The A-levels fiasco will cripple our crisis-ridden universities

The fiasco over A-Level results has only deepened the suffering of a university sector mired in market-driven chaos. Analysis suggests that, thanks to the U-turn on predicted grades, as many as 100,000 students could now meet the entry requirements for their first-choice university. The usual figure is 40,000. 

Universities simply cannot accommodate this many additional students. Indeed, they cannot actually accommodate – physically or in terms of teaching staff – their existing students under social distancing regulations, which is why all teaching is being shifted online for 2020/21. And yet, universities feel not only morally obliged, but perhaps also legally mandated, to try to do so.

A situation that would be nightmarish under any circumstances is rendered positively diabolical by the pre-existing crisis in universities, which this fiasco merely compounds. As outlined in a report for the think tank Cieo last week, this crisis has been caused by the implosion of the market created in higher education since 2011.