by people who might otherwise have applied to less selective institutions, while I argue that there are practical, cultural, academic and other reasons why people will continue to apply to post-94 universities (particularly urban ones) even if there are places going spare in the Russell Group, even if they go on to get A Levels which would get them a place in the RG institution. Time will tell, I suspect, but universities whose recruitment is entirely predicated on people living away from home --- most of the post-Robbins universities --- are going to feel the chill more than the traditional metropolitan Redbricks with a large "home" source of students.
However, it's interesting to look over the ocean and see how the high-end US universities are recruiting. They also face a ten year period of decline in the number of people turning 18 in their country, but with cultural factors that make the situation probably worse than it is for equivalent institutions here. The Ivy League is at least as middle-class as Oxbridge, and it's the white middle classes where the birthrate is dropping most savagely. So to get the best students, the Ivy League has both to reach out to new groups and compete amongst themselves for the best from the traditional recruiting grounds.
It's a whole other world.
The British universities, other than the "tourist destination" old Oxford and Cambridge colleges which offer daily tours of the buildings, have a few open days per year. In practice, you can usually just turn up, but in principle they need booking. They are marketed to schools, rather than to parents and prospective students. Although the middle classes (who are in very short supply, as their birth rate is low and falling) plan campaigns of open days for their children as though they are contemplating an amphibious invasion of France, large portions of the potential student population only make ad hoc visits to a local university, organised by schools on the basis of distance as much as anything else. Aside from anything else, cost is a major factor: visiting four or five universities, even if like me you regard parents going with their children as a lamentable development, could easily cost 250 quid. Packing those into the small window of time during which they all happen is very difficult.
The Ivy League and their competitors have campus tours, on a turn-up basis, every day apart from high days and holidays, both in and out of term (all from the first hit of google "visit X", except for Berkeley, where it's the second hit as the first hit is the district rather than the university).
Welcoming, yes?
Contrast with the first paragraph of the result of searching for "Visit [Russell Group] University" (and it's the same for all of them, plus or minus, so it would be invidious to identify it).
Reading through a prospectus is not the same as coming to visit the University in person. ‘Invitation only’ applicant visit days are held from November to April when students who have applied to study at [RG] are invited to a VIP day where you can meet current
Other examples are available from
There are special days, which you have to book for, but otherwise the university's doors are closed to you.
The US tours are up to a point aimed at prospective students, but they're also more general to raise awareness amongst passing tourists. Those tours also include a chance to talk to admissions people and student ambassadors, every day. So if you're near a university for some other reason, you can visit and get a sense of what that universities, and universities in general, are like.
And if you and your parents don't have a background in university education, for Yale you can sit in on _any_ class on campus as a visitor, something explicitly aimed at explaining why universities are A Good Thing:
You are welcome to drop in on a class – just search for classes that you might enjoy. Or, thanks to Open Yale Courses, you can try out a Yale class online at anytime
This doesn't appear to be a hollow offer --- my elder looked up what lectures were happening on the day we intend to visit Yale, mailed the lecturer and within 35 minutes got an enthusiastic response, finishing
Have a safe trip, and I look forward to meeting you next week.
So a holiday in New York can include a side-trip to New Haven, a campus tour and sitting in on a class. That's a pretty compelling piece of marketing.
Now, suppose a student who happened to be in a city fancied a look at a Russell Group University, or more specifically at a department in such a university. They're told it's invitation only, and those invitations are only available to applicants. How likely are they to think better of the university?
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