Blog: Busting myths about university is a widening access issue

By Laura Foster-Devaney, Communications and Press Officer, University Alliance

If you work in outreach and widening access – or even simply if you know a young person – you’ll know that making decisions around next steps between the ages of 16-18 can feel huge. Young people making decisions about what to do after school feel under immense pressure to decide what to do not just in the next year or two but for the rest of their lives.

We became all too aware of the extent of the pressure young people feel under when University Alliance (UA) conducted some audience research last year.

Painting the picture

In 2023, UA conducted discussion groups with young people aged 16-18 and parents with children within that age group. We asked them a series of questions to understand their perceptions of university.

We discovered that there was a lot of anxiety wrapped up in the decision to attend university – and which one to go to. And yes, we know: students and their parents anxious about their next steps after school? Groundbreaking.

But what was interesting was the specifics of this anxiety. They were anxious about whether university was really for people like them, whether their emotional and mental wellbeing would be supported at university, whether they were academic enough to even justify going. They were really worried that, later down the line, employers would judge them based on subject choice or institution ranking.

If they couldn’t make the right choice, was there any point in going at all?

All aboard the omnibus

The concerns we heard were pretty consistent in focus groups across the country, but to understand the extent to which they were common more broadly, we commissioned Savanta to conduct an omnibus poll of 567 university applicants aged 16-18. We asked a series of questions on how anxious applicants were feeling about various aspects of their university decision-making. The headlines were:

• 68% of university applicants feel anxious or very anxious about choosing the ‘right’ university.
• Two-thirds of applicants are anxious about making the ‘wrong’ subject choice for their future career.
• Over half of applicants worry that they aren’t ‘academic’ enough for university.
• 74% are anxious that if they don’t get high grades it will negatively affect their future career.

Young women were the most anxious across the board, but generally speaking, the concerns were relatively consistent across demographics and regions.

Are these perceptions well-founded?

Alongside polling young people, we also commissioned CBI Economics to conduct a study of employers. We wanted to know if young people and their families were right to be so concerned with making the correct choices for future employers, or if we could reassure them.

What CBI Economics found was that actually, employers are relatively indifferent to university choice. When it comes to subject choice – that is important, but more so for specific industries and roles.

In conversations with employers, they were emphatic that unless a young person had a very specific career in mind, the best thing was for each individual to make the right choice for them, not try and pre-empt what an employer might want. They also said that making the most of the opportunities university offers – to gain work experience, to work in teams and to deliver projects – was the most important thing a student could do to enhance their employability.

What do we do with that information?

Clearly, there are widespread anxieties about university decision making: that starts with worrying about whether or not university is for ‘people like me’, it continues as students worry about choosing the ‘right’ university, and runs into subject choice as well. At any point in that funnel, those with the least access to support and information are at risk of dropping out of that funnel and giving up on the idea of university all together.

That’s why we at University Alliance enlisted the help of our member universities, our partners at UCAS and others across the sector to tackle some of those anxieties head on.

#UniMythsBusted is born

The #UniMythsBusted campaign, which will launch with a four-week online campaign throughout November, is designed to reach young university applicants with clear, factual information to tackle some of those anxieties we identified.

Delivered in collaboration with UCAS, and with content developed by students from the Bright Young Things student agency, the campaign will mobilise real student and employer voices to reassure young people and fill information gaps.

Our vision is for every young person to feel confident making the right choices for them, no matter who they are or where they come from.

Find out more at unimythsbusted.co.uk.