by Laerke Christensen, reporter 

One in eight students applying to university last year received an unconditional offer – but the Office for Students is looking to crack down on this trend, claiming it’s not in the students’ best interests and some of them may fall afoul of consumer legislation.

Unconditional offers – when the student is offered a place at a school, no strings attached – have been on the rise since 2013, where 3,000 such offers were given out. In 2018, that number had risen to 117,000.

The report commissioned by the Office for Students found that these offers were harming student performance, as students who received them were more likely to miss their predicted A-level performance by two or more grades.

The report also found that ‘conditional unconditional offers’ – where students are given an unconditional offer if they put the offering school as their first priority – were ‘pressure selling’ and against consumer legislation.

These offers increased from none recorded in 2013 to 66,000 in 2018.

Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of the Ofs said the regulator was worried that universities were not keeping students’ best interests in mind:

“We are concerned about the rapid rise in unconditional offers, particularly those with strings attached which are akin to pressure selling. It is plainly not in students’ interests to push them to accept an offer that may not be their best option.”

While some may argue that unconditional offers are also a way to get lower-performing students into higher education, Chris Milward, Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Ofs, insisted that conditional offers could be adjusted to meet special considerations:

“Our analysis suggests that more unconditional offers may be being made to students from underrepresented groups to meet the needs of universities rather than students. Our firm view is that conditional offers that take students’ circumstances into account are a more effective way of achieving fair access.”

Conor Ryan from the Office for Students said:

“We want to see students making decisions on what course they go to at university that’s the right one for them, and we also want to make sure that they’re achieving their full potential. So one of the worries for example is that if the university says: “Well, you don’t have to get any particular A-level grades”  then they’re not going to work hard for their A-levels.”