Universities to pay cash incentives to attract students

At City University London, scholarships of ￡3,000 will be paid to AAB plus students in each year of a three or four year degree, subject to them passing their university exams. ?Photo: ALAMY

Institutions across the country, including City University London, and Leicester, Surrey and Northumbria universities, are introducing payments to attract candidates with the best exam grades.

The non-means tested academic rewards are in response to new Government rules which allow universities to take unlimited numbers of sixth formers gaining at least two As and a B at A-level - known as AAB+ students.

With the new freedom to recruit more high-achieving students, less prestigious institutions fear that good quality applicants will increasingly be poached by higher ranking universities.

In the first signs of a "scholarship arms race", universities are now vying to give the best deals to 2012 students, the first to face tuition fees of up to ￡9,000 a year.

At City University London, scholarships of ￡3,000 will be paid to AAB plus students in each year of a three or four year degree, subject to them passing their university exams.

Surrey University is offering ￡2,000 to candidates who achieve three A grades who select the university as their firm choice, while Northumbria is offering ￡1,000 a year to AAB+ students.

Leicester, which is ranked in the top 20 of UK institutions, is offering ￡2,000 awards each year over three years for students gaining three A grades.

Departmental scholarships of ￡1,250, paid towards tuition fees, will also be given to students who meet specific course requirements.

Universities with the highest proportion of students with at least AAB at A-level include Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, London School of Economics, Durham, Bristol, University College London, Warwick, Exeter and Bath.

Many in the list also have the lowest proportions of pupils from state schools and deprived backgrounds.

But institutions in the "squeezed middle" of the league tables are most likely to feel forced to compete financially for students, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi).

"They are vulnerable to losing some of their AAB+ students to more selective, more prestigious, institutions," said Bahram Bekhradnia, Hepi director.

"At the same time they are competing with their peers to hold onto their existing and to recruit additional AAB+ students.

"This is likely to give rise to an arms race of 'merit-based' scholarships – if one university offers them others will be obliged to do so."

Critics of the AAB policy said universities were "fighting over" applicants by offering cash incentives to students who already tended to be from more advantaged backgrounds.

Claire Callender, professor of higher education policy at Birkbeck College, London, said: "All the research from the US which has a long history of scholarships which are purely merit-based shows that they are to the advantage of middle and upper class white students who are the ones who predominantly achieve the necessary test scores."

A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, said: "Our reforms free up places at the institutions where students wish to study.

"We have made sure that under new access rules, more support is going to people from disadvantaged backgrounds and they are treated fairly.

"Beyond this, universities are free to use their own resources in any way they choose in order to attract new students."