Foundation degree report

Foreword
Foundation degrees were launched in September of 2001 as a modern, employment-related, vocational higher education qualification. The Government's White Paper, The Future of Higher Education, announced that foundation degrees will become the major vehicle for expansion in higher education.

This report investigates data on foundation degree applications and accepted applicants through UCAS in the 2003 entry cycle. Various factors are explored to provide a picture of foundation degree applicants, including age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status and higher education subject.

UCAS administrates applications to full-time degree, foundation degree, DipHE, HND and HNC courses to UCAS member institutions across the UK. Each applicant through UCAS is permitted to make up to six applications (with the exception of medicine, veterinary science and dentistry courses where the maximum is four applications). Where data in this report is presented by type of course, the group 'degree (excluding FD)' includes degree and DipHE courses, and excludes foundation degrees, and the group 'HND' includes HND and HNC courses.

Note: The applications data in this report is based on applicants' latest course choices. Since applicants' can change their course choice during the application cycle, application data in this report may differ from other published UCAS application statistics based on applicants' original course choices.

Introduction
In the 2003 entry cycle UCAS received a total of 12,391 applications to over 700 separate foundation degree courses, resulting in 5,596 accepted applicants to foundation degree courses.

Table 1 shows the number of applications to foundation degrees received by UCAS and the number of applicants accepted onto foundation degrees in the 2003 entry cycle. Overall, 1.5% of applicants accepted through UCAS were accepted on to foundation degrees.

Table 2 shows the gender balance within each course type for accepted applicants. The table illustrates how foundation degree accepted applicants were more likely to be male, as were HND applicants. In contrast, degree (excluding FD) accepted applicants were more likely to be female, and since this group makes up the bulk of UCAS accepted applicants, it pushes the overall gender balance towards female applicants, at 53.0% of the entire accepted applicant population.

The age distribution of accepted applicants by type of course is explored in Table 3. The age profile of foundation degree accepted applicants can be seen to be generally older than either for degree or HND accepted applicants. Mature accepted applicants (those aged 21 or over) made up 42.0% of foundation degree accepts, compared with 21.7% of degree (excluding FD) accepts - almost double the proportion.

Subject
This section investigates the profile of foundation degree applications in terms of the subjects applied to, together with the corresponding accepted applicant data. Table 4 provides the proportional distribution of applications across all subject groups. The table illustrates that foundation degrees are proving popular in specific subject areas. Almost one-quarter of foundation degree applications were to courses within Creative arts and design. Other popular subjects included Business and administrative studies and Mathematical and computer sciences. These three subject areas combined made up nearly a half of all foundation degree applications. Table 5 provides the same analysis as Table 4 for accepted applicants.

Table 6 shows the subject group of accepted foundation degree applicants, ordered by applicant numbers from top to bottom. An additional prominent subject group highlighted by Table 6 is Sciences combined with social sciences and arts, which was the subject group with the third largest proportion of accepted applicants.

Table 7 investigates in more detail the most popular subjects amongst accepted foundation degree applicants by looking at the top ten subject lines. Over 10% of accepted applicants were within the subject line Design studies, which explains the magnitude of accepted applicants in the Creative art and design subject group. Computer science and Management studies were also very popular subject lines.

Ethnicity
Table 8 shows the proportional ethnic breakdown of accepted UK applicants by type of course (excluding those applicants of an unknown ethnic background). The table shows that accepted foundation degree applicants were more likely to be of Black ethnic origin than accepted degree (excluding FD) or HND applicants, and were less likely to from an Asian ethnic background.

Ethnic origin is requested from UK domiciled applicants on the UCAS application form. It should be noted that the overall proportion of applicants with an unknown ethnic background was much higher amongst foundation degree and HND applicants (21% and 17% unknown respectively) than for degree (excluding FD) applicants (7% unknown).

Socio-economic status
UCAS derives socio-economic status from an applicant's parental occupation (or their own occupation if they are aged 21 or over) and uses a simplified version of the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC) - since UCAS does not collect employment status or size of organisation from applicants. The method employs the Standard Occupation Classification 2000 (SOC2000) for coding occupations. The question concerning parental occupation on the application form is not compulsory, and therefore there are a large proportion of applicants whose socio-economic status cannot be assessed. The overall proportion of applicants with an unknown socio-economic background was higher amongst foundation degree and HND applicants (38% and 36% unknown respectively) than for degree (excluding FD) applicants (19% unknown).

Table 9 provides the socio-economic background of UK domiciled accepted applicants by type of course. Foundation degree accepts were most likely to be from Lower managerial and professional, Intermediate or Lower supervisory and technical occupations. The proportion of accepted foundation degree applicants from either Higher or Lower managerial and professional occupations was lower than for degree (excluding FD) accepted applicants. The proportion of HND accepted applicants who were from these two higher socio-economic groups was similar to the foundation degree proportions.
Accepted foundation degree applicants were more likely to be from Intermediate occupations socio-economic background than either degree (excluding FD) or HND accepted applicants.

Summary
This report highlights some of the characteristics of foundation degree applicants and provides an insight into how an increased number of foundation degree courses may effect the higher education population. Overall accepted applicant numbers in 2003 were relatively small in comparison with the entire UCAS accepted applicant population. Significant future growth in foundation degree course numbers may alter the current profiles seen in this report. The current picture does, however, indicate that accepted foundation degree applicants are more likely than accepted degree (excluding FD) applicants to be male, older, of Black ethnic origin, and be from an Intermediate occupations or Semi-routine occupations socio-economic background.