Divide found between west Kent and the rest of the county in admissions to top universities

Thousands of students have had their dreams shattered in the battle to secure a place at one of Kent’s universities ahead of the tuition fee rise in 2012.

At the University of Kent 28,000 hopefuls applied for just 4,500 places and the University for the Creative Arts, which has campuses in Canterbury, Maidstone and Rochester, almost 10,000 for just under 2,000 places.

The University of Greenwich was bombarded with more than 10,000 calls in the clearing process last week, many of them for courses at the Medway campus.

A spokeswoman said on Tuesday that clearing had closed or was closing on all Medway subjects.

Clearing is for students who had not secured a place at university or achieved lower or higher than expected grades for their university choices.

Application figures for Canterbury Christ Church University were unavailable, but over the last four years the institution has seen a 64 per cent increase in UCAS applications.

The battle for places was intense this year with youngsters applying in the masses eager not to miss out on the last opportunity to pay the current £3,290 a year maximum cost.

From 2012, universities will be allowed to charge up to £9,000 a year.

Nic Pike, head of admissions at UCA, said this year the university saw 10,000 apply for 2,000 places – a 5:1 ratio.

“We did go into clearing, but only for five courses and only for 34-45 enrolments and this is controlled through the UCAS website, hence we did not receive many applications through UCAS - a little over 130.

“However we did receive hundreds of enquiries in the two days of clearing.

“As we did not want hundreds of clearing applications, we did our best to control the numbers by closing courses as soon as targets were filled.

“We were full by 7pm on Thursday and most of our enquires were as a result of the difficulties applicants had getting on to the UCAS website.

“Fortunately our superb Applicant Portal worked exceptionally well and we could handle this additional workload.”

UCA is one of the universities that will be increasing its fees next year to £8,500 a year, just slightly below the maximum £9,000.

Canterbury Christ Church is also charging £8,500 and for courses at the University of Greenwich’s Medway campus it will cost students £8,300.

The University of Kent in Canterbury will charge the maximum £9,000.

A spokesman at the University of Greenwich at Medway said clearing had been busy this year.

“We received over 10,000 calls, many of them for courses based at Medway,” said a spokeswoman.

“We received many strong applications from well-qualified students. Some subjects, such as nursing and speech and language therapy, did not go into clearing at all.

“Other subjects, such as civil engineering, biomedical science, sports science and business courses were very popular.”

Labour spokesman for Kent, Paul Clark, said he was interested to see what the application levels would be like next year.

“I know there were changes to tuition fees under Labour in 2006, but this £9,000 figure is substantially more than £3,000. I have real concerns in terms of the effect these changes are going to have,” he said.

“It will be interesting to see the level of admissions next year.”

Nicola Dandridge, from Universities UK, the representative organisation for universities, said when the previous increase to tuition fees was introduced in 2006 – from £1,175 to around £3,000 – there was a continued growth in the number of applications.

“Although the increase in next year’s fees is more considerable, it’s too early to tell how the new funding system for 2012 will affect demand for places,” she said.

“But the key thing is that prospective students get the facts. Deciding on whether or not to apply to university can be a life-changing decision, but it’s important that students and their parents look beyond the headlines and political arguments.

“A university education is a very valuable, long-term investment that transforms lives and it’s important that students aren’t put off by misleading figures. While it is true that under the new system, graduates will have to shoulder more of the share of the cost of going to university, students won’t have to pay fees upfront and the new system spreads the cost across your earning lifetime making it an affordable choice.”