Why universities are paying students to stay away

In the same way that airlines overbook flights, universities send out more offers than they have places for on the basis that many applicants will not make the grade. But what happens when most of them do? Airlines often use financial incentives to persuade someone to surrender their seat and similarly universities have been known to offer successful applicants thousands of pounds to defer. The exams fiasco means universities are now under even more pressure to make students a gap year offer they can’t refuse.

Scrapping the exams algorithm and replacing it with teacher predicted grades meant that students from poorly performing schools didn’t miss out just because some computer code forecasted failure. But the new approach has seen the number As and A*s increase by around a third. This means that tens of thousands of applicants – perhaps as many as 60,000 – who reluctantly accepted a place at their second choice of university are now scrambling to take up to their preferred offer.