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Foundation degree report - 2009

Introduction

In the 2009 entry cycle UCAS received a total of 66,477 applications (20.5% increase on 2008) to 3,095 (up 302 from 2008) foundation degree courses, resulting in 25,031 accepted applicants (17.3% increase on 2008) 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 2009 entry cycle. Overall, 5.2% 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 female (53% of total foundation degree accepts), with males more likely to be HND accepts (61% of total HND accepts). Degree 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 54.7% of the entire accepted applicant population (this is a decrease from 55.1% last year).

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 41.2% of foundation degree accepts, compared with 20.8% of degree 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 (24.9%). Other popular subjects again included Business and administrative studies (13.3%) and Sciences combined with Social Sciences or Arts (9.8%). These three subject areas combined made up nearly a half of all foundation degree applications (48.0%). 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 Business and Admin Studies, which was the subject group with the second largest proportion of accepted applicants (12.5%).

Table 7 investigates in more detail the most popular subjects amongst accepted foundation degree applicants by looking at the top ten subject lines. Around 7% 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. Combinations of Science/Engineering with arts/humanities/languages (5.9%) and Hospitality, Leisure, Tourism and Transport (5.3%) were also popular subject lines again this year.

Ethnicity

Table 8 shows the proportional ethnic breakdown of accepted UK applicants by type of course.

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 higher amongst foundation degree and HND applicants (12.4% and 11.9 % unknown respectively) than for degree applicants (3.3% unknown) or other degree (2.9% unknown). These figures have all reduced across the range of subjects compared to 2008.

View the complete tables for the 2009 foundation degree report