ARE UK universities taking students for granted? Could it be time for a wake-up call?

Colin Gilligan, a visiting professor of marketing at Northumbria University, believes it is. Universities don't understand the business of international recruitment well enough, he says.

Times Higher Education (March 20) reports that he told a conference: “[Universities] don't understand the competition or the customer sufficiently well.” He accuses universities of promising too much but delivering too little, adding: “You can put lipstick on a gorilla, but underneath it's still a gorilla”.

The remarks were made before it transpired that there will be greater competition for students in future, thanks to a fall in the birth rate, The Times (March 20) reported. By 2020, the numbers of full-time undergraduates in UK institutions will fall by 4.6 per cent, or 70,000 students, says a report for Universities UK.

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Although by 2027 the dip will have reversed, in the meantime universities are advised to find new blood - older, part-time and foreign students.

Already increasing numbers of Polish students are choosing to study at UK universities. Higher Education Statistics Agency figures show a 56 per cent rise in Poles at UK institutions in the past year.

Not everyone would mind if the student population fell, however. Councils are being urged to work with residents' groups to counter concerns about the “studentification” of areas, reports Local Government Chronicle (March 20). A National Houses in Multiple Occupation Lobby report says that communities could

become unsustainable because of a high student population.

Richard Tyler, the report author, says: “In Leeds there is an acute shortage of affordable homes, yet there are 5,000 homes let in effect as seasonal second homes to students.”

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