With more than 80,000 applicants expected to enter Clearing this summer, universities are preparing for one of the busiest periods in the higher education calendar. As institutions compete to recruit students, admissions and IT teams are working to ensure contact centre systems can cope with thousands of enquiries arriving within hours of A-level results being published.
Universities across the UK are preparing for another intense Clearing period, with admissions teams expecting a surge of prospective students seeking places immediately after A-level results are released in August.
Clearing has become an increasingly important part of the student recruitment cycle. More than 77,000 students secured university places through the process last year and application numbers are expected to exceed 80,000 this year, according to communications provider 8×8. With each successful applicant representing several years of tuition fee income, universities face significant operational and financial pressure to ensure prospective students can make contact quickly.
The challenge extends well beyond admissions teams. University IT departments are responsible for ensuring telephony, contact centre and digital communications systems remain available during one of the busiest periods of the academic year, when tens of thousands of enquiries can arrive within a matter of hours.
James Starvella, UK University Lead at 8×8, said the uncertainty applicants experience when trying to contact universities adds to the pressure surrounding Clearing.
“The number of applications through Clearing has been growing year on year for some time and it’s likely to top above 80,000 people this year – it’s an utterly stressful time for applicants. When they are trying to get through they have no idea if they are going to be on the phone for three seconds, three minutes, or three hours in trying to secure the course that could determine the rest of their life. But beyond this, it’s a stressful time for the university teams because they want the calls to get through quickly and for people to have a positive experience. Financially though, every dropped call is a costly failure – and one that’s utterly preventable.”
The University of Worcester is among the institutions that prepare months in advance for the annual influx of enquiries.
“It’s a tough period, possibly the most intense part of the year, and universities train and plan months in advance,” said Ged Attwood, Head of Operations at the University of Worcester. “It’s worth it in the end though because you want people to get in and be on the course of their dreams. We work hard on this because we don’t want to have people being stressed. Last year during the Clearing period, 3,325 calls were taken with an average wait time of 32 seconds. Even more impressively, on the first – and busiest – day, the average wait time was no longer than 10 seconds.”
While Clearing continues into October, the first days following the publication of A-level results remain the most critical, with universities handling large volumes of enquiries as applicants seek to secure available places before courses fill.
As competition for students continues to intensify, resilient communications infrastructure has become an increasingly important part of universities’ wider recruitment strategy, helping admissions teams respond quickly during one of the highest-pressure periods of the academic year.
