Overseas and mature home entrants (other than postgraduates)
and the net incomes of school leavers in employment; levels of graduate unemployment; and the increased earnings potential which higher education is thought to bring. But it is difficult to predict how such factors may influence the numbers seeking admission to higher education in the 1980s. It may be that faster economic growth in the wake of the full benefits of North Sea oil might increase demand for highly qualified manpower in the mid-1980s and thereby the flow of students presenting themselves for higher education. On the other hand, the highly qualified manpower stock may well continue to rise faster than the number of vacancies in traditional graduate occupations, which could serve to discourage some potential higher education
entrants.
7. The APR can also be materially affected by social changes. Calculations based on total numbers of 18 year-olds conceal the potentially important point that entrants to higher education are drawn in very different proportions from different occupational groups. Research indicates that the differentiation mainly occurs at 16, when decisions are made whether or not to stay at school.
8. A recent study by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys shows that, for the years 1970 to 1975, the average annual rate of decrease in legitimate live births was 0.8% for social classes I and II, while that for other classes was 6.6%. About half the entrants to higher education currently come from classes I and II (estimated on the university pattern) and the rate at which they seek entry to higher education may not decrease as fast as the population of young people in the late 1980s. This together with further evidence on birth patterns from the 1951 and 1961 Censuses suggests that, over the whole period up to 1994/95, the effect of social class might increase the APR by up to three percentage points.
9. Except in postgraduate courses, women have achieved nearly equal participation in full-time higher education as a whole; their predominance in teacher training has offset their relatively low though increasing entry to degree courses. Continuing reduction in teacher training numbers will provide fewer opportunities for women in future, so improvement to full equality in terms of the APR will mean first attracting large numbers of women to alternative advanced level courses. It would be premature to assume a higher total APR or an increase in mature women entrants until these changes can be assessed.
10. Predictions based on extrapolation of short-term trends in the APR are inevitably liable to a wide degree of error. For the present paper, three illustrative assumptions have been adopted. The highest is that the APR will rise to 21% by 1994/95 (that is, an improvement of about a half over the 1976/77 level); the central assumption posits a more moderate recovery to 18% by the end of the period (which broadly continues the rise already assumed in setting the 1981/82 planning figure of 560,000 places); and the lowest posits only a very marginal recovery, to 15%. No probabilities can be attached to any of the variants, and the actual outcome could lie outside the higher limit, for such reasons as those given in paragraph 8 above.
11. Projections for both these groups of entrants are based mainly on past trends modified by known factors. For mature home entrants this means taking account of the reduction in opportunities for mature teacher trainees and of the effect of increased fees for the minority without grants; population projections for the 21-30 year-old age group are also taken into consideration. For overseas students, the restriction on numbers beginning in 1977/78 has been taken into account. For the longer term it is clearly unrealistic to
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