As a part of my work on the Coeducate project I recently attended a project day with representatives from 11 other UK HE institutions.

As us often the cases at such events the most value to be gained is from the surrounding off topic discussions and in one such conversation with someone from Cambridge University I was struggling with the comments that a big challenge for Cambridge was that they “lose too many students”.

After some time and as the conversation progressed it became apparent that this wasn’t a reference to a problem of retention but to one of not recruiting some of the the brightest and best students who were leaking away to the competition, Oxford, Harvard, etc.

The irony of the conversation wouldn’t be lost on anyone working in a recruiting university.