The Library's response to increased student numbers
23 Sep 2021
As you will be aware this September we are welcoming more students than ever to our campus as a result of the unprecedented levels of success in this year’s A levels.
In this piece I will explain how the University found itself in this position and how we are putting plans in place to manage this unexpected swell in our student population.
Even at the best of times the admissions process is an educated game of chance that relies upon the accuracy of our applicants’ predicted A level grades and careful market assessment based on past performance. In a normal year 28% of A level students would achieve A/A* in their exams. In 2020 with the unexpected use of the combined algorithm and teacher assessed grades this rose to 38% and as a result we did see a slightly larger than usual intake.
This year admissions colleagues made offers on the assumption that A level students would once again sit exams but the decision to continue with teacher assessed grades resulted in a 45% A/A* success rate. With an obligation to honour our commitments to offer holders, we are expecting an additional 2200 student registrations; the largest new student intake in the country at c. 11,800.
The impact of this unplanned increase cannot be underestimated, even in a University the size of Manchester. Some courses have doubled in size with huge implications for teaching and support staff in some Schools (Computer Science, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Alliance Manchester Business School, Social Sciences, Law and Psychology are particularly hard hit) and there are of course implications for our estate in terms of teaching rooms (some cohorts won’t even fit into our largest lecture theatre), residences, and all student support services.
In the Library our immediate concerns have been to ensure we can scale up our eTextbook programme and to consider how we can increase the availability of our study spaces to cater for the increase in demand we will inevitably see. We have worked hard over the last few weeks to feed our concerns in to various working groups tasked with planning a University-wide response and as a result we have secured:
- a 5% increase in our content budget to support the eTextbook programme
- an additional £250,000 to spend on increasing the number of study spaces available in the Main Library
- four additional study space sites
- Oddfellows Hall (for PGT use)
- Christie Bistro (for PGR use)
- The Atrium in University Place
- Prospects House (currently being speedily refurbished!)
Most significantly, we have been granted permission to recruit some additional fixed term staff to help us manage these additional spaces!
There will be more details on our new sites as they open in the coming weeks but it’s worth acknowledging that while we are sure all of these learning spaces will become highly valued additions to our portfolio in the short term, we will also still need to turn our thinking to longer term solutions over the coming months.